|
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).
********
Hi Ina,
As I was packaging an item purchased by an international buyer who negotiated for FREE SHIPPING it started me to thinking (This was because when I fill out the customs forms and have to enter the item cost I now have to enter the sales price of the item.): Who really benefits from Free Shipping. I came to the conclusion that the seller doesn't and in many instances the buyer really doesn't. So, who REALLY benefits. I came to the following conclusions:
The seller has his/her cost of the item, the cost of packaging and the cost of shipping. Therefore, in order to offer free shipping the realistic thing to do is to raise the selling price of the item to cover the shipping costs. Otherwise, the seller would go out of business because there would be no profits.
Therefore, the buyer really isn't getting the item for a lower cost because of free shipping - it is just the PERCEPTION of a bargain, because all they are getting is a higher sales price with the shipping built in. It is hard to believe that a buyer is so naive to believe that they are buying something with free shipping for less that the total they would pay if they paid for the item plus s/h. So...who really benefits?
Obviously the big winner is eBay. They are receiving the final value fees on the shipping costs. In many instances, when you raise the item cost to cover the shipping fees it bumps you up into the next fee tranch so eBay is also collecting higher listing fees.
The next winner are the States. When the sales price includes the shipping costs, and the items are shipped within the state so that the buyers are required to pay sales tax, then the buyer will now be paying sales tax on the shipping costs since they are built in to the sales price where before they were typically only paying sales tax on the item. This same theory also applies for International shipments where, because the shipping costs are now built in to the sales price and the sales price is higher, the International buyer will be paying Customs fees on the shipping costs where now they are usually not.
So... who really wins with eBay's new policy? Certainly not the seller. And, in most instances, not the buyer!!!
My thoughts for the day.
Have a great weekend!
Martha
********
Hi,
I'm sure you've covered this somewhere but I wanted to tell you about my experience as a small seller on ebay. I sell mostly collectibles from estates and recently had ebay pull one of my auctions and give me a policy violation strike when I listed a new- with-tags designer accessory. They said the auction had been reported by another member or by the owner of the trademark (they wouldn't specify which) as counterfeit items. I responded by telling them that the items were absolutely authentic, had been purchased from an authorized dealer, etc. I told them I wouldn't relist the item but to please tell me what to do to prove the item's authenticity to them so that I could have the policy violation removed from my account.
Ebay has responded very heavy-handedly to my request. They said they wouldn't remove the violation and they wouldn't look at my proof. I tried asking again and called and spoke to a rep who gave me an email to use; that was also a dead end when the Vero dept. also said they wouldn't remove the violation and not to ask them again.
Since I had one previous policy violation (for listing a vintage collectible not knowing it had been recalled by the manufacturer) I am now in danger of having my account closed by ebay if I get one more violation. Even though I have 100% positive feedback with over 300 feedbacks and have been a seller since 2001 with no issues, ever!
I don't know if you can understand how frustrating this is for me: I have been accused of breaking the law by selling something counterfeit. I am trying to tell them that it's not true. They're saying, "we don't care if it's true or not - do one more thing and you lose your business."
It's ludicrous, and if you look on the ebay boards this has happened to many, many sellers besides me.
Laurie
********
Hi Ina,
Do what you wish with this...... Signed "Jay".
Though I have been a business owner for 35 years and a technology leader in my own minor industry, and with only that small experience, I may be slow on the uptake, but I think I now understand what the CANCER is at eBay/PayPal.
They are changing (promoting or ???) staff so quickly that management of various functions is changing much, much more rapidly than in other industries.
Furthermore, the new people are mostly young and as such, seem to think that they have to prove something and change something. Because these are much larger, and much less entrepreneurial organizations, than others organizations with such high management turnover/change rates, this really screws things up. These companies' (eBay/PayPal) corporate environments seem to be punishment-based and neither truly focus on the customer or on getting real results.
When one of these new management people comes into their new position, at any level, it seems that they somehow think that they have to "do something" to keep their jobs and get promoted. In that screwed-up culture, that may be a correct perception, I don't know. However, "doing something" is more often than not the wrong thing to do!
If a company is running well, most functions simply need steering and constant re-evaluation for improvement, but NOT change simply because there is a new mid-level boss in charge of this or that. Change for the sake of change usually does a lot more damage than any benefit it provides. If a company is NOT running well, then the answers are usually found with the customers, not with mid-level managers' ideas of how they can get promoted. The answers are usually in greater clarity, greater simplicity, NOT with greater complexity and confusion, and certainly not by telling customers what they want "for the good of the community".
However, as evidenced in the last 24 months, I think that most observers would agree that the vast majority of eBay and PayPal changes have been for the worse - and more than a few of them have been rolled back by the company itself, or pushed back by countries (i.e. Australia).
