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.

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.

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.

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.

Click to embiggen

Competitive pricing is nothing new to eBay or the Internet as a whole. Apart from convenience one of the major benefits of shopping on line is price comparison and being able to find the best product and service at the lowest cost, it’s no surprise that sellers have to be ultra competitive on eBay.

What is interesting is the difference between eBay.com and eBay UK. On eBay.com price appears to be one of the most sensitive factors in Best Match, that’s not the case on eBay UK. In the UK Recent Sales are so important that it’s difficult to dislodge and incumbent from the top of Best Match, even if you offer a price that’s significantly lower. Undercutting by a few pennies in the UK appears to make little difference in search standing making it much harder for new sellers to gain visibility, especially for products with a high sales velocity.

On the UK site sellers that listed multiple item fixed price items first and gained recent sales have built what at times looks like an unassailable position at the top of Best Match. The more sales they attract the higher they appear in search and, in a never ending circle, the higher they appear in search the more sales they attract.

Buyers seeing a product at a reasonable price at the top of search results appear to be acting as eBay expected and buying the “Best Matched” product. New listings, even if offered at a lower cost, are finding it harder and harder to compete. This is especially true on low cost commodity products where margins are often measured in pennies rather than pounds. Quite often the Best Matched product is no where near the Best Priced, it’s simply the listing with the most purchases.

Recent Sales can be counted as far back as 60 days on back to back 30 day listings. Once a seller has a long history of sales on a product even outselling them 3 or 4 to 1 isn’t enough to discount their previous sales and dislodge their search standing. Although the most Recent Sales are weighted as more significant a seller with hundreds or thousands of previous transactions on a single listing appears to have an unassailable position at the top of Best Match.

Prices are being driven down and sellers margins squeezed as they fight for visibility but on eBay UK, for sellers that do gain the top spot in Best Match, it appears they can hold their position without being being overly pressured to reduce prices. The chances are they’ll keep the top spot in search results until they run out of stock.

Which site is best for sellers? In the US price appears to be key and if you’re not the cheapest and managing your prices to ensure you stay competitive sales dry up. If you’re in the UK and you’re not at the top of Best Match with a long history of sales from your listing it’s almost impossible to compete against an incumbent.

One thing is for sure, margins are finite, sellers can’t afford to supply at a loss and prices can only drop so far. Those with the biggest inventory will win in the long term and running out of stock on a top selling line is the worst possible situation to be in. Once you lose your position in search and your next delivery arrives it may be nigh on impossible to regain your former search standing and resultant sales.

A company is looking to set up their first shop on eBay and like everyone else have started out with zero feedback. They need to open a shop (minimum 10 feedback or PayPal verified) and want to make use of fixed price listings (minimum 10 feedback and PayPal verified) so the quickest way to achieve this is from buying.

Needless to say when I advised them to get a budget from their manager and go spending they had no hesitation in doing just that. A spending spree on office funds, what could be better? I suggested mundane items such as paper, ink, toner and staples but they had much better ideas. £700 for a new CCTV system? Not a problem, we’ve been meaning to get one for ages!

Two hours and well over £1000 later and they’ve already got their first two feedback from sellers that leave feedback on payment. Just another eight to go which in all likelihood will come from sellers with automatic feedback left on receipt of feedback so it might take a couple of days. They’ve bought more than 10 items to make sure they get more than the 10 feedback needed

Buying is fun though, even when it’s at third hand it’s still exciting. Most sellers spend all their time on eBay selling - if you’ve not been on a buying spree for some time then Christmas is just the excuse you need to go spending.

There’s a good business justification for buying on eBay as well - how will you know the pitfalls your buyers have to face and how search works unless you genuinely use the site yourself as well? Buying is the perfect way to spend a morning and it’s justifiable as “work”.

A couple of weeks ago it was a new fridge freezer, last weekend it was a replacement engine for his landrover as his had dropped a valve. They’re just not the sort of product that can be shipped on a normal courier contract.

I’m not alone either, at any one time there are over 930,000 items listed on eBay which are available for local collection, usually due to their oversized nature. At the same time a quarter of all lorries and vans travelling on British roads do so completely empty.

