I thought it would be interesting to make a list of all the changes that eBay has imposed on and proposed to their customers in the last six months, February through August 2008. I never write about anything without verifying it and the project became a massive chore.
Not only was writing about change on eBay tiring it was depressing because every piddling little change involves hours of mind numbing back end work for sellers. There have been so many this year that often sellers have not completed one change before they have to start another.
I remember very well when eBay decided that buyers should not send cash in the mail. I don't have a problem with this policy overall, as always, it was the way it was implemented and phrased that irked.
At that time I had over 2500 store listings. Each one had to be edited. Many had sales, those listings had to be ended to edit them and then relisted. Simultaneously I was answering questions from potential buyers, picking, packing and shipping, taking care of my family, running my house, taking care of livestock, any small seller will be nodding their head at this point!
On the deadline for compliance I had maybe 200 listings to go and some nice person must have reported the violations. eBay took down every listing. Not just the ones in violation but every listing in my store. I was working on one which pouffed as I was editing. Every single listing, including those which had had the criminal phrase "cash, well concealed" removed, was permanently deleted, gone.
That was the first time I stopped selling on eBay, for almost a year, but I had all that inventory so I went back. This policy has since changed, now the listings are ended but stored, a good change.
We all know "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" and we can't have a dull Jack, or Jill either for that matter. Enjoy this amazing video from Alaska.
Y'all come back! 
Sunday, August 24, 2008
All Work and No Play
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1 comment:
Ah, the cash edits, I remember those well. My first experience with the hell of editing a massive amount of eBay listings was a USPS rate change back when I quoted the amount inside my listing. Never again, I removed the shipping prices from about 7,000 listings at the time and tried to make my listings edit-proof.
Then came cash. That's the only time in my 8+ years eBay ever slapped me, I was banned from listing for 3 days because of missing a few listings with reference to accepting cash payments. I was pissed, they suspended me, yet their bulk relist tools gave no warning of any problem.
On the other hand, when you relisted items individually, you did get the warning and it was a wide blanket warning for the word cash. Thus if I listed a magazine back issue with an article about Johnny Cash for instance, I was warned with big red letters. I was stressed out back then!
Recently I edited 2,500 listings to remove links to resources on my site--then I found out the new links policy was not going to be enforced. That irked me.
And of course we're now going to have to get rid of references to accepting checks or money orders. The one bright side to that, as you know I am the eternal optimist, is that I read on the boards that this wouldn't be enforced until January 2009. Of course, we don't know if we can believe that, do we? So, I'm going to be working on that going forward a little at a time.
I'll probably just get to the end of my listings when they realize the mistake and reinstate paper payments!
Thanks, Cliff
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