eBay crashes, PayPal reverse payments
November 30, 2008
eBay appear to be having a few problems tonight with many site functions returning “Sorry, that’s not working right now” messages.
Whilst this is frustrating for sellers trying to send invoices what’s even worse is that buyers PayPal payments are being reversed. Sellers are reporting payments appearing in their PayPal account followed immediately by a reversal. At the same time the item the buyer thought they had purchased appears back on eBay as a live listing and not as a sold ended item.
If you normally rely on PayPal payment emails for shipping make sure you double check before dispatching goods tomorrow that the item has actually been sold and paid for.
If you’re a buyer double check that you have successfully bought and paid for the item that you think you’ve won.
(P.S. eBay… The “Sorry page” has a link to the “eBay Announcement Board for major system issues and changes“, it’s not got a single post on it yet…..)
eBay Elsewhere : links for 30th November 2008
November 30, 2008
Silicon Alley Insider* has some rather depressing figures on the decline in eBay.com’s traffic, which has been accelerating since the summer. Henry Blodget blames eBay’s management, pricing structure and competition for the decline; Jemima Kiss for The Guardian thinks it’s the arrival of big retail merchants which has alienated smaller eBay sellers.
But it’s not all bad news: eBay in the UK continues to grow, with a year-on-year increase in the number of unique users of 9.6%, according to Nielsen figures. Of course, “more users” doesn’t necessarily equal more sales or more profit, and one set of figures doesn’t create the stellar Christmas that eBay UK really needs.
eBay Ink has a post (no, that’s not news in itself 
) talking to Dinesh Lathi, eBay’s VP of seller experience about Diamond PSs and the famous level playing field: “it doesn’t mean we will treat everyone the same”.
Santa’s not the only person making lists this week: Mark Buckingham has 14 sizzling sales tips for eBayers, while Dan Wilson tells us 7 things we need to know about eBay on the always excellent SmallBizPod. Dan also wrote what is, for my money, the best eBay post of the month: I already linked it in our comments but I make no apologies for linking it again: Not eBay’s VAT Announcement.
*Is it just me, or does their piccie of JD seem ripe for some LOLcaptions?
vzaar launch off-eBay video service
November 30, 2008
Some nice news from our chums at vzaar: you can now embed their videos on sites other than eBay: if you’ve ever wanted to use the same video on your website or another marketplace or auction site, you now can. Better still, vzaar are now offering an unbranded video player so it now looks like a seamless part of your own website.
vzaar’s Business Man, Jamie Parkins, says “the new player focuses solely on the video content and there are no 3rd party links or pre roll adverts to distract the buyer.” The unbranded player can be seen in action on equip2clean.co.uk.
vzaar are also offering improved video management: you can now replace videos onsite, for example, so if you want to update the vid that’s on your eBay listings, you don’t need to edit the actual listings. And if you change your mind about the video altogether, you can also remove it from your listings via their site.
There are now a range of pricing packages to suit everyone from the smallest seller to the largest, starting at $10 (about £6) per month for around 700 video plays. A free package is also still available for casual sellers or anyone who wants to test out vzaar’s service.
Guess What’s missing from this picture?
November 29, 2008
Where’s the fun activity?
For those who
- missed the logo,
- didn’t already know that eBay UK’s Xmas slogan is “guess what” and
- couldn’t read that execrable writing as they were sprinting for their train,
this cake frill round a tree is meant to make you do your Christmas shopping on eBay. Just so you know.
How to get free subtitle until the end of January
November 29, 2008
Free subtitles for the whole of December is available for sellers with a Featured or Anchor shop. I have to say as one of those paying £50 or £350 a month it’s nice to see some added benefits coming in although the cost justifies itself purely on listing fees alone.
