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What eBay needs to do

Wow, that got some response, didn’t it? Thanks to everyone who left a comment on yesterday’s post, and in particular to Scott and Henrietta who responded on their own blogs.

In response to comments made by a couple of people, I want to emphasise that I am not complaining about lack of eBay sales. eBay still has buyers, and that is the reason that I and thousands of other sellers continue to list there. But compared to any number of other sales channels, our own websites included, eBay is becoming hard work. We spend time and effort jumping through their hoops, and in return, we don’t even get to feel that our eBay income is secure.

Today, I’m nailing nine theses to the door This is what eBay needs to do moving forward:

1. A one-year moratorium on fee changes We’ve had two major fee reconfigurations inside nine months. Let us get on with selling without having to spend hours with a calculator refiguring our listing strategies.

2. DSR granularity available now eBay judge us by our DSRs. We need a decent level of information so we can read these figures properly. At the very least, we want to see how many buyers have left us each score.
3. Introduce a proper warning system for sellers suspended under SNP, with right of appeal, and a human being to talk to. Right now, any of us could lose our account at any minute, and do nothing about it. That doesn’t make for long-term business partnership.
4. End secret policies (like the limitation on branded goods sales). We need transparency for all eBay policies. Secret listing limits and polices apparently applied inconsistently from seller to seller must end.
5. Give us proper notice of changes to the site, and an end to polices being introduced piecemeal and retracted later I know eBay are trying on this one, but they’re not there yet. Policy changes should be thought out and announced well in advance, not introduced as a knee-jerk reaction to questions on the forums (like the ban on sub-99p items) or as accidental fall-out to other site changes (like the loss of ISV for UK BIN listings). People’s livelihoods depend on things like these, so stop changing them at a moment’s notice.
6. Retract the ‘no paper payments’ policy, for the sake of your buyers No one believes this is about security; it’s only about eBay’s bottom line. Telling sellers they have to accept PayPal is one thing; telling buyers they can’t pay by cheque even if they want to, is a step too far. Think of the buyer experience.
7. Feedback editing should be introduced when it was promised Lorrie said “before the holidays”. Subsequent announcements said “by the end of October”. It’s October this week, and I see no announcements about the roll-out. Sellers want this. Prioritise it.
8. Remove all third-party advertising from the view item page The *only* possible action on the view item page should be buying the item. Stop distracting our buyers (yes, they’re our buyers: sellers are eBay’s buyers, and we’ve already paid for the view item page).
9. Let eBay catch up with the rest of the internet With so many sellers listing so many items, eBay is always going to be a complex site. Every change made to functionality or layout, therefore, should seek to minimise that complexity. Make it easier to use. In particular, recognise that half of eBay purchases are now buy it now, and give buyers a shopping cart: buying on eBay should not be more difficult than buying on every other ecommerce site out there.

Over to you…

Dear eBay, may I please get on with selling now?

So we made it to 25th September. For the second time in a year, sellers are making major changes to the way they do business on eBay, revising listings one by one, struggling to find information on how eBay’s latest round of changes will impact their particular business. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough. I’d really like to just get on with selling now.

Too much change, too often

Major changes are made on eBay far too often. Hardly a week goes by without some policy or other being revised, meaning sellers have a constant stream of new requirements to incorporate into their businesses. The time we’re spending at the moment changing our listings and figuring out new strategies to work around new policies, could be better spent working on our own websites and figuring out Google Adwords: at least then we’d eventually be in control.

eBay need to make it easier to keep up with their changes. Bulk editing is hard work, and when you have a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand listings to change, it’s really hard to justify spending the time to do so, again. There needs to be an easy way to change your shipping fees, or your returns policy, or even your email address on all your listings.

Policies are made, and then retracted, or tweaked, causing yet more work for sellers. eBay need to find a way to consult with their members before they make many of these changes: often as sellers, we understand the implications of what eBay do better than they do themselves. Policy changes need to be communicated fully, in advance, not piecemeal after the event.

Most importantly, eBay need to stop changing things. Let’s have some time to just get on with selling, please.

Lack of transparency

If eBay are sometimes poor at communicating, other times they’re just downright secretive, and this is doing no good to their relationship with sellers. Getting information about how the new search results work is like pulling teeth. eBay staff contradict each other. They can’t answer basic questions. And all this leaves sellers - rightly or wrongly - feeling as though they’re being duped. Getting sales on eBay feels more like gambling than running a business: if we don’t understand how to get ourselves to the top of the search results, we’re not going to hang around trying to figure it out, we’ll just go somewhere else to sell.

And it’s the same with feedback and DSRs: sellers are judged by those five little stars, but eBay won’t give us the information we need to improve. We’re encouraged to keep our scores above 4.8, but if they fall to 4.79, we don’t know if that’s one disgruntled buyer, or a real drop in the service we’re offering. How would eBay staff feel if their bonus depended on a secret target their boss kept to herself?

We’ve been promised “granularity” in DSRs: let’s have it. Let’s at least see how many buyers have left us each score. eBay need to stop using the excuse that we might harass our buyers if we think they’ve left us a 1 or a 2. A few sellers will do that anyway, but why are they punishing the rest of us for it? They say they want to make the site better: give us the tools to make it so.

Insecurity

Dolphins: need I say more? If you’re trading on eBay, you need to have in the back of your mind that eBay can take it all away at any moment, for any reason, with no warning whatsoever. Though eBay UK made an announcement in the summer that “we will be introducing a 1-month warning period for sellers who breach the Seller Non-Performance policy for the first time“, they didn’t quite mean what we all thought they meant. As clarified on the PowerSeller Board, “30 day warnings are given where appropriate. We have not guaranteed that every seller will get a warning.” You can still be stopped from selling, temporarily or permanently, with no notice, and no appeal.

And it’s not just about feedback and DSRs. eBay’s policy changes too can wipe your business out in a matter of days. If you were selling downloadable listing templates this time last year, you’re not any more, thanks to the policy that banned the sale of digital goods. Sellers of designer and brand name clothing are finding themselves suddenly restricted from selling too. Restrictions on particular trademarks are not being communicated to sellers, and so the first they know about it is when they suddenly can’t list any more of the stock they’ve tied their cash up in. Is that a way to do business? It’s safer to go elsewhere, somewhere where you’re in control.

