Another reminder for UK and Irish business sellers
July 31, 2008
There’s a reminder from eBay UK today that business sellers in the UK and Ireland need to register as such with eBay. The new Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 came into force in the UK on 26th May, under which it is a criminal offence to make false or misleading statements relating to the status of your business. Irish sellers have the same obligation under the Consumer Protection Act 2007.
Of course, this has been something that eBay has been talking about since at least January: I’d hazard a guess that most of the sellers who are not registered as businesses when they should be, have made a deliberate decision to do so, perhaps hoping to avoid tax on their earnings, or their obligations under the Distance Selling Regulations.
Though eBay do make some efforts to limit non-registered businesses on the site, many sellers believe they don’t go nearly far enough, and complain that eBay do not act on reports of breaches of their own rules. A recent thread on the PowerSeller Board complained that eBay have told sellers to report unregistered businesses to Trading Standards, but that Trading Standards are not interested. If the information in that thread is correct, Trading Standards themselves seem to have a very limited understanding of the law in this area: the Distance Selling Regulations are not the only legislation with which online traders need to comply, and all sellers should protect both themselves and their customers by knowing about their legal obligations.
Donate to your favourite charity with eBay Giving Works
July 31, 2008
There’s a great new feature from eBay Giving Works, the US equivalent of eBay for Charity. You can use the new Donate Now tab from your favourite charity’s page on GW to donate directly to them. It’s a nice touch which makes the charity pages feel more complete; and it’s nice too to see the lovely Jen on the announcements’ board.
Random Item Specifics appear in ASQ
July 30, 2008
A rather strange glitch today, brought to us by my competitor chum Jane the demon bead lady. On replying to an question from a prospective buyer this afternoon, she got the following:
click to embiggen
The men’s flip flops aren’t anything she sells, and are certainly nothing to do with quartz chip beads.
I like very much the idea of having item specifics show up when you’re answering ASQs: it can only help with those “how big are these 6mm beads” and “what colour are these black jeans” questions. But I would prefer them to be from something I am at least selling myself.
PayPal refuse risk leaving no buyer protection
July 30, 2008
When attempting to make a payment via PayPal earlier today, this message appeared stating the seller can’t currently accept payments through PayPal.
I’m guessing that either their account isn’t fully verified, or PayPal have put them on hold due to a security risk. I suppose I should be thankful to PayPal for protecting my money but I’m not - in reality they’re only protecting their own money leaving me to shoulder all of the risk.
None of the alternative payment options offered (credit card, cheque or postal order) qualify for buyer protection, buyers are only covered if they pay via PayPal. Buyer protection sounds great when bidding with a nice logo explaining you’re protected up to £500.00. It’s not quite so good when it comes to paying and you find that if you pay you won’t be covered at all.
I phoned PayPal and they definitely advised against giving out card details over the phone - their entire raison d’être is to keep my card details safe. Cheques and postal orders once cashed are pretty much impossible to reverse should the goods not arrive.
Faced with this situation what would you do? More importantly what kind of impression would this situation make on a new buyer who has been told countless times by eBay that PayPal is the safest way to pay online? Other forms of payment might be safe for the seller but with no buyer protection they sure don’t feel very safe as a buyer.
Amazon launch 3 payment services
July 29, 2008
Amazon have today launched Amazon Payments to enable sellers to accept payments from buyers using their Amazon log on credentials.
Amazon Flexible Payments actually launched in limited beta back in August 2007 and Amazon have rolled this in with their new product offerings which are Amazon Simple Pay and Checkout by Amazon.
Checkout by Amazon allows buyers to pay with their Amazon log on, but the seller has to check their Seller Central account to verify payment has been completed. It enables buyer to use Amazon’s patented one click checkout to complete their purchase and provides sellers with tools such as shipping calculators, tax rates and custom promotions for customers.
Amazon Simple Pay is a cut down payments system which redirects buyers to the Amazon Payments website to complete the transaction. There are simply cut and paste HTML code to enable sellers to get up and running quickly and easily but without the additional features of Checkout by Amazon.
Fees for both Simple pay and Checkout vary between 2.5% - 1.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, but payments under $10.00 incur a rate of 5% plus $0.05.
Flexible Payment Services which is now out of beta is designed for web developers for full integration using Amazon API calls.
