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.
Neutral feedback will not be included in percentages on eBay
July 10, 2008
eBay have just announced some significant changes coming to feedback in the next couple of months.
Neutral feedback is to be downgraded and from late August will no longer be included in the feedback percentage.
This was one of the biggest complaints of sellers at eBay Live!, with many sellers saying they felt “punished” for neutrals received prior to the last feedback recalculation. Many sellers lost treasured 100% feedback scores when neutrals were taken into account, and felt that it was unfair to retroactively count them as equivalent to negatives. eBay executives appeared genuinely distressed at sellers’ reaction to the changes, and Lorrie Norrington promised to address the issue.
In a second change, eBay are to introduce editable feedback for the first time. They have recognised that buyers sometimes leave feedback too early and will enable them to change the comments and rating. This will appear on the site in October and will encourage sellers to work with buyers to recitify any issues knowing the buyer can improve the feedback left. Currently it’s not been specified if buyers will be able to edit the DSRs left, but more details will be available in the Autumn.
It’s great news that eBay are not only listening to their customers, but are acting on what they’re hearing. I’ve never known them to make changes so swiftly following feedback from site users, so top marks to the new management team for not only listening, but also for taking prompt action.
vzaar’s trip to eBay Live!
July 2, 2008
vzaar have just published a video of their trip to eBay Live! and it’s brought back some fond memories.
Not only is Chicago a beautiful city with an amazing array of statues and sculptures (and it has a beach!), but ebay Live! was a fantastic event. Sure there wasn’t the normal love affair with eBay that’s been seen in previous years, but the attendees were in the main serious businesses looking to further their eBay operations.
It’s great to see some highlights like Lorrie Norrington bouncing onto the stage (and in fact upstaging JD), and some shots of the city itself - it’s far too easy to go to a conference and not make time to explore.
I’m so jealous the vzaar guys got to go to a ball game though, but I bet they didn’t get to walk 10 miles along the beach of Lake Michigan 
A challenge for John Donahoe and Lorrie Norrington
June 29, 2008
One of the traditions of the eBay Live keynote speech is the celebration of those who have 100,000 feedbacks or more. Everyone stands up, and slowly, those with less than x are asked to sit down. I was pretty happy myself to be standing after “all those with less than 10,000 sit down” (especially as Chris had to sit then 
), but then I was gone and soon, only the 24 sellers with scores of over 100,000 were left standing. John Donahoe, eBay’s President who was directing the game, sat down himself much earlier; slightly ruefully, he said “my feedback’s 172″.
Later on, Lorrie talked about selling a pair of loafers to a buyer in a small French village. I think she could usefully attend one of the photography classes at the next Live event 
but more importantly, she told us her feedback score is 146.
I’d like to throw a challenge out to John and Lorrie. Show us you’re on our side; show us you’re more than just MBAs; show us that whatever we’re going through, we’re going through it together. By the next eBay Live in Florida, 2010, have your purple stars for feedback scores up above 500 each, and make at least half of them from selling. You want to prove it’s a new day at eBay? Go right ahead
eBay heroes collectables miss the mark
June 23, 2008
eBay missed the mark with their “eBay heroes” theme at eBay Live! this year. The usually highly collectable pins were not the hot commodities of previous years. In fact on more than one occasion pinks who would normally be mobbed by eager pin collectors were walking around trying to unload their unwanted badges on uninterested eBayers.
The comic book was even worse, users were supposed to visit the eBay stands in the exhibition hall to gathers stickers which would complete the story to help “remember your own 
adventure as one of the many Heroes of eBay Live!”. Each eBay stand I visited had piles of stickers left - it appears eBay businesses are largely unimpressed with sticker books and comics.
I think it was a missed opportunity, there were many eBay heroes who were highlighted at the conference - the Hall of Fame members, the Giving Works award winners, the three charities eBay donated a million dollars to, the Educational Specialists… the list is endless. Lorrie Norrington mentioned a seller and a buyer she had traded with who could have been her personal “eBay Heroes”.
Sadly eBay Heroes was limited to collectables that few appeared interested in collecting. It should have been more closely integrated with the awards and speeches rather than relegated to freebies. A nice idea that missed the mark could so easily have been turned into a “Here are this year’s real eBay Heroes“.
Live day three: Lorrie rocks
June 22, 2008
And then suddenly, it was all over. The jugglers juggled chainsaws dressed in purple velvet tights, Chris Isaak was really quite ridiculously sexy, thank you, and goodnight. They played Freebird as we left: I’m leaving here tomorrow, but Lord knows, things have changed.