Of course, it’s eBay’s site and they can do what they want, and that includes alienating every seller they’ve got if they choose to do so. But they shouldn’t count on sellers just bending over and taking it much longer.

We have more options now. When I started selling on eBay, setting up a website was difficult and expensive: eBay offered many sellers an opportunity to sell online that they couldn’t find any other way. Now, websites are both easy and cheap: why would any seller not have one? Comparison search engines and search marketing tools like Adwords make it easy and cheap to reach buyers. That easy, cheap connection with people who wanted to buy used to be eBay’s unique selling point, but it’s not any more. eBay can’t sit on their laurels forever. Unless they find a new way to reach out to sellers, to convince us that it’s worth persisting with eBay selling, I fear by this time next year, there won’t be many of us left.

This post was inspired by The Brews News’ “eBay Needs to Find a New Set of Tools to Motivate Sellers in 2009″, which you should certainly also read.

Whatever happened to eBay?

Mimi Jackson has been an eBay member, buyer and occasional seller for eight years. She’s not a professional seller, but someone who has enjoyed buying and selling, finding unusual objects and some bargains. Here she reflects on some of eBay’s recent changes and the effect they will have on her use of the site.

I have been a faithful member of, and true believer in eBay for about 8 years now. I have sold some things I thought could fetch a good price, and I have even built my collection of late 1800’s sewing, craft and etiquette books mostly by surfing ebay. Many of the books were lovely little gems from someone’s grandmother’s attic, or some dusty corner of a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. eBay has allowed me to find the things I never would have otherwise found, and connect with people I would never otherwise meet. It has allowed me to fanatically pursue and satisfy such a specific, quirky, and rare interest… affordably!

Now, I fear, that era is coming to an end.

I always thought that eBay was founded on the idea that people are basically good and honest, and are happy to exchange unwanted/extra goods for money, when mutually beneficial.

Just this week, I decided to sell an old Lenox China (Ceramic Arts Company, c. 1900) sugar bowl that we’ve been keeping, simply because it is beautiful. After I noticed the markings on the bottom, a bit of internet research showed that it might be quite a bit more valuable than I realized, and I decided that it might be better off in the hands of a collector.

So I took pictures, and got ready to list it on eBay. After signing in, I saw that due to my “limited” transaction history with eBay ( Me? 8 years? More than 50 transactions?), I would be required to accept Paypal as a payment option, and that the payment would be held until proof of delivery or positive feedback. Uh… okay… but, wait a second… I’m dealing honestly here… what if the buyer isn’t?

Many of my favorite purchases have come from people who aren’t sophisticated eBayers. It seems they just had a trunk of old stuff to clear out, and a need for some cash, in many cases. eBay won’t get those sellers (who are important!) with these new rules. Who wants the hassle of these new restrictions for something that might not even attract a good price? That leaves eBay selling to the businesspeople, those who know have more valuable items to sell, and those who are strapped for cash.

The whole idea of getting a good deal on eBay, in my opinion, relied on the fact that selling was cheap and easy, and that both parties were willing to take a bit of a risk, trusting someone they’ve never met to pay or ship as promised. In my case, I haven’t ever had a problem that wasn’t satisfactorily resolved, and have gotten some phenomenal deals, just because I bid on the right thing at the right time.

Okay, so I can see that there are some items on eBay that look too good to be true, and clearly there are dishonest sellers and buyers lurking about, but can’t we tolerate a bit of that for the greater good?

First posted on Mimi’s blog and reproduced with permission.

Dell laptop offsite ad - cheaper than eBay

I’m liking this advert better than the previous McDonalds advert that appeared in My eBay. It’s something that’ll appeal to a lot of sellers but I don’t sell laptops and I’m not so sure eBay laptop sellers will appreciate this one.

I’ve already had one question from a potential buyer who says they’ve just ordered an Inspiron 6400 for the price busting £299.00 and can I supply a docking station to go with it, so the advert is obviously working. But what’s the real impact?

Well for anyone who has been thinking of buying a laptop Dell have a really good deal on, comparing prices the 1.7GHz Inspiron 6400 on Dells website is selling out at £349.00 including VAT and shipping. The lowest price I can find the equivalent model on an eBay Buy It Now is £389.00 with £23.50 shipping to add on, a £63.50 saving for going to Dell then.

We’ve all seen the off site adverts at the bottom of search results, but they’re nowhere near as visible as the ones in My eBay. What will your thoughts be when your best selling lines are advertised in My eBay for off site deals?

On thing is for sure - if you’re in the market for a new laptop it’s a cracking deal, so go shopping while you can.

eBay stole 15 seconds of my life

I wasn’t a keen advocate of adverts in My eBay when they first appeared. Now I’m even less enamoured by them.

The drop downs in My eBay don’t load until after the advert has loaded, and they’re the last part of the page to load. Now a missing advert results in my browser waiting for a non-existant image from rtm.qa.ebaystatic.com.

Once the page has loaded it takes about fifteen seconds for the advert to time out and default to a text link, during which time drop downs are unavailable.

Whilst I understand adverts equal click revenue I find it hard to believe eBay make much revenue from them. Adverts irritate me at the best of time and even more so now they’re not working. eBay are wasting a quarter of a minute of my time for each visit to My eBay.

I thought eBay displaying adverts in My eBay was bad, now I’ve realised that eBay failing to display adverts is even worse

Looking back: 2nd January 2007

It’s January 2nd and first day back at work for another year, and that reminds me of this time last year. I wrote about some of the things I’d like to see changed on eBay, and a couple of them have been

Block echeques for eBay payments

echeques are still a nuisance, 2008 really is the year PayPal need to sort out faster clearance times or scrap them altogether.

