• Home
• About TameBay
  • Contact TameBay
  • Comments Policy
  • About Chris
  • About Sue
  • Guest Posters
  • Privacy Policy
  • Advertise on TameBay
• Archives
• Links
• Directory
• Forum

TurboLister update wipes out returns policy

There is a major update to TurboLister today which wipes out any existing returns policy set on users templates. Once the update is installed you’ll need to go back in to each listing (or use multiple edit) and re-enter your returns policy details.

This change updates TurboLister in line with the removal of the returns drop down to specify 7, 14 or 30 days for accepting returns.

There are now only two options - “Returns Accepted” and a returns policy, or “Returns Not Accepted” in which case there’s a warning reminding sellers that they buyers may have legal rights to return items.

For users who were signed up to the TurboLister Beta program you’ll be updated to the non-beta version now the full release is available.

Edited to add: There’s another glitch which is removing returns policies from live listings. The returns policy details on the old version eBay are displaying a message “The seller will not accept returns for this item.” Switching to the new page displays the sellers full returns policy.

Edited to add: eBay have confirmed the glitch in TL and issued and a fix was issued on Saturday. If you’re still having problems with your returns policy in TL you’ll need to update again to get the latest good version.

TurboLister SIF - 30 day BIN update procedure

The new version of TurboLister is now available for download but there is an extra step to ensure it gets the complete download:

* Open Turbo Lister
* Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R
* When a TL dialogue box appears click OK
* Check for updates and download as normal (available from the tools menu within TurboLister)

Once the update is completed all of your SIF listing templates will have been converted to BINs. If they were previously 90 day listings next time you go to edit them an error will inform you the listing duration has been changed (appears to change to GTC).

If you have duplicate BIN and SIF templates stored for the same item it may be worth deleting one or other prior to the update unless they’re materially different. This should save processing time during the update procedure.

Once updated the 30 day and GTC BINs options will be available along with the new Featured First listing enhancement.

Bulk Reviser adds returns and ISV support

Comsulting Bulk Reviser has added the ability to edit your returns policy and the International Site Visibility upgrade on live listings. For any business seller that hasn’t already edited their returns policy to 14 days Bulk Reviser will now enable you to achieve the change in minutes.

The International Site Visibility option enables your products listed on eBay.co.uk to appear on eBay.com. If you routinely list on the US site there is an eBay.com version of Bulk Reviser available.

We did a review of Comsulting Bulk Reviser in June and I’ve not yet found a faster or easier way to edit live listings on eBay. I’ve found it reliable in making changes than when using TurboLister and for bulk editing it’s quicker and simpler to use.

There’s a 10% discount off the purchase price of £39.95 for TameBay readers. To claim the discount enter “Tamebay” as a coupon code when making your purchase.

Windows XP service pack 3 released today

Microsoft has pushed the final major update for Windows XP to its update service today. XP SP3 is now available and will download if you have Automatic Updates enabled on Windows. This will be the last major update for XP since Microsoft officially ceased sales at the end of June.

If you’re thinking of purchasing a new PC you don’t have to use Vista which has been notoriously unreliable with TurboLister. It’s still possible to purchase a Windows Vista PC with downgrade rights enabling the PC builder to supply it with XP pre-loaded.

If you’ve not already installed XP SP3 to date it’s roughly a 67mg download and will take at least 15 minutes to install (longer on slower PCs) so set aside some time to upgrade when you don’t need to be using your computer.

Comsulting Bulk Reviser for eBay

There’s long been a need for an easy way to bulk revise listings on eBay, and Bulk Reviser from Comsulting is the perfect tool to fit the job. I’ve always been a fan of TurboLister but mass editing listings is easier and quicker with Bulk Reviser.

There are two versions of the product - one for eBay.co.uk and another for eBay.com. When you install the program you need to link it to your eBay account and you can then download your active listings into Bulk Reviser.

You’re now ready to edit most variables on listings including price including quantity, Best Offer, payment methods, postage (both domestic and international) and even the titles of your listings.

If you need to perform even simple tasks such as changing VAT rates or editing the email address for PayPal payments this program is superb. Tasks such as adding, removing, or adjusting Best Offer accept and decline prices can be achieved in seconds.

To make selecting the listings you wish to edit easy it’s possible to sort by clicking columns (eg sort by title, listing format, price etc), or to refine your selection by searching for keywords in item titles. Items can be selected and edited en masse, or individually with changes uploaded to eBay in bulk.

