Live day three: Lorrie rocks

June 22, 2008

Town HallAnd 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”.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Events, Featured | 45 Comments 

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.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Events, Featured | 19 Comments 

Town Hall highlights 17th April 2008

April 18, 2008

This post was written in April 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

Creative Commons License photo credit: ☻mrhappy☻

eBay held their monthly Town Hall yesterday. The whole show is around 90 minutes long; if you don’t have time to listen to it all, here are some of the highlights. (The show generally deals with the .com site, so non-US sellers shouldn’t necessarily assume this applies elsewhere.)

• Digital delivery products: sellers shouldn’t give up on selling these on eBay; there were strong hints that a new selling format may be introduced for these types of goods.

• Expanded seller preferences on buyer requirements: it will be possible to block buyers with “2 unpaid items in the last 12 months”

• Shipping prices on bulk lots: sellers who are concerned that bulk sales will be disadvantaged in search results, because they need higher shipping prices than single similar items, should put “lot” or “bulk” in the title so that the algorithm doesn’t disadvantage them.

• item specifics: the importance of ISs for Best Match emphasised; if a lot don’t apply, check whether you’d be better in another category.

• “already watching this” indicators will be introduced in search results: should make shopping a little easier, but how about a shopping cart instead?

• feedback changes no more negs for buyers: change will begin second week in May, on a country by country roll-out. Sellers are now advised to leave positives on payment, as it builds buyer confidence that you’re genuine, and makes it more likely they’ll communicate if there’s a problem.
repeat feedback recalculation: will be done during May. 7 billion feedbacks will be recalculated so that transactions between the same partners in different weeks will qualify for repeat feedback.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Featured | 3 Comments 

Town Hall: total price searches, SMI, UK/US visibility

April 8, 2007

This post was written in April 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

For those of us in Europe who can’t stay up til the wee hours to listen live, the transcript of last weeks’ Town Hall is now available. Amongst all the usual waffle, it becomes painfully obvious that eBay’s senior management have no idea just how horribly broken the site is at the moment: and they didn’t even mention the problems with Checkout in the UK!

They also don’t seem to know how their recent visibility changes have been implemented. Jamie Iannone of the Buyer Team explained that UK listings are no longer visible on .com because that gave buyers too many items to look at, but that they could opt in to see UK listings if they chose to do so. He then commented that “in the UK currently, we don’t actually show the US items and that’s because currently there, the better buyer experience for the UK buyers is to see the local UK items.” Maybe someone should tell him that US listings are shown on .co.uk by default in some categories: we need a different brand of BS on this one, Mr Iannone.

Maybe slightly better news for UK sellers is another heavy hint at changes to search sorting by price:

Caller: Why when you search for lowest price first, isn’t the total amount, that is current price plus shipping, considered? That is to say if an item is shown at one penny with a fifteen dollar shipping fee, why is that higher on the listing than the same item listed for five dollars with a seven dollar shipping fee?

Jim Ambach (eBay Seller Team): Yeah. So the idea would be eh, replace that item priced sort with a total cost sort that would factor in the cost of shipping as well, before all those items were sorted, so that you get a better feel for what the “cheap” is.

This is a great idea, but it needs to be implemented with more thought than is eBay’s wont. One can imagine that those currently overcharging on shipping will miss it out of the shipping fee box and simply state the charge in the auction body alone, or even leave it out altogether in the hope that naive buyers won’t question it until they’ve already bought. My suggestion would be that those without stated shipping charges are removed from this search result altogether.

Meanwhile, though Safeguarding Members’ IDs remains controversial amongst members (we’ve had some epic comments on one old post recently), the noise from SJC is that the program is a success. Matt Helprin, “resident Town Hall Trust and Safety guy”, said, “we have seen a material reduction in the reports of fake scams or fake second chance offers. It, in fact, they’ve almost disappeared for anything above $200.00. I mean they’re down to over 90%.”

I think he means *by* over 90%, but it seems that SMI is here to stay.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments 

Solution to “My listing never showed on eBay”

February 25, 2007

This post was written in February 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

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 :-)

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Uncategorized | 8 Comments 

TurboLister 2 to become Windows Vista Compliant

February 23, 2007

This post was written in February 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

TurboLister 2With TurboLister 1 support finally ending this spring many users have already upgraded to TurboLister 2. Many users who have purchased a new PC with Windows Vista (or upgraded), have discovered that TurboLister 2 is not compatible with their new operating system.

In the eBay Townhall last night we were told with early releases of Windows Vista TurboLister 2 was fully tested and working. Unfortunately in the final release Microsoft changed the code and TurboLister 2 failed to operate. This is being worked on and by early March a new release will be ready which is fully Vista compliant. Good news for all those sellers unable to list in the meantime, but we’d always recommend keeping your old PC running and testing, on a separate machine, all the applications you need for work prior to any major upgrade like Vista or IE7.

Also in the Townhall users have reported issues running parts of the site such as the new Sell Your Item (SYI) form. The advice as ever is that you do need to keep your software updated with the latest browsers and versions of Java. eBay have taken the difficult decision not to support older versions in order to take advantage of new technologies.

For anyone still running TurboLister 1 you need to upgrade as soon as possible.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

Town Hall : more feedback changes to come?

January 26, 2007

This post was written in January 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

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.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off