Multiple shops on one ID

I’m not so sure I really want this one any more - with DSRs and Seller Non-Performance policies maybe it’s not a good idea to have all your eBay eggs in one User Id basket

Account verification for buyers and sellers

What is it with verification for buyers and sellers that’s so hard? We still here of the odd user having their account closed and popping up on a new User Id. eBay need to get tougher on this and at the same time ensure Business/Private account designations are used appropriately.

Listing upgrades bundles

There’s bound to be a fee realignment later in January. Definitely it’s time eBay looked at bundled fee packages both to include gallery in the basic listing fee and encourage more use of listing upgrades with bundles.

Biddy’s button

Well done eBay! You gave us Biddy’s button (better known as the “continue shopping with this seller” button on the item checkout page).

PayPal & eBay to learn we’re in the UK

Credit where credit’s due, PayPal have managed to put the postcode on the last line of the address in a UK format. Well done guys.

Shop listings bundled with shops fee

Including a certain number of SIF listings with an eBay shop still makes great sense. Another possibility would be to offer discounts based on the number of SIF listings sold in a month. That would give an incentive for sellers to drive traffic to their eBay shops.

AutoFeedback

It’s high time TurboLister got a few more SMP type features such as the ability to leave feedback. File Exchange has shown this is possible and it wouldn’t take too much work to make eBay’s premier listing tool even better for post sales management.

Cheap listing days

You love em or hate em, but expect to see even more highly targeted cheap listing days to encourage specific types of behaviour such as the adoption of PayPal.

Best Offers

This wasn’t on my wish list last year, but I couldn’t not give Best Offer a mention. Upgrading Best Offer with the ability to automate accept/decline along with counter offers and a few other enhancements was the biggest improvement for the buyer experience and to make sellers lives easier.

2008

This is going to be an exciting year on eBay, major initiatives in the last year are starting to take effect to raise the standards sellers must achieve with more transparency than ever to buyers on which sellers are excelling and which aren’t.

Buyers are starting to realise there are other venues such as Amazon but eBay can build on the initiatives put in place in 2007 to make eBay an even better venue for buying and selling. If you want to guess what will change on eBay during 2008 there’s a thread in the TameBay forum for your wish lists and predictions.

Here’s to a fantastic 2008 trading on eBay

Minding my own business

Two things happened to me yesterday. The first was a survey from eBay asking what I think about my account manager. Maria is possibly the nicest of all the very nice people I’ve met at eBay: she’s also super-efficient, and I’m lucky to have her as my AM. So far, so good. But the last question of the survey was perhaps the most telling: after asking me if having an AM made me more likely to keep trading on eBay, they gave me a big text input box, and asked me how they could improve our business relationship. The 1000 characters I got to respond wasn’t nearly enough.

The second thing was that I got two neutral feedbacks. Normally, I’d shrug them off: it’s Christmas, after all, buyers are stressed and needy, the post is unreliable, tempers are frayed and time to sort problems is non-existant. But these two neutrals came on an account which doesn’t have very much feedback: it’s one I use for testing new lines and new listing styles, and it gets used pretty erratically. And two buyers is a high percentage of its feedback. Thank goodness those two buyers chose to leave neutrals not negs, because two negs would have got me an account suspension: all my eBay accounts gone, at Xmas, because of one non-paying bidder and one person who didn’t like the colour of her beads.

And I realised what I ought to have said to eBay in the survey.

Earlier this week, Saul Hansell wrote in the New York Times about eBay sellers’ problems. He quoted Scot Wingo saying “eBay’s relations with sellers over the last few years have deteriorated and are, at best, poor right now,” which is undoubtedly true, but then went on to characterise this as being all about fees. Quite honestly, fees are the least of our problems: at least we know what fees are going to be.

The worst things that businesses have to deal with are the unpredictable things, and over the last year or so, eBay have introduced more and more unpredictability. Though it’s been under the guise of protecting buyers, what they have also achieved is to alienate sellers. Seller Non-Performance, Detailed Seller Ratings, putting adverts for our suppliers in search results, and now removing us from search results based on feedback: the real problem for eBay sellers is that constant, nagging feeling that says “we can take it all away from you in a second if we want to, by arbitrary rules that we won’t ever properly explain, and you’ll have no right of appeal”. Because it’s that fear, that very reasonable fear for our livelihoods, that sends sellers away from eBay. We can plan for fee changes, but we can’t plan for total loss of our eBay income. It’s that that makes us look to our websites, to Amazon and to any other online outlet we can find - because in those places, we’re in control. We’re treated like adults running businesses, rather than naughty children who are going to have their toys taken away from them any time that Mommy chooses.

eBay will say - and they’ll be right - that the majority of sellers have nothing to worry about from measures designed to clean up the site. The problem is that although that might be what eBay *mean*, it’s not what sellers are hearing. The new policy against excessive P&P charges is being implemented on eBay UK this week: in a thread discussing this, Louise from beauty-buy-mail says what many are thinking: “I am having a serious re-think over Christmas. I have been on ebay for a long time and things have gone too far.”

eBay’s response to this, tacitly or occasionally explicitly, has been to say that for every seller who leaves the site, there are another five waiting to take over from them. This might be true, but it’s exceedingly sort-sighted. What’s better for the buyer experience: the established, knowledgeable, stable business seller who’s trading for the long-term and is prepared to allow buyers their legal rights, or the Dellboy fly-by-night who’s on eBay for a few weeks’ trading before he falls foul of some policy or other and is thrown off?

Going back to my feedback, of course it’s entirely possible that if I’d had two negs on one account, only that account would have been suspended, rather than the ones I actually make money on. I don’t know, because eBay still haven’t told me. Rumours of the SNP policy began almost a year ago, yet we still have had no official announcement that it exists. When would any other business partner change their policies, affecting your relationship, and not make sure you knew about it? Imagine if your bank, your courier, or one of your suppliers, made announcements of major changes on a chat board - you’d think it was laughable. And yet that’s exactly what eBay did.

eBay need a change in attitude towards their sellers, and I’m hoping that those survey questions indicate its beginning. Because eBay need to start treating their sellers like proper business partners. Instead of “disadvantaging” some sellers in search results, they need to do things properly: if sellers are undesirable, then throw them off the site. Third party ads in search just take the piss: have a little respect for us, please. And give us information: tell us what your policies are and how they’re going to work *before* you implement them, not months later - and give us the information to comply with them properly.

