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.

You can also read the AuctionBytes blog, which has a place for reader comments under every posting (http://blog.auctionbytes.com).

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Ina / David (Auctionbytes)
I am not sure if this is good enough for an article or not, but it is another peeve of mine regarding a recently cancelled auction. It was cancelled due to fee circumvention.

We have a oversize large hand painted mug / price $1.99
We are charging $7.50 for FedEx insured ground shipping.
eBay cancelled it because they feel shipping is excessive.

However if anyone goes to FedEx.com and puts in a 1lb package from where we live Oregon 97321 and just picking a location like Brooklyn NY 11236 FedEx's base price for 1lb is $7.83 Residential Home.

Before we even pay for a box, packing material, or time we are already under the base FedEx fee. We are losing money as it is and eBay has the Gaul to say we are gouging.

If we take the base rate $7.83 and charge $1 for the box and $1 for packing materials our cost is $9.83 and yet we are charging $7.50 and our auction gets cancelled and we get a strike on our account by eBay.

With the holiday coming up, eBay is easily going to hurt peoples sales by not being in touch with the reality of shipping to residential locations. Day by Day eBay makes it harder for sellers to make a living. Unless you get a stream of Rolex's through your door no longer wants your business.
Craig

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The following letter was addressed to eBay.

Hello.
I have formally emailed and filed this problem multiple times using your web forms with no reply or resolution after months.

It is very unbelievable that ebay is liable for it's problem that affects sellers and is a fault of your coding.

On my auction I run on ebay.co.uk I always specifically uncheck "will ship to FRANCE" however, despite this and my policies being stated on the auction. I always end up spending hours defending myself afterwards.

Most often after shipping we receive paypal disputes of non-receipt. This from my experience is a known and published problem on the internet people are using to defraud ebay sellers as their is no way to provide shipping evidence for registered (REGISTERED) airmail on a French site.

Beside the hours of defending myself to someone who doesn't understand English. Always, paypal will default and refund the seller for items shipped. Which often now despite our statement and checking off this option on your webpages we ship because of threats if we don't.

Additionally, for a company so large. Can you please explain why your company has decided to group New Zealand with ASIA not Australia. I really think you guys are unaware how many emails by frustrated buyers from NZ I get every week because of this stupidity. We have shipping to Asia blocked because most Asian countries have neither the need for our product or the means of purchasing.

NZ is obviously quite different and in a completely different continent.

The whole system is so easy (particularly for a multi-billion dollar company) to fix and is a disgusting liability as far as I am concerned on the part of ebay for all buyers and sellers inconvenienced and ripped off.

Even lumping "Europe" together as a whole instead of having a complete set of countries to ship to or not is ridiculuos and uttering irresponsible at the least. And really more of a spit in the face to your sellers that spend so much time trying to appease buyers with these issues.

Additionally, The problem with countries mysteriously unchecking themselves. There is also the same problem on ebay.co.uk only as far as I can tell. In which we specifiy insurance and it never applies.

And we foot the bill afterwards. Again, a script error that all of which has ocurred after the new your item forms were introduced. I feel that this is very well known after we have reported it. And because they pulled it off ebay.com very quickly. These issues did not ocurr before the new syi form.
cy

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I have been looking at all the posts in the ebay discussion forums about the new Item Specifics and I have to say to myself, "Do we really believe that Ebay will listen to our distressed pleas?" I can't help sounding off about this ridiculous procedure.

Once upon a time there was Ebay and it was geared to the average individual who maybe wanted to sell some family heirlooms or items that they had inherited.

Or maybe they had moved to a smaller home and no longer had room for some of these items. Maybe they lived in a remote area where an Estate Sale or Flea Market was not feasible. And maybe they did not have the financial resources or time involved to open an antique store or a second-hand store. BUT, they Did own a home computer and a camera and they learned how to take good pictures and handle shipping.

HOW WONDERFUL!!! Here was a place where they could reach people that actually wanted their items. We will call these people the "small potatoes".

Along came the "brick and morter" stores. They, too saw the opportunity to move merchandise that was not selling with their walk-in customers. Or to sell overstock items and reduce their inventory.

Then along came the big corporations and wholesalers who could buy items on a deep quantity discount. You retailers know what I am talking about.

EX: Item retails for $10.00. If you buy 5 of these you can get them at $8.oo each and make profit of $2.00.

If you buy 12 of these you can get them at $5.00 each and make $5.00 profit. If you buy 100 of these you can get them at $2.00 and make an $8.00 profit.

So now Ebay was flooded with Brand Name products and quantity merchandise that is repeated in listings over and over again. So if you wanted to browse for something special you had to wade through the maze of all these products.

Along comes Item Specifics so you can search for what you want instead of browsing.

