eBay North America President Bill Cobb

There were no surprises at eBay's online Town Hall meeting Wednesday evening, the first such meeting since higher fees took effect for eBay Store items last month. eBay North America President Bill Cobb reiterated that eBay would center the marketplace on auctions, not Stores, and that decision would not change going forward.

eBay members submitted questions ahead of and during the Town Hall meeting, covering both buyer and seller concerns. eBay's Dean of Education Jim "Griff" Griffith selected and read the questions out loud, and eBay staff fielded each one. The meeting was broadcast in a live audio stream.

The 24 questions ranged on a variety of topics, with Stores and shipping issues dominating with 5 questions each. Other questions dealt with Trust & Safety issues, feedback, search, features, and one question each on the topic of keyword-spamming, eBay marketing and sniping.

Of eBay's decision to roll back Stores in Search internationally and raise Store fees, Cobb said it was "the right move to help balance the marketplace." He said eBay was very committed to the Stores product, "but I understand that in some specific instances that it is no longer viable for people to sell on eBay, and that's unfortunate."

Cobb also stated, "We are the place on the Internet where the seller can, within 2 weeks, have a very high probability of selling an item between the original listing or the relist, if they are pricing it at the appropriate level. So we want our sellers to use the core format as their primary means of selling and that the store format would be a supplement to that. So what we're trying to do - and I realize that sometimes it's wrapped up in the emotion of a fee increase - is to really articulate why it is you should sell on eBay, and we think that the reason you should sell on eBay is that you'll maximize your cash flow because you'll turn your items faster than any other place on the net."

Shipping issues also generated many questions from users. eBay recently began enforcing its excessive shipping policy, generating fears from users about eBay's enforcement (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m08/i22/s01). One seller asked, "What do you consider excessive shipping?" eBay executives explained the policy and enforcement issues, and Cobb summed it up when he said, "Do what you think is fair, we want to stop the gaming," and later, "If you're doing the right thing, you have nothing to worry about."

eBay makes available a full transcript of all Town Hall meetings on the Town Hall archive pages online.

http://pages.ebay.com/townhall/archives.html

Note From Editor: a few notes taken by AuctionBytes dealing with the Stores-related questions are available on the AuctionBytes blog at http://digbig.com/4msem