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,
The eBay discussion forums are in a tizzy over rumors that eBay has laid off the entire Discussion Forum
Moderation team and will, in turn, close the boards.
Do you know if there is any truth to these speculations?
Thanks,
Lisa
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Ms. Steiner,
I noticed when listing today a glitch in eBay's fees. When they implemented the new Fixed Price Listing fees, they neglected to give credit for Listing Designer to people who have Selling Assistant Pro or Blackthorne Pro. I've been getting an extra 30 cent charge on all my 30 day listings. I went to help chat, and it is a known issue, but I am not sure if they are spreading the word, and it would be good for everyone to check their billing.
By the way, I dropped my store to use fixed price instead - it just wasn't worth the extra cost for the approx. 20 items I had in there as store only.
Have a great day!
John
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Hello Ina,
I have enjoyed AuctionBytes for many (!) years.
I was interested to read your coverage of Deposit Now. The fee of $39/month plus the upfront cost of a compatible scanner probably make the service a little pricey for some sellers. There are however, a few consumer banks that are offering free deposit scanning on consumer accounts including my bank - Digital Federal Credit Union in Maynard, MA (DCU charges $15/month for business accounts). In addition, their service (called PCDeposit) works with most home scanners - I have three different scanning options (Canon, NeatReceipts and an HP) and all three work just fine. Occasionally I'll get a check which has some security feature that interferes with proper scanning (mostly my insurance company's reimbursement checks) but 95% of my PCDeposits work just fine.
Just a tidbit you might want to share with others. For me, DCU's PCDeposit Service has been a godsend since I live in a rural area and had been mailing my deposits (can you imagine??) to DCU for many years.
Thanks for keeping us so well informed about online auctions.
Deborah
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(October 9, 2008)
Ina,
Last night I received an email from a buyer asking why my eBay listings (e.g item 290266064620) said combined shipping was $1 for each additional item in one place and FREE in another place.
When I checked I saw that the eBay generated message about combined shipping now said "FREE" instead of $1.00 for each additional item, as it always had. I confirmed that the preferences in "My eBay/My Account/Preferences/Combined Payments and Shipping Discounts" had not changed (still say $1.00 for each additional item). My own text in my listings had always mentioned the $1.00 additional cost and continues to do so.
Contacted Powerseller phone support today. Was told that this is a known glitch being addressed as a high priority. Was also told the "good news" was that the buyer would be charged the amount I intended, not what eBay was promising them. I asked if they understood the customer relations aspect of the listing offering one thing and then charging more. The rep had not seemed to recognize this. He assured me it was a high priority to fix it. I asked if they ought not to publish an announcement about the problem. He said that wasn't his call. I urged him to pass on my strong recommendation that they do so.
Bill
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Hello Ina
Talk about double speak and run around by Ebay staff.
I went to re-list an antique Tiffany bronze desk blotter corner set. I was unable to do so because they said it was a branded item and restricted my ability to list it again. I wrote back to them and asked for a better explanation and this is what I got. I went and composed a reply to this but never sent what I did with all my anger. So, I just responded with FORGETABOUTIT! Time to move on, you are no longer the only game in town.
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Dear -
Thank you for writing eBay in regard to your recent restriction on your account.
The restriction on your account limits the number of certain items that you can list within a 30 day period. You will be able to list again after that 30 day period has passed. Unfortunately I cannot give more information as to when the 30 day period starts or ends. Once you have established yourself with further positive selling activity, you may request that your limit be increased We are not saying that you will be unable to revise your listings. However, once your listing and revision limit has been reached, you will be unable to revise those items that are limited regardless of whether or not there are bids on the items.
We thank you in advance for your cooperation, and wish you luck with your future eBay transactions.
Sincerely,
Brandie
eBay Customer Support
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Hi Ina,
Is there ever gonna be a time when ebay stops screwing with the site and it's customers? For many years now it has gotten worse and worse. I have gotten so depressed over this constant "tweaking", feedback, and fee manipulation that I have just quit selling. I feel that they have manipulated the seller fees so many times and are reaching so deep in my pockets now that they are pulling my socks up!
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Hello Ms. Steiner,
Yesterday while testing ebay search I noticed that ebay is now suggesting kijiji as the top result on some item searches.
I'm not quite sure why I'm paying listing, FVFs and Paypal fees if ebay is going to redirect potential bidders off site to sellers who paid nothing to list.
I thought this might be of interest to you and thank you so much for your time.