If you want to take advantage it’s possible to upgrade your shop, and if you’re a habitual user of subtitles it could cost justify itself in a month. The normal subtitle fee is £0.35 for short duration listings and £1.05 for 30 day listings – if you add subtitle to as few as 30 listings it pays for the upgrade. (30 listings @ 20p + £1.05 = £37.50, 30 listings @ 5p with £1.05 waived = £36.50 including the extra £35 shop fee)
Good ’til canceled listings are excluded from the promotion, which makes sense, if you add a subtitle you’d be paying for it on each renewal. By limiting the promotion to 30 day or shorter listings it gives the opportunity to remove the feature when you relist after the promotion period.
For those that wish to take full advantage it’s effectively free subtitle up until the end of January. Many sellers will be relisting their times on the 1st December with the new VAT rates, by adding a subtitle and relisting on the 31st December you have the opportunity of 60 days worth of subtitle for free.
I’ll be manually ending all of my listings tomorrow and relisting them on Monday 1st with revised VAT for free. Now I can add subtitle for free so what’s started as a nightmare for sellers has turned into a cloud with a silver lining.
eBay to refund all fees for VAT affected listings
November 28, 2008
eBay have just announced that they will refund all UK insertion and listing enhancement fees to enable sellers to update multiple quantity fixed price listings with the new VAT rates.
To qualify for the refunds UK sellers must be business or VAT registered, the listing must be a multiple quantity fixed price listing and and it must be manually ended and then re-listed to update the VAT information between Tuesday 25th Nov 2008 and Friday 5th Dec 2008. For qualifying listings eBay will refund both the Insertion and Feature fees.
On the Q&A forum eBay give further explanation explaining that they’ve been working to update the site automatically but it’s simply not been possible to achieve this in the short period since the Pre-Budget report announced the VAT changes. Hopefully by the time the next VAT change takes effect on 1st January 2010 there will be an easier way to adjust VAT rates on the site.
There will be no need to apply for refunds, they will automatically be credited through the normal invoice process.
Although it still leaves sellers with a fair amount of work to do to update all their listings over the weekend at least they won’t be penalised financially on listing and insertion fees. Those who have multiple listings with the more expensive enhancements such as Featured First can breathe a sigh of relief that their fees will be refunded.
If you’ve been delaying updating your listings but now intend to take advantage of the relist credits we’ve written a check list for changing the VAT rates on auctions and fixed price items to make the process as painless as possible.
eBay Ireland aren’t assisting with VAT changes either
November 28, 2008
Lest UK sellers think they were alone in being given no help from eBay with changes to the VAT rate, eBay Ireland have put out an announcement regarding their own VAT changes which is almost a cut and paste copy of the UK one. Irish VAT increases from 21% to 21.5% on Monday 1st December, and as is the case for UK sellers, Irish eBayers will have to individually amend listings without sales, or end and relist items with sales/bids, in order to be able to edit the VAT rate quoted.
The announcement about changes in the VAT rate was made in October, so eBay Ireland have had even longer to come up with a more useful solution than the week that Alastair Darling gave eBay UK. Irish sellers will no doubt draw their own conclusions from the timing of this announcement, one working day before the VAT change goes live: could it have only been prompted by the change in the UK rate?
One small improvement on the Irish announcement: the patronising tag line
With strong competition and early discounting coming from the high street this Christmas season we know buyers are now, more than ever, being attracted to great value bargains.
which concluded the British one has been omitted.
Free listing for DVDs and video games on eBay.fr 2nd December
November 28, 2008
eBay France are holding a free listing day this coming Tuesday, 2nd December, in the DVDs and video games categories. The promotion is valid for auction and BIN listings; other fees are charged as normal. Nothing is specified about French residence or seller status.
Action plan for VAT changes to your eBay listings
November 28, 2008
Due to the large number of VAT registered sellers who will have to update their eBay listings manually this weekend I thought I’d share my work plan for updating VAT rates on live listings.
To do today
- Use TurboLister to bulk edit all auctions without bids ending on or after 1st to amend to the new VAT rate. It will then be correct on the date the auction ends.