Earlier in the day I went to the Q&A session with eBay’s executives for PowerSellers, effectively an extension of the Town Hall. This open access to eBay’s top management has always been one of the best aspects of Live, but something about it has changed. Finally, I believe eBay when they say they’re listening. This isn’t just about “we give you forums to complain about us and wheel out Pierre once a year to press the flesh” anymore. What I saw yesterday were eight people who, I believe, really want to make eBay a better place for all of us.
One of the questions asked by a PowerSeller and cheered by the room was this: why, when sellers tell eBay that they have things wrong, is the response inevitably ‘we know better’? Griff began the response with the eBay line that buyers were leaving the site in droves, and something had to be done to stop the exodus. While this is undoubtedly true, it’s something all sellers have heard before, and when it’s your own living on the line, it’s hard to accept. Someone needs to find a new response. And then they did.
With a passion and frankness that’s a million miles from the slick polish we’ve seen from old-school execs, Lorrie Norrington talked about how it feels to read blog posts every day that rip your company to shreds, a company where, as she put it, “people are working their backsides off to make you successful”. Indicating her fellow panel members, she went on, “there are a lot of new faces up here. We’re sorry for the mistakes of the past, come join us for the future”.
Then Stephanie joined in: we’re a new team, allow us to prove to you that things have changed. “We will prove to you that it’s a new day at eBay.” And that’s what’s different: let us prove it. Things have changed at eBay Towers. This is a brand new management team, and I believe they will make good on their promises.
I know that there will be people reading this post who don’t want to hear this message. That’s fine, but ask yourself why you continue to do business with a company you say you don’t like, don’t trust, don’t believe in? Why, in fact, put so much effort into writing blog entries and forum posts and emails expressing your hatred of eBay? Wouldn’t it be better to put that energy into making things work, on- or off-eBay?
I’ve talked a lot this week about how the fanaticism has gone. It makes for less exciting photographs, but I don’t miss it at all. It wasn’t real; you can’t build real businesses on pins and silly hats (pin and silly hat sellers excepted). Lorrie Norrington and Stephanie Tilenius and the rest of eBay’s management are making something new, something that has a future, something that I for one am intensely proud to be associated with.
As the guy in yesterday’s Town Hall put it, “by the way, Lorrie rocks”.
Live Town Hall: it’s all about the feedback
June 21, 2008
“I’m going to ask a question again that I asked yesterday,” said Larry Phillips from the IMA, which really set the tone for most of today’s Town Hall: there was really very little said that we haven’t heard before, though the feel of the meeting was positive and civilised, and the eBay execs responded enthusiastically to a number of suggestions from members.
Griff commented that of the seven Live events he’s attended, this is the one in which he’s learned the most: attendees are generally very well informed about eBay and full of constructive criticism on how eBay and their own businesses can move forward together. It was suggested that eBay find a way for bricks and mortar stores to offer the facility for their in-person customers to bid on their eBay listings without falling foul of the shill-bidding rules; this received a positive response, as did a request to give Giving Works greater prominance on the site.
There were two questions relating to the wording buyers see for feedback and DSRs: Larry’s first question asked why “4″ scores in DSRs are labelled “good” and “acceptable” when in reality, they’re fail. Brian Burke said that wording on the feedback overview page which states that neutral feedback doesn’t impact a seller’s feedback score should be added to, to reflect the fact that it does now affect the feedback percentage.
There is a definite plan to introduce more granularity into DSR results so that sellers can see exactly where they have been marked down. Brian Burke said that anonymous DSRs had been introduced to counter the possibility of retaliatory feedback, but now that retaliatory feedback is no longer possible, eBay will revisit the question.
A detailed question was asked about the new links policy: may sellers “promote” off-eBay stores without linking to them? Can links still be included in classified ads? And aren’t eBay’s own Yahoo ads contradictory of the new policy? Brian Burke stated that the policy had been announced prematurely, and details were still to be worked out. This is certainly true: I called by the Trust & Safety stand yesterday to ask whether linking to an eBay blog or cross-promoting your own IDs would be permitted. Three Pinks told me they didn’t know, and though the fourth told me that both were permitted, I got the distinct impression that was his personal opinion rather than actual policy.
Responding to the point about Yahoo ads, Stephanie Tilenius said that the long-term goal is that sellers would buy advertising on the site, but she admitted that the current advertising is taking sales off the site: this is a welcome change from previous statements from eBay which have bizarrely tried to claim that ads don’t cost sellers sales.
eBay do seem to be recognising that their sellers are business people and making changes accordingly: a possible future development is a facility to control administrative rights for businesses with multiple IDs. There’s also a hint that merchant credit card accounts could be integrated into eBay Checkout. And PayPal’s Monroe Labouisse stated definitively that PayPal-only will not be introduced in the US.
