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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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Hi, Ina - heard anything about the ebay international charge and when it will take effect. Wonderful idea. I can't wait to pay 'em.
Thanks,
Tom
Editor: The International Site Visibility Listing Upgrade Fee rolls out in May, there was no specific date given in the announcement (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m04/i01/s02). eBay is holding a workshop on this topic on May 7 (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000560471).
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Hi Ina,
Well, it's easy to see where eBay is heading. They want to be a consumer based fixed price forum for internet sales. I have no problem with that.
But I'd like to suggest that eBay spin off a separate company in the old eBay auction style where auction sellers who don't care for a fixed price format can move. That way eBay would have the best of both worlds and so would sellers and buyers. Perhaps a seller's ratings could move with them too.
I'd suggest it to them, but they never listen to individual sellers.
Perhaps you might have an ear in the eBay corporate world you could suggest this to? I hope.
Ed
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Ina,
I've been selling on eBay for over 7 years, mostly in the Business and Industrial Category. I've completed over 25,000 transactions and have probably paid eBay and Paypal over $500,000 in fees. As each month goes by, I see fewer and fewer bids on my listings, lower sales, and more administrative BS from eBay/Paypal.
Up until 4 years ago, 100% of my business was via eBay and Paypal. With their fee increases and poor customer service I was driven to start several of my own websites. Today, I conduct ~20% of my sales on eBay and have recently dropped Paypal altogether. When I hear about the change where eBay/Paypal would unilaterally decide whether to withhold payments for 21 days, that was the last straw. I sell items ranging in price up to $13,000 and if someone at eBay/Paypal thinks I'm going to ship a $13,000 item and then play a waiting game to see whether they will release payment, they are crazy! Combine that together with the Feedback changes and DSR and it all adds up to be too hard and too expensive.
I can host several websites for $100/year and not have any listing or FVF fees. On top of that, I process credit cards through a bank merchant account at a lower fee structure than Paypal and more importantly get more control over potential chargebacks.
Fast forward a few years and eBay will have gone down the toilet like AOL.
Thanks,
Rob
Editor's note: I asked Rob how he was driving traffic to his site without the exposure on eBay, here's what he said.
100% of the traffic to my websites is driven by free natural search and Google Products. I used to use Google Adwords, Yahoo, MSN and some others but the cost of CPC got too expensive. Plus, as I spent more time doing SEO on my websites, my keyword rankings and traffic increased. As of late last year I cut back all paid cpc and just rely upon upon good ole search engines. Sales are just fine, costs are down and margins are up.
eBay was a great concept 5 years ago but unfortunately the eBay brand means "cheap prices" to buyers so the average sales prices on eBay tend to be lower for me and probably for most sellers. I can sell the same product on my own website at a higher price with lower selling costs....it's a no brainer. Now eBay is trying to change their brand to be more competitive with Amazon and others and are taking it out of the hide of the sellers. Shipping charges on Amazon can be lower because the fixed cost of doing business is lower and the selling price is higher. With eBay, the buyer expects a rock bottom price and now eBay penalizes a seller for trying to cover reasonable shipping and handling costs. Now to add insult to injury eBay has added Best Match and this 21 day Paypal hold. They are crazy!
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Hi Ina,
I want to thank you for the information sharing. You are helping me stay in the loops on the latest, greatest concerning ebay and I appreciate that very much!
I have question concerning ebay's new policy, about to be implemented, that prevents seller's from giving negative feedback to a buyer. What's to prevent a seller posting a negative comment along with a positive grade? In other words, the comment section can still be used, if a seller desires, to "call out" a non-paying bidder, or whatever, even though he gives the buyer a positive grade, eh?
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G'day Ina,
I just read your article on the new features to encourage Free Shipping. While this is consistant with Stephanie Tilenius's recent comments on representing value to buyers, it begs the question of just how much Ebay thinks that sellers can absorb costs. If you return to Section 4.2.4. of the PayPal user agreement for both Australia, and Europe (which includes UK users), you will see that PayPal's seller protection is voided if "You combine items purchased through separate eBay transactions into a single shipment". Thus sellers who have so far offered multiple shipping discounts or free shipping for multiple purchases, must either send every item bought in a separate insured/registered parcel, or lose their rights if a buyer (unscrupulous or not) makes a claim against them. PayPal's own policies are forcing a serious increase in packing costs and postage charges (except in North America), while Ebay's policies are trying to encourage sellers to absorb these costs.
At some point sellers who are not located in North America, will either have to remove themselves from Ebay as it will be an unviable marketplace, or forfeit their rights under PayPal Seller Protection giving them no rights when a buyer makes a claim against them and writing off those losses as a cost of doing business on Ebay.
