You should receive an email in your eBay My Messages towards the middle of next week. If you believe you shouldn’t face restrictions on what you buy or sell online we’d encourage you to sign the online petition and make your voice heard.

Royal Mail strikes: London 8th-10th July

Royal Mail workers in London are striking for three days next week. In order to cause maximum disruption to the mail network different parts of the business will strike on different days, thus meaning any one particular worker should only lose a single days pay.

On Wednesday 8th the delivery offices will walk out and on Thursday 9th the Mail Hubs (which process mail in and out of London) will be striking. Finally on Friday 10th the London Mail Centres (the large sorting offices) will down tools for the day.

The strikes are in protest at what the CWU say are cuts in jobs and wages. However as the Royal Mail try to modernise at the same time as the rest of the country struggles with recession, there’s likely to be little sympathy from online merchants for the strikers.

Best advice for eBay sellers is to notify customers that there will likely be delays to their purchases arriving. Expect a minimum of two to three days delay for mail in London, but the ongoing effect will probably be to slow mail down for most of the next week as the back log is cleared.

Tamebay Morsels 02/07/09

eBay Australia has partnered with seekingservice.com.au to provide access to business services on the site. The service allows you to find local businesses and compare quotes by posting a one-off or ongoing project which businesses can bid for.

20% is a big drop in revenue, but it may be that last year’s $2.1m bid for Warren Buffett’s annual luncheon auction was simply too big to match. Recession or no recession, the $1.68m raised for the Glide Foundation on eBay this year is still a sizable figure.

If you’re a Skype user it’s time to upgrade to the latest Skype 4.1 release which apparently fixes a few bugs in the previous versions.

China has delayed an introduction of web filtering at the last minute turning planned protests into a celebration. Software was due to be installed on all computers to prevent access to pornography.

If you’re a hand made guitar aficionado there’s a DVD on eBay you have to buy – Antony Dewar chopped down a dead cherry tree in his garden and spent three years filming it’s transformation into a pair of guitars. Running for 3 hours 26 minutes the DVD shows everything from felling the tree to the finished product.

Richard Ambrose leaves eBay for new challenges

Richard Ambrose is leaving eBay after six years with the company.

As Director of Trust and Safety for eBay UK, Richard was the media face of eBay, appearing on TV and radio to talk about the company and to defend sellers and the ways they make money online.

With over 1000 feedback (and no negs!) Richard knows eBay inside out. He was a valued and valuable member of the community, spending his own time on boards and forums talking to buyers and sellers and taking their concerns back to eBay’s internal teams. We’ll miss his wisdom, his advice, and his no-messing style.

Richard will be traveling and freelance-writing, with trips planned to Greenland and the US. We’re looking forward to reading about his adventures, and wish him the very best of luck.

Royal Mail OBA (Online Business Account)

Royal Mail are advising business sellers who still use paper dockets for PPI stamps (Printed Post Impression) to move to an Online Business Account (OBA).

For those using offline postage the minimum order value has risen from £5 to £20, plus a separate £1 handling fee. This means if your daily dispatch amount is less than £20 you’ll either need a trip to the Post Office or have to wait until you have £20 of postage before you ship your orders.

The minimum order value for OBA remains at £5, and the difference is due to the cost of printing andhandling paperwork compared to processing postage orders online. If you’re not already using OBA you can contact Royal Mail to add it to your existing business account.

eBay confirms refunds for Michael Jackson tickets

eBay have announced today that they will be extending the terms of the Buyer Protection Programme to cover all buyers of Michael Jackson tickets. The statement, made in eBay’s press centre rather than the more widely read Announcement Board, says “eBay is committed to ensuring that no buyer is left out of pocket as a result of the unique nature of the event, and will ensure all buyers on the site can receive a full refund for their ticket purchase.”

Yesterday, eBay advised buyers of Michael Jackson tickets to contact the seller they had bought from. Other secondary tickets sellers, such as Seatwave and Viagogo, said yesterday that they would ensure all buyers receive a refund.

Exact details of eBay’s scheme are unclear and more information is promised next week but it seems likely that eBay buyers  of Michael Jackson tickets will not be left out of pocket.

Skype trial could delay eBay unlocking $2bn

John Donahoe’s statement that “Skype is a great stand-alone business” could be coming back to haunt him as the IPO due to float it off may be facing a long delay.

