eBay Live! 2008 is upon us…

TheBrewsNewsOn June 19, 2008 at 6:23 pm Said:

Paypal providing complete buyer protection only makes sense. Paypal is pushing folks to pay with their bank account, rather than their credit card, so that PayPal makes more money (by reducing merchant credit card processing fees). But everyone knows that PayPal buyer protections are limited unless you use a credit card to fund your PayPal payment. This new “Buyer Protection” policy will ultimately help Paypal have lower merchant (and chargeback) fees they pay because buyers will feel more confident using their bank account to fund payments.

Expanded Seller Protection so that smaller sellers are finally covered is long overdue. Asking small sellers to bear undue risk only encouraged off-eBay sales which eBay is fighting a fierce battle over.

PayPal is implementing policies which, of course, benefit them directly but at least it is a Win/Win situation this time (rather than the standard Win/Lose typical eBay policies we are so used to).

Now I’m just holding my breath to find out what exciting news tomorrow brings……

Patricia1On June 19, 2008 at 11:05 pm Said:

“Expanded Seller Protection so that smaller sellers are finally covered is long overdue. Asking small sellers to bear undue risk only encouraged off-eBay sales which eBay is fighting a fierce battle over.”

I guess they finally realized our fee money is as green as a powersellers! For shame that it took small sellers leaving in numbers that ebay finally noticed to give them this little bone! Its not nearly enough though…wouldn’t be enough to make me re-open my Ebay store and list at the level I was listing at before all this stupid mess! Maybe I won’t ever again have the stomach to do that after being made to feel like an untrustworthy criminal on the site!!!! No…ebay needs to give more than that pittance! It would be really nice if they gave ALL sellers the protection of a 7 day wait before a buyer can neg them. There is NO way a seller can or will make a transaction right after a buyer has negged him! This ruling alone shows really bad thinking on the matter and they just can’t see it – that’s the scarey part! What I’ve seen so far will not keep small sellers on the site. This madness makes small sellers feel they are purposely being forced off the site.

T. SwoopesOn June 20, 2008 at 1:08 am Said:

I appreciate that eBay is trying to improve both the seller and buyer experience. Whenever I’m browsing on Ebay, I usually have a few things that I wish could be improved– the user interface, better search results, and more customized recommendations (like style feeder). Starbucks had a great idea that I think Ebay should consider implementing– http://www.mystarbucksidea.com.com It’s a great way to demonstrate a renewed interest in the experience of their customers (and I don’t even drink Starbucks– but I love their dedication. I know you already have the forums– but I’m not a seller, only an occasional buyer who would like to see Ebay better–and I would like to see my suggestions considered– and not just read over.

Anyway, this blog is start– but i’m really looking for an overall better user experience on ebay…. how about a myebayidea.com page?

Thanks for considering :)

SandiOn June 21, 2008 at 12:53 am Said:

As a seller, I would like to see Paypal provide the same information google checkout does as far as verifying the monies coming in.

Buyer credit verification
Covered by Payment Guarantee [?]
AVS: Full

Account age: 431 days

That provides me confidence as someone about to ship something to someone I do not know. Paypal can make all the promises they want, but they do not have the track record to back them up. You can go over to the answer center any given day and read how it didn’t work like it is suppose to.

MechelleOn June 21, 2008 at 1:50 am Said:

PayPal needs to get their act together! They broke the law and have put a seller and her family at risk of physical harm from a psycho buyer.

She sold a cell phone the guy had it a couple weeks emailed told her the he broke the power port and wanted a full refund. She said no she wasn’t going to give him a refund because as he said he broke it. He filed a paypal dispute – we all know how that turned out- she told him if the phone was returned in any other condition than how he received it she wouldn’t be giving him his money back. Of course that is just us trying to convince others and maybe ourselves that we actually have say over our own damn money and merchandise.

Anyway, he emailed back referring to her as a M***er F***er and told her he knew how to find her and that he was going to kill her and her family, and attached with the email were images of dead people and swastikas. Yeah and we are all the criminals

So a bunch of sellers asked her what she was doing using her home address that she should have a PO on file. Here is the punch- she does use a PO for her selling, but because she has to have an actual address to receive some packages she has her home address on file. When she opened the dispute she used her PO address. PayPal gave him her home address completely disregarded the dispute info and that of the original transaction.

This type of behavior is apparently not unheard of- the people on the posts have it down to a science – they must have had some very unsettling experience with both customers and eBay/Paypal.

Oh, and after this contact she reported it – we all know the message she received from eBay/PayPal- all together everyone- I’m sorry but that is outside of our jurisdiction we are only a venue sorry for the inconvenience! Cowards!

It really is sad that eBay/Paypal have so little regard for us as people that they don’t even respect our rights. Take nothing into consideration give our address and personal information to absolutely anyone.

