eBay took a different approach to its January Town Hall meeting held Wednesday by setting an agenda for questions from members. The three topics covered were outlined in eBay's January 8th Announcement Board post - the new update to feedback removal policy dealing with customs fees; new approved payment methods; and eBay's Seller Checklist with listing update reminders.
Compliance with new policies was on many sellers' minds, and eBay covered the issue in the last part of the radio program dealing with the Seller Checklist. Several sellers complained that they had to relist listings several times due to the number of eBay changes rolling out at different times, and that it costs money to relist items.
Sara Brubacher of eBay's seller development team said eBay would try in the future to roll out changes together, about two to three times a year. Nick Donelson of the selling team said there are two issues around seller challenges in revising their listings. "One is loosening the restrictions we have on being able to edit multi-quantity fixed-price items that already have a sale," he said, and secondly, "there are some issues with the bulk-edit capabilities of our tool around Item Specifics, and they are weorking on a project that is coming out this year. That is on our radar."
In the meantime, as January 15th marks the day sellers must comply with new provisions of the Accepted Payments policy, Griff will be covering how to use Turbo Lister as a bulk-editing tool on his radio program on Thursday. One seller reminded eBay that Turbo Lister is not Mac-compatible. Another seller wanted to share that he was able to edit 10,000 listings in less than 5 minutes using the Blackthorne software tool.
Some answers from eBay managers were straightforward. Rich from the Shipping Team said they are still working on getting PayPal postage for the large flat rate Priority Mail box and expects it to be available in the second quarter (April - June) of this year.
Other answers seemed veiled in secrecy. What was ahead for small sellers on eBay? "Look for initiatives to make it more attractive for small and large sellers in 2009." Does the acquisition of Positronic have anything to do with promised improvements to search? "It does, but I can't say a whole lot more than that."
Someone asked about standardizing the placement of shipping and payment information in order to train buyers to look in the same spot in each listing, since each seller currently puts such information in different areas of the description field.
eBay managers said they were moving in that direction, without mentioning the new View Item page layout announced in June and forthcoming later this year that features "tabs to better organize shipping and payment information."
eBay took two dozen questions via phone call-in and email. A recording of the meeting will be made available on the eBay Town Hall meeting archive page.
