eBay Elsewhere : Links for 16th November 2008
November 16, 2008
A Denbighshire mother is changing her name to Pudsey Bear to raise money for Children in Need. 37 year old Ellen de Bont had put her name up for sale on eBay, saying that she would donate 80% of the money raised to charity. She made several suggestions of names she was willing to adopt, including Semi-Detached House, Piccadilly Circus and Scunthorpe Travelodge (Paris Hilton, eat your heart out).
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.
A chance to chat with eBay executives
May 8, 2007
Ever wanted to meet a top eBay executive and let them know your thoughts on the site? Well now you can! How about a game of golf with John Donahoe, rumoured to be next in line to take over from Meg when she eventually leaves eBay? Ever had a problem with PayPal and fancy unloading your frustration on Rajiv Dutta the president of PayPal? Maybe you’d like to fire some questions to the VP & CMO of eBay US, Gary Briggs? Or of course there’s everyone’s favourite Griff, the host of eBay radio.
Well now you can - courtesy of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and their “Bid for a cure” eBay for charity auctions on eBay!
The power of five
May 3, 2007
Griff points us to a nice story: the eBay Community is to be given a lifetime achievement award in this year’s Webbies. Meg Whitman will accept the award next month, given “in recognition of eBay’s contributions as a cultural phenomenon and commitment to innovation, growth and social consciousness”.
As Griff says, Webby acceptance speeches are traditionally limited to five words only: “Brevity is not always our strongest suit, so I’m curious what Meg will decide on.” It will be very interesting to see if she follows Paypal’s cheaty lead from last year: in accepting the People’s Voice award in the Finance sector, they said “Paypal thanks *a hundred and five* million users”. If they’re calling that a five word speech, it’s significantly not as described
You can add your suggestions for Meg’s five words to this thread.
Solution to “My listing never showed on eBay”
February 25, 2007
In the last few months there have been more and more sellers complaining that their listings are not showing up on eBay, even in the dying hours of a full seven day auction. The auctions always appear in their “My eBay” demonstrating that the items were actually on the site. Sellers are complaining that their items are receiving no bids, and can not be found in category search results although searching by the item number would find their auction.
This was raised at the recent eBay Town Hall by sellers Sam and Debbie who called in. At the Town Hall Griff requested affected sellers to email him and he would investigate some specific item numbers. This is a difficult one to track down after the event, you need to search the item while it’s still live in order to diagnose the issue correctly.
There has been much speculation as to the root cause of the issue, including questioning are the new longer item numbers are to blame? eBay blogger firemeg comes close to the solution when mentioning “eBay has been telling sellers for months that listings (especially for high ticket items) will be subject to security checks prior to being indexed (ie. prior to showing in searches)“. The suggestion that security checks are delaying items appearing in search for the full duration of the auction is not the problem, but we are indebted to firemeg for the following YouTube broadcast which reveals the answers.
It turns out that in this case (and we suspect in many others) it’s a very simple explanation, the “high ticket items” comment holds the clue. In categories with high ticket items a high proportion of sellers pay for the Featured Plus listing enhancement. When search and browse results are sorted by “ending soonest” the items at the top of the first page will be Featured Plus listings. This feature costs sellers between £3.95 and £29.95 extra on eBay.co.uk (US$19.95 on eBay.com).
Featured plus listings always appear at the top of the page they would naturally fall upon in search results with one important exception - in categories where many sellers select the featured plus option, items about to end can flood the category and take up several pages of search results. In fact in some categories the first non-featured plus listings can be many pages back in search results.
In the category in the YouTube broadcast above (Jewelry & Watches > Rings > Diamond Engagement/Anniversary > Diamond Solitaire Rings) Featured Plus listings currently occupy the first eleven pages of search results and the first non featured plus listing is halfway down page twelve, hardly surprising sellers think their item is not indexed by eBay!
There are two solutions. Firstly to pay to have featured plus on your item, and secondly scroll through the pages to the end of the featured plus items to find the listings without that listing enhancement and you’ll find your auction.
If your listing never shows on the first page of search results in the last minutes of your auctions there is nothing amiss. It’s just the way that eBay is designed to work!
Finally eBay provide a little known utility so that you can locate exactly where your item is located on the site 
eBay university 2007 booking opens!