- Bulk edit all templates in TurboLister (you’ll need to do this in two steps – all auction templates and then all fixed price templates)
- Consider launching shorter duration auctions to cover any days when you didn’t list. 3, 5 and 7 day auctions can plug the gap and be listed today with the new VAT rate. (If you use 1 day auctions make sure that they are listed with the current VAT rate)
- Schedule fixed price listings to start on 1st
To do on Sunday 30th November
- End auctions with bids, consider selling to the current highest bidder if an acceptable price has been reached.
- Use TurboLister to bulk edit any fixed price listings without sales or best offers, for any subsequent sales before midnight edit VAT back to the old rate on the SMP invoice.
This is potentially the most difficult step as whilst you can see start and current quantities to identify listings with sales (Right click TurboLister columns, click “Customise columns” and make “Qty” and “Available Quantity” visible), it’s not possible to see which listings have received best offers. Attempting a bulk edit which includes just one listing that’s received a best offer will block the VAT field from being revised.
- End any fixed price listings with sales or best offers and relist with the revised VAT rate as soon as possible (or schedule them to restart on 1st December) and manually edit the VAT rate on the SMP invoice for any final sales from the 30th.
You should now have all your listings updated showing the correct rate of VAT and can enjoy the rest of your weekend!EUK & Woolworths to impact DVD sales on eBay
November 27, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.Whilst the news that Woolworths has appointed Deloitte and Touche as administrators this morning probably hasn’t escaped you, what’s less known is that it includes Entertainment UK (EUK), one of the last major DVD suppliers in the UK.
The DVD distribution market has been shrinking and EUK, one of the last, is doubtless a major source of supply for many eBay sellers.
“EUK are likely to have been the last source for many DVD sellers on eBay, listing numbers in the DVD category are likely to go down”.
- Steve, of drstevew, one of the largest eBay media sellers with over 100,000 feedbackIt’s not just on-eBay supply that will be affected, EUK are also major suppliers to Tesco, WHSmith, Morrisons and of course Woolworths themselves.
In the short term it may be good news for buyers as the administrators try to dispose of stock with cut price deals, both for media items and the other products Woolworths sell. This could potentially lead to lower sales for other high street retailers and online merchants as they struggle to compete.
In the longer term it could lead to a re-balancing of DVD prices, with less supply prices may increase, though no doubt overseas suppliers will be evaluating opportunities in the UK DVD market.
eBay UK sellers must manually edit listings for VAT changes
November 26, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.eBay UK have finally made an announcement about how the 1st December change in the VAT rate should be reflected by sellers on the site. That’s the good news: the bad news is, we’re on our own.
eBay’s announcment says this:
- the VAT rate can be edited on listings without sales.
- listings with sales will have to be either allowed to end as scheduled, or manually ended by sellers, and relisted with the correct VAT rate.
After 1st December, offering items for sale with 17.5% VAT will be illegal, so allowing your listings to end naturally after that date is not an option. Listings with sales, therefore, *must* be ended and relisted, with all eBay listing and featured listing fees payable again on the new listings.
Frankly, this isn’t good enough. It would not have been too much to ask for eBay to automatically change all 17.5% VAT-listed items to 15%, or if not that, to make the VAT field editable on listings with sales. Instead, they’ve abdicated any shred of responsibility; not only are sellers left with huge numbers of listings to edit when they should really be ramping up their sales to crazy point for Christmas, but eBay are profiting by the extra listing fees on the whole mess.
eBay have said that editing the VAT field will not affect sales recency for Best Match: this isn’t going to be a whole bunch of comfort to sellers faced with editing and paying to relist their entire eBay inventory.
If anyone from eBay is listening, please reconsider: do a bulk edit from 17.5% to 15%. And if you won’t do that, then at very least, consider waiving some listing fees.
Updated to add some conversations with HMRC
A couple of TameBay readers have spoken to HMRC and been told that they do not need to change the VAT rate quoted on eBay so long as their own records and invoices show the correct rate (see comments below).We’ve just spoken to HMRC’s Glasgow contact centre and been told that displayed rates *do* need to be changed, and that sellers need to contact eBay to find out how to do that (ha ha).
So if you’re chosing to leave 17.5% standing, it’s very much at your own risk.
