French right-winger sells car on eBay
April 30, 2008
Far-right French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen has put his bullet-proof car up for sale on eBay. The listing says that the car is for sale following its replacement, but a Front National spokesman told reporters the aim was “glorious money”, which might well be the truth: in February, Le Pen was fined €10,000 and given a three month suspended prison sentence for describing the Nazi occupation of France as “not particularly inhumane”. At time of writing, the car has just broken the €1 million mark with 72 bids. It remains to be seen how many of those bids are real, and how many are a protest against M. Le Pen’s politics.
eBay Spain gets ‘report this item’ links
April 30, 2008
eBay Spain have announced that “report this item” links have been added to the bottom of all item pages on eBay.es. The “Informar sobre este artÃculo” links allow users to quickly inform eBay of items which break listing policies and other rules.
Most other eBay sites have had these links for a while now, beginning with eBay Australia back in 2005.
eBay announce Trusted Reporter program
April 30, 2008
Today speaking at the Internet World exhibition in London Richard Ambrose announced a new program of “Trusted Reporters” on eBay UK.
Starting within the next few weeks pilot program with a couple of dozen users will be launched with a fast track for action to be taken. By the end of the year, if the program proves successful it will be expanded to include hundreds of users.
eBay have discovered that a dedicated core of around 1000 eBay members generate about 50% of all accurate reports on the site. It is from this pool of experienced reporters with a history of accuracy over several years that the Trusted Reporters will be drawn.
One concern from similar pilots in the past, carried out in the US, is that the accuracy of reports could deteriorate once they’re aware of their status. eBay will continue to verify the quality of reports from the Trusted reports to ensure the program isn’t open to abuse.
Users have often complained in the past that reports weren’t acted on, it’s great news that those who have actively, consistently and accurately reported violations over an extended period of time will be prioritised.
Addresses missing from PayPal emails
April 30, 2008
Numerous sellers have been reporting that PayPal payment emails are missing buyers’ addresses. The problem seemed to start a couple of days ago, and has apparently been spreading ever since. It seems that not all sellers are affected, and of those who are, not all their emails are lacking addresses. In a long thread on the PowerSeller Board (PS signin required) a Pink has acknowledged the problem, but there is no further news of a possible fix.
In a possibly related problem, TameBay reader Antonio has reported that his PayPal payment emails are being sent to his primary email address, rather than to the email address to which payment was sent. Anyone using email filtering to manage their sales might want to keep an eye out for this problem.
If there’s any word of a fix, I’ll update this post.
Update Wednesday 2pm PayPal have apparently told at least one user that a fix will be with us shortly.
And for what it’s worth, there is now an AB post confirming there’s a problem.
eBay Italy: EUR0.01 listings, free Gallery, Best Match
April 30, 2008
From June this year eBay Italy will be the first site to make major changes to Shops, scrapping existing SIF listings and combining them with BIN to make a new format – “Buy It Now with full visibility in the search”.
In addition to the standard listing lengths there will be a new 30 days format BIN which can be automatically renewed. Gallery will be free on all listings from June.
At the same time new Shops will be introduced – Base, Plus and Premium, with varying insertion fees. Sellers who select the Premium Shop costing €99.95/mth will have free BIN listings until August 31st, and from then on the cost will be just €0.01.
Best Match will be introduced for fixed price listings although Auctions will still appear with ending soonest sort. In order to advantage the longer listing formats multiple item listings with the MOST sold items will appear first in search results. It becomes more important to list multiple quantity items than duplicate listings of a single item (which many sellers have done in the past to increase visibility).
There will also be a new Showcase feature, using Showcase will allow sellers to buy their way to the top of Best Match in order to gain sales, once they have sales the listings will rise to the top of Best Match on their own merit.
Seller Standards will become more important than ever on eBay Italy. Not only will sellers with poor feedback, excessive shipping, or multiple INR complaints be disadvantaged in search, they will also lose the right to open Plus or Premium eBay shops and access to virtually free listings.
Working towards free insertion fees is a stated long term aim for eBay. Italy is the first country to experiment with this and if it’s a success we can see it introduced in other eBay territories, possibly as soon as Autumn this year.
JD speaks to sellers through Pierre
April 30, 2008
I’ve looked at eBay Ink a few times, and really wondered what’s the point? Up until today there’s been very little content that couldn’t be found elsewhere, but today RBH posted some genuine insider stuff.