Kind Regards,
Kevin
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Re: "PayPal Glitch Inconveniences eBay Sellers"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m05/i01/s04
"eBay sellers began complaining they were receiving some PayPal payment notification emails missing the shipping address of the buyer"
I was wondering if it was intentional as a test to try to force more users to sticking with PayPal for shipping. This would make it impossible to copy an paste without actually accessing PayPal.
Kindest Thoughts and Wishes,
Lee
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Just a heads up to let you know ebay is padding their listings, yet again in this boycott, that started on May 1st.
I captured one page for you below, looks like the sdc_prod ID's are back in full force.
Once one of the boycott sellers announced this sellers 10,000 fake auctions that could be bid on, within minutes they were all pulled as invalid items by the workers watching the boycott boards. Hopefully more people will email you with these finds and not post them to ebay.
I hope you will run an new article on this and do some investigating on just how many that are fake to hide the affects of the boycott on the auction counts pages online. The news programming should be all over this too. I'll email more when I find them.
Thank you,
Eric
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Hi Ina,
A while back I read the articles you wrote regarding the shopping.com listings that were reported as a test, and then a glitch. It seems to be happening again with one of the same Seller IDs from before. If you click on the feedback tab it leads to another Seller ID. Here are both links. The auctions (over 10,000) are set to close May 28th, but when you click on them they've been cancelled...
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewListedItems&userid=sdc_prod_9074_35&sort=3&page=201&rows=50&since=30&rdir=0
Here's the direct link to the 2nd masked Seller ID...
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=sdc_prod_9074_35&ftab=AllFeedback
Is ebay pumping up the numbers again?
Thanks,
Lisa
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Hi Ina,
Looks like eBay is testing more SDC listings.
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewListedItems&userid=sdc_prod_9074_35&sort=3&page=90&rows=50&since=30&rdir=0
10,001 listings for just this one.
Nancy
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Hi Ina,
I just experienced a small miracle. I had trouble with an eBay bidder and auction winner who left refused to pay and left negative feedback.
Here is an eBay email with the results of my complaint ... Use it if and as you will freely. (They actually removed the negative feedback and I'm waiting now for a refund of my Final Value Fee.... The item number is included in the email below, so you can see further what transpired if you like.)
Ed
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Hi Ina,
Do you happen to know when eBay added this to the Additional Information section of the 30-Day Pre-Sale Policy?
Magazine Subscriptions
Due to the nature of magazine subscription services and the general inability for ordered items to be delivered within 30 days of the purchase date, eBay does not permit the sale of magazine subscriptions on the site.
There's been no announcement that I'm aware of, and there is still a Magazine Subscriptions category under Books.
Glenda
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Ina,
I am an eBay USA buyer and seller with great feedback. I see on the discussion boards in both the US and AU that people are not happy with recent changes being imposed by Mr Donahoe. Personally, my sales results were quite good, then recent changes tanked my sales. I have ceased listing on eBay and started listing on other sites.
I have no intention to list items or buy again on eBay until after the May 1 boycott. I will return only if I see how Mr Donahoe is going to react to the boycott. If reaction is to stay the course of these changes, I will stay my course as well.
Mr Donahoe can not be reached, there is no forum to contact him, other than snail mail. If I could talk to John Donahoe about his focus on improving buyer experience, increasing repeat sales and policy changes, I would say...
Instead of imposing new rules, policies, fees, and features based on the glass tower executive's concepts of what works best, open a discussion thread and seek input from sellers and buyers before making drastic changes. One look at discussion boards shows there is no shortage of opinions and suggestions.
Float ideas. When improvements are needed, ask the people who have the most experience - sellers and buyers - what they would do, or would like to see.
Listen to sellers and buyers. Executives should be regularly on the boards under their own names, visible to everyone and participating in the dialog, not sitting in offices imposing policies with no regard for those affected.
Verify results. Come back to boards after policies are changed, and participate in discussions to see what the impact is after implementation.
To that end, here is some dialog.
Fact:
Fees are passed along to buyers, the higher fees go the more prices are going to increase. High fees contribute to bad pricing experiences which have driven buyers away from eBay.
eBay acknowledges that there is a reduction in buyers active with the site. Changing the image of what eBay is instead of returning to the elements that made eBay a successful start up will do little to bring people back.
Go back to the old listing fee rate schedule.
Sellers appear to prefer to pay more to list and save on FV fees. The Public Relations spiel about saving money when an item fails to sell indicates a corporate view that sellers plan to fail when they list. This makes the point that the glass tower executive is out of touch with their own business and their customers.