Ina liveblogged the event if you want more detail.
Keynote speech pictures
June 21, 2008
There were around 6,000 seats in the hall, far short of the 10,000 that eBay claim on their banner. Worse still, less than half of the seats were filled. People were leaving during Lorrie Norrington’s speech.
Click the pics to embiggen.
eBay: past and future feedback changes
June 20, 2008
Following Lorrie Norrington’s announcement that buyers will be able to withdraw feedback in the future, Brian Burke hosted a session on “evolving the eBay feedback system to enhance the marketplace”.
Unsurprisingly the room was too small for everyone to get in and before the doors were closed, at least a dozen attendees were turned away from what was one of the most eBay controversial sessions I’ve attended.
Brian recapped the changes that are already in place, with some statics thrown in:
- 10% of sellers were negatively impacted by the feedback recalculation, or as Brian chose to express it 90% saw no change in their feedback percentage.
- Of PowerSellers 10% saw their feedback percentage drop and 11% dropped below 98%
- The average drop in feedback percentage was 0.5%
- The rate of low DSR ratings left by buyers (1 or 2 stars) has increased very slightly but not significantly
- 85% of positive feedback gets 5 star DSR ratings
- The overall percentage of non-positive feedback left by buyers hasn’t changed, but more negatives and fewer neutrals are being left by buyers.
Brian expained that on the whole the changes have had the intended effect, that buyers are less scared to leave a negative as there is no danger of retaliatory feedback, and that those sellers who with 100% rating weren’t being advantaged compared to those who previously received a larger proportion of neutrals but had also had a 100% rating. The changes are highlighting those sellers who truly give stellar service.
The Q&A produced lively questions, and at one point the audience were politely asked not to heckle to allow responses to be heard.
An interesting future possibilty thrown out by eBay was to ask how sellers would view eBay automatically debiting a buyers PayPal account then an auction closes. That would at a stroke wipe out non-paying bidders if PayPal was offered as the only payment option and would be welcomed by the sellers present.
When asked why not scrap neutral feedback, it was explained that although a neutral impacts your feedback percentage, it doesn’t affect your total score in the way a negative does. The audience voted unanimously when polled that they’d still prefer neutrals to be discontinued.
Several questions related to buyer communications, with the general consensus that eBay My Messages and the Dispute Console need a revamp. Feedback extortion is taken seriously, but if via email rather than My Messages is difficult to prove. Also it was agreed that a process to force communication prior to leaving non-positive feedback makes sense giving the seller an opportunity to assist the buyer.
The most telling comment came from the IMA, which was that a buyer who thought your description was accurate, was satisfied with your communications, thought you shipped quickly and that your post and packaging charges were reasonable would be leaving you 4 stars for all DSRs. This would disqualify you from PowerSeller status and you wouldn’t qualify for volume discounts on final value fees.
eBay said that for years feedback was considered to be untouchable, but now that changes have been made it’s not the end. They are still looking at it closely and will be fine tuning it and evolving the feedback system in the months and years to come.
Live from the Live keynote
June 20, 2008
• Live tweets from the eBay Live! keynote. Reporter Dan Wilson is at the scene.
• Trying to count empty seats… there is a whole unoccupied block. Possibly thousands of bumless seats. But there are donuts and coffee.
• John Donohoe takes the stage. Bit starchy. eBay Live attendees sold $1.3bn last year. Collective feedback - 20 638 040. His feedback? 172..
• How touching that JD’s Parents are in the audience. And he’s showing us childhood snaps… more like a wedding than a keynote.
• JD has a strange selection of messianic hand gestures. Lots of out-stretched arms and hands clasped as in prayer.
• JD: eBay’s values haven’t changed. But buyers are more sophisticated and have so many choices. Change is difficult but essential.
• Anyone watch the West Wing? JD is very reminiscent of Arnie Vinnick in season 6 & 7. He’s offering ’sensible solutions’.
• JD: eBay works for the ‘collective good’ and will ‘do right by people who do the right thing’. 20 minutes in. No substantive announcements.
• JD is saying Thank You. He thinks we should all say Thank You more. (no John, thank you!) Run VT. Lorrie Norrington is on next.
• Whooooossssshhhh…. Lorrie Norrington bounds on to the stage. Lively. Girls do keynotes better.
• Saints preserve us. Norrington has just shown us a picture of her dog. Half an hour in. No substantive announcements.
• In the film of ebay Live, Alan Alda is playing JD and Jodie Foster is Lorrie Norrington. Hugh Grant is the non-paying bidder.