It’s three pretty interesting video clips from a longer conversation between JD and Pierre Omidyar, which was broadcast to eBay employees at the beginning of April. The segments address the level playing field, handling the community especially when they’re vocal, and the eBay marketplace and feedback.
The timing is impeccable, tomorrow is the 1st May and the latest eBay seller strike is due to kick off. It would be easy to think JD might be prominent and answering a few questions on why the changes sellers are complaining about are good for the community as a whole. That’s not what happens in the videos though, JD simply asks Pierre questions and lets him answer and tell it how it is.
I can almost imagine JD thinking “Hey I’m the new CEO and I have these things to say that sellers won’t like – I know… I’ll get Pierre to say them for me!”
The timing could be a coincidence but you have to admit, that on the eve of a seller strike, wheeling out the founder of eBay really isn’t a bad move.
US start-up takes on eBay
April 29, 2008
A new startup is being billed as the marketplace that will rival eBay. Launched in public beta today, though apparently only open to US residents, Wigix is aiming for the Buy It Now, new items end of the market. The site, whose name stands for “want it get it exchange”, offers a stock exchange-type price matching mechanism, where buyers and sellers can add their desired prices for items, and the system will notify both parties when there is a match. Wigix will offer a ticker showing recent transactions and prices, hoping to entice browsers to become sellers.
No fees on items under $25
As has become the norm with eBay competitors, there is no fee to list on Wigix. Items sold for under $25 are fee-free even when sold. From $25 up, there is a downwards sliding scale for sellers:
- $1.50 for a sale $25 – $100;
- $1.50 + 2% of the amount above $100 for a sale $100 – $1,000;
- $21 + 1% of the amount over $1,000 for a sale of more than $1,000.
Buyers will – unusually – pay $1.50 per item themselves. This pricing structure obviously tends towards the higher end of the market.
But members also have the opportunity to earn money from the site, without needing to sell a thing themselves. Those who add new products into Wigix’s Amazon-style inventory, will earn 5% of the site’s transaction fees when items are sold from that listing. There’s a great opportunity for someone with a large database of products there…
Members can also become category experts, overseeing product submissions, blogging, posting on forums and dealing with other members’ queries: creating community around their categories. For a fairly hefty time committment, these members will earn 1% of the revenue from their category.
PowerSellers wanted
eBay PowerSellers will be able to import their catalogues into Wigix, and they say that from July, the site will offer store fronts.
I must admit, I’m more impressed with Wigix than with pretty much any “the next eBay” I’ve ever seen. Concentrating on higher-end consumer products rather than trying to take on the breadth of eBay’s marketplace, looks like it may attract experts in the relevent categories, as well as serious buyers and sellers. It’s a shame they’re limiting it to US residents at the moment, but perhaps that will change in time.
eBay France free boutiques listings promotion
April 29, 2008
eBay France is offering free Stores listing fees during May, June and July to sellers who use prefilled information in their listings. Prefilled information is available on eBay.fr for books, films, music, video games, PDAs, digital cameras and mobile phones.
The promotion is open to business-registered sellers only, and is valid for Stores (Boutiques) listings for a 30 day duration. Good Til Cancelled (valide jusqu’Ã annulation) listings will also receive free insertion fees for each 30 day period beginning during the run of the promotion. Shop listings which don’t use pre-filled information will be charged at the normal rates.
Two useful feedback tools from Auctiontrax
April 29, 2008
If you’re worried that your Buyer Dissatisfaction Rate is coming close to the dreaded 5%, Auctiontrax have a new tool to allow you to check how bad things really are. You can see your negatives and neutrals over the last 90 days as a percentage of your total feedback, and see whether you need to start pleading for Mutual Feedback Withdrawals or not. It’s very similar to the Toolhaus version, but seems to work a lot faster.
Another useful new Auctiontrax tool is the DSR calculator, which lets work out how many star ratings you’ll need to increase your average score (I need 525 fives to get my P&P up to 4.9, so I think I’ll stop hoping now). It’s a shame eBay don’t have an API for 30 day figures because this would be a superb tool for helping us all figure out what we need to do to keep our FVF discounts.
No more ‘grace period’ to sort out poor feedback
April 29, 2008
eBay UK sellers are receiving emails from Account Managers this morning advising them of unannounced changes to the rules regarding seller non-performance:
- there will be no more 30 day grace period for sellers whose buyer dissatisfaction rate falls below 95%.