Some of the technology that Skype uses is under dispute with Skype failing to secure an early court date in London. The case is now likely to be heard in the first quarter of 2010 and any attempts to float the company before then is likely to impact heavily on the price.

If Skype loses in court the original Skype founders who claim they still own some of the underlying Skype technology could put the scuppers on the service, totally disabling Skype.

It’s bizaare that having paid $2.6 billion for Skype (later written down to $1.2 billion) that they didn’t ensure they were actually buying the entire kaboodle. Buying a company that doesn’t own or have cast iron guarantees it can continue to use it’s technology is a recipe for disaster, but one that could net the original founders yet another massive payday.

In the mean time putting the Skype IPO on hold appears to be the only option left for eBay, having paid over the odds for Skype in the first place, offloading a major chunk onto the stock market at what would inevitably be a vastly underpriced value just isn’t an option.

Wagglepop pops its clogs

Auction site Wagglepop is to close at the end of this month; after failing to find a buyer for the site as a going concern, it will be reborn as a “a 100% affiliate-driven marketplace through affiliate partnership agreement with Amazon”.

Originally launched in 2005 in response to eBay’s hike in Store subscription and final value fees, Wagglepop has closed down before – the first time, just a week after launching. If anyone fancies overseeing its next incarnation, the site remains for sale at $40,000.

Wagglepop is the second auction site announcing closure this month, as Tazbar made a similar announcement a couple of weeks back.

L’Oréal to appeal eBay ruling

L’Oréal are to appeal against a French court’s decision that eBay is not responsible for the sale of fake cosmetics made through their site. The court had said last month that eBay “has fulfilled its obligation in good- faith” and that “preventing counterfeits will only be effective through a close collaboration between rights holders and eBay”.

A spokesman for L’Oréal said that the appeals process could take as long as two years, and that the company intends to pursue mediation with eBay in the interim.

Farewell to a fellow blogger

Gary, better known as The Auction Rebel was one of the original eBay bloggers that I started following in the early days of TameBay. Sadly his family have reported on his blog that Gary passed away on Tuesday this week.

Gary’s readers will remember him for his “Garage Sale Challenges” where he documented the gems he found and the prices the items fetched at auction. I’ve followed his challenges with great interest over the years and he’s never failed to inspire with his dedication to show that “real eBaying”, as it was in the early days, is still alive and kicking.

Ever the pro, he researched hundreds of products informing fellow sellers what to look out for at sales and the prices they could expect items to fetch with advice of what to list on eBay and what is better suited to Amazon.

After an incredible nine years selling on eBay, Gary’s last entry on his blog was to let readers about one of his other passions in life – fishing, he was off for a week for a well earned break.

Gary’s bought a refreshing outlook on the industry with a personal touch and bucket loads of enthusiasm. Always an inspiration, he’ll be sadly missed.

Free Skype calls forever on your old mobile

If you’ve got a spare unlocked 3G mobile sitting around head on over to the 3 Mobile website. 3 are giving away up to two free SIM cards per person which you can use to make free Skype to Skype mobiles calls.

There’s no contract, no minimum top up and you can get free text/data bundles for 90days with each top-up. I also use 3 mobile add-ons for roaming Internet Access with costs starting from just 50p per day. You can buy the add on as and when you need it so if you’re away from home for the day a PAYG 3G mobile from 3 is the perfect way to keep up to date with your eBay business at a very reasonable cost.

Message to MPs: Stability is key to ending recession

eBay’s Summer edition of the Online Business Index which was published today reveals that, despite the ongoing economic gloom, the outlook for online businesses is brightening.

Over the last three months confidence is up, pressure on profit margins and prices has eased and more businesses expect stronger sales in the next quarter.

At the same time as releasing the Online Business Index, eBay and Total Politics co-hosted a breakfast seminar today, with Mark Prisk (shadow minister for business and enterprise), Ed Vaizey (shadow arts minister) and John McFall (chairman of the treasury committee) and other government ministers attending. The aim of the meeting was to help raise awareness of this group of online entrepreneurs and to explore ways that government agencies and legislation can assist sellers in growing their businesses further.

The meeting looked several issues, the first being “A 21st Century Economy”. Key here was the message that small to medium sized online businesses have bucked the trend seen on the high street – a new breed of businesses have emerged which differ markedly to traditional bricks and mortar based companies and are performing well. The 123,000 online businesses registered on eBay make a significant contribution to the UK economy, including £57m worth of export sales generated by UK-based eBay sellers in January 2009 alone.

