eBay held a Town Hall meeting on Wednesday afternoon to answer questions about its second round of changes, which the company announced on Tuesday. A panel of eBay employees included Vice President of Seller Experience Todd Lutwak and Dawn Sullivan, Senior Manager on eBay's Trust team responsible for developing and executing Seller Standards for eBay North America, including the eBay Top-rated seller initiative.

The panel screened emails and calls to limit questions to those about eBay's forthcoming changes to new Item condition; feedback reminder emails; "Buyer Protection in Seller Standards"; member to member communications; and new tools for relisting in bulk.

Questions came in about eBay's new "Opened Cases" metric that measures seller performance based on how many cases are opened against sellers by buyers. eBay staff confirmed that all opened cases would count, even when the seller was shown to have performed and the buyer was satisfied.

eBay staff seemed perplexed to learn that sellers had been unaware that it sent emails to buyers reminding them to leave feedback, a practice it initiated in 2002. One eBay employee said eBay sent reminders 15 days after a transaction, but only if the buyer had not left feedback. When another caller said 2 weeks is not enough time, especially when a package is shipped from Canada and the buyer might not even have received the item, a staffer said the feedback reminder emails were sent between 15 - 50 days. eBay clarified that the email is a buyer-optional email, sellers cannot opt out.

Another caller reported he had a buyer who left him 7 negative feedback ratings and had left other sellers a total of 40 negatives in the last month in a half. Ms. Sullivan suggested he report the buyer if he felt it was malicious feedback, and the caller said he had reported it, "numerous times, as have other sellers," with whom he had contacted. The bidding behavior "keeps going on." Ms. Sullivan suggested he email her the information.

eBay's Jim "Griff" Griffith indicated there would be another Town Hall meeting in July to cover the next round of changes that will be announced in the summer.

Additional questions and answers from the eBay Town Hall meeting can be read on the AuctionBytes Blog.

eBay is holding a webinar to answer additional questions about the Summer Seller Update, more information is available on the eBay announcement board