A new website, shiply.com, aims to match goods with hauliers already travelling along a similar route. By giving work to vehicles that would otherwise be empty, users of Shiply can expect significant savings.

eBay buyer, Lesley Carmody, used Shiply to collect a heavy glass table which the eBay listing described as a “very heavy item, so would advise pick up only.” By listing the collection on Shiply Lesley had 5 quotes by the next day, which varied on price and availability, from carriers to collect from Manchester and deliver to Birmingham. Hauliers able to bid for deliveries in much the same manner as buyers bid for their goods on eBay.

Lesley said of the delivery “I chose the best for me, not the cheapest, and arranged the delivery using the website, all the quotes were far cheaper than the ones I got via Google.”

Next time you’re buying or selling an item which is collection only list your delivery on Shiply for free, let transport companies bid and then choose the haulier that best suits your needs and budget. They can ship anything from a box to a boat and best of all I no longer need to drive around Southern Englend for my neighbour!

The event is being organised by Nathan O’Hanlon who has worked for eBay over the last eighteen months. He comes from a web development background and is no stranger to organising Meetups, the last group he set up was for web professionals, and is now the largest Meetup group in New Zealand with over 500 members.

This group will not be run by eBay, but is for sellers on eBay to share tips and tricks for trading on the site. For this the first Meetup the topics are Best Match, visibility, and how to maintain your listing; Selling items in bulk; Third party tool comparisons.

Doubtless there’ll be plenty of time for a few pints afterwards

My first question had to be “Why would anyone pay other than by PayPal on eBay?”. ProPay explained that they can offer a very simple checkout experience where a user can simply enter their card details much as on any other ecommerce site. For first time buyers on eBay that’s a lot simpler than opening a PayPal account and for many of my buyers, who make business purchases, to be able to pay on eBay with a company credit card makes a lot of sense.

Other advantages are ProPay provide sellers with a full merchant account and merchant ID (recognised by the banking industry) the ability to take payments both on and off eBay along with the customer service you’d expect from a merchant provider.

Currently ProPay is currently available on eBay for Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Titanium PowerSellers based in the US and offer an eAuction Account, with an eAuction Pro Account coming early next year.

There is a $24 annual fee for the eAuction Account, which is refunded as a processing credit if more than $3000 is processed in the first six months. The only other fees are the transaction costs which are as low as 2.4%. Transaction costs are not based on the volume of payments (as with PayPal) but on the sellers PowerSeller level making ProPay extremely competitive to use alongside other payment methods.

Added benefits for the eAuction Pro Account will be an online virtual terminal, touch-tone telephone processing, secure email invoices (send an email and the buyer clicks a secure link to make payment), direct API and encrypted ProPay Card Reader. The enables sellers to take payments both on eBay and from other website or off-line payments.

ProPay were pretty honest and up front explaining that the initial integration on eBay wasn’t as smooth as they and eBay would have liked. That’s not surprising as it’s the first time eBay have opened up their checkout for a payment provider other than PayPal. For the future other third party payment providers following in their footsteps should find the integration much easier.

PayPal have had the exclusivity of eBay online payments for many years, although more of their revenues now come from off-eBay transactions than from eBay generated payments. The future will be interesting and anyone that’s had their PayPal account limited will welcome the first approved alternative payment option for trading on eBay.

Next year as well as launching the eAuction Pro accounts, ProPay will make the eAuction Account available to Bronze Power Sellers and later to all eBay sellers. With a track record of handling payments for on and off-line home based businesses ProPay is one option I look forward to seeing in the UK and well worth considering if you’re based in the US.

A Guardian reader asked for advice on his plan to buy from charity shops and resell on eBay: a couple of the usual suspects replied

There’s speculation about Meg Whitman’s next move now she won’t have a place in a McCain government: California here we come?

eBay Ink watches PayPal blog a bug:

the fact that the issue was proactively blogged about from within is fairly significant. … PayPal identified a problem, communicated it publicly, and got back to trying to fix it as quickly and as seamlessly as possible.

Richard’s right, but the fact that eBay’s official blog is trumpeting this single post as such a triumph only goes to show how far the company has still to go. One blog post doesn’t overcome the decade of non-communication and inertia that surrounds eBay bugs: it doesn’t alter the denial and disbelief that those reporting bugs have to deal with from eBay staff. Lets hope this is the beginning of a sea change.

Auctionbytes and “an eBay employee” (she means Griff) have a little disagreement over just how Google is using eBay data. What’s really interesting here, I think, is Griff referring to eBay listings syndicated via Googlebase as “listing on a competitive site”. As sellers, we tend to think of Googlebase as “advertising our eBay listings”; clearly, eBay think of it rather differently.