- if your BDR falls below 95% over a 90 day period, you will immediately have your account suspended from selling for 30 days and all listings will be removed.
- if after 30 days, your account has not shown “a significant improvement”, you will be indefinitely suspended.
- if you are indefinitely suspended, you will not be able to use any other accounts, or to open new ones. (The implication here is that the accounts will be completely suspended from all activity, not just selling, but the email doesn’t explicitly say this.)
Sellers who had fallen foul of the seller non-performance policy previously had the opportunity to trade their way out of trouble, perhaps by selling a lot of cheap items quickly to try to increase their feedback percentages. This will no longer be an option.
To be a victim of the Seller Non-Performance Policy, sellers must have 5% or more of their buyers unhappy, as evidenced by neutral feedback, negative feedback or item not received complaints, over a 90 day period. While this would be difficult for most eBay sellers to achieve, as we’ve seen with DSRs, it’s likely to be the high-value, low-volume sellers who are hit hardest. The DSRs themselves are not currently taken into account for this score, though eBay have said that this may change in the future.
eBay do offer some tips on how to improve your chances of staying registered on the site:
- sellers who have received any non-positive feedback are encouraged to file for mutual feedback withdrawal
- sellers who have filed for MFW and had no response are encouraged to email AMs to see if the feedback can be removed under any eBay policies.
I am exceedingly concerned at the effect this will have on the eBay buyer experience. It’s likely to lead to *much* more bullying of buyers by sellers who no longer have anything to lose by harrassing people into feedback withdrawals.
And of course, for sellers, it means that you can’t trade your way out of a bad spot. 30 days sitting there with nothing for sale is unlikely to improve anyone’s score much – indeed, when sellers seem to have disappeared from the site, they’re much less likely to be given the benefit of the doubt by buyers who will naturally assume they’ve done a runner.
Worse still, if you’ve had a flurry of negative feedback – maybe because of a faulty batch of stock or a missing mailbag – then selling nothing for a month will give you 60 days worth of feedback as previous good ones drop off, and you’ll probably be down to 90% by the time your suspension is up. In other words, if you get to a 30 day suspension, you can probably wave goodbye to your eBay account.
But the thing that shocks me more than anything is that this change is not being officially announced. “Although it has not been announced…” begins the AM email. Frankly, this isn’t good enough. There should have been a post on the Announcements Board, not a sneaky little email to those of us lucky enough to have an Account Manager.
Updated to add Just to clarify: sellers need a minimum of two negative feedbacks to be sanctioned under the SNP policy (or they did last time eBay actually revealed any details of that policy). So one negative cannot get your account suspended (or so I understand).
eBay UK joins Twitter
April 29, 2008
eBay UK has become the latest business to discover Twitter today. The micro-blogging service lets you discover your friends’ answers to the question “what are you doing now?” Mini-posts of up to 140 characters can be posted via Skype, mobile phone or an array of desktop tools, as well as via the website, and though at first glance it looks like so much more pointless noise on the internet, I’m beginning to be convinced there might be something in it. People I know via eBay turn out – astonishingly – to have a life beyond eBay: I’m enjoying discovering that.
And Twitter is increasingly being used by business as a way to communicate with customers. Dell, for example, have sent out discount coupons via Twitter. And Zappos CEO’s constant stream of interesting Tweets revealed that he has told eBay CEO John Donahoe to get on Twitter. Perhaps eBay UK’s new account is the first step to that: we’ll be following their tweets with interest.
Thanks to Dan for the heads-up.
eBay Motors Australia hooks up with drive.com.au
April 29, 2008
eBay Motors in Australia are partnering with Drive.com.au in a deal which will see eBay Motors listings appear on drive.com.au and vice versa.
Working with dealers to list their entire inventory on eBay is nothing new, the GM partnered with eBay in an agreement to list their entire inventory of used motors on eBay. This is the first time I’m aware of that eBay Motors has partnered with a classified site in a deal to share listings. I’m trying to imagine what eBay Motors UK would look like if they were to do a similar deal with Auto Trader – I imagine motors traders would be quite vocal about the influx of listings, although exposure on another site would be a bonus.
At the end of the day anything that increases exposure of the eBay brand, and of eBay listings has to be good news – partnering with classified sites is an interesting development.
To support the deal eBay Motors Australia are about to launch a revamped site which is currently in beta.
