eBay is modifying a policy it rolled out on October 20 affecting its Half.com service that was initially met with complaints from sellers. eBay announced the modification on October 25.

Half.com processes payments from buyers and forward money, less commissions, to sellers. Previously, after a customer purchased something through Half.com, the seller would send a confirmation email to the buyer. On October 20, 2005, eBay removed the sale confirmation process for Half.com transactions, and Half.com now automatically charges the buyer. If for some reason sellers cannot ship an item, they have to perform a function so Half.com refunds the buyer.

Many sellers complained about the new policy in a thread that grew to 35 pages long (http://digbig.com/4ewbs). eBay posted on October 25 that it would compromise on confirmation. eBay said most of the feedback about the new policy were concerns over how buyers would know sellers actually received the order and would ship it, and suggesting that eBay make it optional rather than doing away with the process.

To address these concerns, eBay said it would add functionality so that a seller can choose the "mark as shipped" option once they have actually shipped the order. Choosing this will mark the order as shipped, as it currently does, but the action will also cause an email to be sent to the buyer informing him or her that the seller has, in fact, shipped the order with a reminder on how long the shipment should take. The wording of the email will be very similar to the "order confirmed" email that Half.com sent out under the old model. The mark as shipped feature is optional, and if a seller can't ship for some reason, they’ll still need to offer a refund to the buyer. eBay said it expects the new functionality to roll out in a matter of weeks.

eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said the input eBay got from Half.com sellers for eliminating the sales confirmation process was overwhelmingly in favor of taking this step. "We believe that this new process will improve the buyer experience by reducing the instances of a buyer thinking that he or she has bought something, only to find out afterward that the seller has decided not to ship it. Better buyer experience is good for sellers ultimately."

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000114411