Mercent Retail and eBay Large Merchant Services
November 26, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.eBay have launched a new set of APIs to build Large Merchant Services (LMS) specifically designed to meet the integration needs of Large Merchant sellers. With the push towards recruiting Diamond PowerSellers existing tools simply don’t scale well for 10s or 100s of 1000s of listings.
The developers announcement makes rather dry reading, but today we spoke to Eric Best, CEO of Mercent who gave a greater insight as to how LMS can benefit sellers.
Mercent specialise in solutions to optimize performance across multiple online marketing channels including marketplaces such as Amazon and SHOP.com, comparison shopping engines and paid search. With their new deployment using LMS they have launched catalog merchandising and order integration software for high-volume eBay sellers.
SmartBargains a division of Retail Convergence, Inc, is Mercent’s first client to launch on eBay using Mercent Retail integrated with eBay’s Large Merchant Services APIs and have already started to list their catalogue on eBay.
One of the biggest differentiators that Mercent offer is full integration with existing back office systems. Other channel management systems typically combine marketplaces, shopping comparison and paid search activities but all orders are managed through the third parties software interface.
Mercent act as middleware to connect existing infrastructure such as SAP systems directly to eBay and other marketplaces. This means any eBay orders are processed through LMS by Mercent and are pushed directly into the warehouse for picking/packing as well as updating finance systems for invoicing. For retail catalogue sellers this is the solution they need to make large scale trading on eBay achievable and manageable with thousands of product lines.
Mercent Retail for eBay are making it easier than ever to launch a high-volume, fixed-price, multiple-quantity seller presence on eBay. Don’t be surprised to see more large catalogue sellers launching on eBay in the near future, as the technology is now in place, through LMS, to make managing large scale eBay operations possible.
Microsoft’s live.com cash-back and eBay webinar
November 26, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.ChannelAdvisor are holding a webinar at 2pm Eastern Time (7pm in the UK) focusing on how to get the best from coupons and cashback. Buyers can save anything up to 30% on purchases and 4.5 million buyers a month are performing Live Cashback searches.
This is one for our US readers and sellers that trade on eBay.com, as sadly Microsoft cash-back hasn’t made it across the Atlantic in time for the Christmas selling season.
With eBay getting focused on driving traffic more coupons than ever before are being issued, in the UK with 5, 10 or 15% discounts and as much as 30% discount in the US.
The workshop will also include tips for 30 day listings and keeping DSR scores high over the holiday season along with an update on the UK VAT changes and how that affects sellers.
Free listing weekend for private sellers on eBay UK
November 26, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.eBay UK has a free listing weekend for auction items with a 99p or lower start. The promotion is valid for private sellers only (so dust off that buying ID
), and runs on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th November 2008. All other fees are charged as normal. The pre-budget report, VAT and eBay
November 25, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.eBay are looking at ways to enable the change in VAT from 17.5% to 15% without sellers having to cancel and relaunch their items. Currently it’s not possible to edit the VAT rate once a listing has sales or bids. Relisting would incur additional fees (and listing enhancement fees) along with loss of Recent Sales boosts in Best Match.
Changes to VAT were announced in yesterday’s Pre-Budget Report by the Chancellor Alistair Darling. In short the VAT rate will reduce from 17.5% to 15% from December 1st 2008 and will stay at the reduced rate for the whole of 2009. For 5% and 0% VATable products there is no change in rates.
How will this affect eBay buyers and sellers? Well for VAT registered sellers possibly the most important change is the VAT rate displayed on your listings. You’ll also have to change VAT rates in any accounting packages that you use.
For buyers there may be a small reduction in the cost of goods, but in all honesty many sellers are unlikely to make price cuts in any bar the most competitive categories. A £9.99 (inc 17.5% VAT) item today is unlikely to be listed for £9.78 (inc 15% VAT) on the 1st December and 21p is unlikely to sway buyers either. There is no legal obligation for sellers to pass on savings although the government would like to see sellers do so.
Do I have to pass on the VAT reduction to my customers by reducing my prices?