DSRs have Whirly in a spin
April 29, 2008
When eBay talked about DSRs, Best Match, search result advantages and disadvantages, and all the other changes they’ve made recently, there was a refrain running through the conversation, that one buyer’s bad marks would not, could not, affect a seller. Unfortunately, for some sellers, this turns out not to be quite accurate.
Long-term readers of the PowerSeller Board and numerous other eBay-related forums know Martin from The Whirlpool Bath Shop better as Whirly. Martin sells luxury baths, and as you can imagine, his high value sales are pretty low volume: if he gets a dozen feedbacks in a week, that’s a pretty busy week on eBay.
Under eBay’s new regime, that has left The Whirlpool Bath Shop veering from ‘PowerSeller with an FVF discount’ to ‘disadvantaged in search results’ and back again. Over the last week or so, I’ve watched his particular problem, the dispatch time star, move from 4.3 to 4.4 and back again half a dozen times, one feedback at a time: 4.3 is of course the cut-off point for being disadvantaged in search, so buyers leaving a “4″ are killing the Whirly Shop. Martin himself swings from “I’m finished on eBay” to “phew!”, and though he paints it all with the humour we’ve all come to expect from him, it’s not a way anyone can run a business, not over the long-term. If one buyer can kill off his eBay sales, then he might as well finish the job himself.
Unfortunately for Martin, it seems that most of his buyers aren’t bothering to leave him any DSR stars at all: according to his Account Manager, 18 out of the last 25 buyers who left a comment, didn’t fill out the stars. This does seem to confirm the fear that many sellers expressed last year when the DSR system was introduced, that happy buyers won’t bother to leave stars.
When 13 buyers in a row had left a positive comment but apparently no stars, Martin decided further action was required: he phoned them to make sure everything was satisfactory and to see what could have gone better. No, said the buyers, all was fine: they’d told him when they wanted their bath delivered, and it’d been delivered on that day.
It strikes me that Martin has the same problem with delivery time that many of us have with the P&P score. He lets his buyers choose when his couriers will deliver, and because their expectations are met exactly, rather than exceeded, for many buyers that merits a “good” score of 4 out of 5. Unless there’s a really nice surprise in the transaction, some people don’t give 5s. If you sell hundreds of items every day, that probably doesn’t matter: your average will be pulled upwards. But if you sell a dozen baths a week, every single 4 is another nail in the coffin of your eBay shop.
Martin’s now listing higher volume cheaper items in an attempt to increase his DSR scores. He doesn’t want to: “it’s hassle”, he told me. But its what his competitors are doing too, and it seems that for many low-volume, high-price sellers, it might be the only way to survive on eBay.
1st May: 5p auction only cheap listing
April 28, 2008
eBay UK are holding a one day auction only cheap listing day on the 1st May. Auctions starting on the 1st will have an insertion fee of just 5p regardless of price.
Call my cynical but isn’t 1st May the day that the supposed sellers strike is rumoured to start? Great timing by eBay…
Will you be taking advantage? Let us know in comments below.
So farewell then, eBay Matchups
April 28, 2008
eBay Matchups, the fun but pointless “which is better” game, has been removed from the eBay site. It was launched in November 2006, apparently the after-hours brainchild of a couple of eBay employees. Matchups had its finest hour when blogger and eBay forum regular Fruit Helmet Cat beat then-CEO Meg Whitman hands down:
More important is what this says about eBay’s future. The holding page says that Matchups has gone “due to changing business climates”. Fun-but-pointless used to be a characteristic of eBay: think of the words of the song, the rare mint snow globe and the Smurf TV tray, things you might want, but certainly didn’t need, one person’s rubbish that became another person’s treasure. eBay has moved beyond that: its about big business now, which seems not to have room for pointless fun. Which is a shame.
Neutral feedback to be counted as negative
April 27, 2008
A post on the eBay Developers’ Blog reveals some more details about the feedback changes coming in May. As we already knew, percentage calculations will now be on the last 12 months’ activity, not the entire lifetime of an eBay account. The formula used to calculate that percentage will now be “all positive Feedback earned in the past year by all positive, neutral and negative Feedback” (emphasis mine). Currently, neutrals do not count at all in the percentage calculation. If this new calculation brings a seller’s feedback percentage to below 98%, they will lose PowerSeller status, and thus FVF discounts.
