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.
Saddam Hussein’s Rolls Royce for sale on eBay UK
July 23, 2008
The Telegraph reports that Saddam Hussein’s Rolls Royce Corniche is up for sale on eBay UK Motors. According to the seller, the car comes with paperwork confirming its ownership by the former Iraqi President, and it will arrive in the UK from its current location in Baghdad in the next four weeks.
For the £185,000 price tag, you’ll get a brand new stereo “as the USA Army … stole the stereos from most cars” they found in the basement of Saddam’s former palace. Steven Brown, owner of the car dealership Autocontinental, told reporters that the car was bought at an Iraqi government auction by an Iraqi friend who’s resident in the UK, along with eleven other cars from Saddam’s collection, including “one Maybach new with solid 24 carat gold fittings specially made for him but not delivered … car was only ready for him two days before he left Baghdad in a hurry”.
And apparently, amongst interested buyers is an American colonel who wants to put SADDAM numberplates on the car. Talk about asking for trouble.
eBay.com, .ca sellers told ‘PayPal required’ in error
July 22, 2008
Sellers listing on eBay.com and eBay Canada may be receiving messages telling them that PayPal is required on their listings in error today. eBay say that they are aware of the problem and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.
With so much speculation that ‘compulsory PayPal’ will be rolled out beyond the UK and Australia, this will be one glitch they’ll want to fix as soon as possible.
eBay child pornographer jailed
July 22, 2008
The BBC report that a man who used eBay to find customers for his child porn business has been jailed today. The 42 year old from west London listed “low level” material on eBay, and then offered more explicit material to his buyers off-site. He pleaded guilty to charges of distributing child pornography, and was jailed for five years.
eBay Motors parts and accessories CLD 22nd - 24th July
July 22, 2008
eBay US Motors are capping insertion fees at 20c for listings in some categories, from 22nd to 24th July. Listings for tires, wheels, rims, hubcaps and some other ‘pimp my ride’ categories are eligible for the reduced fees, which apply to both auction and BIN listings. Please check the categories included before you list. All other normal fees apply.
eBay have hinted several times recently that they’re looking at more category-specific fee structures; it’s interesting to watch the cheap listing days as they test this out.
eBay and designers hold talks over counterfeits
July 20, 2008
The Telegraph reports that eBay are holding talks with representatives of some of the UK’s biggest luxury brands next week, in an attempt to find a way to cut down on sales of fake merchandise via the site.
The Walpole Group comprises some of Britain’s best known brands, from designers Jimmy Choo and Thomas Pink, to Wedgwood, Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Discussions are expected to focus on who bears the responsibility for tracking down fakes sold via the internet: a French court recently fined eBay for not doing enough to stop the sales of counterfeit and unauthorised merchandise, whereas an American court absolved eBay from responsiblity for sales of fake Tiffany jewellery.
Frederick Mostert, chair of the Walpole IP and Brand Protection Working Group, said that the way forward lies in the two sides working together. “The answer lies in constructive co-operation. Brand owners and auction sites need to work together and share the responsibility to stop fakes to avoid a restraint on the progress of society. The answer for assessing responsibility lies in the middle - both sides should in equal measure diligently confront the online counterfeit problem together.”
Is there a seller exodus from eBay?
July 18, 2008
Yesterday, SellerDome’s blog noted that the number of inactive sellers in their list of top 100,000 eBay sellers had increased by more than 15%. SellerDome’s list ranks eBay sellers by feedback: sellers who are NARU, or who have received no feedback for the last 1, 6 or 12 months, made up 18.5% of the list on 25th May; now, they make up 21.3% of the list:
| inactive | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NARU | 1mnth | 6mnth | 12mnth | total | |
| May 25, 2008 | 9,563 | 3,930 | 1,691 | 3,330 | 18,514 |
| July 16, 2008 | 10,462 | 5,156 | 1,831 | 3,859 | 21,308 |
| Change | + 899 9.4% |
+ 1,226 31.2% |
+ 140 8.3% |
+ 529 15.9% |
+ 2,794 15.1% |
I’ve heard a number of sellers make the claim recently that there is an “exodus” from the site: that sellers are leaving in droves, closing up shops and moving their sales to their own websites, eBay’s competitors and the Big River. Is this finally proof that they’re right? Are we losing good sellers like water through a colander?