February 9, 2007
eBay have revamped the eBay University pages on the site and opened bookings for the four 2007 Universities. eBay say that the locations have yet to be confirmed, however on another page they are showing to be those predicted by TameBay.
It looks like a great line up and the timetable is pretty close to our expectations. It really does appear eBay UK are pulling out all the stops to make eBay education as good as it can be this year.
It is worth noting at this point that the UK is streets ahead of the US on education for it’s sellers. In the US they only offer Selling Basics and Beyond the Basics courses. In fact Griff recently published a letter from an attendee who requested more advanced courses. Maybe the eBay could send Griff an invite to eBay University in the UK, so that he can see how it should be done
Town Hall : more feedback changes to come?
January 26, 2007
Last night’s eBay Town Hall was not so much about the new, as communicating eBay’s conviction that all their recent changes were great, and that members who are complaining are completely in the minority. Seller concerns about the unintended effects of the anti-counterfeiting policy, for example, were dismissed in half a sentence: “we know we’re impacting some sellers but…” Butt is exactly where Bill Cobb needs to get his head out of if he’s going to keep sellers onside with that one.
After sixteen minutes of riffing with Griff, we finally got onto some real questions. Predictably, changes to feedback were a feature, and it seems that the recently announced “Feedback 2.0” is not the end of the changes. Matt Halprinn, “resident Town Hall trust and safety guy”, commented that:
With feedback 2.0, if a buyer rates a seller low on accuracy of item description, say a 1 or a 2 on a scale from 1 to 5, we’re actually going to pop up another question that asks why, and one of the possibilities is was it a counterfeit or was it a fake.
And that’s a good idea: you might even start to sell me on Feedback 2.0 like that. Assuming, of course, that eBay have the support staff to investigate.
Over the last few days, several sellers have said, some in jest and some not, that they would like the ability to rate buyers as they themselves will be rated. This had mixed reactions from the Town Hall panel, with some pointing out that it would make eBay unique on the internet, as buyers are almost never rated by merchants: whether this in itself would raise eBay’s appeal was also a matter for debate. But the thought of “a gold dollar bill sign next to a buyer that pays fast” appealed to some, and we were promised more than once that “everything is on the table”: looks like this is not the end of feedback changes.
Policies against excessive shipping and handling also look set to change: “we are all over the shipping issue, but it’s more complicated than we thought.” No kidding: the policy was a sledgehammer when first implemented, so let’s hope this promises something a little more subtle.
And finally, unlikely as it seems, a call to promote eBay Stores (Shops in the UK) more prominently, met with apparent approval from the Cobbster: “good idea, I’ll take that back to the Stores team”. Fingers, as ever, crossed.
“It’s not get rich quick, you have to work at it”
November 17, 2006
That was the message from eBay’s Jim Griffiths on this evening’s Money Programme.
The programme looked at three UK eBay sellers: Simon, aka godblessthismess, fitted the traditional image of the eBay seller of rather bizarre collectibles. Trying to expand his business, he has a problem that many of us have: falling in love with his own stock. Sadly his love for and bidding on an item he was selling for a friend cost him a week’s suspension from the site: a salutory lesson for him, but a positively managed demonstration that the site does not tolerate artificial bid inflation (”shill bidding“) by sellers.
Wilmamae Ward, trading as Gathering Goddess began her business in the same way many sellers do: selling off her own excess eBay purchases. Her vintage clothing collection is just to die for, though I couldn’t help wondering why she was showing her new employee how to take parcels to the post office, instead of paying less than a pound a day to Royal Mail to arrange a collection. Also rather worrying was her eBay Live mentor, the Australian millionaire CD seller who couldn’t ship more than 150 CDs a week by himself. Sure, “low cost, high volume” eBay selling isn’t easy: anyone who’s ever phoned me when I’m in the middle of doing my daily packing will tell you just how stressful it is. But 150 CDs a week seems a rather low target to be complaining about.
The Bid Easy represents a new breed of eBay seller: big business with financial backers arriving on the site. Selling luxury goods on behalf of larger brands and with six employees already, the programme followed Jameel Verjee through his ambitious project to sell six hundred diamond rings a month on eBay.
Watching eBay selling portrayed in a positive but realistic way on the BBC was a wonderful and refreshing change. The highlight, as always, and the true star of the show, was eBay Live: corporate spectacular the way only America can do it. Doug’s right: we still love the fun-ness of eBay.
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