Neutral is no longer neutral
This change is going to leave a lot of people questioning what the point of neutral feedback is. eBay have previously said that neutrals allow buyers to leave a non-positive feedback without the damage of a negative. This is obviously not the case any more: a neutral is just as damaging as a negative under the new calculation.
Sadly, I don’t think buyers will see it like that. Many neutrals are left simply because the buyer’s assumptions were incorrect, because something outside the seller’s control (delivery time) wasn’t quite satisfactory, or even because the transaction was ‘just ordinary’. As the leaver of my very first neutral told me, “don’t get your knickers in a knot, it’s only a neutral”. Except now it isn’t.
It’s time to get rid of neutral feedback once and for all; if buyers want to complain, they can leave negative feedback, and they can mark down DSRs. Giving them this ‘negative lite’ score which they believe doesn’t really matter is only encouraging them to damage sellers’ livelihoods without realising what they’re doing.
Limits on when feedback can be left
The Developers’ Blog says “We’ll block buyers from leaving negative or neutral Feedback for 7 days for active PowerSellers who have been on eBay for at least 12 months.” Whatever this actually means, it’s good news.
The feedback changes page says “A time limit should be placed on how quickly negative and neutral Feedback can be left.” I assume therefore the limit is seven days from the date of the sale, rather than – say – buyers indicating they want to leave negative feedback having to wait seven days before that feedback appears on the site.
eBay comment that this should “drive positive feedback”. I don’t think this is true: most genuine negatives are left more than a week after the transaction, when it has become obvious that the seller can’t or won’t make things right. But it will help to stop feedback extortion: quite why that should be limited to long-term PowerSellers, I can’t really see.
Help for sellers
As has been previously announced, there are several tweaks to the system being made which should help sellers limit the problems they have to deal with:
- sellers can block buyers who have two unpaid item strikes in the last 12 months
- sellers will be able to block buyers who have been reported for feedback extortion and email threats
- blocked bidder lists are increasing in capacity from 1000 IDs to 5000.
How will this affect you? Are you – like me – waving goodbye to all your 100% scores? Or do you still believe that feedback doesn’t really matter? Leave us a comment.
Is this the return of Stores in Search?
April 26, 2008
A poster on the eBay.com Stores discussion format has copied an interesting question from a recent eBay survey:
Imagine that eBay updated its current eBay Stores product offering: In the revised eBay Stores product offering, listings in the Store Inventory Format:
Would be shown in Core eBay search results with Buy It Now items and Auction items.
Would have lower Insertion Fees than Buy It Now listings depending on the eBay Store product to which you subscribe (see details in table below).
Would have the same Final Value Fees as Buy It Now listings.
Imagine eBay made the explained changes to the Store Inventory listing format and also introduced (30 days, Good ‘Til Cancelled) listing duration and ($0.30) Insertion Fee to the Buy It Now listing format.
Monthly subscription fee
Basic Store $24.95 .10 store listings in core
Premium Store $59.95 .05 store listings in core
Anchor Store $299.95 Free store listings in core
In addition to these changes, imagine that eBay offered longer durations of 30 days and Good ‘Til Canceled for all Buy It Now listings at no extra charge.
Taking into account these changes, would you consider continuing subscribing to one of the eBay Stores if eBay offered them at a reasonable subscription fee?
Longer-term sellers will remember the last time when stores’/shops’ items showed in search, an experiment which was abandoned by eBay as apparently sellers were overwhelmed with too many items showing in search results – and presumably eBay themselves lost revenue as sellers stopped bothering to list in core.
If the survey question reflects eBay’s intentions for changes to SIF listings, they might have found a way to overcome both of those problems. eBay may well think that Best Match will keep search results from overwhelming buyers.
What do you think? Would this send you running to subscribe to an Anchor Shop? Leave us a comment.
Via Auctionbytes via Randy.
eBay affiliates’ deadline extended
April 26, 2008
The eBay Partner Network has given affiliates an extra month to move their links from Commission Junction to the new network. CJ links will now cease to be valid on 31st May. This applies to Half.com and all eBay countries except Belgium, Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which will still switch on 30th April.
eBay say that more than two-thirds of traffic has already moved to the new system. However, switching earlier rather than later should benefit affiliates, because clicks on the CJ system during May which convert into purchases or registrations in June will *not* be paid out. Dull though it is, don’t put off changing your links til the end of next month!
