I'm not sure if anyone else has mentioned this or not, and I haven't seen anything in the newsletter . . . but beginning on 3/25, the relists on eBay weren't showing on my invoice as relists so the second insertion fee would be refunded if the item sold.
eBay Customer Service responded to my email, but I had to provide the original item number and the relisted item number for each item. Seems to me they are going to have a massive number of fees to reimburse if they have a "bug" in there program.
And some sellers don't have the time to be constantly monitoring eBay like that.
Ron
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Hi Ina,
I have been looking for something that I am sure is marketed, but can't figure out what it might be called. I thought you might have something on AuctionBytes, cause I think it could be very useful for auction descriptions. Anyway, I need a way to accurately measure a collectible. Something like they use at doctors' offices would be terrific, a ruler doesn't always work, especially when the highest point is needed on an intricate piece.
Right now my home made tools are bothersome and would love to find a measure that is easy to use. Thanks for any help.
I'm in the voices group for books, I can not say how hard we argued against this and the whole product finder concept. In the last 8 months I can't think of a single thing they have done differently as a result of "consulting" with us.
Robert
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Ina,
I enjoyed reading your article on Prefilled, Item Specifics, and subcategory rollups on ebay. Unless I missed it, though, you didn't talk about the "yellow box" situation as regards Prefilled. Sellers need to understand what this means now...and will mean in the future.
In a nutshell, ebay now has "yellow box" placement of items in their catalog that show up on the top of the screen when you do a search. Click in this box and you will get listings that were created using Prefilled. But NOT the same exact items that were created "by hand" as it were. I showed my hubby this. In the example we choose, he got 4 hits by using the box, 7 by just doing a search for the title.
As sellers start to adopt Prefilled more and more, I believe that there exists the possibility that buyers will just look at the yellow box and not wade through the rest of the listings, if there are many. This is important because ebay has announced the Express listing method coming in a few weeks. This will make it even easier for large sellers to load great numbers of books using Prefilled. They won't have to go in and edit a thing, just list by ISBN. If those large sellers dominate the search results screen by being "in the box," then other sellers need to be aware of this.
Beth
Great point. FYI, the yellow box is called "Product Titles in Search Results" and was introduced in January 2004. - Ina
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Are there better auction places than Ebay? I'm so upset - a lot of my items that I listed this week is not showing up when I use a search engine. I emailed Ebay this morning, but after reading some of the comments from others on AuctionBytes, I'm beginning to think that Ebay is not the place to use for my stuff to be auctioned off. Any suggestions?
Christine
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Ina,
Everything I see on ebay (turbolister, tool bar, etc) is geared for PC users. Do you know if they are going to get around to doing some of these tools for Mac users? Every time I see something new put out by ebay, I go check it out, only to find it's for PC users only.
Donald
I try not to make product recommendations, especially when I am not familiar with the tool myself, so you might want to post in some forums as well.
Good luck!
Ina
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Ina,
I couldn't agree more with Mr. O'Neill's observations (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y204/m03/abu0115/s04). Never have I seen a company be so inconsiderate of it's customers. My company has sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods on eBay over the past 3 years and we can't even get a real person to talk to help us through issues that might help us sell even more...let alone when we have a legitimate problem that needs quick resolution. The absence of competition has bred a level of complacency and arrogance that for sure will eventually come back to haunt eBay. Until then. I'm afraid we're all stuck.
Frank
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Recently my sister sold a laptop computer on ebay and the payment was supposed to go through paypal. She was notified by authorities that the credit card was stolen. She had a ruff time getting fees refunded through ebay, but paypal refused to refund her money. This happened to her 3 times. So there is no protection for the sellar on big items when someone uses a stolen credit card. We learned not to sale big items anymore. Paypal she said charged her fifty dollars each time and wont refund it. She never got paid for laptop. Luckily she didnt send it. Since ebay went Uk, she got people who wanted to purchase and item and send it to russia. These people were using stolen credit cards. And if she would have sent it she would have lost it all.
Just thought i would let you know. Other people need to know to watch out because you cant get paypal fees back.
thanks