Adverts appearing in My eBay

Here I am, minding my own business (literally!) and checking my eBay sales and bam, the latest eBay advertising hits me between the eyes. Well ok, maybe not between the eyes, but it’s there at the bottom of the left hand navigation bar.

I have a number of objections to this, not least of which is why do I want to waste my valuable bandwidth downloading adverts in which I have no interest? Perhaps it’s time to invest in an ad blocker to zap the annoying things?

Whilst downloading adverts when I’m trying to click dropdown links that don’t work until the entire page has loaded is annoying, I’m more interested in what eBay intend to do with the adverts for the future. It’s the first spot on the site where they could easily serve up adverts personalised to me.

That’s not personalised to the search terms I as an eBay user enter, not personalised based on generalised buying or selling behaviour. I’m talking about personalised based on what eBay know about me as an individual!

I have to question if this is a good move on eBay’s part, they already have off site links in search results which are justified on the basis of a better buyer experience. This isn’t benefiting buyers though, the adverts are appearing in the selling section of My eBay. It’s purely and simply a way to raise revenues, whether it be with eBay owned services or with third party advertisers.

I don’t like it, it’s unwelcome and intrusive, it’s my personal space on eBay where I manage my business and don’t forget I *PAY* for the privilege of listing and managing my auctions. If it was a freebie service fair enough, but I don’t expect to pay for a service and still suffer a string of adverts stealing my bandwidth.

UK Best Offers missing the point

Many of you are probably aware that on eBay.com the Best Offer function has counter offers available. This basically means that you can negotiate a price with a customer who is interested, if there first offer is a little low.

Now in the Antiques Trade this is so inherent in the culture that to not have it is like setting out a stall at a fair with a big sign saying:

“PLEASE DO NOT NEGOTIATE MORE THAN ONCE WITH US, IF YOUR FIRST OFFER ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH, THEN PLEASE LEAVE THIS STALL, WE WILL NOT NEGOTIATE WITH YOU OR DISCUSS OUR DECISION, SO GOOD BYE!”

Now that makes no sense does it? Yet eBay UK have adopted this sales strategy with their version of Best Offer.

It seems to us that not allowing counter offers is madness of the most incredible kind, the sales leverage they give us on .com is astounding, the results fantastic. This is one reason why eBay.com is so much better than eBay.uk is for selling Antiques and Collectables on.

It is a shame that eBay UK have been so determinedly head stuck in the sand with this one. Is it because they do not really believe that “People are basically good”, and that to allow this would allow back door transactions offsite? If that is the case, the only thing that a buyer needs to do is send an email, and the off-eBay sale occurs. If this is the reason for eBay UK’s rationale, it seems a shame that their mistrust of their customer base, over-rides a negotiating feature that is second to none on the Internet.

Is this a case of eBay UK’s not seeing the wood for the trees?

So well done eBay.com, for providing such a fantastic feature. A big round of applause!

Thumbs down for eBay UK, (mild booing would be acceptable and probably beneficial at this point).

eBay tell buyers purchases will be delayed

eBay have started telling buyers that there may be delays to deliveries because of the postal strike. The message below is displayed as they sign in to My eBay for those who have accepted the default notifications-on setting.

Frankly, this is crazy. The terrible wording of the notice has already lead at least one buyer to assume that it would take “a few weeks” to get their item: you can bet more are just not bothering to continue to purchase now. eBay, remember, are just a venue. Any seller worth their salt is communicating with their buyers about the postal strike; any seller who isn’t bothering to keep buyers informed is going to get the feedback and the DSR stars they deserve. eBay have no right to interfere in transactions like this.

Updated to add: We’ve just heard from eBay that they will be changing the wording on this message slightly, so that it doesn’t wrongly give the impression that buyers will have to wait weeks. The message is only visible to those members who have already bought something, so perhaps it isn’t quite as disastrous as I first thought.

Updated again: This may be is the new version of the message,

DSR: a suggestion

Steve Grossberg, president of the Internet Merchants Association, has been having a rant about DSRS, “the star ratings”. Mr Grossberg’s complaint is that the shipping and handling costs criterion is commonly the lowest score amongst a seller’s DSRs, and that “it is totally unfair for a buyer to rate someone on something known in advance with 100% certainty”. I’ve been thinking about this this week as my own S&H rating fell from the heady heights of 4.9 to the gutter of 4.8. In my devastation, I began looking around for an explanation, and what I came up with was this: it’s precisely because buyers know the P&P/S&H charges in advance that they get lower scores.

I have a friend who does free shipping on all their items: their DSR for shipping cost is 4.8. How could you want better than free? How could free possibly be improved upon? You could look at this as “eBay buyers are crazy and even free isn’t good enough for some of them”, or you *could* see it as they got free shipping, exactly what they were expecting, no more and no less.

I think that because buyers know the S&H upfront, they never get “a nice surprise” on shipping fees. So it’s going to average out as “as expected” - whereas all the other criteria give the buyer a chance to have a better experience than they’re expecting. That’s why those criteria tend to be higher.

Amongst the rant, however, Mr Grossberg makes an absolutely superb suggestion:

I would rather see ebay replace this DSR with Would you buy from this seller again?

This, frankly, is a stroke of genius. Why bother with all the waffle, because what feedback is supposed to tell you is whether other buyers would recommend the seller. A five point scale (definitely, probably, maybe, probably not, definitely not) would tell you exactly that, without needing to take into account other people’s bizarre expectations about postage charges and dispatch times.

In fact, this one could do what many eBay sellers - some in jest and some not - have suggested: sellers should be able to leave DSRs for buyers too. “Would you deal with this person again?” It would be all the feedback we ever needed.

Stumbleupon eBay chitter chatter

The big question is “Where is it?” It’s an eBay owned company. It’s a social bookmarking site. eBay users are encouraged to use it. It’s linked from the front page of eBay. But on eBay’s own Chatter blog it’s no where to be seen!