It will be interesting to see how many merchants start offering Amazon Payments, there’s still time to add it to ecommerce sites before the Christmas selling season begins. At this point Amazon payments appears to be limited to the US. Although Amazon have been unable to comment at the time of writing, I’d expect it to roll out for the UK at some point in the future.
So will you be adding Amazon payments to your own website? Do you mind Amazon gaining access to your sales data which they undoubtedly would? One thing is certain - the more payment options that you can offer a buyer the less likely they are to abandon a shopping cart at checkout and more than 80 million potential customers already have Amazon account.
More third-party advertising coming to eBay
July 29, 2008
If you think there’s too much third-party advertising on eBay now, just wait: things are only going to get worse. New Media Age reports that eBay have launched “an international business division” to sell targetted campaigns across eBay’s collection of international sites. Christian Kunz, head of advertising international at eBay, said that eBay’s “unrivalled product transaction data [would enable] brands to get closer to sales by directly targeting consumers with a high propensity to buy.” The new division will be based in London.
We know that eBay have been running user testing recently and looking at users’ reactions to advertising. One member of staff involved in the testing commented “normal users have a very low threshold to adverts or things that they suspect to be paid-for services”.
Nevertheless in the Q2 earnings call just a couple of weeks ago, JD hinted that more adverts towards the top of eBay pages might be coming:
We continually test that to make sure what placements optimize our advertising but by and large, above-the-fold listings monetize better.
During the eBay Live Town Hall, Stephanie Tilenius admitted that current third-party ads are taking sales off the eBay site. She also commented that the longer-term goal is for sellers to be able to buy advertising themselves on eBay: personally, I thought that’s what I was already doing.
I suspect I don’t need to say this 
but leave us a comment. Buyers’ comments are particularly welcome: have you clicked an ad on eBay and gone off-site to buy? Are third-party ads a help in finding what you want, or just a distraction to take you away from eBay?
Soccer Aid ticket sales restricted on eBay UK
July 29, 2008
eBay UK have just announced that sales of tickets to Soccer Aid will be restricted. Sellers donate at least 20% of the sale price to UNICEF UK through eBay for Charity. In addition, one and three day listings will not be permitted.
Soccer Aid at Wembley on September 7th will see teams of football legends and celebrities from England and “the Rest of the World” compete, raising money for UNICEF to help vulnerable children around the world.
It should probably be noted at this point that the sale of football tickets is highly restricted and football tickets to association football matches involving English and Welsh teams may not be sold on eBay UK.
Will the Skype dance come to a club near you?
July 29, 2008
Most people know how to type an emoticon without even thinking about it. They’ve become so ingrained in our lives from IM to email and even on mobile SMS text messages that :-) is pretty much universally understood.
In recent times :-) automatically displays as 
(can any one still remember the early days when they didn’t?) and some emoticons are even animated such as 
That’s about as much thought as I’d normally give emoticons until I saw on the Skype Journal that some guy has actually gone so far as learning the Skype Dance. Skype Dance is just one of the emoticons for available for use in Skype chat but this guy would like to see people doing the “Skype Dance” in clubs. If you’re out clubbing at the weekend keep an eye out for people doing the Skype Dance
50% off Featured Plus! on eBay.com
July 29, 2008
eBay are running a three day 50% off promotion for the Featured Plus! listing enhancement for auctions and BIN listings. The promotion runs on 29th - 31st July and appears to be open to all sellers regardless of your location.
It’s worth remembering that with Featured Plus your listing is featured on the page of search results it would naturally fall on, and in the US with Best Match enabled this may mean it never makes the first page of search results.
One final point to bear in mind - if you’re listing on eBay.com from outside the US the promotion runs on PT not BST (an eight hour time difference) so make sure you’re listings start during the promotion period.
Find your best match on eBay.com
July 28, 2008
I heard Stephen Fry tell this story, so it must be true: when Louis Daguerre invented photography, one of the first things he did to celebrate was to persuade a local barmaid to pose for some topless photos. The association between photography and naked ladies has been there from the beginning, so perhaps we can forgive eBay for making the connection too.
Doug’s been researching photography for sale on eBay. He says “the search results returned a variety of items for sale - mostly pictures of celebrities, nature, and vintage images. I was actually surprised at how few dirty pictures showed up in the search results,” and swears he never clicked on anything naughty. But the next time he went back to browse eBay, here’s what greeted him:
As Doug says, what’s his wife to think?