I spoke to Rob from SellerDome to ask for more information on the NARU and inactive sellers: specifically, for those who appear to have stopped selling in the last six months, what was their feedback percentage.
I wanted to see if we could tell what was causing more recent casualties to stop selling: was it quitting in disgust at eBay’s policies, or something else? We limited the search to “sellers who are no longer registered or have received no feedback in the past month but have received feedback in the past six months”, so as to some once very-large sellers who have not sold anything on the site for a couple of years: glacierbaydvd at #19 is probably the best example of this.
Here’s what Rob found:
| NARU or Inactive (according to criteria above) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Top 100 sellers: | Avg Rating - 95.2% | 5.0 Percentile * |
| Top 1K: | Avg Rating - 96.4% | 9.5 Percentile |
| Top 10K: | Avg Rating - 97.4% | 14.9 Percentile |
| Top 100K: | Avg Rating - 98.14% | 15.0 Percentile |
* means 5% in the top 100 had lower feedback ratings and 95% higher.
This seems pretty conclusive. There were some serious feedback issues going on amongst these sellers. Remember, these are the people who have stopped selling within the last six months, since eBay brought in FVF discounts and Best Match ordering to promote good sellers, and all kinds of sanctions to discourage bad ones. Some have been NARUed, some undoubtedly suspended or disadvantaged off the site, and some have surely made the decision themselves to either quit eBay, or to start afresh with IDs that paid more attention to customer service.
But we can’t claim that these sellers were any great loss to eBay: an average score of 95.2% is astonishingly poor for an eBay seller, and when sellers performing so poorly were some of eBay’s biggest, most visible, discouraging dozens and hundreds of buyers from shopping again on eBay, it’s in all of our interests to get these people off the site.
Skype reports 338 million users
July 17, 2008
JD might have singled out PayPal for special mention, but Skype also had a stellar Q2 of 2008, reporting 51% year-on-year growth and an incredible 338 million users worldwide. Skype revenues were $136 million for the quarter - annualised, that’s over $½billion.
JD called it “a killer communications application”, and mentioned that 25% of Skype calls are now video. There were 14.8 billion minutes of free Skype to Skype calls during the quarter, and 1.8 billion revenue-generating SkypeOut minutes. They might have some crazy ideas, like ad-funded free landline calls, and they’re certainly in need of better monetisation of that enormous user base, but I don’t think anyone can call a $500 million a year a mistake anymore.
Rajiv Dutta leaves eBay
July 17, 2008
eBay today announced that Rajiv Dutta is stepping down as President of eBay Marketplaces from October. During his ten year stay at eBay, Rajiv has held a number of posts including Chief Financial Officer, President of Skype and President of PayPal.
Praising Rajiv as an “extraordinary leader”, eBay President and CEO John Donahoe said “he will always be part of the eBay Community”. For my own part, in all my years of eBay-watching, I’ve never seen anyone with the combination of imagination, drive and extraordinary niceness that Rajiv exudes: he’ll be missed.
He will be replaced as head of Marketplaces by Lorrie Norrington, who most recently was President of eBay Marketplaces Operations. Some of Lorrie’s responsibilities will devolve upon Stephanie Tilenius, General Manager of eBay North America.
eBay Q2 earnings call: more change is coming
July 17, 2008
“It’s still early, we still have a lot more to do,” said John Donahoe in tonight’s Q2 earnings call. The message from eBay was that “we’re about where we expected to be”, that eBay’s changes are working, that things are improving despite the economy, but that more changes are coming in the second half of the year.
eBay’s second quarter earnings were $2.2bn, an increase of $361m from the same period last year, and in excess of most estimates.
Top of the pops, as it has been for a while now, was PayPal, reporting a net revenue increase of 33% year on year. eBay say “PayPal will continue to focus on greater penetration into the Marketplaces business and the acquisition of new merchants”: the word “ubiquitous” was used more than once in relation to PayPal’s presence as a payment method, so we will certainly see more stories of PayPal’s partnering with large online merchants. “Greater penetration into the Marketplaces business” has some interesting implications, and we can certainly expect to see eBay doing more to push sellers towards accepting PayPal as their sole payment method. I think the eBay UK year free of fees competition won’t be the only one of its type, and we can expect more PayPal-related CLDs. Whether this also means that eBay intend to extend compulsory PayPal beyond the UK and Australia remains to be seen.