You can Digg it, you can Facebook it, you can add it to del.cio.us but the one thing you can’t do when you find a great eBay chatter post is add it to Stumbleupon.

I constantly find it absurd that companies don’t use their own products for whatever reason, but can anyone explain just why eBay wouldn’t use Stumbleupon having coughed up $75 million to acquire the company?

How not to say sorry

Why do companies find it so hard to rectify mistakes, especially when they’ve caused their customers heartache? In the last few days there have been a couple of notable instances:

Firstly Skype, yes we know it’s largely a free to use service but thousands of people rely on Skype and many have also paid for services like SkypeOut, SkypeIn and voice mail. So when the service hits a problem and they’re off line for a day and a half, it’s understandable that their customers are more than a little disgruntled.

This is the time they should be talking to their customers but it was noted on several forums that the top management were absent. No announcement from San Jose, no announcement on the System Board (which seems reserved for eBay and PayPal glitches), nothing on the general announcement board, in fact the only place information was made public was on a couple of Skype blogs.

Even the email that Skype has sent out to all it’s loyal customers talks about how great the community is to stick with Skype and it’s only if you read it carefully you’ll find hidden away the word “sorry”. It would have been so much easier to apologise publicly at the time Skype went offline instead of to selected paying customers days after the event.

Google also has come under fire for the way it treated customers of it’s Google Video download to own/rent service. Customers paid to download films with the understanding it’s like music on your iPod, once you’ve paid you’re free to watch as often as you like. Google decided to discontinue the service, customers could no longer watch the films they’d paid for. Instead of refunding customers they gave them Google Checkout credits!

Google customers were livid and Google soon backtracked and are refunding all buyers credit cards in full. They are also keeping the service live for six months so people can watch their saved films a few more times. Customers get to keep the Google Checkout credits as a “we’re sorry we goofed” bonus.

Companies need to realise that when there’s a problem they need to do their best to rectify the matter, and both Skype and Google have both done their best to do this but it’s too little too late. Skype should have said sorry sooner and Google should have realised their refund method would be unacceptable.

When someone is paying you for products or service and there’s a problem you need to think about how the buyer feels, not what’s the most convenient way for you and your company to remedy the situation. Most importantly saying sorry as soon as possible goes a long way to keeping customers onside.

There’s a valuable lesson here for eBay sellers.

1. If a transaction doesn’t go smoothly firstly say “Sorry” even if it’s not your fault, let the customer know you care.
2. Don’t assume your method of remedying the situation is acceptable to the customer - offer the customer a proposal and ask them if they’re happy with your suggestion, ask if they have an alternative that would satisfy them more.

Generally customers will usually accept your suggestion if it’s fair and equitable, but they always appreciate you asking them what they’d like to happen. Getting the customer to buy in to the remedy is vital for closing the transaction with a happy buyer who will trade with you again in the future.

At the end of the day it’s an easy thing to say “We’re sorry”. It’s not so easy to appear sincere unless you put the customers interests first.

Cross-border trading policy stops French sellers selling in France

Yes, it’s true, it’s crazy, and it’s just happened to me.

As most of you know, I live in France, though I’m English and my original selling account was registered in the UK. I re-registered it in France when I moved here (essentially, that just means putting in a change of address) - though I still mainly list with that account on eBay UK. The tag on my feedback page says “registered in France”.

So this afternoon, I was uploading some listings with Turbo Lister, some to eBay UK and some to eBay France. Back comes the TL results: eBay UK items uploaded successfully, eBay France items blocked because I have reached my international selling limit. Let me stress: this is an account that was registered more than seven years ago, it’s about to hit a shooting star and it’s been regularly listing on eBay France for a year now. If upping the qualifying feedback from 25 to 50 for Irish sellers to sell internationally was crazy, how much more crazy is this?

According to TL’s error message, I have to send a list of my eBay IDs into the black hole that is eBay customer support, and await further instruction. There is no indication of how long this will take, or indeed if the restriction will be lifted.

So, in order to preserve the safety of the international marketplace, it seems I should abandont the ID with the proven track record and start listing on the always-been-French one that I wasn’t going to list on until nearer Xmas. This new ID barely has enough feedback to open an eBay shop - and why would it, it’s brand new - but I have a living to earn, and these kind of out-of-the-blue restrictions are not helping me do that, not one little bit.

I apologise for the rant - but no doubt this will happen to other people too. I’ll post updates if/when I hear back from eBay. My account manager is, of course, out of the office.

Update Friday: Have been able to contact a very nice lady who is standing in for my AM. Her advice was to send an email to the same email address that came up when I tried to list. The problem with trying to resolve anything with eBay is that the people you can get to speak to (Powerseller Support and Account Managers) are *not* the people with any power to do anything. Although she can see that my account is in good standing and should have the trading limit removed, she can’t do anything about it. Her only option is to chase it up through eBay’s system, while I wait for her to get back to me.

In the meantime, I’ve been busy buying things from sellers who leave feedback on receipt of payment, so that I’ll have (10) and can open my new, French shop.

Update Friday night: I’ve just had an email from PayPal to say I can list on .fr again - and they’re right!

I started off this little saga very worried that the problem might last indefinitely - other sellers told me it took “ages” to get their accounts sorted, and there is a serious lack of information from eBay on just what needs to be done. But I’m very impressed with how quickly eBay sorted this out. Whether this means their systems are now efficient, or just that AuctionBytes shamed them in to action, I guess I’ll never know.

It’s time to scrap neutral feedback

Are you looking for the eBay buyer who was sued for leaving neutral feedback?

When does a buyer give neutral feedback? Well often it’s because they’re hoping they won’t get a negative in return. At other times it’s simply a new eBayer that doesn’t realise how important a positive feedback is. It’s easy to think that the transaction was reasonable, but that they’ll save a positive for something truly outstanding.

There’s also the transaction where something went wrong, maybe the wrong size, the item was damaged or lost in transit, so the buyer was refunded. It’s perfectly natural for a buyer to think that the sale wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, it was just neutral!

