eBay is adding a field in the Sell Your Item form for sellers to indicate whether they have a return policy. We wondered what sellers think of return policies, and created a survey to find out. Please visit
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=65140662513 and let us know whether you include a return policy on your listings and what that policy is.
Years ago, you could go to eBay and list an item very simply - the Sell Your Item form was one page. eBay was simple, if a bit homey and quirky, and people loved it. It's more complicated now, and eBay's lack of adequate customer service adds a level of frustration. So it's not surprising that something sparked a chord with sellers last week when Overstock.com announced its new auction site (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m09/i27/s01). The company has telephone support, which is a homerun as far as online sellers are concerned.
I checked in with Overstock's Vice President of Auctions Holly MacDonald-Korth on Friday afternoon to get current statistics. She said the site now has 43,000 registered users, who have posted 21,000 listings since the site launched last week. There were 13,000 listings as of Friday, and 4,700 of those had bids. There are an average of 5.65 bids per item, she said.
The site is attracting smaller sellers, according to MacDonald-Korth. Large sellers are waiting for the API (a tool to help integrate their inventory into the site), which is 6-7 weeks away from being ready. Medium-sized sellers are waiting for the bulk lister; Overstock Auction's lister is in Beta testing, and MacDonald-Korth said it will be released as early as next week.
Competition is good and I hope Overstock's entry into the online auction industry will spur other sites to improve their services. And I hope Overstock will live up to its promise. We'll be watching.
In today's issue, Lu Paletta discusses fundraising as a consignment-selling strategy; I review Terapeak, a market research tool for eBay sellers; we have an interview with a local online-classifieds site; and we take a look at two sellers' groups: ShabbyButChicPowersellers and the eBay Stores Sidewalk Sale coop. We also look at some intriguing new tools for buyers and sellers in "This & That," and take a look back at 1980 Atari games in this week's Collector's Corner.
On an administrative note, we'll be moving AuctionBytes to new servers over the next week. With traffic increasing to the site every month, we're trying to stay ahead of the curve. You should see better performance in speed accessing the articles on our site, browsing the forums and the Buyer's Market classifieds. The move will be transparent to users should be completed by the time we publish the next AB-U newsletter (10/24).
Thanks for reading,
About the author:
Ina Steiner is Editor of AuctionBytes.com and author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). She has a background in marketing and research in the high-tech and publishing fields. If you have story ideas, comments or questions, send them to ina@auctionbytes.com.
