Knowing Where You Stand

TheBrewsNewsOn 05.20.2008 at 9:42 am Said:

QUOTE: “And there is some great news here. For instance, the Choice Policy (good name for a policy that actually limited choice), is being eliminated so that sellers can now list items in different sizes, color, etc. in a single listing. This helps buyers with a more convenient shopping experience and provides sellers with relief on insertion fees.”
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First, sellers have ALWAYS been able to offer a choice if they simply understood the policy. For example:

(Previously) Choice Policy violation: List one shirt in 3 colors - red, blue, or green

(Previously) Acceptable Choice Policy Listing: Two shirts in 3 colors - red, blue, or green

(Currently) Acceptable Choice Policy Listing - any number (including one) shirt in 3 colors

So, the change in Choice listing policy is not really much of a change at all. The only difference is that you can now list a quantity of 1 and not be in violation of the Choice Listing Policy.

How wonderful for us! Oh wait a minute…. not so wonderful because…..

how does the buyer communicate their “choice” to you?

We have always asked the buyer to let us know in the Paypal notes section of their payment which particular choice they want.

How wonderful! Oh wait a minute… not so wonderful because….

the Paypal “notes” section has been broken for months. Buyers include a note specifying their choice but the note does not appear in the paypal payment notification or the paypal details page. Instead, that note (sometimes) appears on the ORDER DETAILS page.

Despite repeated reports for MONTHS, the paypal notes problem is broken. We have been told that there are other higher priorities. Okay, got it.

So, for me, the good news about the Choice Policy would not be that I can now use the Choice Listings with a quantity of 1 but rather that eBay would provide a working system whereby the buyer can communicate their choice to me.

One of the biggest problems I have always had with eBay is that those folks making the decisions and the folks implementing the changes have no true understanding of the system.

LurchOn 05.20.2008 at 10:21 am Said:

Oh - won’t choice on sizes really mess with the purpose of item specifics? Item specifics really only seem to be of benefit to clothing/shoes, and wouldn’t that eliminate a chunk of their usefulness?

My prior questions - ok, I re-read it again, and I assume this “Third-party solutions and services directly related to the particular listing.” will cover Auctiva, correct?

But what about their gallery? The Search/Browse policy does read as through their gallery will be in violation. I also just re-read the links policy, and their gallery also might be in violation of this: “Links to any eBay property page including eBay, PayPal, Half.com, and StubHub, as long as no more than five links are included in any single listing or community post.”

The gallery piece, which links to specific other auction items that you have listed, shows more than 5 (assuming you have more than 5 items listed).

MechelleOn 05.20.2008 at 10:25 am Said:

@Richard

I understand that the blog does provide the opportunity for eBay to more “open, honest, and available”, but I have yet to read anything from them demonstrating they are using what could be a very effective tool to have dialogue with its “constituencies”. Their comments and “answers” are clearly disingenuous and superficial. My perception is they have evaded the topics that concern those posting on this blog the most.

Also, their lack of communication both yesterday and today are very demonstrative of the weak leadership skills within eBay. A leader would take the storm head on and not hide behind the corporate door. A leader would refrain from superficial consolations that only results in more malcontent among its “constituencies”. A leader would sympathize and demonstrate compassion to those of us who have or will be unjustly damaged by these thoughtless policy changes. A leader of a company would understand what customer service is and recognize that alienating your customer base is the quickest way to the employment office.

So, I don’t see any evidence of their being “open, honest, and available.

Patricia1On 05.20.2008 at 10:40 am Said:

Richard - reluctantly, I have to agree with Mechelle - they may be listening but its like me listening to the radio - its amusing but nothing happens because of it.

AmberOn 05.20.2008 at 10:48 am Said:

@ Brews and Richard,

The changes in the choice listing policy were clearly designed to pump up stagnating listing numbers and cater to eBay’s recent partner, Buy. As pointed out when they first dumped those 400,000+ listings into core, many of their listings were in direct violation of that particular policy. Rather than force them to revise their flagrantly violating listings, eBay decided to dump the policy.

The average seller WILL NOT BENEFIT from these changes. This is (again) aimed at letting those mega-sellers flood the site in their effort to go retail.
The average seller will be buried under the flood of duplicate listings. I have no faith that search will in any way limit the exposure those multiple listings get, just as I have no faith that buy will be held accountable in DSRs or the seller non-performance policy.

