Sunday, October 12, 2008

That Was The Week That Was!

This is my favorite story this week, Catching a Scammer on eBay
Dude, you rock!

Runner Up goes to the comments section on eBay Ink News. Not the post, the comments. The King of Smoke and Spin was moved to come out from under his rock and make not one but two denials to this question. After I picked my jaw up off the floor and dusted it off I couldn't help wondering why? Hmmm. The comment I wanted to point you to was made by Davey and if he reads this, I would like to write about you!


From the horses mouth, or am I thinking about the other end? eBay's head of Public Relations goes on and on and on in this leaked inter-department epistle. Thanks to Randy Smythe for the lead on this one on Wednesday.

FAKE BLOG of the YEAR AWARD

Goes to this piece of end product of a very stinky animal. Please do NOT click on any of the links, or advertisements. A list of ten (10) money making (for the writer) affiliate links with no disclosure masquerading as 'news'.

How to write a misleading headline "eBay shares rise as analyst upgrades, sees bottom" Inquiring minds want to know, who's bottom? American Technology Research analyst Tim Boyd upgraded eBay to "Neutral" from "Sell." saying that he believes eBay's share price, which has fallen 31 percent since July, already takes into account all sorts of bad news. Actual quotes from the analyst:

"We do not recommend buying or even holding eBay shares at this juncture . . . . These valuation levels suggest that the market views eBay as 'mostly dead'


Retro current:
From Scott Wingo's eBay Strategies blog his thoughts on eBay's latest brilliant plan, the anonymization of buyers. He includes a link to a January 2006 post about the famous non-functioning Yellow Button.

Chris Dawson on TameBay
breaks astounding news from the other side of the pond, Richard Ambrose Where's Dickie? the beloved (not) head of Trust and Safety for eBay UK apparently announced um, stated um, he leaked at the Small Business 2.0 Conference October 11 in London. Early next year eBay UK will impose maximum postage rates for media and mobile phone categories, the kicker, some of the rates will be below actual cost and for DVDs they will insist sellers offer free post, although upgrade to priority services and overseas postage can still be charged. Wow, that's pretty generous of you Dickie, what happened to "only a venue?"


Y'all come back!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have to love the irony factor in the Tamebay article about forced free postage:

Quote: "eBay are focusing on the three top reasons why buyers stop buying on eBay

1. Losing money on eBay.
2. Getting a negative feedback
3. High postage and packaging charges
"

I wonder what the top three reasons for sellers stopping selling on Ebay will be, when they decide to stop the haemorrhage of paying customers?

Ebay appears to be single handedly trying to create an ecommerce culture of free shipping by saying it is an expectation (I have not spoken to anybody yet, that is not an Ebay employee, that sees free shipping as an expectation - nor have I found anyone yet who believe that free shipping is free).

As postal rates rise (and until this point, fuel costs), Ebay is the only company that can afford to push the free shipping barrow. They not only don't own the stock and thus don't pay the shipping costs, they also earn a bonus commission for the part of the transaction they are not involved in, when shipping charges are also added into the transaction total.

Nicely, though, in an email from Ebay late last week, I was generously offered a double power seller discount if I start offering free shipping on all of my goods. Being in Australia I am entitled to precisely 0% discount, which means that if I offer free shipping on my items I will earn an additional 0% discount.

As I said, Ebay is the one ecommerce company that actually can afford to offer free shipping (although I suspect they are losing much more money through this campaign than they realise).

Kevin

JustOneVoice said...

Henrietta, You do so much good with your blog. I look for it every day, and I'm never disappointed by your insight.

Keep it up, and thank you!