A search for photo prints doesn’t show up any great number of naked lady gallery pictures. Searching for “photograph”, in the other hand, turns up a fair few “fine art nudes” and some frankly pornographic ones (is anyone policing this?!). But there are plenty of other photographs on eBay.com too: why show Doug this particular selection? I can only assume that this is an unintended result of Best Match: eBay are perhaps suggesting the most clicked-on items within the categories you’ve been searching - so now we know what eBayers are looking at
Royal Mail add postcode verification for recorded delivery
July 28, 2008
eBay sellers sending recorded delivery items will find the process has changed when they visit the Post Office today. As part of Royal Mail’s initiative to introduce better tracking to their services, Recorded Delivery items will undergo post code verification. This is a similar process to that for Special Delivery which was introduced in January of this year.
The Royal Mail are exceptionally good at delivering mail which has a typo in the address, sadly computers aren’t at all forgiving on address verification - it’s either right or it’s wrong. The Post Office queue is possibly the most frustrating point of the delivery process to discover a buyer’s mistake.
Postcode verification will slow posting time down considerably, although there is a bulk process with a Bulk Posting Certificate (PDF document).
You’ll need to print out and complete one of these for every ten parcels you post. It appears that if you use the Bulk Posting Certificate that the address verification is bypassed which will at least save some time.
The Bulk Posting Certificate isn’t an ideal solution, as well as the limit of ten items per sheet the time taken to complete it will slow mail preparation time down.
One other change is that Post Offices can no longer print more than 10 labels at a time for the bulk process. If you have 11 or more identical weight and size parcels it will mean Post Office counter staff have to go through the label printing process at least twice.
For eBay sellers who want to speed the process up in the short term there is a solution. Post Office counter staff have access to a bypass option - I’d highly recommend asking them to use it until such a time as you have a Bulk Posting Certificate process implemented.
As sellers visit their Post Office at the end of the today on their way home I’m guessing there’ll be a fair amount of frustration at no advance warning of the changes. If I’d known on Friday that a new system was to be implemented I’d have had the Bulk Posting Certificates ready to go instead of being faced with a new system at the Post Office Counter.
If you use Recorded Delivery and mail items at the Post Office let us know how you get on with the new procedure and how counter staff are coping with the changes.
Resolution center and dispute console updates
July 27, 2008
eBay have updated the INR (item not received) process which has in recent times been moved from eBay to the PayPal site. It’s worth remembering that nowadays buyers have little or no buyer protection unless they pay via PayPal.
The main changes are adding the ability to negotiate partial refunds and an indication of how long each step in the process will take. Also there is closer integration with eBay which enables the eBay dispute console to show the status of claims as the process progresses.
It’s not all plain sailing however, reports are coming in of sellers trying to view the claims to resolve them only to find paypal keeps logging them out. PayPal have responded to them saying that there “is an IT issue which has affected a few claims for a few merchants.”
As a temporary solution PayPal account managers have suggested “If you have experienced difficulties updating a particular claim then please email the PP reference number for the claim, and your response you would like to submit for that claim. We will be able to forward these details to the department who look after buyer complaints so they may update the case.”
It’s great to see the process updated it needs to work for all sellers all of the time. The technical issue appears to occur on new disputes that the buyer has upgraded to a claim since the new system as been put in place. Once the buyer upgrades the dispute to a claim some sellers have been unable to access them even to offer a return for full refund.
Disputes and claims are something that most sellers will hopefully encounter as a rarity. Most buyers will email sellers asking for help and giving the seller a chance to rectify any issues prior to opening a dispute. For the few buyers that go straight to a dispute or upgrade to a claim the new process should make life easier for sellers and also highlight buyers making an unusually high number of claims to eBay.
We’d recommend providing full contact details to buyers with messaging requesting that they contact you if there’s a problem with their purchase. A PayPal claim or even a dispute is something best avoided and hopefully you’ll never get the opportunity to see the new eBay/PayPal dispute flow.
If you’ve got any hot tips for getting buyers to contact you to resolve issues before they escalate into disputes or claims let us know in comments below.
Software industry threatens to sue eBay over counterfeits
July 26, 2008
After the designers, the perfume makers and the jewellers, the software industry may become the next group to sue eBay over sales of counterfeit merchandise. Keith Kupferschmid is senior vice president for intellectual property policy and enforcement of the SIIA, a trade organisation which represents software manufacturers such as Adobe, Apple, Oracle and Sun: Kupferschmid said in an interview that eBay’s “refusal to work with us will only push us closer and closer to a lawsuit”.
