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.

Ina,
I don't know if you wrote about the new postage rates yet but it is very newsworthy. The cost of mailing a 1-2 ounce First Class parcel with Delivery Confirmation is about to double!
Thank you,
Reed

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Hi Ina,
I was a member of OAUA a few years back and a logo was inserted in my listing and that service was stopped. Is there any other similar organizations offering same kind of service.
Thanks
K.

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Greetings Ina,
I would urge you to print something about the incredible problems that many sellers are experiencing with Turbo Lister 2. ebay will retire Turbo Lister 1 on 4/4/07, and it create havoc for scores of sellers. We've spent over 17 hours with live chat and on the phone.

In order to list, we must to into the actual listed auction, activate gallary images, and any where from 5 to 12 settings that never transmit. After incredible frustration and finally posting on the TL board, someone recommended that we download TL1 and use it instead. It solved our problems! However, we are at a loss how we will continue after 4/4/.07 and many others are worried about the same thing.

It's mess. This is an urgent matter.

Many sellers don't yet realize that a retirement is around the corner. eBay has a responsibility to produce a decent listing tool that works. There's also a petition created by Mac users - Turbo Lister 2 is not cross-platformed, won't operate on older versions of windows (we have XP and it still is worthless), is extremely problematic with csv (many users must use TL; switching to another lister would be very costly).

Here are some links, but if you go through the 9 pages, you'll find much more. The TL site has only been recently available. Frankly, it was the pressure that I put on the tech support through my senior account rep that has produced pink responses these last two or so weeks - there was virtually no support before that):
Thank you,
Susan

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/forum.jspa?forumID=34

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000448593

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000336880

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000334818

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000332917

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Hi,
What would be interesting is if you could track down the first item ever sold on eBay.

From editor: In his book, "The Perfect Store: Inside eBay," Adam Cohen goes into detail describing the first item Pierre Omidyar listed on eBay, which was called AuctionWeb when he initially launched it. The item was a broken laser pointer, and the bidding reached $14. (I'm unclear as to whether that was the final selling price.)

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When the latest change took place in the UK visibility to the US it has seriously damaged lots of UK sellers. Here is a link to just one of many, many threads
http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1200100117

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Hi Ina
I have been looking for your reaction to the recent ebay decision to stop the UK listings being displayed in the USA. But can not find anything in your site.

The UKs listings have always been defaulted to show on the US site, until a week ago when ebay decided to stop it. There was no warning to the UK users, and no warning to the USA users. We now have the situation were there are Thousands of UK sellers suddenly having their international sales disappear, and thousands of US buyers wondering why their source of UK items have disappeared.

Have a look at this ridiculous thread by the UK pink Richard
http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1200100117
None of us can understand why this is kept secret.
Steve

Note from the Editor: We have been following this topic which is causing much concern from UK sellers:

eBay UK Sellers Face More Competition and Less Exposure (March 9, 2007)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m03/i09/s01

eBay Changes UK Listings Exposure on eBay.com (February 19, 2007)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m02/i19/s02

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Hi Ina,
I'm a big fan of Auctionbytes, please keep up the great work. I wanted to ask you if you could do a story on our particular problem. We are having about 20-50 auctions a day ending with buy it now's from account take over's (ATO). Ebay is ending the listings and reimbursing our insertion fees but we have to ask to get our final value fees back. Not to mention we have to pay ChannelAdvisor the percentage of gross sales.

Our TSAM is doing a great job of taking care of this for us but it seems she is backed up because this problem is time consuming to correct. I'm not sure how many other people are having this problem but I just wanted to let the rest of the ebay community know about it. Hopefully they'll be able to retrieve their final value fees since the ATO have been occurring more than three months ago. Our TSAM found that as far back as October ATO have been getting away with buying our product and in no way shape or form were going to pay.

The sad thing about the way ebay is handling this matter is final value fees should be given back to the sellers instantly because these auctions were taken down due to fraud activity on the site. While the insertion fees are given back immediately a seller has to ask in order to get the final value fees.
Will (Shoe Metro)

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You are such A WONDERFUL resource to those of us continuing this junk on ebay.

I am emailing as I just went to print a shipping label to Cypress. My paypal account WAS set up that I manually decline any payments that are not confirmed or verified (thus protecting me from fraud & charge back - paypal.) About a month ago I emailed and asked about this sudden issue of which I found that you could "no longer deny"... I was pretty well informed then you have to accept, choose to refund or let the payment expire.

Tonight it has sent the funds through on a NON CONFIRMED or unverified payment on paypal. Is this something new also. Are they suddenly shoving all payments through, letting us see if we catch this? Any assistance and response is greatly appreciated.