There are only a couple of limitations to the software: You can only revise listings on one site (either eBay.com or eBay.co.uk depending which version you purchase). Currently you can only link Bulk Revise to one eBay ID, although a multi-ID version is to be released shortly. The software interface is slightly techie but no more so than TurboLister - experienced eBay users will have no trouble finding their way around.

If you need to edit multiple attributes on one listing each has to be done in a seperate screen and uploaded to ebay. This however isn’t a weakness of the program, it’s designed so that you can make a single change to multiple listings quickly and efficiently, and that’s what the program does best. If you need to make the same change to some or all of your live eBay listings, then this is the program for you.

Bulk Revise costs just £39.95 for either the UK or eBay.com version. Comsulting are offering all Tamebay readers a 10% discount. To claim the discount enter “Tamebay” as a coupon code when making your purchase.

Living in a passwordless world

I changed my eBay password yesterday, and unlike previous occasions it was a painless change, and it’s all down to a mysterious technology called Auth & Auth.

In the past a changing a password was a lengthy procedure, due to the necessity of duplicating the change across a variety of applications such as TurboLister and third party sites like vzaar, Firefox companion and even Facebook (where I have an application that displays my eBay listings). Thanks to Auth & Auth I no longer have to remember every application and site that accesses my eBay account as it’s all looked after for me.

Auth & Auth stands for Authentication and Authorisation, when you link an application to your eBay account you’re required to sign into eBay and agree to share your account information with the third party. This then generates an encrypted security code or “token” which the application uses whenever it accesses your eBay account rather than your username and password.

The Auth & Auth tokens are valid for up to 18 months, you’ll only ever be asked to generate them again when the expire unless you make major changes such as uninstall and reinstall the application. Your account is kept safer as you never share your password with a third party service provider, eBay issue them with the token when you authorise them to access your account.

Most applications have been using Auth & Auth since it was introduced back in April 2004, but it’s only just been implemented in the latest release of TurboLister 6.5, and that’s why when I changed my eBay password there wasn’t a single additional application or site that needed updating.

If you want to check who you’ve granted access to your eBay account you can view them in My eBay, Preferences, under the Third Party Authorisations tab, and if you no longer use the application you can also revoke the authorisation there.

Top UK eBay sellers analysed

Have you ever wondered what it takes to be successful on eBay? What listing tools should you use? Should you pay for a professionally designed custom eBay shop and listing template?

I wondered too, so I looked at the top UK sellers to see what they were using. From the Nortica eBay 500 list from December 2007 I selected the top UK eBay sellers by number of feedback received. Out of the top 500 sellers worldwide, this gave me 32 UK sellers of which four were excluded - three are NARU (no longer registered users) and one has private feedback.

The top sellers are based on total lifetime feedback, the data is not necessarily reflective of the current top sellers on eBay. It excludes sellers such as aceelectronics_uk who have accrued 56130 feedback in the last year but still just outside the top 500 worldwide. However I believe it does reveal some interesting trends.

Top Seller Feedback

First of all feedback, with DSRs affecting search placement how are the top 28 UK sellers stacking up? The average feedback rating is 99.3% ranging from a low of 98.1, to two sellers with an astounding 100% record. More interesting some of the sellers with the highest feedback percentage have the lowest number of withdrawn feedbacks. The average feedback withdrawals per seller is 207, with the highest withdrawn feedback for a single seller being 1079.

Average DSR scores for the top currently trading 28 sellers are:

DSR	Average	High	Low
Item as described	4.84	4.9	4.7
Communication	4.72	4.9	4.4
Dispatch time	4.64	4.8	3.8
Postage and packaging charges	4.53	4.7	4.0

These figures put the average top UK seller into the average/bottom 25% of all sellers for DSRs based on latest eBay information.

Shops

I was interested to find out if the top UK sellers all used the same listing tools and how they used their eBay shops and listings. The first and unsurprising discovery is that all 28 have an eBay shop. What was somewhat surprising is most appear to have a basic eBay shop with no frills or customisation. Just five users had a Frooition shop template, four had customised their shop or had a custom shop landing page. 19 out of 28 of the top UK sellers have no customisation at all although four have inserted a shop header.

One thing I find off putting is landing on an eBay shop where the products aren’t the first thing I see. If I want to know a sellers terms and conditions or more about them I’ll visit their about me page. Four of the top sellers however have shop landing pages that don’t display products.