A month ago Sue posted that eBay are classing neutral feedback as a negative when measuring a seller against the Seller Non Performance policy. Now eBay have officially announced that this is the case.

So for the future is there any reason for eBay to keep the option of neutral feedback? They’re no longer willing to accept that some transactions could be ranked by a buyer as neutral, they’re either positive or negative (or neutral but counted as negative!).

Justus is wrong here, sometimes it’s an indication of dissatisfaction, but sometimes it’s not. Unlike positive and negative feedback, it’s ambiguous, if it’s to be considered as a negative then they they should MAKE it a negative.

eBay state that their goal is not to drive sellers off the site, but to assist them with suggestions “such as settling any open buyer dispute issues, refunding buyers when appropriate, asking for mutual feedback withdrawal when disputes have been resolved, etc.”

Justus says the goal is to help sellers “understand what to do to avoid problems, or resolve them after they’ve occurred”. In reality it’s too late for many sellers. If they’ve already fallen into the bottom 1% of sellers many of the transactions concerned are up to three months in the past. It also sounds like an open field for buyers to demand refunds in exchange for feedback withdrawal. This is tantamount to feedback extortion.

Once selling restrictions are in place it’s too late for sellers to improve details on auction listings, put faster shipping procedures in place or to increase customer communications. Those are the best practices that eBay highlight to increase buyer satisfaction. If you’re one of the sellers who’s account has been restricted you can’t trade your way out of trouble because you can no longer sell in volume. The only option left open to you is the feedback withdrawal route.

One thing is certain in the future there will be a lot more withdrawn feedback as sellers fight to make sure their overall percentage doesn’t drop. One neutral feedback today could be one too many in three months time!

It’s unclear how it will be implemented but detailed seller ratings will also be taken into account in the future. This will be even harder for sellers to manage. There is no visibility which buyer left the ranking and which products are producing better or worse ratings. It’s impossible to tell if one particular product line is causing major issues which need addressing.

The fact remains eBay now consider neutral feedback as a grey negative indicating an unhappy customer. It’s time to scrap neutral feedback in favour of a simple positive/negative choice.

“We believe that people are basically good”

Seth Godin is always interesting, but reading this post was a eureka moment for me: he put into words something that’s been bothering me for a while now. Go read it. I’ll still be here with my half-assed observations when you get back. But pay special attention to this paragraph:

The temptation is to … insist on eternal vigilance against the possiblity of getting ripped off. To act as if everyone online is a criminal. To assume that the moment you are generous or trusting, squadrons of bad actors will exploit your generosity.

As eBayers, we see this every day. The seller’s terms and conditions that guard against every single little thing that might ever go wrong. The buyer who acts like a crazy person because, they say, “I’ve been ripped off before”. The endless argument about who should leave feedback first. As Seth says, “I don’t think that’s the answer.”

I’ve been running an experiment. I had a little selling ID where I was leaving feedback first, just to see if that meant I got more non-positives from buyers. I know, I know - you don’t want to do that, and that’s your perogative. But I just wanted to mention an email I got from a buyer: “Thanks for leaving me feedback straight after I paid. That doesn’t normally happen. I’m going back to your shop to buy some more things now.” And he did - five times the amount he’d bought on the first go.

And I wonder if five times the happy, bringing in five times the money, isn’t worth the risk of the odd neg now and again. I wonder if saying “I trust you” to your buyers isn’t, in itself, a unique selling point. I wonder if, if we all assumed everything was going to go right, it might not do so more often.

Why does Skype drop phone calls?

Just what is it with Skype? It’s a great application. It’s free (most of the time) and I don’t generally complain about free programs but you pay for SkypeOut calls. It’s just that it drops calls on such an annoyingly frequent basis.

On Friday I was on a conference call from the UK to the US so of course rather thann pay BT’s exhorbitant rates I chose to use SkypeOut for pennies per minute. The call was an hour long and during it Skype dropped the call no fewer than five times. Of course I could always dial again and rejoin the conference call, but it’s so annoying!

Is it just me, or is this normal for lengthy Skype calls? Is it just Skype or is a general problem with all IP calls accross the Internet?

Well having in the past sold Voice over IP hardware I know that it’s possible to make IP calls that don’t drop on such a regular basis. Is it my Broadband Internet connection that’s not up to the job or do others have the same problem? If you’re a frequent Skype user please let me know.

Why Gary Sattler’s conspiracy theory is wrong

Sattler has lost the plot! I know he’s never been an eBay exponent, but his latest conspiracy theory has eBay taking over the Internet purely to unseat Google and give Microsoft a kicking into the bargain.

Piecing together a couple of industry partnerships he builds up a picture of Firefox, Yahoo! and Facebook mafiosi controlled by the all seeing eBay. The cartel bow down to eBay, even to the extent of Yahoo! closing it’s online auction business just so that they could build an eBay search tool.

The shadowy group have joined forces and in return for supporting eBay they’ve agreed to build Firefox’s market share. Already they’ve killed his Microsoft Internet Explorer with a new breed of digital images that forced him to use Firefox. Apparently viewing them instantly causes IE to close rendering it useless for today’s Internet.

Sattler concludes that the Internet is getting smaller as eBay gain control with the ultimate aim of knocking Google off the map. I don’t suppose it could be that there’s no conspiracy and it’s just too many dodgy downloads on his PC causing it to fall over?

As for Google - maybe the world is waking up to the fact that paid advertising (Adwords make up 98% of Google’s revenue) aren’t nearly as effective as personal recommendation. Whilst it’s great to have a yellow pages who only charge you for advertising when someone clicks on it social networking is much less obtrusive and many times more compelling.

Everything Google has done in recent years including Checkout has been designed to prop up Adwords and make Google the place to go for choice. They now have to start embracing social discovery and social commerce. The Internet is changing with the likes of Squidoo, Stumbleupon and innovations such as distributed commerce.

Sattler is correct, Google should be worried! Not because there’s a conspiracy - Just because they could be left behind.