“And finally”, Dan has a very naughty suggestion on how to beat Best Match.

pile of rubbish

I normally avoid updating TL until it stops working: if it’s not broken, I don’t try and fix it. But today I’d added some new categories to my Shop, so I ran the “check for updates” process. Once TL had downloaded the upgrade, it competely failed to sign into two of my selling accounts: I got a strange message saying “block remedy” and a link to “continue” to another sign in page, which hung indefinitely, not letting me in to list.

Finally a thread on the HTML and Technical Issues board came to my rescue. I had to completely uninstall the UK version of TL I was running and reinstall the US version from scratch. Signing into that, I then got a new screen telling me that eBay didn’t recognise my computer: I don’t know why because it’s the same one I’ve been listing from for months. One automated phone call and an input PIN code later, my problem was solved; I can now list again.

This sign-in problem isn’t limited to Turbo Lister: other sellers are reporting the “block remedy” message appearing when they try to sign into Omniture, so it seems to be a problem with third-party authorisations, rather than with Turbo Lister specifically. Perhaps eBay could take the line recommended by eBay Ink and let us know what’s going on?

Photograph by Chiara Marra.

The article covers everything from finance to photography, from market research to business plans. John’s come a long way from when he used eBay simply to sell of his old clothes and it’s great to see successes like this.

Congratulations John, see you down the Post Office!

PayPal and eBay have identified the problem which first exhibited itself at around 11am on Thursday and are working on a fix. They aim to get a solution completed and rolled out as soon as possible and will continue working on it over the weekend.

Buyers who don’t select optional insurance are not being affected with postage correctly charged and the glitch only appears to affect those using 3rd party checkout solutions. Sadly many of those using 3rd party checkout solutions such as ChannelAdvisor are amongst the biggest sellers on eBay who may have hundreds if not thousands of incorrectly charged transactions.

eBay is on average 25% cheaper than the high street on like for like new items

“eBay is cheap” was very unpopular with sellers last year; will this credit crunch Christmas be any different?

Meanwhile, over the pond, Greg Fant from the Marketing and Buyer Experience team has details of what eBay.com will be doing. “Millions of eligible customers” are to receive coupons for money-off their eBay purchases; the coupons will appear throughout the site and in buyers’ My eBay accounts. Presumably there’s some targetting going on, as the actual percentage discounts offered will vary; several UK members I know have received vouchers for 10% off in specific categories. The coupons will be valid for both auctions and BINs, “for a very limited time” to get shoppers out spending as soon as possible.

from top rated sellers

The Daily Deal will also highlight a deep-discounted product again with free shipping; a different product, available in limited quantities, will be featured each day. So far, this promo appears to be entirely of buy.com.

Frankly, Mr Fant’s AB post is, at best, disingenuous. These promotions are not for all eBay sellers: they’re of specific, selected sellers, whose IDs are coded into the links from eBay’s home page. Presenting this to eBay sellers generally as “special deals to increase excitement, drive buzz, and keep buyers coming back to eBay for more” is missing the point entirely: what’s being driven is buyers straight from the home page to the listings of eBay’s favoured merchants.

0 results found for obama inauguration ticket

The tickets may be gone, but inauguration merchandise, from badges and periscopes to hotel rooms, is still all over eBay.

Click to embiggen

The new module should enable sellers to see which transactions are helping or hurting their DSR ratings enabling them to take action to improve their service.

Reports will be available for Buyer Location, Category, Date Range, Shipping Service (plus free post vs paid) and Item Numbers. There will also be a breakdown by percentage of how many 1 & 2 star, 3 & 4 star and 5 star ratings have been received for each report.

This will be a fantastic tool for sellers that make use of it, being able to identify if there is one particular product line that’s dragging down overall ratings is exactly what sellers need to know in order to raise their overall rankings.

eBay 05-Nov-08 at 09:45:45 GMT
This case has been opened by the seller with the following reason: The buyer has not responded.
 
eBay 11-Nov-08 at 23:30:36 GMT
Buyer has indicated that they will pay for this item. The item details are as follows:
Item: High School Musical 3 Graduation Poster Brand New Large
Transaction date: 14-Oct-2008
 
Buyer 11-Nov-08 at 23:35:39 GMT
I have sent message to seller for postal address to send cheque - had no reply - cannot access through the ebay route their address as my email address has changed and not logged as yet with ebay. need seller to send me address as has put cheque as an option but no address.
 
iposters 12-Nov-08 at 09:13:26 GMT
We have had no emails from you about this.
Our address is as follows. Please make payment to: POP-culture.biz Limited
 
Buyer 13-Nov-08 at 22:13:58 GMT
Thank you. I can assure you though that 3 messages were indeed sent. Cheque will be in the post tomorrow.