So far, SIIA has persued individual sellers of pirate software through eBay: earlier this week, one eBay seller was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, and SIIA say that another six cases have been filed. They are also chasing those selling counterfeit software through other merchant sites: Scott Bain, their litigation counsel, told InternetNews.com that they expect to file their first suits against non-eBay sellers within weeks.
But this may not be enough for the SIIA. Kupferschmid said that they had made more than 20 suggestions to eBay on how the site could more effectively police software sales, ranging from banning the use of Buy It Now on software, delaying the appearance of software listings on the site to allow manual approval, placing a notice on the feedback of those caught selling pirate software, or running a paid-for ad warning buyers of the dangers of buying pirated software. But, he said, “they just say no.”
So are the SIIA going to sue eBay? “That’s something that we have talked about with our members and talked about internally,” said Kupferschmid. But Bain said, “I don’t mean it to sound like we’re sitting here drafting a case because we’re not.”
On eBay’s part, spokesperson Nichola Sharpe said “counterfeits are very bad for our business - we don’t want them on our site. People don’t want to buy them and we don’t want to sell them. But we can’t be the expert.” She said that the VeRO programme allows rights holders to request removal of infringing merchandise. CNet also cites eBay’s “fraud search engine”, which
has 13,000 rules that are designed to identify counterfeit listings based on words such as “replica” or “knock-off.” Listings flagged by the search engine are manually reviewed by customer service representatives.
Following the Tiffany verdict, any action taken against eBay would, says Kuperfschmid, rely more on copyright law than trademark law. He believes that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act could provide for eBay’s liability for infringing items sold via the site. And even if it doesn’t, the option to rewrite the law is always there: “there may be a point where we decide to go up to Congress and ask for legislation.”
Fly now, pay later with PayPal
July 26, 2008
US airline Northwest are to allow customers to buy their tickets now and pay later, through PayPal’s Pay Later financing service. Passengers can defer payment for up to 90 days, giving them “even more flexibility when paying for their next trip on Northwest Airlines,” said Al Lenza, Northwest Airlines vice president, distribution and e-commerce.
Northwest Airlines was the first airline to accept PayPal payments, and now it’s also the first to accept PayPal Pay Later: expect to see more airlines following suit shortly. Sadly at the moment, PayPal Pay Later is only available to US customers.
Via eBay Ink.
eBay Belgium offers half-price insertion fees 27th & 28th July
July 26, 2008
eBay Belgium are offering approximately half-price insertion fees for Sunday 27th and Monday 28th July 2008. Auctions and BIN listings are included, though SIF and classified ads are not. All other normal fees apply.
Anyone listing in the lowest two fee tranches (€0,01-1,99 and €2,00-9,99) should be aware that the discounted insertion fee will be rounded up to the nearest whole cent (0,03c and 0,08c respectively). eBay, would it have killed you to round down and make yourselves look extra-generous?
“I sold my life to a non-paying bidder”
July 25, 2008
The buyer of an Australian man’s entire life on eBay is an NPB, reports The Telegraph. Ian Usher put everything, from his house to his job, up for auction. Having been auction-wrecked the listing ended about AU$100k short of the price Mr Usher had hoped for.
Neither the high bidder nor the four or five highest underbidders have stumped up the cash to buy the life in Perth, Australia, though Mr Usher remains sanguine: “It is a bit of a shame, but never mind.” He is now selling his house through a conventional estate agent.
Is someone eavesdropping on your Skype calls?
July 25, 2008
Just how secure is a Skype call? It’s often thought that a phone call is pretty secure and an encrypted IP phone call almost impossible to listen in on. Not any longer though, the Austrian government have revealed that it is “not a problem” for them to listen in on Skype calls.
Skype is proprietary software so no one really knows how it works, there is speculation that there might be a backdoor built into Skype to allow legal authorities to eavesdrop on calls. If that’s not the case then it appears Skype may have a flaw in the set up of calls enabling the call security to be compromised. AES encryption that Skype uses is secure, but not if the keys exchanged when a call is set up can be captured.
It’s long been known that GCHQ can listen in to land line or mobile phone calls and they can also read your emails. Does it really matter if they can eavesdrop on your Skype calls as well?
