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.

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Hi Ina, hope this finds you and your family well,

You kindly ran our story back at the beginning of October, with regards to the Channel Islands being left out of Ebay Express due to an oversight (they forgot it was part of the UK).

After constantly battling with ill advised ebay customer support agents, (who to date still ignore my actual question and ask me for an item number to see if my listings qualify!...are they trained to wind customers up?) we turned to you to see if your strength and respected voice could be heard correctly, in obtaining some sort of resolution.

The simple question again still stands: When will the Channel Islands ebay customers listings appear on Ebay Express UK?

The answers we've received in the last 3 months have been wide and varied but evident that no one still, after 3 months of frustratingly, fruitless enquiring, has a clue whats going on. I won't begin to list the answers but can only liken my personal experiences to asking a trained SeaWorld dolphin for directions to the moon, it puzzles for a moment, then performs one of its regular tricks in hope it might pacify me and get a thank you sardine!!?

After you kindly asked the question for us too, you were told also, that an error had been made and the site engineers are working on it.

Further more, you were told that this would be resolved by the middle of November.

It's now the 18th and still after 3 months, we have no listings on eBay Express UK.

It's running up to Christmas and should be our busiest time of year on eBay, we've had to double our listings to counteract the changes eBay made, and though sales have grown, inadvertently, so have our fees!

We just want to be part of a sales medium that we're fully entitled to and hope that this secondary channel of selling will replace the loss revenue we've based our lives on.

So we call upon your help again Ina of AuctionBytes, could you please ask the question again for us and champion our cause? (I've looked everywhere on eBay and sadly the book "How to talk Dolphin in 10 easy clicks" doesn't appear?)

Any information would be fantastically appreciated.

Thank you again and keep up the great work, I can't recommend you highly enough and if there is anything I can do please don't hesitate to ask.
Jamie

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Re: "Who Owns eBay Group PESA, Members Ask, as Tax Status Changes"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i13/s01

Hi Ina,
Great reporting on PESA - something smells, and it's not in Denmark!
Michele

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Re: "eBay Rolls out Seller Incentive Programs in US, UK"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i16/s01

Hi Ina,
Just a comment on the US program.... although they do not allow store sales to could towards the sales goal, they DID use store sales to calculate that goal. In my case the goal they set for me is $1,500. I rarely run core listings so this number had to be arrived at through my store sales. Just another kick in the teeth for store owners.
Robert

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Re: "eBay Rolls out Seller Incentive Programs in US, UK"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i16/s01

Ina,
I read the article about incentives for US and UK sellers. From my perspective it is interesting to note the only roadblock to grow my ebay business has been ebay itself.

The search has gotten better, but they are still in the midst of their year long system tweaks. At any given time there are parts of the US that can't see or find my items in a general search. For much of this year the entire west coast was invisisble.

I can say that since from 6 years experience I know my historical volume of sales to the west coast was in the 80% range and fell to "Zero" for much of this year. California has recently reappeared, but Washington and Oregon are still missing. I am sure ebay is not admitting to any of this. I just know too many full time sellers seeing the same patterns to believe Meg and the crew.

I am in the process of selling off my existing inventory and will eventually be off ebay entirely. I just found the "incentive" thing a bit comical. I went from 30K gross sales in January 2006 to 800.00 in August. All that changed was ebay. I had way to many emails from previous customers asking if I was still in business????

As a investor it will be more interesting to see what happens with the stock price once the share "buy back" money is gone. Lots of smoke and mirrors for now.
Regards,
Ray

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What the heck is Ebay thinking? Ebay motors now has bidder numbers where the ID should be. It's on items over $200 on auction pages and on all items in Ebay motors search. It gives all those auctions a "private auction feel", I wonder if shill bidding will explode on motors now. As a full time seller I don't like it, as a buyer I like it even less. Ebay would be better served by cutting off internal email if they are trying to prevent members from talking to one another. I've never had a problem with phishing on my customers to my knowledge. I have to wonder if Ebay is still worried about off line deals...
John

Editor's Note: here is AuctionBytes Newsflash recap of this eBay policy change:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i03/s01

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Hello,
In one of your articles, someone took issue with your claim that bidding in eBay is a binding contract, claiming that contracts require both an offer and acceptance (among other things) and that acceptance was not present.

I would like to suggest an additional angle - that the seller's posting of an auction and agreement to comply with eBay's policies is an implied acceptance of the bidder's offer.

The bid is clearly an offer, however, acceptance is not contingent on the seller's direct acceptance of that offer, it is implied under the rules of buying and selling on eBay.

Sellers agree to sell to bidders who win auctions, and buyers agree to buy from sellers when they win auctions and the eBay auction mechanism is just the process of negotiation, in a sense.
Regards,
Izaak

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Hi Ina,
In case you missed it, a payments newsletter I get (that often quotes YOU) (http://www.paymentsnews.com/?from_feed) mentions that Google will process checkout for free.

This would be good news for eBay sellers IF eBay allows them to use Google, but as I recall, they do not?????? At least eBay sellers might want to know about this for both non-eBay sales and general competitive reasons - to know that PayPal is not the only option on the planet.
Jay

Editor's note: Here's more info: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m11/i09/s01