The discussion looked at ways that online businesses could be assisted and covered topics ranging from reducing business taxation and VAT burdens, to how best support small businesses and make them aware of assistance available.

Finance was also discussed, with the Business Index revealing interest rate cuts aren’t passed on to small businesses, overdrafts have been reduced and 1 in 12 small businesses have to put their homes at risk to secure funding.

“Online businesses want the Government to force banks to loosen the purse strings and stop giving lip service to the extent to which they’re helping small businesses. And they want to see the Government doing likewise by cutting business rates, corporation tax and VAT.”
- Mark Lewis, eBay UK Managing Director

Many small businesses (especially eBay businesses) often start out as part time home based businesses. They grow with advice often being sought on message boards from online colleagues, rather than agencies such as Business Link, the FSB or professional advisers such as accountants and banks. One of the challenges for the government is how to support online businesses, although it could be said many are doing just fine through their own hard work, commitment, ingenuity and determination.

Tactics by manufacturers to restrict trade in their products was highlighted. The Online Business Index highlights the 45% of sellers prevented from discounting goods, and 49% of suppliers who banned merchants from selling their products online. Because many of the restrictions are verbal with the unspoken threat of cutting off supply, this is the first time statistics on restrictive trade activities have been collated (and is why quotes from sellers in the Business Index are anonymous).

In summary the report concluded that small to medium sized online businesses are helping to pull the country out of recession with 41% looking to hire one or more additional employees.

The most important message was summed up succinctly by Ed Vaizey, who concluded stability is vital to enable online merchants to plan and grow. Shot gun tactics by the government (such as last years temporary cut in VAT rates, which did little to help the one sector of the economy that’s booming) simply disrupt online businesses and potentially hinder their growth.

Stability is something the eBay have already recognised is key, major eBay site changes are now restricted to twice a year with sellers being informed well in advance. If the government can adopt similar tactics online sellers can get on with the business of selling.

New SMP summary page now live

The new Selling Manager (SM) / Selling Manager Pro (SMP) summary page has gone live on eBay. Along with the ability to change the section header colours, you can also move the sections around on the page so that the information you need is at the top.

The shortcuts menu has been imported from My eBay (along with any shortcuts you’d previously added) and a new at a glance bar chart shows your gross sales for the last 120 days. There’s also a useful Account Status section (not shown by default, click the Page Options at the top of the screen to enable it). This will show your latest invoice and current outstanding fee balances.

What does amuse me are the three items on the To Do list that eBay have kindly created for me – it’s more of a “What Not To Do List”. In third place we have “End Listing Early”, a great way to ensure you don’t sell anything. In second place “Cancel bids for a listing” (just in case you hadn’t ending your listing early). And first prize for usefulness on your brand new SMP To Do list is to “Block or pre-approve bidders”. It may have escaped eBay’s notice that the ability to pre-approve bidders was scrapped way back in February 2007 but I’m sure you’ll appreciate the reminder anyway.

The best part of the new SMP design is that it’s been limited (currently) to the summary page, which to be honest is a page I never look at anyway. Thankfully the really useful stuff in the Active and Sold sections has been left alone for now. However if you like tweaking colours and rearranging widgets you can have some fun. Just ignore your new To Do list

eBay to hold payments for tickets until delivered

eBay UK’s head of Trust and Safety, Richard Ambrose, said on Radio 4 yesterday that eBay is to hold payments for tickets “until buyers have what they paid for”. The statement was part of a You and Yours feature on eBay ticket sales from a seller they identified as “M T Promotions”. A number of buyers told the BBC that they had bought tickets for high-profile concerts, but received nothing: You and Yours calculate that around £½ million was paid to this seller – who has now had their eBay and PayPal accounts suspended. eBay told The Sun that buyers would be reimbursed, and that the police had been called in to investigate.

We’ve asked eBay for more details on the new policy: they told us that “this is a big task and something that will take a while to refine the details of and then subsequently launch.” As soon as we have any further details, we’ll pass them on.

The R4 program is currently available on listen again.

London postal workers to strike on 19th June

London postal workers are to stage a 24 hour strike next Friday, 19th June. Their union, the CWU, says that 10,000 will take part in the action, protesting against cuts made by Royal Mail which the union say are “arbitrary” and threaten jobs and services.

CWU deputy general secretary, Dave Ward said “We have offered a moratorium on all strike action if Royal Mail will suspend executive action and enter into meaningful negotiations.” Further strike action will be announced if no progress is made.