This is another issue with their having no idea who shops on their “venue”!

HenriettaOn June 22, 2008 at 2:06 pm Said:

That buyer needs to go to the police. Terroristic threatening is a crime.

MechelleOn June 22, 2008 at 6:31 pm Said:

She was told to file reports with the police in her’s and the buyer’s station and to file with the FBI by the other sellers on the board

arnoldtradingOn June 23, 2008 at 4:33 am Said:

Stronger seller protection??? All it will do is put buyers who want their money back to come up with creative lies and file significantly not as described disputes. This is a weak area for PayPal. It is difficult because it is just taking one person’s word over another. Lie Victoriously!!!

MechelleOn June 26, 2008 at 9:36 pm Said:

I was just reading the issue with Buy listing (and I am appalled to learn that eBay has allowed this) of child pornography)on Auctionbytes, and I had a thought (light bulb)!

“There is also a new level of PowerSeller – Diamond Level. It will apply to sellers of $500,000 worth of goods a month and who have a minimum DSR score of 4.8 across the board.”

I am assuming that the only Diamond level powerseller is Buy. I am certain I read some where that a Diamond powerseller is eligible for pricing negotiations?? If this is the case I assume this new powerseller status was invented to give the impression that this isn’t just for Buy- any eBay member can reap the rewards of Diamond powerseller – negotiating pricing discounts for high quantity.

The problem I have with this facade of opportunity- For any & all (except Buy) current eBay seller/powersellers the attainment of 500,000 gross sales will have to be achieved under the fee schedule that all real eBay sellers are charged. Buy started out with free insertion fees and possibly additional discounts on FVF. Real eBay seller would have to accomplish this paying real eBay seller fees and following real eBay seller rules.

Also given the nature of Buy’s pre-eBay established business, which must have a reliance on drop shipping to some extent considering the massive numbers of items sold that they did/do not have, they had the inventory or at least someone does to load into the eBay store. I’m thinking most if not all real eBay sellers would be hard pressed to come up with the inventory to achieve Diamond Powerseller when paying the same fees as real eBay sellers, which buy doesn’t pay.

I suppose the argument could be made that any seller can attain drop shipping accounts and load an eBay store to the hilt as well. Just to get that particular claim out of the way immediately- real eBay sellers relying entirely on drop shipping will find themselves on unstable ground under the new DSR BS. Recognizing that eBay enforces rules on real ebay sellers (unlike with buy) the number of item not received or “sold but didn’t have” violations would rack up and lead to suspension within a month. So, gambling on success of a purely drop shipped or partially rooted eBay store business under the rules that real eBay sellers must follow would be more than a bit foolish and would never make it to month 3 to qualify for Diamond Powerseller, because they would be suspended for policy violations.

My question is why- eBay do you persist in imagining that your customers are lacking in intelligence?? Why- eBay do you continue to patronize us with these disingenuous opportunities?? Why- eBay do you allow and assist an outsider to undermine and wreck the businesses of the real eBay sellers who follow eBay rules, pay eBay fees, have the products they sale, don’t peddle child pornography on eBay, don’t have thousands of thousands of listing violations, and who are here (on eBay) trying to continue their eBay business despite the merciless impediments you have laid on the back of these real eBay sellers???

The biggest question- eBay why don’t you care about all of the people who care about eBay??

MechelleOn June 27, 2008 at 3:35 am Said:

Curious I went to check on good old Buy, and I must say-

eBay you really need to purchase a conscience!!!

First you shut down the business of thousands of eBay sellers with less than a weeks notice.

Second you bring in this company to offer the same products already available- you let them list free- they are running mass 3 day auctions flooding the categories blocking the listings of all the real eBay sellers- you know those that actually paid to have their product out there. The past month buy has sold over 40,000 items – isn’t that fab!! I wonder how many families went without food, had utilities turned off, couldn’t pay their mortgage- may even be in foreclosure by now???

Why don’t you care about people? You masquerade as some humanitarian providing charitable donations (though they have been a bit paltry) (or having or trying to get us to) all the while you have some pig of a company that peddles child pornography – wrecking the marketplace causing starvation among your paying customers and yes those who made eBay in the first place!!!

You know you can try to blame the state of the market on sellers, but it is your fault 100% eBay’s doing. If you want a clean reputation – you want people to hear eBay and think good company – you need to clean up the corporate attitude coming from eBay. eBay is so unattractive on a human level it is shameful- it really is!

DakotaOn June 27, 2008 at 4:18 am Said:

Right on Mechelle!!

I echo the same sentiments!

AmberOn June 27, 2008 at 9:34 am Said:

I’m sure this won’t be posted, as Richard is holding all of my posts for moderation and rarely allowing them to go through, but:

Looking at sales data, Mechelle, Buy isn’t meeting the requirements to qualify for Diamond powerseller status–even with free or nearly free listings.