Roll back the final value fee - Most sellers do not want to be penalized for their success with higher FV fee. They pass the fees on anyway, so the higher FV fee creates higher priced items, and thus drags on ability of items to sell.
The fee discounts that have been touted are virtually unreachable to new and short term sellers, thus the fee schedule discriminates against small and new sellers and favors long term established sellers.
Allow for fair and equal visibility of items listed for all sellers: get rid of Best Match as a default search.
The idea that a mathematical algorithm based on secret formulas and confidential criteria (which is by its nature is designed to favor some listings over others) is unfair as it skews search results in favor of some sellers over others.
Additionally, Best Match discourages visibility of items offered by new sellers based on non existent DSR's.
Few, if any benefit from this discrimination except high volume sellers. High volume sellers who may actually receive greater numbers of lower DSR ratings, but the impact is lessened by volume. Newer sellers and low volume sellers should not see the visibility of their listings diminished due to being new or having lower volume of sales.
Give buyers the better experience you promise. Make default search Ending Soonest. Listing visibility tiered to the end of the listing assures every seller a level field of visibility for the items they list.
The shipping and handling mess - eliminate the issues that buyers complain about most. eBay claims they want sellers to be honest about shipping rates, and they want buyers to be happy. These two should not be mutually exclusive. On the other hand, eBay, by design, provides mechanics that encourage abusive shipping fee charges that leave buyers with poor experiences.
Eliminate the ability to conceal handling fees in shipping costs, and require that handling fees be clearly listed and identified separately on each listing. Its the honest and truthful thing to do. This will lead to a better buyer experience.
Eliminate bait and switch on shipping. Lock shipping method in the eBay listing to PayPal shipping for label printing.
Eliminate the ability to misrepresent weight when shipping by location is used by locking it in. Sellers do over post weight on listings, then print labels with actual shipping weight applied thus avoiding eBay final value fees on that profit.
Prevent sellers from downgrading shipping services from faster more expensive shipping shown on the listing to slower cheaper shipping - lock it in.
Eliminate the ability of sellers to print shipping labels with postage amount hidden.
Eliminate the ability of sellers to charge for insurance and then not take it out at shipping time - lock it in.
Require use of PayPal shipping process as described here with every PayPal transaction. Buyers would have better information and tracking would better identify items have shipped.
Labels should then be required as evidence in shipping complaints and disputes, as they would better evidence in shipping disputes.
For bank check & Money order transactions, and for PayPal transactions with unconfirmed addresses, make it mandatory that signature service is required with the buyer required to pay the fee. This will better serve to motivate buyers to become confirmed, and will reduce claims and disputes over non delivery.
Require that listings show the city and state from which items will ship. Too many times buyers do not realize that the item they are viewing or purchasing has a higher shipping cost because it is coming from Canada, or from the opposite coast. Geography is everything folks...deal with it.
Lastly, remind buyers about common sense. Fact is that when they bid on and win an item, they are agreeing not only to the price, but to the entire listing, including, item condition, shipping cost and so forth. Complaining that an item's shipping fee was too high after the fact is just plain ignorant.
If the revisions above were applied, buyers should have few complaints about high shipping cost if they have agreed to make a purchase and the cost to ship is clearly listed.
Permit alternate checkout services to exist in stores only.
The shipping rates quoted in some outside checkout services which sellers utilize are outrageous - no wonder buyers complain. Stop letting sellers list items and make all of eBay look bad with outside shipping calculators. Let these sellers that are avoiding FV fees with their inflated shipping fees do so under their own roof in their own store.
Make it possible for members to order packing materials directly from the Postal Service
Integrate PayPal shipping with USPS so that sellers may obtain USPS products directly from USPS.. This eliminates the expense to eBay of having co branded boxes available in only a few sizes.The co branded boxes might as well have STEAL ME printed on the outside instead of eBay' logo.
Many more package size options exist and are free directly from USPS. Better sizing options would lead to better packaging and fewer damage claims making both buyers and sellers happier and reducing complaints.
Combat fraud by better qualifying buyers and sellers.
Registration should be more difficult and should not be completed so quickly. It is obvious that the lack of thorough verification is increasing fraudulent memberships. Registration should require a process which includes verification of addresses against credit records or bank records which are provided during the registration process. If that takes a week or 2 or 3, to more thoroughly confirm buyers or sellers and eliminates scam artists, let that be the acceptable standard.
Stop the abuses once and for all.
Terminate accounts after repeat offenses.
Get rid of the bad buyers and sellers, then blacklist them and make it impossible for them to sign up a new account using the same name, address, credit card or banking information.