If the government really want to listen in on my mindless wittering on phone calls then they’re welcome - all the time Skype is free I’ll carry on using it. After all the alternative is to use mobile or land line phones and they can listen in to them anyway.
The big question of course is who else is listening in on calls, if governments and Skype themselves can intercept conversations then how long before someone less desirable gains access and starts monitoring calls?
Replying to ‘Message from buyer’ on SMP invoices
July 25, 2008
Last week messages from buyers entered at checkout started to appear in SMP as highlighted notes. Now you have the ability to quickly respond with a note which is added to the SMP invoice.
When you click into the SMP Sales record to read the note beneath it is a free type text box where you can enter a message of up to 600 characters which will then appear on the individual buyers invoice above any standard messages you’ve added.
Just below the message box is an email link - if you need to contact the buyer more urgently than via the invoice enclosed with their parcel don’t rely on adding a note which they won’t see before receipt. Notes to buyers are however great for those times you want to highlight any extra service you’ve given.
Changes to item specifics for eBay.com media, jewelry categories
July 25, 2008
If you list on eBay.com in the media or jewelry categories, some major changes to item specifics are coming next month (on a date yet to be specified).
For media categories Books, DVDs & Movies, Music and Video Games, the current “new” and “used” item specifics are being replaced with “brand new”, “like new”, “very good”, “good” and “acceptable”. Sellers should note that when relisting, current “new” will default to “brand new”, and “used” to “acceptable”: make sure this doesn’t misdescribe your item!
In Jewelry, item specifics are being added to the new categories Fine Bracelets, Fine Earrings, Fine Necklaces & Pendants and Fine Rings, and “used” will be available as a condition alongside the current “new”.
More details of the changes are available from Seller Central.
Amazon, Etsy, eBay and the eCommerce Land Grab
July 25, 2008
With much doom and gloom pervading comment about eBay, it’s easy to forget that ecommerce is still a frontier. The IMRG forecasts year on year ecommerce growth (in Britain, Europe, America and Asia) all the way to 2012. And even the very real threat of recession in the UK and US doesn’t seem likely to dent that. Even though eBay is languishing, Amazon has proved that the old guard can still find accelerating growth. The ecommerce land grab is still underway and there’s everything to play for.
With that in mind, an article from Y Combinator (a respected venture capitalist firm) called ‘Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund‘ makes for interesting reading. Not only does the piece prove that there’s still money out there for winning ideas but the comments regarding online auctions will be familiar to eBay sellers:
“Online auctions have more potential than most people currently realize. Auctions seem boring now because EBay is doing a bad job, but is still powerful enough that they have a de facto monopoly. Result: stagnation. But I suspect eBay could now be attacked on its home territory, and that this territory would, in the hands of a successful invader, turn out to be more valuable than it currently appears. As with dating, however, a startup that wants to do this has to expend more effort on their strategy for cracking the monopoly than on how their auction site will work.”
Y Combinator thinks that eBay’s dominance can and should be challenged. But it’s the belief that only the monopoly stands in eBay’s favour that should be most disquieting. eBay doesn’t have brilliant marketing, a superior product or a vibrant culture of innovation to protect it from an onslaught, it would seem.
One company that certainly can’t be criticised for lacking innovation is the crafts marketplace etsy, which has been in the news this week. Chad Dickerson, a former Yahoo executive, is joining etsy as Chief Technical Officer. Much of the coverage, mindful of Yahoo’s current difficulties, make much of this being a blow to Yahoo. And while that’s true, it’s also a huge boost for etsy: they’ve hired a talented operator from a big firm and that can only a be a vote of confidence. Even before this, etsy has been encroaching onto eBay’s territory and doing it with style, inventiveness and generating not a little admiration.
What does all this mean? Whilst eBay is struggling to find a little bit of ecommerce growth, expending a great deal of energy tinkering with feedback, search and fees, Amazon is successfully taking a good chunk of the fixed price action and attracting professional eBay sellers. Auctions are, it seems, up for grabs and yet eBay isn’t defending this flank and is concentrating on the faster growing But It Now business. Critically, eBay seems to be losing the battle: Amazon is growing faster than ecommerce and eBay isn’t. As for etsy, they’re a shining example of a specialist site taking some of eBay’s action and looking at a bright future.
eBay Inc. might be enjoying great results from Skype and PayPal but meagre growth in the marketplace business should be sounding alarm bells. eBay’s challenge is not just defending existing territory but squaring up to the frontier again and aggressively joining the land grab. Regrettably nothing in the Q2 results, report or investor call suggested that was the plan.