Scammer blames everyone but himself

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

That’s the headline of an article in the Wimbledon Guardian regarding Simon Waugh jailed in March for hawking fake designer goods on eBay.

His brother (understandably) thinks he’s been treated harshly and should have had a slap on the wrist with a fine or community service. The courts however disagree and imposed the jail sentance and at this weeks confiscation hearing, he was ordered him to sell his flat car to pay back £55,000 which is about a third of what his scam netted.

As his brother said according to the article his life has been ruined, he has no where to live and will find it hard to get a job.

The fact this was a first offence is beside the point, the scale of the crime £170,000 a year isn’t something you can do by mistake!

What I really object to however is blaming eBay! “everyone does it”, “eBay cost me £55k”…. erm sorry but no! How about blaming yourself? If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime!

WebProNews, iEntry, spammers

WebProNews (no link, you’ll see why…) quite often turn up articles that look like they might be interesting. That must have been why I signed up for their email list (which I did, I admit), is administered by iEntry Inc. (again, no link). Just recently, though, the mail has got more frequent and less relevent, so I unsubscribed via the link in the mail. And unsubscribed the next day. And the next. Then I mailed iEntry direct. Then I mailed the whois contacts on both domains. I’m still getting mail.

So firstly, don’t sign up for any mail from these spammers. And secondly, given that I’m in France and they’re in the US (I assume) and that having my lawyer write to them isn’t an option, what do I have to do to get off their lists?

1 in 10 Internet users are scammed for £875

That’s the finding of a YouGov survey from early March this year. However it was also pointed out that if internet users took the same precautions online that they do on the high street, a substantial proportion of online fraud losses could be prevented. Astonishingly less than half of Internet users believe that they are responsible for their own online safety with 16% under the impression that it’s their banks job and 13% assuming their ISP should look after them.

It really is amazing that people go online blithely expecting others to take care of them. Whilst credit, bank cards and wallets are high priorities for most people their online passwords and email barely get a passing thought. When asked over half thought there should be an “Internet Safety Test” before people are let loose on the Internet, with over three quarters believing that schools should run lessons in online safety.

With so many admitting that Online Safety should be a priority but equally expecting someone or another organisation to take care of them it’s not surprising 12% of internet users have experienced online fraud in past 12 months.

The UK population spend some £30 billion online each year. 3.5 million people being defrauded at an average cost of £875 each is simply far to high to be sustainable. Users need to start taking responsibility for their own losses, and if they aren’t Internet savvy, to make sure they educate themselves with resources such as Get Safe Online. Alternatively the European Computer Driving Licence includes online safety material as well as educating on how to use a computer!

We’re all adults here

So, the missing auctions are down to a typo. Like most conspiracy theories about eBay, the explanation turned out to be rather less fun than the fantasy, though I think it does show why peer to peer support works so well. Ask Griff why your listing isn’t showing up, and he has to go away and think about it; pose the same question on the Community Q&A board and you’ll have an answer within minutes.

The conspiracy theorists might have been disappointed, but this little saga does bring up another very important point: why the hell do eBay just hide auctions with ‘naughty words’ in them, rather than giving you a big red notice when you try to submit them saying ‘you can’t say expletive-deleted’? If they can manage to warn sellers of brand names that it’d better be authentic or else while they’re listing, surely they can manage to tell sellers of ornithology books that mentioning blue tits is likely to get their listing buried? (And yes, that one really did happen.)

It’s particularly bad for sellers in the music categories who are using Muze’s prefilled item information to populate their listings: import a song title with the word “fuck” in it, and eBay’s own system will both put the naughty word in, and exclude you from search results.

And frankly, I think it’s about time they published the naughty words list too. Every other policy on eBay has a list of examples of what you can and cannot say, so why not this one? After all, according to the user agreement which says you have to be over 18 to join eBay, we’re all adults here.

Carrots are good for you

This was going to be a comment on Scott Wingo’s post about eBay fee changes and the upcoming eCommerce forum. It got a bit too long for someone else’s comments: in general, when a comment is longer than the post you’re commenting on, it’s probably time to stop!

I’ll go out on a limb and guess that with the “stick” of the fee increases, we will see a “carrot”. I’d guess it will be in the form of some seller’s reward program that is geared towards giving growing sellers a break on their fees in the form of some PayPal $, etc.

I really hope you’re right with this, because we are long overdue a carrot.

It’s not about the pennies here and there on the fees: any seller worth their salt should be able to deal with a 5c increase without much pain. It’s the bigger message that these increases give: give us more and more and more and more of your turnover, and if you don’t like it, go away because there are a thousand more wannabe sellers queuing up behind you. It sometimes feels like eBay think sellers are a magic porridge pot which will keep spewing out fee payments whatever they do to us.

I’d like to see eBay rewarding seller loyalty. Give us a reason to put other channel plans on the back burner, and make eBay a cornerstone of our business again - whether it be a Paypal-like tiered fee system, the ability to “bulk purchase” listings or upgrades (”buy ten Galleries, get two free”), a certain number of store listings free with your subscription, whatever. Frankly, just about anything that gave the message that we’re all in business together, that eBay are there to facilitate things for their sellers rather than just screw them harder into the ground, would be very much appreciated right now.

And ANYTHING AT ALL they want to do to promote Stores is good with me Despite last year’s changes, 80% of my sales STILL are from store listings. Stores work. They work beautifully. I just wish eBay could appreciate that. They’re so stuck in their old-style auction mindset, I don’t think they realise how many of their buyers and sellers have moved on from that way of dealing, that the novelty of the auction format has largely worn off. eBay is now “the place where you can get anything”. But if you cripple Stores, you stop that happening. The obscure items we might need to list for a month or two before we find a buyer are no longer worth what eBay will charge to sell them, so we won’t bother. Result? A site that’s filled with the same crap you can buy on Amazon. This sure as hell affects the vibrancy of your marketplace. Recognise what you have in Stores, eBay, and work with us to promote it.

As for what else we’d like from eBay, well, Mountie already wrote a list.