• Fast Facts: 2007 GMV was $60bn. 84m active buyers. Lorrie Norrington’s dog is called Lucy.
• Seller Protection to be available on all items paid by PayPal for US sellers. No cost. No limits. Available when buyer overseas.
• DSR visibility and discounts are working. Average rates are up. 33% have 4.8 or better, up from 15%.
• Powersellers with 4.9 on DSRs will get extra 20% FVF discount from July.
• Postal services discounts for PowerSellers. Coupons for buyers. Top buyer phone support. Fee changes coming up?
• Lorrie Norrington booed over the removal of the right of sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers.
• Mutual Feedback Withdrawl back on the table. Encouraging buyers to remove the negs and neuts they leave.
• Full buyer protection when you pay with PayPal…. on eBay.com. Lots of people leaving the hall… Norrington hasn’t finished.
• So many people have left the hall because they thought it was all over… it isn’t.
• Community Hall of Fame award winners. All very nice but Meg really did do this better. Lorrie, John: smile like you mean it.
• Keynote ends. Not a classic. Exit Music? Saturday Night’s Alright for Fightin…from Elton John. Prophetic?
Lorrie promises feedback withdrawal for the holidays
June 20, 2008
In this morning’s keynote speech from eBay Live, Lorrie Norrington promised that a new way for buyers to withdraw feedback left for sellers would be introduced by the end of this year. The announcement was exceedingly short on details of exactly how the new mechanism might work and the timing of its introduction: I rather got the feeling that eBay have decided that something will be done, but haven’t quite decided the details themselves yet.
Minutes earlier, the audience had booed Lorrie as she mentioned eBay’s most controversial change this year, the removal of sellers’ ability to leave non-positive feedback for buyers. Her reaction was upbeat - bring it on, we can take it - and her smile never faltered.
Lorrie revealed that the overall rate of combined negative and neutral feedback has not changed, though Brian Burke, Director of Global Feedback Policy, did say earlier in the week that the balance has changed: more buyers are now leaving negatives rather than neutrals. eBay cite this as proof that their categorisation of neutrals as ‘negatives lite’ is correct, in which case, that’s all the more argument for getting rid of neutral feedback altogether.
Diamond PowerSellers, feedback withdrawal and DSRs
June 19, 2008
Diamond PowerSeller level
There is a new Diamond PowerSeller level in the US. This new level is for sellers with a $500k/mth and 4.8 minimum of all four DSRs.
Diamond PowerSellers will benefit from packages which will include pricing tailored for their business model. Specific requirements will also be included which could include criteria such as free shipping, despatch time or other service levels appropriate to the category.
Feedback withdrawal
eBay are emphasising that sellers should provide products accurately described with great service up front so that non-positive feedback isn’t left. However they recognise that buyers may occasionally leave feedback too early. Lorrie Norrington is expected to announce a limited capability for buyers to withdraw feedback left for sellers in her keynote speech at eBay Live! tomorrow.
DSR requirement lowered for Best Match
It’s expected that the minimum requirement for DSRs received from buyers will be lowered from 10 to 3 ratings. This will benefit high value, low volume sellers who would otherwise be advantaged in search under Best Match, but currently don’t receive enough ratings in a 30 day period to qualify.
API calls for DSR consoles
Brian Burke told us that eBay are planning to introduce API (Application Programming Interface) calls to enable developers to build 3rd party DSR consoles. These API calls will enable more granular information to be provided than is currently available. The type of information could include the percentage of buyers leaving 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 star ratings, and the average star rating for each seperate category the seller trades in.
Better DSR data would enable sellers to target the products or categories where they’re under performing and highlight the areas they excel in. This information is key to assisting sellers to improve their business for the future.
Is this the last eBay Live?
March 12, 2008
Skip McGrath is obviously hearing the same rumours I am, that this year’s eBay Live in Chicago may be the last. I hope it’s not true, but I wouldn’t be surprised: collecting pins, the clapping tunnel and dancing to Weird Al Yankovic seem somehow to belong to an eBay that’s gone with Meg. eBay’s execs these days seem to prefer a more business-like forum: witness JD making the big announcements about eBay changes at the Ecommerce Forum, and now Lorrie Norrington giving the keynote at PeSA’s conference.
eBay Universities also seem to be on their way out. eBay will not be running any UK universites in 2008, though Ireland still have events planned.
Personally, I think this is a shame. I can understand that eBay want to talk to the big sellers, and putting on expensive events for newbies and hobby sellers and those of us who only sell beads is a poor return on investment. But the chance to meet other sellers, network, brainstorm, and just remind oneself that eBay can be fun as well as work, this I will miss. Who’s up for organising our own event?
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