Dan Wilson is a writer and consultant and the bestselling author of ‘Make Serious Money on eBay UK’.
Hairdresser guilty of eBay scam
July 24, 2008
The Daily Record reports that a bald hairdresser made £63,000 selling hair straighteners he stole from his employer. Between December 2004 and September 2006, the 37 year old Midlothian man used two accounts on eBay to sell GHD straighteners and luxury shampoos and conditioners, and even created his eBay listings from the salon’s computer.
His employer originally hired private detectives to track down missing stock; when investigating police tried to find the 946 missing straighteners, they were unable to do so, despite the fact that six of them were still listed on eBay. The hairdresser claimed he had bought them in bulk from other eBay users.
He was found guilty of theft and fraud at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday and will be sentenced next month.
Software pirate jailed and $200k cash seized
July 24, 2008
SIIA, The Software & Information Industry Association has notched up another victory in the fight against counterfeiting with a successful prosecution of a software pirate (link opens in PDF).
The sentence handed down is 4 years jail, 3 years parole for community services and seizure of computers and $220k in cash.
SIIA have now filed 32 lawsuits in 2008 including 6 new cases filed today on behalf of Adobe. SIIA said “We’ve been much more aggressive in filing lawsuits this year and intend to send a clear message that auctioning counterfeit and unauthorized software will lead to serious penalties” that the “case demonstrates that these pirates won’t simply get a slap on the wrist when caught – they very well may end up doing serious time in federal prison”.
If you see a listing on eBay that you suspect is counterfeit software you can report it to SIIA on their website.
In related news another case has been settled in the US upholding the right to resell legitimate software on eBay. The court ruled that a software license’s “ban on transferring the software is of no consequence under the Copyright Act” and purchasers are free to dispose of software they no longer require.
eBay issue discount coupons for tech categories
July 24, 2008
In the tail end of the 1p listing promotion for technology products eBay are offering discount to selected buyers up until the 30th July. If you’ve been sent a voucher it will be in your email and should also appear in your eBay My Messages.
Coupons emailed to buyers offer £7.50 discount for a purchase of £25.00 or more in Mobile & Home Phones, Computing, Photography and Consumer Electronics. To redeem the coupon the buyer must buy and pay for any single item before 30th July on eBay.co.uk .
eBay appear to be putting a big focus on tech products - great news for sellers who list in these categories.
It’s also welcome news as the school holiday period starts to see coupons being issued to remind buyers to visit eBay and giving them a solid reason to log onto the site.
Amazon increase international sales 47%
July 24, 2008
Amazon reported their 2008 Q2 results last night confirming that sales are accelerating with what looks set to be a record breaking Christmas selling season.
Amazon sales are growing faster Internationally (47%) than North America (35%) and it’s not just traditional media products driving the growth. Whilst media grew 31% Amazon’s consumer electronics and general merchandise grew 58%. A third of items sold on Amazon are now not the media products Amazon are famous for.
Third party selling is growing on Amazon and almost 1 in 3 products sold is from a seller rather than Amazon themselves. Amazon emphasised in their investor conference call that many large sellers use Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) which keeps service levels high as Amazon themselves handle the shipping. Jeff Bezos said “When sellers move into fulfillment by Amazon they end up selling more…. a third party item can be married together and put in a box with an Amazon retail item”.
It’s also worth pointing out that if you use FBA then Amazon will also ship products to customers for off-Amazon sales, which can include your own website and even eBay sales.
If you’re already selling on Amazon have you seen the same increases on sales compared to last year? If you’re not an Amazon seller will you start selling on the platform by Christmas?
eBay Australia cheap listing days for Computers
July 24, 2008
eBay Australia are holding four days of cheap listings for the Computers category. From 26th to 29th July 2008, sellers can save 25% on insertion fees and 25% on FVFs. The offer is valid for Australian resident sellers listing in the Computers category of eBay.com.au only, and applies to both auctions and BINs. All other fees apply as normal.
eBay have been doing quite a bit of experimenting with fees in technology categories recently, most noticeably 1p listings for two weeks in UK technology categories. This promotion is slightly unusual in that it discounts both up-front and final value fees, and no doubt eBay will be closely watching how this affects seller behaviour.
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