I have no faith that ebay will tell me the truth. No faith that they even understand what they’re doing to smaller sellers on the site, let alone care. The Town Hall made that perfectly clear. “Don’t focus just on what these changes mean for you…Look at the bigger picture.” Well, pardon me, but most sellers can’t look at the bigger picture if their business has been ruined by demoted search, NPS restrictions, Paypal holds, loss of Powerseller status and discounts etc…many sellers won’t be able to “wait it out” while the “spread widens.” It’s extremely self-righteous of those people to even suggest such a thing.

And some of their comments made it quite clear that they don’t understand how Paypal has become an unsafe payment method for million of sellers. More and more buyers are using it to make fraudulent claims. It is much more easy to scam a seller through Paypal than directly through a credit card company. The protections for sellers are insufficient– online tracking/proof of delivery is unavailable for most international shipments, so even the Powersellers with their expanded protection are not really protected.

It is extremely unsafe, and as this last week or so has proved, extremely unreliable. Having sellers and websites across the country lose business due to technical difficulties on Paypal’s side proved that as nothing else could.

AmberOn 05.20.2008 at 11:01 am Said:

“a prime example of the company’s willingness to be more open, honest and available to all of its constituencies”

Richard, we all agree that we’re seeing more of the rationale behind these decisions. Most of us agree that they are explaining more. Where we disagree is in their level of honesty. Their constant need to “spin” what should be straight-forward answers just raises the ire of most informed sellers.

An example: Removing Mutual Feedback Withdrawal.
Brian Burke claims this is to protect sellers from extortion. I question the veracity and sincerity of that. 99% of sellers would also question that, as the extortion nearly always comes BEFORE feedback is left, not after. What the removal of this policy does, if one were completely honest, is further eBay’s agenda to “widen the spread” between good sellers and mediocre sellers. It also results in the collateral benefit to ebay of a greater % of Powersellers losing their discounts. Loss of discounts = more $ in eBay’s pocket.

If they were sincere in protecting sellers from extortion, they could do so by allowing ALL communication to be submitted as evidence and take action on the first instance of such behavior rather than waiting for a pattern to develop.

They could also substitute a buyer-initiated feedback removal request in place of MFW, so that buyers who make a mistake have the ability to remove/edit feedback that was left in error. They did not.

Quite frankly, the rationale doesn’t hold up to even the slightest challenge. Seeing the multitude of assumptions that these people are basing policy on is further eroding whatever slim amount of confidence many of us had with ebay’s leadership team.

TheBrewsNewsOn 05.20.2008 at 12:00 pm Said:

Regarding Mutual Feedback Withdrawal:

*********************
Information that was unveiled yesterday (May 19)

Full details located at: pages.ebay.com/services/forum/new.html

Elimination of Mutual Feedback Withdrawal
There are a number of reasons for removing Mutual Feedback Withdrawal, including:

1. Leaving the possibility of Feedback withdrawal leaves buyers open to possible harassment and/or unwanted contacts by sellers attempting to have the buyer change the Feedback.

2. Since only buyers can leave negative Feedback, the Mutual Feedback Withdrawal process could be used as a tool for Extortion - buyer leaves negative first, then removes once satisfied.

**********************

Comment on reason #2 — So, now what will happen is that the buyer will leave a negative feedback and REMAIN unsatisfied. Hmmmm….. Isn’t the point to have a satisfied buyer? Sellers have absolutely no incentive to make a buyer happy once the buyer leaves a negative feedback and buyers will soon learn that. So, buyers learn that they must extort concessions BEFORE leaving feedback… just like they do now. Doesn’t seem like any improvement in fighting feedback extortion.

Now, while eBay would like to make us believe they care enough to protect us from feedback extortion by removing the Mutual Feedback Withdrawal process, the REAL reason is the #1 reason given yesterday:

“Leaving the possibility of Feedback withdrawal leaves buyers open to possible harassment and/or unwanted contacts by sellers attempting to have the buyer change the Feedback. ”

Here is a simple solution: Why not allow MFW and ask buyers to report sellers who are harrassing them about feedback?

The truth is that MFW was discontinued for the benefit of the buyer. It is insulting to try and “convince” us otherwise. I would much rather know “the truth” behind your actions (even though I may disagree) than to be told that changes are made because someone cares about me and wants to protect me when that clearly is untrue.

NOTE: It’s kinda hard to know where one stands… after being cut off at the knees.

CrunchyPostingGoodnessOn 05.20.2008 at 12:52 pm Said:

One remark about the removal of the mutual feedback withdrawal….

I’m glad that Amazon still sees the importance of this feature!