The Government is making this change as part of a broader package of fiscal measures to give the economy a boost. Passing on the tax reduction through reduced prices will stimulate consumer spending and mean that both businesses and consumers benefit from this change. But ultimately decisions on prices charged by business and paid by consumers, are for them rather than the Government.There are some other changes sellers need to be aware of, such as changes to the VAT Flat Rate Scheme percentages. If you’re a VAT registered seller all the information you need is available from the HMRC Detailed Guide for Vat-Registered Businesses (opens in .pdf) which covers the VAT standard rate changes.
Half price listing on eBay Motors this weekend
November 25, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.eBay UK are running a 50% off insertion fee promotion for eBay Motors this weekend. Any vehicles listed as Auction, Auction with Buy It Now, or Fixed Price will will have the insertion fee reduced from £8.00 to £4.00 in qualifying categories.
Classified Ads are excluded from the promo which runs on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th November.
eBay UK’s homepage and the GREAT BIG AD
November 24, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.The transformation of eBay UK from marketplace to advertising hoarding continues, with the appearance of a HUGE advert for Vodaphone on the home page.
click to embiggen
At the spendiest time of year, eBay UK are promoting not their sellers, not even something related to their sellers like PayPal buyer protection or some kind of holiday giveaway – they’re promoting an off-site deal for a mobile phone company to, as far as I can tell, every single person who visits the site.
Experienced sellers, I know, will be itching to comment that they never visit the home page but go straight to My eBay. But this is the time when – we hope – new buyers might just be visiting the site, checking it out to see if those tempting ads about eBay being 25% cheaper than the high street are really true. Wouldn’t it have been nice to show them some eBay content rather than sending them straight off to a different site altogether?
Would it have been so much to ask to have had some nice promotional creatives featuring different areas of the site in which Christmas presents might be procured?
eBay Australia : is this a new partnership between eBay and sellers?
November 24, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.A few days ago, eBay Australia put out a document entitled “Planning for a stronger marketplace“. It’s the result of several months of consultation with their sellers following eBay.com.au’s embarrassing reversal of their PayPal-only policy back in July and the absolute fragmentation of that community that followed.
The six-page document charts complaints and observations heard from sellers, and eBay’s responses. It’s remarkable less for its content, than for the fact that it exists at all: in ten years of eBay-watching, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this. It’s almost as if there’s been a sea-change in eBay’s attitude to their sellers:
eBay and our community of sellers alike need to focus on building repeat business from existing buyers so they continue to purchase from you, rather than taking their business elsewhere. We need your support to achieve this and if we work together, both sellers and eBay will benefit.
The message put out so often by eBay over the last few years has been that sellers are untrustworthy, and that only eBay and PayPal stand between buyers and being ripped off. A new message the eBay and sellers are in business together and are invested in each other’s success might be the only way that eBay management can keep sellers onside.
The roadmap for the future of eBay Australia is not, for the most part, anything very surprising. Divided into five sections – fees, feedback, support, PayPal and policies – many of the proposals are things we’ve seen in the US, UK and elsewhere. But there are a few tidbits worth picking out:
- free Gallery for eBay.com.au seems to be on the cards, in line with developments on many other eBay sites.
- the pop-up message telling buyers they’re free to leave non-positive feedback without fear of reprisal has been removed.
- the launch of a 10,000-strong “member panel” to consult with eBay.
- more detailed information will be made available for the DSRs and buyer satisfaction ratings, and
- “improvements to the language and tone” used on the seller dashboard. Not treating sellers like naughty children has to be a good move.
But the most important promise in my book is that eBay will limit to the number of times that changes are made, so that sellers don’t have to constantly edit and re-edit listings, rethink strategy once a month, and spend hours with Excel figuring out our fees. After a year of almost constant change, being left alone to get on with selling is exactly what we need. Of course that’s not going to happen – eBay say “please expect more change and understand that it’s not done for change sake, but for the ongoing health of the marketplace as a whole” – but to have change made more sensitively, more coherently and less often is an important step towards making a site that sellers might want to stick with.