Best regards,
Will
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Hi Ina,
Just in case you're not aware of the latest eBay glitch - and this one is huge.
Apparently not enough sellers were voluntarily offering free shipping. The free shipping orange dot began appearing on seller's listings regardless of whether free shipping was actually offered. It came & went. I had several dozen listings affected including all of the listings that ended this evening - too late for me to revise or deal with.
The boards are full of miserable sellers with problems due to buyers insisting on free shipping - as advertised.
When I contacted eBay, I was told to revise all my listings to show that this was an eBay glitch and free shipping did not apply.
I have 900 listings that I'm supposed to revise due to eBay's error?
By the way - you recently announced that there was a Town Hall on October 14th. I was never able to find an eBay announcement about it, and no one has posted the minutes, like they usually do. DO you know if it was held?
Regards,
Leslie
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Hi Ina ~
I came across some stats that are very disturbing to say the least and wanted to get your opinion.
In addition, I recently discovered that google base store connector is not working and pushing my ebay listings out to google ~ many sellers I know are getting only a small percentage (less than 20%) of their listings published via google base store connector. The error message I got for about 70 of my 96 listings was that there was a problem with the shipping amount attribute (most of my items have calculated shipping based on weight so I don't have to make any changes every time the PO changes it's rates).But sellers say that listings with calculated shipping USED to work just fine via google base store connector.
I wondered if this might have an influence on the experiment you did a few weeks ago where ebay listings had fallen dramatically in organic search. It's possible there is a correlation??? I don't know how long google base store connector has not been working as I only started using it a couple of days ago, but this may be one of the reasons your experiment with ebay in google search reflected ebay listings so low in organic google search results. Do you think that these issues are related??
Here are the stats from med-ved.net ~ I don't understand how these two charts make sense combined:
Here's the graph showing number of listings increasing from 15 M to over 24Million!
http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND
Now this one is really scary, and seems to correlate to the timing of ebay's drop in organic search results on google:
http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?SINDALLCAT
If I am reading it correctly, auctions sell thru went up, and BIN crashed (probably due to the FP30). Can you recommend any add'l sites to verify these stats? Did eBay REALLY almost double their number of active listings on eBay????
You are such an authority and have a steady hand on the pulse of what's happening, I thought I would email to see what on earth was going on here???? I desperately want to understand what's going on with google and ebay so that I know how to counteract the trend in some way. It's hard to try to compensate for something when you don't understand what's wrong!! Does that make sense??
I hope you can enlighten us all. I just don't get it.
And now ebay search results have been tweaked to falsely indicate that items with a shipping charge have no shipping ~ the field is blank instead of being filled with flat or calculated shipping. The items offering FREE shipping are shown on the same page, but with the free shipping button. But side by side on the same page, items with FREE shipping which have shipping built into the price are appearing simply more expensive than the items with a shipping amount (because it doesn't show on the results page). It was discussed on the Ask Griff Show live this last Tuesday and on the super secret chat board (in case you want to listen to the archive). Do you have any information about this issue???
We appreciate you so much, Ina!! I hope you can enlighten us soon!
Best regards,
Melinda
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Ina,
Wondering if you'll be doing a story about the "Obama monkey dolls" and other racist imagery and content that is increasingly finding its way into the eBay discussion boards, particularly the Feedback board.
eBay apparently has no desire to end this, and I - for one - am finding it increasingly uncomfortable to be known as a seller on a platform that even tacitly tolerates this kind of behavior.
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Ebay is allowing posters to post racist icons/photos dipicting Obama. Most of the icons are tweaked in such a way as to show Obama in stereotypical, "old black" references. The most offensive graphic is a sock-puppet monkey made to look like Obama. I reported the really bad ones and Ebay removed them. However, this same poster has made a smaller version with two sock-puppet monkeys, but the implication is still there and Ebay won't remove these. The thread where these posts appear is on the first page of the Feedback Forum Board titled "Official Feedies Politics Thread 2008". This same poster posted four separate photos of Obama and Michelle Obama stating that they'd both had their skin lightened to become white. Ebay would not remove this post. Why is Ebay allowing blatant racist posts and photos, icons and siggies to remain on their boards. I hope that you will look into this and print something in Auction Bytes. Somebody has to step forward and stop this.
When I reported the posts that got removed I mentioned in my report that I would be contacting Auction Bytes with this information. Those were the reported posts that were removed. Looks like Auction Bytes carries some clout with Ebay. Please do what you can to expose these racist posts that are allowed to remain.