The result is huge turmoil. Sellers don't know whether they are coming or going - they just know that they are losing every time there is a change or a rollback. Buyers, are also often confused, but they simply no longer care - which increases the success of fraud attempts. The fraudsters are having a field day - they are the real winners (as will be the lawyers soon enough).
What brought this to mind today was a recent (last couple of weeks) change to the PayPal "send a payment" interface that I see when I send a payment. It has been completely changed and is really screwed up in both of the two different browsers that I use. Any typing in of information, selecting currencies, or clicking on selection buttons, etc., causes the browser contents to JuMP AroUnD like crazy for a minute after each such typing or click. I have never seen it happen on any other website I have ever visited (and that is a LOT of websites). It must be like a bad drug experience.
Also, there are now windows within windows with both horizontal and vertical slide bars that do nothing in particular. Maybe this is not seen in all other browsers, but this new interface was certainly not adequately tested if such ** was rolled out. It is a complete mess. I employ an very experienced IT & database developer full time, for "real money". If he tried to tell me we should run ** like that on our website, I would fire him - no questions, no conversation, just a simple goodbye.
The PayPal interface had been working perfectly fine for a long time. There was absolutely nothing to be gained by changing it (the new interface does not seem to actually add any functionality) ..... UNLESS SOMEBODY SIMPLY NEEDED TO "LOOK BUSY". Now they can do a PowerPoint presentation about how they DID SOMETHING. With luck they will be promoted to a level at which the damage they do will not affect me.
This small type of problem is repeated over and over and over and over again at both companies. It cannot be coincidence. I have never experienced such massive change-ups/screw-ups with any other company or industry I have dealt with in 35 years (other than the fraudulent activity of the credit card and mortgage industries, but that is simply "honest fraud", not incompetence). I have never had anybody else ever describe to me anything of this scale that is so screwed up. Even military veterans who are used to SNAFU, will probably agree that eBay/PayPal are more messed up. I can understand a local, newly-opened flower shop or restaurant getting it wrong, but we are talking here about huge companies paying huge salaries to incompetents.
If I owned eBay stock (eBay owns PayPal), I would be selling it. It is obvious that there is absolutely no clear understanding of who their customers really are and what those people need to continue being eBay/PayPal customers. And, based on my experiences and those of others that talk to me, eBay/PayPal management certainly don't use their own products, websites, etc., etc. (A prerequisite for being hired as an eBay manager should be 300+ 99% or better feedback SELLING on eBay.)
Sellers are waking up and going elsewhere.
Buyers must be waking up too because eBay would not otherwise be in such a tizzy.
Now it is time for stockholders to wake up and push the FLUSH lever.
Jay
********
why is it if someone buys an item you send an invoice then they decide to buy another item you cant combine them into one invoice? this is the most annoying big glitch on ebay. ask them about it and they say it doesnt exist but time and time again im forced to send an invoice from paypal. amasing simply amasing
kent
********
Hello Ina,
Re: Email addresses soon to be anonymous
I particularly like the obvious disingenuousness of eBay's stated reasons. Clearly, it has little to do with protecting us from scammers and more to do with minimizing outside-of-eBay communications, in the same manner that the purpose of absolute anonymity of bidding, that we in Australia now still suffer, was more (or only) to do with making shill bidding "disappear".
I suppose they will next apply a ban on the inclusion of any direct contract details in item listings: no direct email addresses or phone numbers?
Notwithstanding that there was not some other serious flaw in eBay's data security that the scammers were exploiting, if eBay do make email addresses anonymous worldwide (as has been the case in Australia for some time now), then there is no continuing need for any of the increased level of anonymity of bidders (apart from the hiding of shill bidding, that is).
And, how is it that you is the US don't still have absolute anonymity? What brought about the "retreat" from absolute anonymity to the effectively bidder-specific alias that you now have? And why can't we have that too, so that we too are at least be able to watch for blatant shill bidding? If I was a cynical person I could probably opine that eBay are simply trying to save the computing power that would be required to send out all those boiler-plate responses to the reports of shill bidding that would undoubtedly otherwise ensue!
I have concluded that unless shill bidding gets media attention eBay will do nothing about it and I think that, given their market domination, their application of absolute anonymity, which serves no other purpose than to hide such shill bidding, is reprehensible.
Regardless, if you have not already seen them, you may be interested in a couple of papers by Jarrod Trevathan and Wayne Read from James Cook University, Australia, which can be downloaded in PDF form from:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.61.7728
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.61.7072
or
http://www.academypublisher.com/jcp/vol02/no10/jcp02106375.pdf
http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/1788/02/02whole.pdf)
These authors are suggesting that their shill bidding detecting algorithm/s would allow an online auction operator to effectively stop shill bidding in its tracks.
Regards
Philip
|