It’s not just eBay’s tone that’s changed. They’re also getting more open with hard facts. Since the feedback changes were made earlier this year, I’ve heard many sellers complain that the number of non-paying bidders has increased. eBay Australia deny that this is the case, with this rather oddly worded paragraph:
September 2008 data shows that the share of non-paying bidders on the Australian site has reduced by 5.53% since the Feedback changes came into effect on 12 May 2008 so there is no evidence that this is currently a widespread problem.
I think that this means that there are actually fewer NPBs as a proportion of total sales on eBay.com.au (though equally, it might mean any number of other things). Even if they need to hire a copywriter, it’s good to see eBay going public with such specific figures. What’s most difficult as sellers is to be asked to accept apparently random decisions: if we had access to at least some of the data behind those decisions, it would go some way to rebuilding trust between eBay and sellers.
Of course, this is just a document. It says all the right things, but so did Lorrie and Stephanie in Chicago in June, and that didn’t make a blind bit of difference to the series of changes and reversals of changes that followed. Will 2009 bring a new partnership beween eBay and sellers, or are eBay Australia just the band playing on the Titanic?
Maximum 60-days recent sales score today
November 24, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.Today is 60 days from the eBay UK fee changes on the 25th September and is the first time it’s been possible to have a maximum 60-days Recent Sales score on listings. It won’t last long though, those with Good Til Canceled listings will see their relisted items drop from 60-days to 30-days Recent Sales, which in truth shouldn’t affect them too much as the most significant sales are those in the last few days.
The drop is because Recent Sales only carry over to relisted items once, current 30-day listings have benefited from sales from the 25th September. Items relisted today (the second relist) will lose Recent Sales boost from September and early October sales (the original listing).
It may however assist those sellers who have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th spot in search results especially if they’ve been trying to dislodge someone from the top spot of search results. If they listed their original listing a few days later in the short term they’ll have a long tail of 40 or 50 days of Recent Sales score.
For sellers who have 30 day listings ending, the best practice is to relist as quickly as possible to regain their spot in search results. A delay of even a few hours gives competitors an opportunity to gain sales and each sale gained while your listing is off the site increases your competitors Recent Sales score in comparison to yours.
50% off eBay.com auction fees for high DSR sellers
November 24, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.For 24th – 25th November auction listing fees are being discounted by 50% for eBay.com and eBay.ca. However in order to take advantage of the savings all 4 seller DSR ratings must be 4.5 or above. New sellers who haven’t yet received 10 DSR scores to gain a rating are also eligible.
It’s no surprise to see eBay offer a discount, to boost listings, a week before what’s normally the busiest shopping weekend in the US of the holiday season. What’s not surprising is that again the listing promotion is aimed at auctions and not at fixed price listings.
eBay.com drops duplicate listings policy
November 21, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.eBay.com announced yesterday that search results would no longer hide duplicate listings from the same seller, a process that’s become known as “de-duping“. Where an individual seller has more than one identical listing for sale, all instances will now show in search; previously, only one would have been displayed. eBay say that sellers are now taking advantage of the boost that recent sales give their listings, by combining identical items into single listings offering multiple items for sale, and that “this has proven to be the right strategy for sellers and a great shopping experience for buyers”.
But this doesn’t feel quite like the whole story to me. If the policy works, and sellers are changing their behaviour as desired because of it, why change the policy? The duplicate listings policy was – at least in part – intended to stop a few huge sellers dominating particular categories: might we assume that eBay are now happy to have one or two or their largest sellers dominant after all?
eBay.com will continue to show a maximum of ten listings per seller per search results page. Sellers should at least spread their listings out over time rather than listing in ‘clumps’ to try to avoid having them hidden under this policy.
Checkout glitch estimates delivery yesterday
November 21, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.Several sellers have reported a glitch in eBay’s checkout in the last few days, where delivery time is estimated to be “within -1 day after seller dispatches item”. The problem mainly seems to occur on “sellers standard rate” and international deliveries.
delivers within -1 day
eBay staff on various forums have been made aware of the problem but don’t seem yet to have any information regarding a fix. One PowerSeller support rep actually told a seller that the one day delivery information came from the Royal Mail website. I’m fairly certain the RM website doesn’t say anywhere that parcels will be delivered the day before they were dispatched however.