Fix the feedback system. One way feedback is not feedback at all. And if Best Match is going to be imposed as the default search method, buyers can adversely impact a sellers DSR and the visibility of their listings with impunity and without accountability.
As eBay is rightfully concerned with the satisfaction of buyers, make feedback start with buyers, not sellers, buyers are the ones that you want to have a better experience.
Change the feedback process so that negative feedback is not immediately posted and instead initiates a dispute.
Shorten the time period for buyers and sellers to participate in the dispute process, and bring disputes to a prompt conclusion.
A dispute before posting negative feedback would assure negative feedback would not then be retaliatory. The dispute before final posting of negative should then motivate buyers and sellers to address issues through a mediator.
The other option...Kill feedback altogether. Feedback is dead as many knew it. eBay abuses it (favored item visibility) , buyers abuse it, sellers abuse it . Negative from one leads to retaliation against the other...and now even outside frivolous lawsuits. Kill it until a better process is created with input from buyers and sellers in creating a revised and fairer process.
Mr Donahoe has made his feelings about dissenters quite clear when he used the term "noise" in referring to those sellers expressing how the announced changes have or will impact their ability to succeed. Postings on discussion boards critical of eBay continue to disappear. In the boards in AU, their thread about coming changes was hidden for a time and could only be found when AU members posted the main thread link on other boards. link: http://forums.ebay.com.au/forum.jspa?forumID=500000001
Thank you for your time and consideration of my opinions.
Best regards,
Richard
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Hi Ina -
I'm convinced something is wrong with eBay's new DSR scoring system. Please see the message that I just sent to eBay.
"I do not believe that my DSR scores are accurate. They seem to change in specific increments which I find odd. Doesn't make sense to me that every time a buyer would score me that my scores would be identical to my previous scores but would just go up by 1. My ITEM AS DESCRIBED AND SHIPPING TIME are always identical and my COMMUNICATION AND SHIPPING AND HANDLING CHARGES are always off by 1. I also want to comment on my lack of a PowerSeller discount for the month of April. My SHIPPING/HANDLING CHARGES score was 4.7 all the way thru April but now when it's time to give me a discount you say that my score was 4.5!!!! As a Full Time Power Seller with over 3,300 feedback at 100% I would like my scores checked out please. I truly believe something is wrong with the system. Thank you."
Not sure if you've heard from anyone else regarding this problem but thought I'd bring it to your attention also. The numbers really seem to be suspicious. Here's a screen print. So needless to say, as pretty as my feedback looks I DO NOT GET ANY POWERSELLER DISCOUNT for the month of April!!
Dorothy
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Hi Ina,
Got a notice from DSR watch today that my ebay stars had changed. Looked on ebay and everything looked ok. Searched my id on DSR's site and they came up all 0. Sent in a mail to them and this is what I got back thought it might be of interest to you.
Best,
Carl
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Hi there Ina,
I emailed you last month about the DSR discount for Powersellers; and the fact that Ebay stated I did not earn the discount, even though my DSR levels were at or above the minimum on the (then) stated date to qualify.
Well - I have found yet another interesting thing happen with these DSR's. Last night, I checked my DSR's and they were all at or above the minimum, once again (they have been all month long, except for a couple of days). Now - this am, the ratings have dropped to 4.5 from 4.6 in one category; and what bothers me about this is that no new feedback has been left since last night, when all were at or above the minimum DSR for the discount!
How can that be?
I have emailed Ebay this am yet once again, to ask how this happened...I can only imagine what they will say this time.
I feel there must be some "manipulation" with these DSR's, and I don't like the smell of it.
Just wanted to let you know.
A BIG thank you once again, Ina, for all you do.
Your friend,
Annette
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Re: "PayPal Glitch Inconveniences eBay Sellers"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y08/m05/i01/s04
Ina,
This didn't just affect ebay sellers... I have a Tias store and it was dropping addresses and the buyer names.
Lori
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GEE with the low prices most things are selling for on Ebay, now they want us to give Free shipping. Where does our profit come in after that? I mean really, Ebay takes a junk from the front and back, and Pay Pal takes there cut in the middle, now we should do Free shipping. Wondering now if Ebay and USPS are in cahoots.
Rochelle
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Ina -I usually use terapeak's Free search for completed listings. Starting today, I noticed they have gone from 30 days free to 14 days. Just thought you would like to know.
A
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Hi Ina
I was just wondering if you had heard about this?
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?tstart=0&threadID=2000537377&anticache=1207713202190
If this this true everyone who holds a paypal account could be at risk.
Lori
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