‘PayPal only’ sends Ozzie sellers to eBay competitor
April 25, 2008
OZtion, the second largest online auction site in Australia, has announced record growth in the two weeks since eBay Australia announced their new PayPal only payments policy.
OZtion’s listings have increased 22% to approximately 580,000 simultaneous listings. The site now has more than a quarter of a million members, with daily new registrations up 165% and new seller registrations up 300%.
Philip Druce, General Manager for OZtion commented “The fact that OZtion has seen significant growth across most metrics shows that Australians are looking for alternatives to eBay and will not be forced into only using PayPal. Our internal data shows that 79% of buyers prefer to pay by bank deposit.”
OZtion’s sellers must undergo an identity check process similar to that required to open a bank account. Druce comments: “Many online fraudulent activities are only possible because sites make it easy to create a fake identity. OZtion focuses on preventing fraud and has created a range of identity checks for both buyers and sellers, allowing Australians to shop online with confidence.”
OZtion was started in 2005 when Druce and co-founder Kelvin Yip to offer Australians an alternative auction site to eBay.
eBay Canada names new country manager
April 25, 2008
eBay Canada have officially named Andrew Sloss as their new country manager. Sloss was previously head of marketing for eBay.ca, and has been acting country manager since September last year. Prior to joining eBay Canada in 2002, he had spent five years working for Bain & Co., for whom John Donahoe and Meg Whitman have both worked.
Could you sell on Overstock UK?
April 24, 2008
Overstock announced in February that will be expanding to the UK and Europe this summer. I met some of their staff at Catalyst US and today Jake Bailey, Director of International Business at Overstock, gave TameBay the inside track regarding their UK launch.
On the launch date Overstock will ship to International customers through a freight forwarder in the U.S. This initial service will allow UK customers to shop in pounds sterling, with the product shipped from the U.S.
The range of products on sale will not differ too much from what Overstock offer in the U.S. Obviously, some products are just too expensive to ship internationally (like furniture), so these types of issues are being worked through prior to the launch.
Overstock are always looking for additional third-party sellers or “partnersâ€. They are currently seeking international third-party sellers that can ship both domestically and into the U.S. (a UK seller for example, that could fulfill orders in the UK and directly into the U.S.) With the initial launch, they will mainly use sellers from the U.S., but are already seeking international sellers for future expansion. Overstock would welcome any sellers that would have an interest in partnering with them, especially if their products can fill a gap in Overstocks product portfolio. The main qualifier is that the seller offers product to Overstock customers at the best price on the Internet.
When asked if there is a place for the small seller on Overstock, they described themselves as “agnostic to seller size”. What’s most important is that the seller takes good care of customers and supplies product at a competitive price. It also depends on the product category, for example, they would want a partner to keep high stock numbers in a fast-selling DVD, but would be happy for a partner that sells very high-end jewelry to only keep a few items in stock.
Overstock currently work with eBay sellers, Amazon sellers, website owners, traditional Bricks/Mortar outlets and larger manufacturers. They have relationships with ChannelAdvisor and Vcommerce and are exploring others. Many of their partners link directly to Overstock through either through an EDI or Shopping API integration.
Overstock are the most serious competitor to enter the marketplace in recent years. eBay and Amazon are likely to watch developments with interest as sellers rush to partner with their newest competitor.
We’re interested in your views – will you sell on Overstock? Are you a US seller that will be selling to the UK? Are you a UK seller that would like to be selling to the UK and US on Overstock when they launch in Europe?
Lorrie to sellers: you are our customers too
April 24, 2008
Lorrie Norrington’s keynote speech at the PESA Ecommerce Summit has some interesting thoughts for sellers on the future of eBay. eBay Ink has provided the full transcript of the speech, and here are the highlights:
Sellers are eBay’s customers too
Yes, she actually said it. And she went on to say “we have to improve the seller experience … make eBay a more attractive place for you to do business.”
Measures to improve things are working
• Near 100% Gallery usage on .com
• 63% of PSs qualified for 5% discount
• 30% of PSs qualified for 15% discount; this was double the expected rate.
More protection for sellers
There will be changes to bidder management: sellers will be able to block buyers with 2 UIDs over the last 12 months, and buyers who have been reported by other sellers for feedback extortion and other feedback abuses.
Negative and neutral feedback will be removed when the buyer does not respond to a UID (as now) or when their responses do not express dissatisfaction with the item or with the seller’s performace: in other words, nonsensical responses are no longer enough to protect non-positive feedback. Negs and neuts will also be removed when buyers are suspended for feedback and other policy violations.