Listings

I expected to find custom templates designed for the top sellers, and in most cases I wasn’t disappointed. Top UK sellers had complex HTML designs with the one common theme being links to their other listings and eBay shops. Just two sellers appear to have used Frooition templates (five have Frooition shops). What was surprising was that five of the top 28 sellers (17%) have no template and use simple text based eBay listings. Even one seller who has invested in a Frootion shop has simple text based eBay listings. It would appear that it is possible to be a prolific seller without complex HTML skills.

Sadly out of 28 top sellers three have HTML scripts classed as site interference risking their listings being cancelled.

Tools

Eight of the top sellers use ChannelAdvisor to power their eBay listings. Fifteen use eBay Tools (either TurboLister or Selling Manager Pro). Four sellers use Auctiva/Sellathon with just one using Vendio. It would be interesting to know if there’s a correlation between the sellers using ChannelAdvisor and those that also sell on Amazon or their own websites.

Summary

The most noticeable feature of feedback is that the sellers with the highest feedback percentages have some of the lowest numbers of withdrawn feedback. Conversely sellers with the highest numbers of withdrawn feedback have some of the lowest feedback percentages.

If the withdrawn feedback was added back into the mix those with the worst feedback would have a much lower feedback percentage. Sellers who give the best customer service definitely appear to be rewarded with better overall feedback.

The top UK sellers don’t all have complex shop designs, a basic eBay shop works just fine. Although links to sellers other listings and eBay shops are favoured you can be successful with a basic text based auction. Many top sellers rely on simple eBay tools such as TurboLister, Selling Manager Pro and even the Sell Your Item form. If a third party tool is used ChannelAdvisor is the favoured choice.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learnt from the top UK sellers it’s to include more links to other products in my auctions. I’m not going to run out and pay for auction management services or expensive listing templates, if the top sellers don’t need them then neither do I.

The Skypephone, vzaar and eBay

I love technology, especially when it works, so tonight I sat down to make video work with a mobile phone, a 3G network and an eBay listing…. and it not only worked but it was easy!

I used my Skypephone to make a video, and to be honest I was pleasantly surprised at the quality.

The next job was to upload the video to vzaar who would host it for me. That was easy, if you log into vzaar you can set a PIN number, then you simply open the browser on your Skypephone and navigate to m.vzaar.com. You’ll be asked for your user name and PIN and then you can upload your video. It’s so much easier than using a PC to get the video onto the Internet.

From then on I created a listing in TurboLister as per normal, but inserted a small piece of code that vzaar provide into my listing. What that code does is to tell vzaar exactly where I’d like the video to appear. Once the auction is created upload from TurboLister to eBay, alternatively you could use the eBay Sell Your Item form, or a third party listing tool.

The final step was to log onto the vzaar website, go to the video I’d sent vzaar from my Skypephone, and tell vzaar which auction I’d like it inserted into. vzaar then do the clever bit and insert the video and my listing is finished!

I guess I could have achieved the same with a normal camera or of course any mobile phone with a camera but it seems a shame not to make use of the Skypephone seeing as I have it. What will be really interesting is to see if anyone Skypes me from the listing. It would be rather neat for the listing to be partially created on the Skypephone and then close the sale with the same device.

Best offer auto accept now in TL

I’m going to be busy this afternoon, Best Offer Auto Accept has now been added to TurboLister. I’ll be editing all my live auctions and templates to reflect the change and from now on my customers will receive blindingly quick responses when they submit Best Offers.

This really is a fantastic change, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve got home in the evening and checked my emails to find a Best Offer submitted for an auction that ended whilst I was out. From today (or at least from later when the edits are done) I’ll never lose another sale just because I’m away from my computer.

I know the changes to Best Offer - Auto Accept/Decline, Counter Offers, 3 offers in all categories etc have been widely welcomed by sellers and it’s been long overdue for implementation. I don’t think even eBay themselves realise just what a major impact this will have for the speed transactions can be processed and the huge benefits for both buyers and sellers.

The final part of the current planned rollout will be the ability to see and manage counter offers in My eBay. That’s planned for next year but in the mean time emails and My Messages have details of counter offers made and recieved.

Best Offers gets my vote for the “Best Site Change of the Year 2007″ award (do eBay get awards? ). It really is a fantastic enhancement and possibly the best automation tool on the site and it’s live just in time for the busy Christmas selling season

Best Offer enhancements go live on eBay

Great news for all eBay sellers, the Best Offer enhancements have started to roll and I’ve just made my first Counter Offer!