Marketplace revenue increased 13%, which is around half the rate of this time last year. A number of factors were blamed for this: primarily the economy, with buyers choosing cheaper options within categories, and especially changes within eBay’s Motors business, which has seen a large percentage of its listings move to classified and local listing formats, e.g. eBay’s own Classified ads, and eBay-owned local ads business Kijiji.
I’ve heard many sellers comment in recent weeks that there is a mass exodus from the site, but eBay’s figures suggest that this isn’t quite the case. The number of eBay Stores internationally is up very slightly on the previous quarter. The number of new listings rose 19% compared to the same quarter last year: the fee restructuring is certainly working. The number of active users is steady: though eBay’s coupon strategy might not be pulling in the buyers quite as quickly as they’d hoped, I don’t see a company in crisis here.
JD said that eBay “will continue to make changes in the second half of the year”. Primarily, this is going to be a continuation of what they’ve already started. Bob Swann mentioned “less up-front, more back-end fees”, and when asked about category specific pricing, JD said “sellers make different margins in different categories, and our pricing should reflect that”.
Overall, JD seems to believe the “bold changes” he’s introduced are working. Since January, the number of PowerSellers with DSRs of 4.8 or more has doubled, which he attributes to buyers rewarding better service. There has been an increase in the proportion of successfully-sold items, and “this is the best indication that buyers are coming back and they’re buying”.
Skype introducing ad-funded calls to businesses?
July 16, 2008
I received a survey invite from Skype this afternoon. It began with the intriguing suggestion that Skype might offer free calls to businesses in your own country. Would this make me use my landline less? You betcha, I answered, assuming this was some kind of 0800 number deal where the businesses themselves would pay for promotion via Skype.
Of course, any sensible business will publicise their Skype name and that their customers can make Skype-to-Skype calls for free. But the new scheme being proposed is like their current SkypeOut service: you can use it to call ordinary landlines, except in this instance, you wouldn’t need to buy credit first. Sounds good?
How about if you got adverts before you could make the call? I cannot imagine a scenario where I would listen to 30 seconds of adverts just to be allowed to make a free national telephone call. I’m not even convinced I would put up with 5 seconds. What do you think - is this a service you’d go for if Skype decide to offer it?
eBay Italy free listing day 16th July
July 15, 2008
eBay Italy are offering free insertion fees tomorrow, Wednesday 16th July 2008, on auctions with a starting price of less than €1. Motors’ categories are excluded, and all other normal listing fees apply.
Looking at Peaches
July 14, 2008
After moving to a new flat and finding all her stuff won’t fit in it, Peaches Geldof is selling off her old clothes on eBay. She moved into a new apartment in Islington last month with two friends, but the three girls have more clothes than wardrobe space.
There’s a variety of vintage and high street items to choose from, and Peaches and her flatmates say “we are donating a percentage of all profits made to charity”. According to the Sunday Mirror Peaches is keeping half the cash herself and donating the rest to the unnamed cause: I can’t help thinking they’d have been better listing through eBay for Charity.
eBay UK, IE update user agreement
July 13, 2008
eBay UK and eBay Ireland have announced changes to the user agreement and privacy policy. These are effective 13th August for existing members.
User Agreement
The two main changes are that
- if your eBay seller fees are more than 180 days overdue, eBay may take them from your PayPal account, and
- sellers are explicitly made responsible for checking the accuracy of pre-filled item information, stock photography and other catalogue services supplied by eBay.
Privacy Policy
- eBay can share your information within the eBay group, e.g. with PayPal or Skype, and
- with law enforcement agencies in the case of suspected fraudulent and malicious activity.
- A new “No Spam, Spyware or Spoofing” section explicitly forbids the adding of “other eBay users, even a user who has purchased an item from you, to your mailing list (email or physical mail) without their express consent”.
- A new “Marketing” section gives users the ability to opt out of targetted marketing on the site. As eBay were running user tests last month which included looking at reactions to adverts and paid-for services, the more cynical among us might wonder if this heralds yet more third-party ads on the site.