I had one buyer there that left me a neutral (3) because she only wanted to ask me a question, so she didn’t believe a rating was applicable, hence she picked neutral. Luckily I was able to address her request, inform her that she actually left feedback, instead of the using the Contact Seller feature, and requested that she remove her feedback, since the 3 rating dropped my feedback percentage.

She was very happy that I informed her about the error and promptly removed the feedback.

Another buyer used the feedback to request I send her item to an alternate address - she even put all of her personal information in the feedback. Worse yet, it was to a military location in Iraq! My poor buyer didn’t realize she was leaving public feedback. She thought that she was just contacting me about a change in the transaction.

Now Amazon has a strict policy of not removing feedback unless specifically requested by the buyer, however they realized the sensitive nature of this information, and promptly removed the feedback.

At least there, Amazon understands that mistakes can happen, and they want to allow for buyers to be able to fix them. eBay should take a lesson from their play book on that, since eBay seems to be cherry-picking every other Amazon-like policy and layout.

AmberOn 05.20.2008 at 1:03 pm Said:

@ Brews

“The truth is that MFW was discontinued for the benefit of the buyer. It is insulting to try and “convince” us otherwise. I would much rather know “the truth” behind your actions (even though I may disagree) than to be told that changes are made because someone cares about me and wants to protect me when that clearly is untrue. ”

Exactly! If you want to promote this blog as open, HONEST, and available–you NEED to be honest. So far, we haven’t seen much of that from certain execs. We can disagree on the rationale for decisions, but please don’t pretend something is for my benefit when it quite obviously isn’t.

MechelleOn 05.20.2008 at 1:08 pm Said:

Not only does eBay not allow for the correction of user error they count on it. Leaving the neutral without disclosing its significance to the buyer is out right deception and abuse of both the buyer and the seller, and they know it.

Getting rid of the MFW has nothing to do with protecting us or the buyer it is to eliminate the possibility of the seller to communicate with their customer to resolve the issue and have their reputation restored, and to let those user errors stand. This should be clear from their out right encouragement and explicit suggestion to leave us a negative or neutral.

eBay doesn’t give a damn about the buyers or the sellers

Patricia1On 05.20.2008 at 1:15 pm Said:

I see no reason for not allowing buyer/seller to have total control over the feedback they leave. Each should have the option to remove or change their feedback within a set amount of days. Why ebay insists on getting into feedback and controlling it the way they do causes nothing but more disruption between sellers and THIER customers. One wonders how much better things might be right now if buyer/seller were allowed and encouraged to interface and straighten out problems among themselves! Ebay should only be stepping in in extreme cases!

TonyOn 05.20.2008 at 1:29 pm Said:

Richard, there’s a real issue with the seller non performance policy, in the UK anyway. It has changed to 30 days, sellers are complaining of being suspended and you look at their feedback, and it’s for 1 or 2 negs and neutrals in the last 30 days.

Their feedback is good, most ebayers wouldn’t bat an eyelid over buying from them and yet, they’re suspended and nobody can fathom out why and then people pull up figures of sellers with much worse overall ratings.

Some of these sellers will never come back, this isn’t good for buyers or sellers. This really needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed quickly.

SandiOn 05.20.2008 at 2:34 pm Said:

Slightly off-topic - but not. Has anyone seen the DirectTV commercials with the cable executives sitting around the table trying to come up with ideas to “fix” their business?

One has them talking about how the customers do nothing but complain, one exe comes up with the plan “I know, let’s get rid of them and get new ones”

The one I saw today they came up with the plan “I know, we will raise their rates & tell them its for better service (or something). They won’t even notice we didn’t give them anything” Or something along those lines.

I stopped in my tracks and thought, wait, I know a company who does that!

MistyOn 05.20.2008 at 3:49 pm Said:

Quote “Richard, there’s a real issue with the seller non performance policy, in the UK anyway. It has changed to 30 days, sellers are complaining of being suspended and you look at their feedback, and it’s for 1 or 2 negs and neutrals in the last 30 days.

Their feedback is good, most ebayers wouldn’t bat an eyelid over buying from them and yet, they’re suspended and nobody can fathom out why and then people pull up figures of sellers with much worse overall ratings.

Some of these sellers will never come back, this isn’t good for buyers or sellers. This really needs to be addressed and it needs to be addressed quickly.”

This is exactly what small volume sellers here in the US are expressing concern about as well.

JJHOn 05.20.2008 at 4:08 pm Said:

“Slightly off-topic - but not. Has anyone seen the DirectTV commercials with the cable executives sitting around the table trying to come up with ideas to “fix” their business?”

Yes, I think of eBay when I see this commercial.