In every issue, readers soundoff about issues important to them. From feedback to payment services, from increased fees to posting policies, AuctionBytes Soundoff gives you a chance to air your views.

Dear Ina,
I find your AuctionBytes newsletter very useful but one thing bugs me, bigtime. Unlike you, I am not in the USA and it is incredibly frustrating, when reading your articles about products or services, to find that the majority are only available or only relevant to the USA and its citizenry.

Given that the USA's population is only about 5% of the total world population, is there any chance you could indicate when specific offers are only available in the USA so I don't have to waste time reading about things I can not actually take advantage of?
Kind Regards,
Christopher

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Ina,
I think eBay ought to pay attention to the lesson they just learned from eBay China. According to Shawn Rein of the China market research group, "eBay did not have a phone number that consumers could call when they had a problem....and that consumers in China view this as a major lack of customer service, rather than as an efficient way to get answers, and as a way to make friends with others in the eBay sphere".

I'm still a newbie with only 65 stars, but when I first started out with eBay, I had a lot of questions and problems that I needed help with, but quickly found that eBay's lack of a Customer Service telephone number, with a real live person on the other end, was to say the very least, a hair pulling experience.

I think eBay should rethink their present policy of having no Customer Service with a phone number and a real live person at the other end.
Thanks, Al

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Hello Ina,
I am sure you are already aware of this practice, but it has just bitten me and I wonder if this is a well known practice amongst your readership.

In a recent auction, I placed a bid which was 1 cent above the maximum bid of the competing buyer. So my bid won and the new winning bid was posted. Given that I was winning the auction by such a small margin and that this would also tell the other bidder that the price shown was indeed the maximum bid I had made, I decided to place another bid at a slightly higher price to ensure that I won the auction. No other bids were placed on that auction and thus my original bid would have been the highest and the closing price for the auction. However, because I placed another bid, ebay upped the closing amount of the auction to the next increment above the second highest bidder - in other words making me bid against myself. In a response I received from ebay they said:

"I understand your concern since your bid on an item was increased even though you were already the high bidder."

However they went on to say that they do not believe that this is bidding against yourself and thus they are right in doing what they did. It may be what their rules say, but it is clearly unfair. I know I will never place a higher bid again when I am already winning the auction.
Best regards,
Brian

Editor's Note: Here's information from eBay's Help file on how this works:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bidding_change_bid.html

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Re: "eBay Express Progress Report: Still at the Station?" http://auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i01/s01

Ina:
Thanks for the article on EE. I saw more sales from EE in Aug. and Sept. than I see now. I have been averaging one to two sales a week from EE. I felt from the start it was a flop. It is easy to tell which sales are from EE and which are from ebay.com by the way the payments are displayed in paypal.

I was up over $5,000 a month with search in stores, and ebay was making good money on all of our commissions on that venture. I feel they were afraid it would hurt EE so they took that feature away hoping EE would do the job, it is not. EE will not make it. I had over 1,300 items listed on EE. I still have most of those items and now only a little over 300 are showing up on EE. Why? Who knows what ebay is doing these days.
L.

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Re: "eBay Imposes New Rules for Auctions of PS3 and Nintendo Game Consoles"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m10/i26/s03

Hi Ina,
To my mind, when eBay starts to impose these types of restrictions on sellers and how they run their auctions, doesn't this fly in the face of eBay's claims that it is only a venue? Might be something to explore here?
Thanks,
Gary

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Hi,
Ebay is getting flakier and more capricious all the time (I have done ebay for 9yrs now). I am looking for work in my old field to be more diversified - I feel Ebay could kick me off or quit working any day.
M.