If you’re happy with the new agreements, you need do nothing; if you’re not, you’re invited to close your account.
eBay.com postpone new links policy
July 11, 2008
eBay.com are postponing implementation of their new policy banning links from About Me pages to sellers’ websites. According to the most recent Power Up! email newsletter, which is sent out to PowerSellers registered on .com,
the policy announced in May covering links in sellers’ listings or other eBay pages will not be enforced. Instead, we’ll be announcing a clearer and more comprehensive links policy in mid August.
No corresponding policy was ever announced for eBay UK, so it’s still not clear if there will be a change here, and if so, what it will be.
At eBay Live, Brian Burke stated that the new links policy had probably been announced prematurely: certainly there were many unanswered questions that even eBay staff I talked to seemed to need clarification on. It seems that eBay may have changed their minds, for example, on links to non-transactional pages.
Of course, none of this will be much comfort to sellers who spent hours last month changing their listings to comply with the new policy. eBay have now put out an announcement board post confirming that implementation of the policy is being delayed, and that once the new version goes live, sellers will have a four week grace period to amend their listings. Sellers will also not be required to specify shipping prices until August, when improved bulk editing tools will be available to make changes more easily.
Via Skip.
eBay.com tell buyers what to search for
July 11, 2008
eBay.com have made some changes to their New Search Experience following member feedback on recent trials. Preferences have been made ’sticky’, i.e. what you pick stays picked, and more options have been added to the advanced search. As of next week, more members are going to start seeing the new version of search, and those who aren’t included in the trial can still test things out in the Playground.
From what I’m hearing, the new search system has not so far won many friends. Even some pretty experienced users have had trouble figuring out just how it works. But if there was suspicion of Best Match and Finding 2.0, this is going to be ten times worse:
We have also added an Auto Complete feature, which provides search suggestions in real time right from the search box!
Of course, if yours is one of the keywords that pops up on the first letter, this will be superb for you - but if your words never show at all, then you’d better hope that eBay haven’t distracted your buyers before they’ve finished typing. Buyers really should be trusted at the very beginning of the search process to know what they’re looking for, and left to get on with finding it: this horrible new feature should go.
eBay’s perfume ban confirmed
July 11, 2008
eBay’s appeal to stay an injunction banning the sale of ‘grey-market’ perfumes in France has failed. A French court has upheld a judgement from last month, that Kenzo, Guerlain, Christian Dior, and Givenchy brands may not be listed on eBay by unauthorised dealers, even if the item being offered is genuine: lawyers for both sides have said that this will even apply to individuals re-selling items they have received as gifts. The ban applies not only on eBay France, but on any site worldwide which is accessible from France.
The injunction takes place immediately, and failure to enforce it will be punished by daily fines of €50,000. A spokesperson for LVMH, who market all four brands, has previously said that “LVMH Group do not intend to hold off enforcing the injunction.”
Statement from eBay France
eBay France have now issued a statement, informing French users that they
will no longer be able to buy and sell the perfumes and cosmetics of the brands cited above, not only on eBay France but on the other eBay national sites, until further notice.
eBay UK hint at more changes to come
July 11, 2008
Following on from yesterday’s announcement on eBay.com, eBay UK have put out their own statement on feedback changes to be implemented later this year.
It’s confirmed that neutrals will no longer be counted as part of the feedback percentage, and that those percentages will be recalculated. This will be effective late August, but in the meantime, no one will lose PowerSeller status because of neutral feedback.
The promised new dispute process which will give buyers the facility to edit feedback, will also roll in the UK in October. More details of this are coming “soon”.
And finally, a hint that change isn’t finished yet:
We’ve also recently received lots of feedback from sellers about the Seller Non-Performance programme. We’ll provide an update on changes to this programme early next week.
Despite many sellers criticising the ‘neutrals as negs’ policy when it was introduced and demanding eBay change it back again, I’m seeing just as many people this morning criticising them for the latest changes. ‘Too little, too late’ seems to be a popular thought: ‘they shouldn’t have done it in the first place’, and ‘it’s an admission of failure’.
But even if the implementation of the policies was wrong (and it was), the desire to clean up the site, to drag it out of the 1990s and make it a better place to shop, was absolutely right. Watching eBay tweak new policies and work towards getting things right is all part of the process: how many of us try things in our own businesses, test, tweak, see if it works, and if it doesn’t, try something else? It’s difficult, for all of us, but the alternative is a site that never moves forward, and none of us can want that.