You’d think it might end there, but no, it continues:

eBay 13-Nov-08 at 22:17:14 GMT
Buyer has indicated that they will pay for this item. The item details are as follows:
Item: High School Musical 3 Graduation Poster Brand New Large
Transaction date: 14-Oct-2008
 
Buyer 13-Nov-08 at 22:19:15 GMT
Please advise as to how much postage and packing is as all I can receive is £3.99 for the poster.
 
iposters 14-Nov-08 at 08:54:49 GMT
Please click the pay now button on the item. This will take you to the checkout. Select personal cheque as payment method and it will work out the shipping and give you our address.

The news that eBay will begin to ensure users maintain a valid email addresses will solve problems like this at a stroke. The buyer wouldn’t have received the item won email, the invoice, notification that a dispute was opened or indeed any communications at all.

This buyer has over 100 feedback, is aware that the problem is simply that they’re not receiving emails, but still seem incapable of completing the transaction. Enforcing them to update to a working email address would enable them to receive an eBay generated invoice and they could simply pay straight away.

For those who are based in the US (or fancy a trip overseas) the US Catalyst conference will be in Raleigh NC on the 28th-30th April. If you’re missing eBay Live! or eBay Universities and want to meet up with other eBay sellers in 2009 then Catalyst will probably be your best opportunity this year.

ChannelAdvisor conferences offer some of the best ecommerce training available, and if you’re worried about it simply being a plug for their service don’t be because it never is. Although they’re always happy to talk about their services they take a back seat and let the experts tell it like it is, along with their own up to date experience from partnering with some of the biggest ecommerce merchants trading today.

Early bird booking discounts run until 15th December for the UK (£149 instead of £249) and 15th January for the US ($349 instead of $449).

Currently when an email is returned by the buyer’s email provider sellers have received a standard reply informing them and advising to resend using eBay My Messages. Some sellers may have received this message even if the original email was sent through an eBay contact webform or My Messages and a fix is being rolled out in the next few days to prevent this.

In the past when My Messages were used rather that direct email communications the data to determine when a users email addresses was invalid wasn’t available (any bounced emails would return to the sender, not to eBay). Now that the data is available to eBay they will introduce a process in early 2009 to force members to update their email preferences with a valid email address.

In the future eBay will also capture the reason for bounced emails and include this information in failure notices, which could be as simple as the mailbox being full, or a spam filter rejecting the email.

An additional process will be to mark messages as replied to in eBay My Messages even though an email client may have been used to send the reply. This means by checking My Messages buyers and sellers will easily be able to identify which emails have been responded to and which still need attention.

Currently the old “Yellow Button” has been removed from notifications leaving users with the option of replying from their email client or navigating to eBay My Messages manually to respond to emails. Next year a button will be restored giving the option of a single click for users who prefer to use My Messages to respond to buyer or seller communications.

The case for changing how eBay communications work is simple, in the past when a bidder sends an ASQ tied to a fraudulent listing, eBay revealed the bidder’s email address to the fraudster. Under the new process replies to anonymized emails are routed through eBay and scanned by multiple security layers including fraud and anti virus checks. Email addresses will automatically be stripped out of anonymous communications, even if they are included in the message body. Only once a valid auction bid or buy it now purchase is made are the buyer’s and seller’s real email addresses revealed.

The changes are great news for sellers, using my normal email client (Outlook) to respond to buyer questions has certainly made my life a lot easier. Once eBay begin forcing users to keep their email addresses up to date, communications will not only be safer from fraud but buyers are likely to see messages sooner - most people check their email more regularly than logging into eBay.

If you would like to send and receive eBay messages from an alternative email address to your eBay registered email, you can change your Member-to-Member email address in the Notification Preferences section of My eBay (Communication preferences if you’re using My eBay Beta)

Now feel free to call this sour grapes, because I’ll never get one, but there’s something not quite pleasing about this silver star. It looks - frankly - a bit sweaty. Must be the effect of all those DSRs…