Via the BBC.

Ordered to repay overcharged postage by the courts

Overcharging on postage has in the past been pretty much the norm on eBay for many sellers, which is one of the reasons that eBay are starting to introduce compulsory free post in some categories. It’s not something that’s normally illegal though, but a Flintshire man who made twice as much on postage as on selling counterfeit products has had postage profit included in a proceeds of crime repayment.

Selling counterfeit dart flights with football club logos, the court has assessed his profits at £3,100.00 for the flights and £7,500.00 from inflated postage and ordered him to repay £9,020.00 or face six months in jail.

This is the first time I’ve seen a case where profit from unreasonably high postage costs was taken into account. It’s hard to hide on eBay though, everything is recorded for the world to see and the courts are no exception.

The only thing I don’t understand is how he got away with overcharging on postage for so long without his feedback suffering. This case is unusual as it involved counterfeit product, but it does go to show just why there is so much resistance to eBay enforcing free postage. For many sellers making double the profit from postage, compared to the profit on the product, is just too much to ignore.

TameBay Morsels 09/06/09

PayPal have posted on their blog confirmation of what’s been known for months – rolling reserves on accounts. Basically (and they may have a good point here) for most sellers it’s better a rolling reserve than telling you you’re too big a risk to have an account which would mean you can’t trade on eBay. Doesn’t make it any easier in today’s straightened financial times though.

Download the latest white paper on Rich Media from ChannelAdvisor. Rich Media is everything from zoom and colour choice on product images to rotating views and ultimately video. Whether it’s using the eBay slide show to produce image to the left, or more complex imagery or video with 3rd party apps, this is something all sellers should be exploring or at least considering to stay ahead of the competition.

If you’re in a hurry to get hitched but are 6000 miles away from your bride why not simply get married via a video link up on Skype? The famous words “You can now kiss the bride” were probably skipped in this unusual ceremony.

TameBay Morsels for Monday 8th June 2009

I’ve read some pointless “guides to eBay” before but I think even the newest of newbies could figure out The Times’ five points to selling on eBay. For five really useful things, check out John Jantsch’s post about what people really buy.

Three arms smugglers who bought equipment for Top Gun-style F-14 fighter jets on eBay to illegally sell on to Iran have been jailed.

The EFF have launched a new service TOSBack, to track when large internet sites, including eBay, change their terms of service. They’ve recorded eight different versions of eBay’s TOS since February. Worth keeping an eye on.

Tazbar to cease trading

Auction site Tazbar is to cease trading on 16th July, owner Lee Markham announced tonight. Lee writes that this is “purely a commercial decision and doesn’t reflect on the wonderful people that we have met … during the lifetime of the website.”

Tazbar will cease to charge for services from 15th June. Members will then have a further month to finish any remaining trading, which will stop at midnight on 16th July and any remaining listings will be ended. The website will remain open for a further fourteen days to allow back-up of listing information and transaction data.

Tazbar was founded in August 2006, aiming to attract disgruntled eBay sellers with its no-fee listings. We wish Lee and his colleagues the very best of luck in the future.

London postal workers vote for strikes

London postal workers have voted overhwelmingly in favour of strikes, said their union, the CWU. The union said that its members voted 9 to 1 in favour of industrial action, though it’s hoped that all-out strikes can be avoided.

The dispute with Royal Mail is over jobs and conditions, with the union claiming “arbitrary” cuts are being made, while RM say that their changes are covered by an agreement signed with the CWU in 2007, and that the cuts are necessary to modernise the service.

CWU spokesman Martin Walsh said “strike action is a last resort for our members who can ill afford to lose wages”. Dates for industrial action will be set shortly.

eBay cuts 3rd party providers affiliate revenue

eBay Partner Network (ePN) is eBay’s affiliate scheme which pays a commission to websites that send traffic to eBay. Different rates are paid when a website refers a user who places a bid, makes a purchase or registers as a new eBay user.

Many companies have offered tools to eBay users and relied on ePN payments to fund their services enabling them to keep charges low or provide tools for free. That’s all changing, eBay recently stipulated that ePN was intended to reward referring websites for new or incremental traffic, not for referring users who are already using eBay.

ePN affiliate payments are intended to reward websites who drive new traffic and incremental activity on eBay. I can understand why eBay don’t want to pay for traffic from tools providers, they are essentially paying for buying and selling activity from existing eBay users.