Free webinar on market research for selling vintage items
July 10, 2008
This Monday, eBay research specialists HammerTap are holding a free webinar on using market research tools to help sell vintage and one-of-a-kind items on eBay. Run by Steve Nye, HammerTap’s Research Education Director, and Amy Kendall, a HammerTap education specialist, the seminar will discuss how to research unique items and how to discover selling trends attracting high-paying collectors.
The 45 minute session will be followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. It’s on the telephone, so call in via Skype and it should be an almost-free call. You can sign up for the webinar via GoToMeeting’s site.
SMP glitch stops Firefox printing
July 10, 2008
Sellers using Firefox may be having a problem printing off their packing slips at the moment: some sheets appear to be printing correctly, while others are showing just the seller’s logo and address, and still others are completely blank. The problem appears to occur with both versions 2 and 3 of the browser, but doesn’t happen with IE7. The problem has been reported to Support by many people including myself; if we get news of an estimated fix time, I’ll update this post.
Please remember to reuse or at least recycle the blank sheets: think of the trees 
PayPal competition offers a year free of selling fees
July 10, 2008
After the stick, the carrot: PayPal are offering the chance to win your eBay and PayPal fees paid for a year. There’ll be one winner picked each month from August to January; each of the six lucky winners will have their fees from January 2008 credited back to their PayPal account. Knowing that you could spend the last four months of the year selling fee-free sounds a pretty nice way to cover the Christmas spendy season, no?
There’s a catch (you knew there’d be a catch). Only users who accept all payments with PayPal will be eligible to win the grand prize. That’s right: if you take cheques or postal orders or bank transfer or Nochex, you’re not going to win.
Personally, I’m rather torn on this one. In fact, all my eBay sales *are* paid for by PayPal, but I still do list a couple of other payment methods as acceptable. Is it worth editing all my listings to be in with a chance with this one? What do you think?
eBay Oz offers free 99c listings
July 10, 2008
eBay Australia are offering free insertion fees for auctions and BIN listings starting at 99c, listed between 12th and 21st July. Multiple items are included, but SIFs are not and there are some category exclusions. All other normal fees apply.
PayPal claims shown in eBay dispute console
July 10, 2008
eBay.com have just announced that PayPal disputes will now be shown in the dispute console on eBay. It will show the status of open disputes, as well as indicating when you need to take action. If you’re unfortunate enough to have a number of claims open, this should make dealing with them a little easier. The change on the eBay.com site will be made in the next few days.
Bill & Meg show there’s life after eBay
July 8, 2008
Online travel company Orbitz have appointed Bill Cobb to their board of directors. Bill served as President of eBay North America until January, and had previously held a number of positions withing the company, including senior vice president and general manager of eBay International and senior vice president of global marketing.
Steve Barnhart, President of Orbitz Worldwide, said that he looked forward to benefiting from Bill’s advice and counsel. Orbitz own a number of online travel brands, including ebookers and cheaptickets.com.
Bill’s one-time boss Meg Whitman has also been mentioned several times recently as a possible Vice-President for Republican candidate John McCain.
eBay Poland offers free media listings all summer
July 8, 2008
eBay Poland are offering free insertion fees in media categories from 1st July to 30th September. Listings in Movies and DVDs, Books and Comics and Music and CD, in both auction and BIN format, will qualify. The offer is available only to Polish residents. Here’s Google’s translation of the announcement.
Recent Comments
- Whirly: #3 you don’t deserve one after having a 1p listing festival you jammy blighter.
- Chris Dawson: #1 I didn’t get a voucher either
If anyone has one and wants to spend it with me... - northumbrian: the only fault with that bling thing is if anything it makes the item look to good
- faculty-x: us techies are honoured at the mo from ebay or the ones that have dropped off ebay the most, us...
- faculty-x: bling looks excellent, must get a copy. been messing around with coral for years, should save ages. so...
- Whirly: No voucher for me which is a pain as I need some stuff I know a buyer who will get one, he likes...
- Whirly: #2 If you build the fee’s into your sale price I think it’s a justifiable expense, we regularly...
- Trish Connolly: I need to dissagree with part of your statement. You say, “I’ve met many buyers who are more...
- J R: if we sell something for £500 there is no way we would be willing to give ebay £50 plus Paypal fees, there...
- Whirly: lmao