So far the Counter offers and Auto Decline features are live on the site. Look out for Auto Accept within the next couple of days. I’m going to hold off editing live auctions until I can add both the accept and decline functions in one go. The good news for TurboLister users is that if you run a program update you can edit from there rather than live on the site.

I went to Boston and all I got was this lousy program fixed

A few days before I went to eBay Live, a friend asked me why I was going. I started to waffle about picking up new ideas for my business, making eBay fun again, celebrating what I’d achieved, and then realised, none of that was quite right: “actually,” I said, “I want to get Turbo Lister to work properly.”

I apologise if you’ve already heard me make this complaint over and over on eBay message boards, but my Turbo Lister problem has loomed large in my life over the last month or two. One of my accounts - and wouldn’t you know it’s the one I do the most experimenting on - just would not synchronise. The only way I could get it to match up with the live data from my eBay Boutique (you’ve got to love eBay France for “boutiques”!) was to delete the entire program, and all the back up files, and reinstall it. The first synchronise would bring in the live data… and after that, I was back to square one: watching a couple of blue arrows go round and round and round, while Turbo Lister failed to make any contact with my eBay account.

I find it hard to believe now, how much I rely on being able to change things “live”: being able to alter postage rates for 200 listings with one click, being able to see at a glance which items I should relist… this buggy tool is far too useful for me to give up on.

So when I arrived in Boston, I made a beeline for Turbo Lister’s booth. “Hmmm,” said a white-coated eBay employee, “that’s a less than ideal situation.” He was right, but he couldn’t offer me a fix. Nor could his colleague. I needed to speak to Ajay. It seemed I wasn’t the only one: Ajay managed to avoid me for more than 24 hours by dint of running seminars and workshops. Finally I tracked him down. I’d described my problem to half a dozen TL people by this point, all of whom started off confident they could help me and ended up as blank as I was. Ajay, however, didn’t bat an eyelid. “No problem,” he said, “give me your email address, I’ll mail you instructions on how to fix it.”

Reader, he did it. I did it, and it works. And that is why, if you get the chance, you should go to eBay Live, or any of the other events eBay puts on closer to home.

And now, because I know I’m not the only seller who has the Turbo Lister won’t synchronise problem, here’s what I had to do:

• Exit Turbo Lister if it is running
• Delete the file: “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\eBay\Turbo Lister2\Data\*YOUR-ID*listing.tdb”
• Start Turbo Lister, login and attempt to synchronize

Promotional postage in TurboLister

Anyone using TurboLister will get a surprise when they create or edit listings after the latest update. The field for entering shipping costs for additional items has disappeared and been replaced by a link to “Create Rules for Combined Shipping and Postage”

The promotional postage rules now available are a great way to incentivise multiple purchases and should be used by all sellers. Rather than giving a postage discount based on a per item discount you can apply critera based discounts. For example if your average order value is £40 you can offer a “Free postage if you spend over £50″ discount. What a great way to encourage buyers to purchase more! Another method will be “Buy any three items and pay only £5 postage”

Back to TurboLister, for anyone wondering how to get the normal “Additional Item Postage” field back, simply click “Customise” above the postage fields and there’s an option to add it back in!

RIP TL, RIP SYI form

4th April 2007 passed virtually unnoticed by me. It was the day that the loved TurboLister was retired with support by eBay switched off. I had long since switched to TurboLister 2.0 having first tested it back in Alpha and been using the Beta version ever since. There’s much to love in the new TurboLister, although it caused problems for people on Windows Vista due to a last minute change by Microsoft. TurboLister 2.0 still has some of the flaws of the old version, such as not supporting CSS properly (if you create an auction using CSS in the HTML view of Description Builder and then make a change in Design View it’ll wipe out all your carefully crafted code. In the main though it’s a vast improvement with the ability to edit live listings with the syncronisation options.

This Bank Holiday Monday 7th May, and later in the month the 24th May, are a couple more dates I won’t notice. The Sell Your Item form (SYI) is something I use very rarely. Support for the old version ends on the 7th for users on eBay.com and the 24th for eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie. The last two times I’ve had to use it are down to eBay for Charity (you can’t list your first eBay for Charity item in TurboLister due to a bug so you’re forced back to SYI). Others however swear by the old version with it’s multiple page listing, although the new version is slick with a single page to create your auctions. Once you’ve set up defaults to decide which features and shipping options you want to access on the page it’s a much quicker process to list an item on eBay, although it’s a higher bandwidth hungry page due to displaying more images.