Sounds good. Doesn't it? But wait a minute. Now the "small potato" sellers say,

"Gosh, I don't even know the exact date this was manufactured, or the manufacturer, or maybe the design name". Now this "small potato" seller will have to have a huge library of reference books or spend hours of research and listing time to get all information needed for item specifics. So, I guess their items get more lost in the Maze.

Concerning the buyers:

Have you ever gone shopping and just wanted to look around for something special, unique, or different? Maybe you go into the store and the salesman says "may I help you find something?" and you say "No I just want to look for something special, something that catches my eye." Something that you just happen to see that fits your purpose. Well if you want to shop Ebay and find "IT". Something just right, one of a kind, different, unique, or not sold in stores. Well good luck! With Item Specifics, if you don't know exactly what "IT" is down to the last detail, you will not come across that unique buried treasure that you long for.

And good luck to the sellers also, who will spend hours on research and listing time to get their items noticed.

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Dear Ina,
I am surprised there are not more people outraged by the false advertisement of ebay stating listings were free for the month of September 2007 as it was impossible to effect it as part of their advertisement campaign mentioned that one had use a gallery photo (I soon learned a gallery photo was not free), and if the gallery photo was paid for, only the insertion fee would be free, but overall, a fee would be assessed to list! One can easily verify what I am saying as a seller has to navigate through two pages, both with headers highlighting the word "LISTING", and not "INSERTION".

Well, I did contact the DOJ among others and tried to put the information on wiki but apparently they don't want current ebay controversies, only old ones.

Perhaps you could look into this to help our society.

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I have been contacting live support on Ebay every day since October 16th, I have been given one link after another to have nude frontal pictures removed of males, that should be placed in the mature audience pages. For almost three weeks I have gotten nowhere and would like to see if anyone can help me. It is offensive to search regular auctions and see these photos in plain view for any age to see. Ebays own guidelines state that these items should not be placed in regular auctions. Who can help get these things removed faster?

I have contacted live help everyday and it a shame that those people do not have the authority to remove items like this , it has to go to one department then another and so forth, allowing the items to remain for people to see...my 15 year old daughter was the first one to bring these to my attention!!!!!

Because now with ebays new larger image offer when you scroll through the gallery....and your mouse hits one of the larger images they show up on your computer screen as a 5" x 4" image!!!!

Someone needs to be able to remove these as soon as this type of thing is reported, live help should have the ability to remove full frontal nudity immediately.

It this were fake Tiffany lamps they would be removed as soon as they were reported to VERO but full frontal nudity is left for anyone including children to see.
Sandra

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Hi Ina
eBay has this new "best match" search that has been mistakenly set as the default. People really hate it. It was meant to help the dumbest eBay searchers, but has also wreaked havoc on eBay's longest and most sophisticated buyers, who have spent thousands of hours over many years to create and save complex searches with many keywords, and sellers, filtered in and out. It has ruined people's bookmarked keyword searches, temporarily, at least. Read about it here http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000241408&start=0

Be sure to read the last posts on page 7. eBay says a fix should be coming Monday.
Dick

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Ina,
I think I've discovered an alarming trend. With the Canadian dollar up in value against the $US, I've had several brand new Canadian buyers buy up merchandise and not pay for it. I believe it is being done to take my product off the market so that they can sell their own product to take advantage of the exchange rate. After doing some investigation, I've found that these newly registered buyer names are located in the same city as Canadian sellers of the same merchandise. It's not bad because they purchase the items, it's bad because they don't pay for it and then my items are off the market while their items sell. Then I have to file disputes to get my fees back.

Certainly, this is interference and against eBay policies. Ebay investigated on one seller and could not find a link, but my recent buyer is a seller of the same merchandise and a brand new user was registered in the same SMALL town on the same day that the sale took place. I doubt that the merchandise will be paid for and I believe that opened up sales to that seller under their older eBay ID.

Hopefully, eBay will investigate this for me after I furnish them the details and that the other seller/buyer will face consequences if they turn out to be the same non-paying person. By the way, it certainly isn't limited to Canadian eBayers. It can happen with buyers from any country. It's just that the last THREE non-payers have been Canadians (and that's out of the last 7 Canadian buyers that I've had). Considering that my prior sales to Canadian eBayers total about 200 sales with NO UNPAID items, this is an alarming new trend.

I know that I can get around this "problem" by making buyers pay immediately through PayPal, but then I can't give a discount for purchasing multiple items. I could refund some money back to buyers, but buyers are looking for that discount when they purchase, not as a refund later.

In my opinion, it does boil down to the exchange rate. When $1 CAD used to be $0.65 US to $0.80 US, then my $10 US item was costly to Canadians at $12 to $15 CAD. Now, with a $1.00 CAD = $1.03 US exchange rate, it only costs a Canadian buyer a little less than $10 CAD to purchase a $10 US item.

I will keep you posted as this unwinds and I get information from eBay.
Tom