Want it now

With the first day back at work of the new year I’ve been thinking about what eBay could do to make my life easier. How could they iron out some of the little niggles that constantly pop up on a regular basis in my life as an eBay seller. It’s by no means a definitive list, but if eBay could work on it over the course of the next year I’d more than a little grateful!

Block echeques for eBay payments

eCheques are the worst type of payment for serious business sellers. First PayPal promise the buyer they’ll clear in three to four days! Complete poppycock, in the UK they take around ten days to clear. Secondly you’re reliant on an email from PayPal to inform you that they’ve cleared (well email was never the most reliable medium) and finally there is nothing so frustrating for both the buyer and the seller than having waited the requisite ten days just for the darn thing to bounce! Scrap em or give the ability to block them.

Multiple shops on one ID

Many sellers open more than one shop for a variety of reasons, different stock lines or to tailor products to different geographic marketplaces. Life would be so much easier if you could have multiple shops on one User ID.

Account verification for buyers and sellers

There is very little justification for either buyers or sellers not to have fully verified accounts. In the US there has been ID Verify for some time - why not in the UK?

Listing upgrades bundles

Some countries already have the option to buy multiple listing upgrades at a discounted price, if this was offered it would not only gain eBay more revenue but would encourage sellers to use and experiment with more features, e.g. why not offer Gallery, Bold and Highlight as a bundled price?

Biddy’s button

When a buyer has bought something from a Shop, eBay present them with two options: “pay now” to checkout, and “continue shopping with this seller”. We propose changing the latter from its current unclickable text, to a button that would take the shopper back to the Shop (or seller’s other listings), at one stroke making things easier for buyers to buy multiple items and therefore increasing eBay’s revenues.

Biddy first suggested this on the Power Seller message board over two years ago (and on some now-defunct US board even longer ago than that): it’s received support from numerous Pinks from Doug McCallum downwards, but promised action has failed to materialise thus far. It’s a tiny change in code, so why on earth has it not been implemented? Go on Doug…. Change it to

PayPal & eBay to learn we’re in the UK

What is so difficult about UK address formats? We do not have City_State_Zip on the last line of our addresses! We have City, County and Postcode on SEPARATE lines specifically with the postcode on the final line on it’s own. Seven years trading in the UK and they still haven’t worked it out! Bit pathetic really…..

Shop listings bundled with shops fee

To encourage Shop Inventory Format now that it’s rendered practically obsolete by excessive fees why not include a certain number free with the Basic, Featured or Anchor monthly shop fee?

SIF Fees to be per sale not per item

While we’re on the subject of shop fees the biggest gripe with the BIN and SIF final value fees isn’t the percentage per se. It’s the fact the percentage is applied per item. This means if you bulk sell quantities of low cost product each and every one is charged at the highest percentage rate. Why not apply the percentage to the total sale of that product line purchased in a single transaction, or even better apply it on a pro rata basis based on a months total turn over similar to PayPal merchant rates.

AutoFeedback

Yes we know it’s available in SMP, but quite frankly if any part of eBay is going to fall over it’s SM and SMP, just check the community boards to confirm this. Why not incorporate autofeedback into either TurboLister, or even better a standalone option in my eBay.

More cheap listing days

We love em, they save us fees

Scrap cheap listing days

Yeah I had to put these last two in to prove you can’t please all the people all of the time. Many sellers detest cheap listing days because they fill the site with junk, so if we’re going to have them just don’t make them Free Listing Days ever again
Oh and finally…. just carry on as per normal! eBay is a fantastic platform to run a business on. Don’t make it too easy or everyone’ll be doing it!

Spam me, eBay, one more time

I know it’s not like me to complain that eBay communicate too much: normally, it’s exactly the opposite. But this week, I’ve had a bunch of communication from them that’s gone beyond pointless, deep into ‘completely infuriating’ territory.

Firstly, we have the “you’ve changed your email” alert. Actually, I have two, because my main email account went down on Friday, came back Sunday, and so I changed to an alternate and then changed it back again. eBay put alerts in My Messages, great. And then they tell me I can’t delete those alerts for ten whole day. WTF? I’ve read the messages, I made the changes, it’s all legit, why do I have to have that stupid red blob at the top of my screen making me think that my seller account is overdue or some buyer has filed for non-something or other? I don’t need it, eBay, I really don’t.

Secondly, there’s eBay’s neat trick to double your spam. For some reason, rather a lot of Chinese wholesalers think that my gothy jewellery-selling ID might wish to invest in their electrical products. In fact, they’re so sure that I should become a customer of theirs that on Christmas Day, they sent me spam ASQs from a dozen different accounts with the same enticing message. I know there’s nothing eBay can really do about spam ASQs; I’ve been getting them for seven years, and I can deal with them. On Boxing Day, I duly clicked the “report” link beside each one in My Messages and grassed them up as spammers. So far, so good.

But then I received back, for each spamming ID, a “Communication Partner Warning” from eBay, informing me that a member with whom I had recently communicated had now been excommunicated from the site. These were not people from whom I’d bought, or to whom I’d sold. They were people who had sent me ONE email, whom I’d reported. And gotten a whole bunch more spam back from eBay as a result. Thanks. Thanks SO much.

Finally, and perhaps least expicable, is the “Notification of Change to my Feedback”:

They obviously liked me because I got fifteen of those messages: musta been a nice big order. But do eBay tell me who it was? Nope, not a clue. So what was the point of that? They don’t tell me who the dodgy buyer was so I can look out for them when they re-register, or suggest that I keep an eye on their Paypal payment as a potential chargeback. Maybe they want to to make phishers lives easier by encouraging clicking of links in emails (which it does - I get this message from phishers too)? Who knows.

Please could someone who designs this rubbish for eBay actually start using the site, get rid of the stupid over-communication when it serves no purpose, and start communicating with users about the things that actually matter.

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• Recent Comments

  • ebuyerfb: If I had to speculate eBay made the initial policy for the reasons they’ve stated. Now that it seems...
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  • John Pemberton: #17 Hi Nick - please see my comment made( #11). 99% of our shipping is via Interlink Express. I use...
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