40,000 items, even with an average sales price of $10 (most are much lower) is only $400,000.

The uproar yesterday over the questionable item found in buy’s inventory (you know the one) wasn’t entirely because it was buy. It was also because this particular seller represents the worst of eBay. Harsh TOS, Policy violations aplenty, a lack of accountability–no action taken despite numerous reports by sellers and buyers. This seller is getting preferential treatment in every aspect of selling, from visibility to fees to immunity on policy violations.

EBay picked a horrible company to partner with. The reasons we have been given don’t jive with the facts, but who cares? Most of us will be gone from the site within the year anyway.

MechelleOn June 28, 2008 at 12:25 am Said:

I am basing my assessment simply on the feedback left for a month and last night it was 42000 received.

Today it is 43733- using my ave feedback not received of 11% that brings buys at about 48,543- considering today buy received over 1400 feedback ratings- I’m confidant when I say buy will have sold 50,000 items by the end of this month.

From looking at the first 200 feedback ratings left for buy today – there are 52 that range from $5.99 to 10. The rest are more than $10.00. Out of the 200 I looked at 11 were greater than $100- and actually totaled to $2817.37- this amount definitely brings the average well over 10 dollars per piece sold- just dividing this number by the 200 transactions gives the average transaction $14 each. The average price of the 200 transaction is at least $20 per transaction.

So – yes they will qualify for the diamond powerseller probably by the end of July.

Thanks Amber – I do realize what the contention is concerning buy, which is why I wrote about that specifically relative to the real eBay seller in contrast to the freeloading seller buy and their pursuit of diamond powerseller status.

My point was/is the diamond powerseller concept is specifically to appear as though this is still a level playing field in that the ability to negotiate pricing is available to anyone who can meet the diamond powerseller status. My second point is this will never be viewed as a level playing field, because any real ebay seller is paying real ebay seller fees and following real ebay seller rules, neither of which is buy having to surmount to reach Diamond powerseller status. So, no there is no level playing field and clearly they are being allowed to break policy, pay nothing to do so, drive other real fee paying rule following sellers out and off of eBay, and to peddle child pornography. Any real eBay seller would be suspended for this BS.

The most sickening aspect is we are paying full fees which are being used to subsidize buy’s distribution of child porn. In essence we are paying for the distribution of child pornography by buy on eBay. That is just sick- buy could at least be paying its own way if they want to distribute child pornography.

MechelleOn June 28, 2008 at 11:33 pm Said:

here is a link of the current diamond powersellers Amber

http://blog.sellerdome.com/?p=11

I must say bravo to the other if that seller did it within the eBay rules and paying the eBay fees

Patricia1On June 29, 2008 at 10:53 am Said:

“EBay picked a horrible company to partner with. The reasons we have been given don’t jive with the facts, but who cares? Most of us will be gone from the site within the year anyway.”

Perhaps only companies such as this one will even want to “partner” with the likes of Ebay. Ebay’s reputation isn’t exactly sterling – though they like to think so and their business logic of late hasn’t been exactly logical ;-)

Lu McInturffOn June 30, 2008 at 4:50 am Said:

Guess E-bay will be “working with” the Powersellers and more than likely, will have to do it soon. Their insurance will be paying the fines from the court above, combined to the initial fining. But then, their insurance rates will go up. The Australian court case seems to be costing e-bay tons of money too, especially since Google went after them.

Its good to keep up with the news regarding e-bay. For me, I went to google > news > left side of page ALERTS. Once there, I choose the Comprehensive, and then simply put in the word e-bay. I get about 8 e-mails per day to include blogs, news releases and message board postings.

Its better if I think in the “Bigger picture” regarding e-bay.

Patricia1On June 30, 2008 at 9:19 am Said:

Yes, I get those Google alerts for Ebay too. Helps to keep you up on the latest news. Although with my sales down about 90 percent on Ebay, I sure am not as interested in the nonsense as I once was. I’m more interested in driving sales elsewhere ;-)

MechelleOn July 2, 2008 at 8:21 am Said:

Someone took a screen shot of search return that didn’t look a damn thing like eBay- definitely demonstrates eBay has lost its way and they simply don’t know what they have.

So, it looks as if I need to agree with another poster that I guess eBay is attempting to emulate Amazon.

It looks as though when a search is performed listings will not display like they do now- they’ll be clumped into one generic return

So, if someone puts in toaster- generic broad search term- the results will return every BRAND > FEATURE > COLOR AND WHAT EVER ATTRIBUTES. So the search could return 50 results, but each will have a specific set of attributes and will represent all sellers offering that item.