This has left a number of third party tools companies with a large cut in their revenues. Auctiva has been the first to announce that some services (listing and hosting) will become paid for services. They will still offer a few free services such as Sellathon and 1mg of free picture hosting, but for most larger sellers who wish to remain with Auctiva, a paid plan will be the only option.

Other third party tool providers have also reacted to the news, Inkfrog are promising no price increases for three years at the same rate that they’ve held since 2006. Vendio are expected tempt current Auctiva users with free unlimited listings on eBay and Amazon until the end of 2009 with a low monthly charge and no commission fees for the whole of 2010.

Where does this leave users though? Especially in today’s uncertain economic climate sellers used to free listing tools are unlikely to want to pay for them, whether from their current provider or from an alternate. Even worse by switching listing provider and relaunching listings they would lose all recent sales history with a corresponding drop in Best Match placement.

There only appears to be three options for users of 3rd party tools who are switching from an ePN funded model to a paid model – either start paying for the service, switch to an alternative (probably paid) provider or stop using the services entirely. I’m guessing that many sellers will probably choose the later.

Disclosure: Vendio advertise with TameBay.

TameBay Morsels for 29th May 2009

Proof that you can still bag a bargain on eBay: the man who bought a Gainsborough on eBay for less than $200.

eBay Australia have found that 8 in 10 people are shopping on the sly, hiding the value of their shopping from their family and friends during the recession.

A couple for website owners: is Verified by Visa a conversion killer? And some interesting thoughts about getting buyers to actually buy.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain is backing Meg Whitman’s bid to become Governor of California: it’ll be interesting to see whether he, like eBay, is an asset or a liability for her campaign.

And what if you let your computer shop on eBay by itself?

Skype 4.1 Beta adds screen sharing

Skype have released their latest Skype 4.1 Beta today, which adds screen sharing capabilities.

It’s not going to instantly replace professional webinar solutions as it’s currently view only and at the moment only works between two users – a host and a guest viewer. You can easily switch roles and it opens interesting possibilities for Skype to add functionality in the future.

Despite it’s limitations it’s still a cute addition with the option of sharing your full screen or a resizable section of the screen.

A couple of old features have been reintroduced – Birthday reminders and the ability to send contacts to other Skype users. You can also import new contacts from Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL and LinkedIn.

Skype 4.1 Beta can be downloaded from the Skype website.

TameBay Morsels for 27th May 2009

VC Fred Wilson wonders why PayPal isn’t more popular: he doesn’t really draw any conclusions, but I suspect the comments may get interesting.

More interesting comments as Venture Beat asks Can eBay rebrand itself as the Web’s Wal-Mart? I’d say yes, it can, but should it want to? Steve “Genuine Seller” Lindhorst, on the other hand, is off to WalMart to shop.

HuffPo reports that Meg Whitman is writing a book about the “core values” that helped her build eBay. It’s currently untitled but is due out next February, as California goes to the polls.

And multi-millionaire dragon Duncan Ballantyne sells his stuff on eBay.

2 year EU-wide warranties for buyers

A newly proposed EC Consumer Rights Directive aims to give consumers across the Europe the same protection as they can expect when buying from within their own country.

Currently only 7% of buyers purchase from another country, concerns include language barriers, higher delivery costs and difficulty in post sales support. Buyers are also concerned about the security of sending money overseas along with the difficulty of establishing the trustworthiness of the seller.

The EU directive, if it comes into force, aims to provide increased consumer protection, but they could actually have the effect of lowering protection in the UK. Proposed is a two year warranty covering goods with inherent faults. In the UK the law already covers buyers for six years under the Sale of Goods Act.

Currently in the UK the buyer can request a free of charge repair or replacement and for the first six months it’s up to the manufacturer to prove that the product wasn’t inherently faulty when supplied. From six months to six years the onus is on the buyer to prove their purchase was manufactured with an inherent fault.

It’s also worth noting that the statutory warranty only covers errors in design or manufacture, it doesn’t cover wear and tear or misuse.

eBay sellers that purchase goods from overseas should be aware, that if the manufacturer isn’t based in the UK, it’s the importer that carries the warranty responsibility. Indeed the buyers first port of call is always with the trader.

The EU directive, if it comes into force, would ensure that all buyers across the EU have a basic level of cover, but it’s likely the UK would keep it’s current six year warranty so it’ll be business as normal for UK sellers.

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