At this time of year with delivery times becoming more critical, it’s a glitch eBay need to fix as a matter of urgency, and if it can’t be fixed immediately, the estimated delivery time needs to be removed until it *is* fixed. For sellers, in the meantime, communicating with buyers about actual delivery times becomes more crucial than ever.
For any sellers who do wish to stick to the suggested delivery schedule, you can purchase your tardis on eBay.
eBay pirate jailed for 21 months
November 21, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.The BBC reports that an man who sold pirated ebooks on eBay has been jailed for 21 months. The Derbyshire man made £85,000 selling copies of audiobooks with as many as 37 eBay IDs over a five year period. The books included the Lemony Snicket series, the Lord Of The Rings and the Narnia Chronicles, and the sentencing judge suggested that his sales represented a loss of more than a million pounds to the copyright owners. The prosecuting counsel said that he had been selling copies of the first six Harry Potter books for £6.49: the normal retail is around £300.
What do you know about EmPwrOnline?
November 20, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.EmPwrOnline has been advertising seminars in the media in the last month or so and I recently attended one of them in Brighton. Rather than providing ‘the secrets of proven eBay selling success’, they offered some basic and insubstantial eBay selling knowledge and then pitched a scheme whereby eager attendees could give away free websites to apparently eager eBay sellers and receive a commission when sellers upgraded to a paid-for website. This scheme, claimed the presenter, netted him an annual ’six figure salary’ for a few hour’s work a day.
To find out more, attendees were encouraged to fork out £20 for a subsequent seminar and £10 monthly for access to a ‘portal’ that would help them promote the free websites they would be giving away on behalf of EmPwrOnline. My money stayed in my wallet and I certainly don’t advise anyone to waste their valuable time attending another of these seminars let alone shelling out for any of EmPwrOnline’s services.
I blogged about EmPwrOnline, and in just a short time there have been some interesting comments. But I’m keen to find out more: so I turn to TameBay’s illustrious community of readers. Have you had any dealings with EmPwrOnline? If so, please tell me about it.
Linking PayPal accounts for higher discounts
November 19, 2008
This post was written in November 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.
There’s a little known benefit available from PayPal for those that hold more than one PayPal account. It’s been confirmed via Monroe on a recent eBay call, and verified with account managers that you can link two or more accounts for the purposes of volume discounts.If you have a PayPal (either Premier or Business) there are volume discounts available if you process more than £1500.00 per calendar month. Discounts can lower fees from 3.4% down to as low as 1.9% for those processing more than £55k per month. By linking accounts the your PayPal account with the lower discount level can receive the same discount as your account with the larger monthly processing volume.
Quite how this stands with PayPal’s stance that members can have one Personal and one Premier or Business account isn’t clear.
PayPal allows members to have one Personal account and one Premier or Business account.
PayPal, like eBay, have never quite acknowledged that someone may operate several distinct businesses with separate banking arrangements and be different entities in law. It’s not unusual for users to have multiple PayPal accounts although PayPal themselves state that it’s against the rules, although famously even the then head of PayPal Geoff Iddison was unaware of this rule when asked at an eBay university.
At eBay Live! we specifically asked the question and the answer given was “We won’t mind so long as you don’t do anything you shouldn’t”. Or in other words have as many PayPal accounts as you like, but don’t get caught doing something you shouldn’t.
By linking accounts for the purposes of discounts (and quite frankly I think as a Business PayPal are mad to give discounts on accounts that otherwise wouldn’t qualify), PayPal are acknowledging that their own rules are out of date and need reviewing. Both eBay and PayPal need to allow businesses to open a true “Business” account tied to a company and not in the name of a particular employeee.
In the mean time if you do have more than one business entity each with it’s own PayPal account then speak to your account manager, ask for a “fee override” and get them linked for discounts.
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- 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...