Example
toaster brand A > 2 slice > red- return will be one listings for a toaster with these attributes: A price range xx-xxx from 15 sellers with a link to a list or a list of sellers offering this particular Toaster (brand A, 2 slice, red) there could be 50 sellers with the same item lumped into one listing/return competing on nothing but the price.

A few question for eBay- maybe Mrs. Norrington could take a minute to respond while she reads this blog- You Mrs. Norrington personally not you having Richard explain everything like he did concering your policy violations???

Is there going to be a stock photo?? doesn’t this strategy negate the DSR raised, standard, screwed sort influence?

I have also heard rumors that eBay intends to set shipping cost based on category??? I am interested in knowing how you intend to decide the allowed cost of shipping per category?? Do you intend to set prices for products as well?

WTH do you intend to do? why not share the damn plan with those of us who will be affected?

Also, why do you roll out new policies that effect listing requiring revision at different times, and without the necessary tools and or inputs in place(specify who pays return shipping)? Do you have so little respect for me that you can’t be considerate of the time it takes for me (all sellers)to revise my listings? I just revised all of my listing 2 months ago to conform to the item specifics- it took me 3 freaking (solid)days to complete them, and I have close to 300 more listings now than I did at that time. So I probably have an additional day and a half to go through and make sure all of my listings do not have any 3rd party links in them. In a couple months I will have to revise all of my listings again to deal with the return policy changes, because you don’t have the who pays return shipping spot ready to go.

Do you not see how outrageously rude and inconsiderate eBay’s attitude is on policy changes and how you time when they become effective? Well, I won’t be revising any of my listings until eBay has its crap together and provides me with the essential components you require. You can pull my listings if you want, but what comes down won’t go back up. I am not going to play this game with you. Your utter disrespect for me as a person, my time, and the money I pay you is astounding and not appreciated.

I find these concepts of improving the buying experience you/eBay have amusing. You clearly do not know the people who shop on eBay. They don’t like stock photos. You don’t realize that the various presentation of each individual store, listing, and photo play a large role in creating eBay buyer confidence. I really don’t understand where you derived the information (if any) that is influencing these changes, but it is wrong and has not had good results for you. Deny that reality as much as you like, but it is the truth of the outcome so far and will only continue to erode eBay’s viability in the coming months.

I know you have lost 2 sellers that grossed more than 2 million a year in June alone, and I am certain there will be more leaving and that more have already left. The worst thing about it is these were exceptional sellers that were nothing but an asset to eBay. You let them walk away while allowing the trash stay.

You failed to acknowledge the significance of feedback- the emotional attachment sellers have to their reputation they have busted A** to earn while selling on eBay. It is very telling when you hear sellers declare they will not be using their selling ID they have used for years (in some situations over a decade) because as they put it “I’m not letting my hard earned feedback reputation be trashed by these new policies and some non-paying bidder”. You never thought about any of us and what we have accomplished and the fact that our feedback record/reputation represents the effort and accomplishments we have made in our experience selling on eBay. Just another example of how inconsiderate you all are.

Doesn’t it concern you that right now in our current economic situation that purchasing on eBay is way down, but rising in the rest of the online market? This decrease includes auctions which should be dominating the entire online market are doing nothing – relative to their performance prior to these better for the buyer changes? I’m not sure what level of insight eBay possesses but it doesn’t appear to be to terribly much. Those two sellers that left eBay this month took their customers with them- yep in your effort to provide a better buyer experience you have lost exceptional members of the selling community and their large customer base. Some people specifically shop on eBay because they encounter the rest of the eBay market when they are purchasing from their primary seller. If that seller has moved on to another auction site, Amazon, or started their own web store that is where their customers are shopping now. For a seller to average 50 dollars per sell to have a that large of a customer base they were effective in inspiring confidence built on their reputation devoted enough to allow him/her to gross two million a year. They just took a substantial portion of eBay buying members with them. Of course the reality that many- most- eBay sellers are large consumers within the eBay market seems to be ignored. How did you not see this coming?

This unanticipated phenomena is called customer loyalty and again eBay has demonstrated its failure to understand its role in the relationship with buying members. They are not loyal to eBay management – they are not loyal to the eBay venue. They are loyal to the sellers on eBay- their favorite sellers – the sellers that have worked to earn their trust – the sellers who have gained a lifelong customer because of their hard work and effort.

eBay management needs to wake up before it is entirely to late, before you have killed eBay and lost all of your customers. I’m not witnessing a whole lot of your customers being satisfied, trusting eBay, being loyal to eBay. The persistent and predominant sentiment is feeling betrayed and disgusted by the lack of respect you have shown all of us.

I am interested in a response so if anyone of you can fit the time into participating in a bit of dialogue it would be appreciated. Though I am certainly not counting on your finding time to communicate with your customers (me and the rest of you customers- sellers).

MechelleOn July 2, 2008 at 5:16 pm Said:

my feedback is gone- it says 0???