For those that haven’t adopted the new SYI form this bank holiday weekend would be a good time to set aside a few hours to try it especially if you list on eBay.com. When you return to work after the Spring Bank Holiday (28th May) you’ll be using the new version in the UK as well.

Bulk editing listings deletes postage information!

There appears to be a major flaw with the bulk edit facility currently. Earlier this evening I used bulk edit to change shop categories on fifty listings and it removed all postage information - price, postage method etc.

This left buyers with the ability to purchase items without paying postage. For a seller that doesn’t realise this could be financially disasterous, especially on heavy items where postage is high in proportion to the sale price.

If you use bulk edit beware, it’s probably in your interest to use the edit and synchronise live listings in TurboLister in preference to on eBay as this appears reliable. (And in fact is the method I used to restore postage method and cost to all my listings).

Old “Sell Your Item” form retires in May

The Sell Your Item form which many eBayers have grown to love over the years is to be discontinued in May this year. It’s replacement the New Sell Your Item form is already used for over 60% of new listings on the site. eBay say listings created with the new form are completed 20% faster than with the old. The downside is that it holds more information on one page, and so people with slow bandwidth connections can struggle, although it should still be quicker to work with.

Personally I’d recommend anyone listing in quantity to use TurboLister or similar bulk listing tools like Spoonfeeder. Although they have occasional problems in the main listing is quicker, repeat listing from saved templates takes a couple of seconds, and with back ups you can keep copies of old listings forever!

TurboLister 1 retired, TurboLister 2 unusable

eBay have started to publicise the retiring of TurboLister 1 with support ending in early April. It’s great that they’re keeping us informed, however there are a number of concerns with the announcement. Currently plans are to disable TurboLister 1 on the 4th April 2007.

Firstly I’m already using TurboLister 2, so if they’ve “noticed” I’m still using the old version they’re not detecting it correctly. Secondly TurboLister 2 still isn’t Windows Vista ready yet. A Vista compliant release was scheduled for early March but the last information from 11th March was that the update was delayed with no official launch date confirmed.

Finally today many users are reporting that the latest update to TurboLister 2 has removed the option for Shop Inventory Format and eBay Express listings, lost gallery pictures and started to calculate fees in US$ instead of GB£.

This is eBay’s flagship listing tool used by thousands of sellers around the world. If eBay fail to fix the bugs and release upgrades for Vista in just a couple of weeks sellers will be unable to list effectively. Some could use SYI form, but we’ve heard there are problems both in SMP, and with “Sell similar item”.

TurboLister 2 to become Windows Vista Compliant

With 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.

TurboLister V2 Beta

If you’re not signed up for TurboLister Beta now is the time to do so. There are loads of new features such as viewing live auctions, ending auctions, editing live auctions etc.

Two fantastic features are the ability to sort by auctions eligible for free relist credit, and ability to see the remaining quantity on Buy it Now and Shop Inventory Formats - if the quantity is zero you just sold your last listed item and it’s time to relist a new quantity!

Seriously the best tool eBay have released in years - a must have!

• Recent Comments

  • ebuyerfb: If I had to speculate eBay made the initial policy for the reasons they’ve stated. Now that it seems...
  • Sue Bailey: Steve, I don’t know - I can only go by the announcement eBay make (and give em a few days to...
  • John Pemberton: #17 Hi Nick - please see my comment made( #11). 99% of our shipping is via Interlink Express. I use...
  • Steve: Sue, you mention “ten listings per seller per search results page.” results pages of what size? my...
  • John Pemberton: sounds logical to me!
  • Sue Bailey: Chris, is two months’ notice enough? The next one’s 15th Jan - see you there.
  • chris o'D: Can we have some more notice next time - sounds interesting Chris
  • Chris Dawson: #17 All the details are at http://www.meetup.co m/ebayuk/ Well volunteered to take minutes and report...
  • northumbrian: makes mental note, ***will need to order more Anoraks***
  • Andrea Kennard: Cool, will deffo come along to the next one. Will it be at the same place? Will anyone be...

Recent Forum Threads

• Whirly's Dragons Den
• Skype Question
• More problems at checkout.
• Stupid Paypal email
• Charity Auctions
• Importing Containers from China
• Am I being done over here...........?
• something to note if you buy from abroad- custom duty change
• What do you do when someone gets a virus from a porn site?
• www.shoppingforum.in

Copyright © 2006 - 2008 Chris Dawson