More changes coming; sellers who are on board will do well
Success-based pricing and category specific pricing are coming. Sellers who have high DSR scores will be rewarded with better pricing and better visibility, and “are going to fare very, very well on eBay”.
If you can’t stand the heat…
get out of the kitchen. This is the bluntest I have ever heard an eBay exec be about who they don’t want on the site: “If you do not perform well against the criteria buyers care about most, you will not be successful on eBay. We will not apologize for this … but, if you are willing to try, we will be there for you to help you raise your game.”
A concluding paragraph deserves quoting in full:
Finally, if I can leave you with just one message from today, it is that you’re not just an eBay seller … you are an eBay customer. This is a change in perspective at eBay and one that I think that will benefit both buyers and sellers.
It means, that we will spend most of our time, money and effort into winning your business and making sure that good sellers – whether large or small – have a great experience on eBay.
We do live in interesting times.
Demand Draft appears as payment option on eBay
April 24, 2008
eBay have inadvertently changed the payment methods displaying on listings to read “Demand Draft” instead of “Postal Order/Bankers Draft”.
A demand draft isn’t something I’ve come across before but appears to be a guaranteed cheque drawn on a buyers account but not generally available in the UK. Hopefully we’ll get our Postal Orders and Bankers Drafts back soon.
(Thanks to Eddie from AuctionChex for the info)
Google University to visit London
April 24, 2008
Internet World takes place on 29th April – 1st May at Earls Court in London and one thing that caught my eye were the Google University classes. Starting with “The Basics” at 11am each day of the show, if you’ve never used Adwords and want to learn from scratch this is the session for you. Google also have a masterclass on Adwords on the 29th (repeated on the 30th), with a further session on Google Analytics and Website Optimiser on the 1st May. These sessions are a must for anyone serious about driving quality traffic to their website.
There are a couple of familar faces that I met at the Catalyst conference last week, who are speaking at the show. Richard Ambrose of eBay is hosting a session on the 30th – “The Challenges of maintaining trust among online communities,” and James Scott of ChannelAdvisor is to talk about “Leveraging the influence of Comparison Shopping Engines as part of a online retail strategy.”
With 300+ exhibitors and over 200 hours of seminars covering just about every key topic concerning the online world it’s looking to be a great event. Oh, and it’s free to attend, just pre-register online.
Sued for leaving neutral feedback
April 24, 2008
eBay sellers have been getting pretty protective of their feedback in recent weeks. With search results’ order and even ability to list on the site now influenced by the feedback buyers leave, I was unsurprised – if a little depressed – to hear of one seller negging a buyer for not leaving four 5s on DSR stars. But now one American seller has gone a step further, trying to sue a buyer for leaving neutral feedback.
According to reports, the buyer had bought some silver dollars on eBay, which arrived poorly packed. Then it seems like the seller asked for feedback. The buyer left him a neutral, and was slapped with a $10,000 lawsuit. Though the judge threw the case out, the buyer was still left with a $500 legal bill for the attorney he’d had to hire.
King5.com’s report of the case says that the seller was prevented from leaving negative feedback for the buyer because of eBay’s rules: in fact, this new rule doesn’t kick in until next month. But I’ll predict that this will not be the last case of this kind that we’ll see from sellers desperate to protect their reputations and their livelihoods.
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- Chris Dawson: Just in case you haven’t seen it on the announcement board… http://www2.ebay....
- Lorna: Pete, so many times I see on the Q&A, where a buyer comes on and complains that a seller has refused to...
- Pete: #2 In a word…No. That would be the same as saying “it’s a free world, so if I don’t...
- Lorna: ‘Brand owners (and not just those supplying luxury goods) are threatening free trade by attempting to...
- Lorna: It’s possible that the retailers of particular brands stipulate a restriction on who else has access to...
- Gay: I think I might just put holiday settings on for a week!
- Richard: There’s a clone of Louise on the PayPal site too who wears a blue top.
- Chris Dawson: Nick, I thought I’d try my luck…. You: Hi Louise – eBay: Good evening how can I help...
- Pete: I know, we had an issue with our first installation, the barcodes were unreadable and we had to install a few...
- Nick Talley: Louise – eBay: Hi! I’m Louise and I’m here to answer your questions about eBay. Can I have your...
