Red Ink Diary

eBay and the Manx Cat

2008-11-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

The marketing consultants have a great liking for acronyms, collections of initials that are essentially meaningless unless you are one of the 'in' crowd. They use them to dazzle prospective pigeons ripe for plucking, erm, clients.

If you would like to read more please go to the new Red INK Diary site, and remember to change your bookmark!

See you there,

The Niche Book

2008-11-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

Generally speaking I am not a huge fan of eBooks. Most of the time they are a complete waste, both of my time to read them and my hard earned cash to buy them.

If you would like to read more please go to the new Red INK Diary site.

See you there!

That Was The Week

2008-11-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

Red Ink Diary has moved, lock stock and barrel (all past posts and comments are on the new site) please click on the link to go there.

Red Ink Diary has Moved

2008-11-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

Red Ink Diary has moved, lock stock and barrel (all past posts and comments are on the new site) please click on the logo or the link to go there.

It has been 'interesting' making the transition to WordPress. On the whole I like it.

I have put a feed subscription button in the sidebar, let me know if it works!

See y'all over there!

Security Spotlight PayPal Questions

2008-11-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

My friends at the Brews News noted glitches at PayPal in their blog earlier this week. The eBay boards have been in uproar about it since the morning of October 28th.

Well so far PayPal has not manually released my funds from my unclaimed eChecks, as they had promised. My Buyers are not happy, as they of course already see their funds cleared from their account.

I ask PayPal if they would as least send emails to the buyers affected to explain. They acted like, "why?". I had to explain it three times before they even understood how the buyers expect shipments after they pay. It's like they don't even understand how eBay works!

PayPal now has $1000 of mine on hold FOR NO REASON AT ALL, which makes it pretty hard to run a business. If they, for example, have only 2000 $250 'holds' at any time, that's half a million of our money they are earning interest on.

That is five days ago and co-incidentally the same morning John Canfield eBays' Senior Director for Fraud Prevention Policy made an announcement regarding eBays Shill Bidding Initiative

Based on the positive results we’ve seen by anonymizing bidder User IDs, as well as our commitment to protecting all bidders from becoming targets for fraudsters, we’ve decided to extend anonymized User IDs to winning bidders, as well. This change will be implemented sometime this week.

and the Trusted Selling with Identity Confirmation plan. That is the one where if you attempt to use eBay with a computer they have not seen before, they freeze your account and make an automated telephone call. If you are not home, or like me, do not have touch tone telephone service, you get to deal with Live Helpless. Hello hello!

But I digress!

I asked a question on eBayInkBlog several times this year to which

Richard Brewer-Hay was unable to get a sensible (to me) answer, although he did try. A post introducing Rich LaMagna this week offered an opportunity which I took. Much to my surprise Mr LaMagna responded. In fact, he responded to everyone who posted not just the cheerleaders. Positive Feedback to him.

Remember the minor news item earlier this year about fake Skype subscriptions being used to defraud PayPal accounts? Here is a well written complaint dating back to March 2008.

The Industry Standard, a San Francisco based publication, features news and analysis that covers emerging technologies and companies, venture funding, acquisitions, site launches, and other developments in the internet space. An article goes into great detail including many screenshots.

I am wondering if there is any connection to the 'glitch' above. What do you think?

Y'all come back!

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The Industry Standard 10.28.2008

Orange County Register June 2007

Praise for ProPay, Good Grief!

2008-10-31T01:05:00.000-07:00

For those of us who are no longer doing eBay, ProPay has come up with the coolest gadget I have seen in years. The days of lugging around a three pound weight credit card scanner for point of sale charges are over!

Are you working craft fairs, flea markets, sales parties or shows? Check this out. Full disclosure, I gain no financial benefit from telling you about this whatsoever.
The MicroSecure Card Reader. Is that cool or what?

It is a secure, encrypted, portable card reader that comes with a lanyard and USB cord. You simply swipe the card, the green button lights to tell you everything is copascetic, record the name, amount of charge and last 4 digits only of the card in your duplicate receipt book, hand your customer their receipt and move on to the next sale. You can store 71 transactions at a time. When you get home, plug the Card Reader into the USB port on your computer, login, your transactions will appear one at a time. Enter the amount of the transaction and an optional invoice number. No more entering card numbers and hoping you got them right.

If you have an internet connection and computer available, the reader processes and authorizes real time transactions.

How secure is secure?

From the look of it, very secure indeed. The device stores and encrypts the data and is fully compliant with card-association security standards. If it gets lost or stolen the information is still secure and can't be decrypted without access to your ProPay account and using the ProPay software.

And the price tag is?

Amazingly low. Did I just say that? Hmmm.

Regular price $149.95 with a $4.95 service fee per month. Pay that fee annually up front and it drops to $39.95, a year. There is an introductory price on the device of $99.95 and service fees are waived through 2008 (better than a swift slap upside the haid!) If you buy more than one you will not be charged more than one monthly service fee. No contract, no termination fee and you can sell the device (with some restrictions) if you no longer need it.

There are of course the normal merchant credit account fees in addition to the card reader service fees.

Back in the day I paid over $200 for my reader and $75 a month, with a one year contract. I had to lug carbon paper forms, be connected to electricity and a phone and most of the time input the transaction more than once.

I am really impressed. I don't often say that.

Y'all come back!

In Demand on eBay

2008-10-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

Once again Scot Wingo has a very interesting revelation on his blog. Scot is the President and CEO of ChannelAdvisor, which provides large retailers and manufacturers with the tools and services they need to successfully utilize consumer marketplaces as a sales channel. Recently ChannelAdvisor received substantial funding from eBay; one of the main marketplaces they utilize.

Although InDemand will not please smaller sellers or those sellers whom eBay considers 'not good enough' to benefit, (regardless of what information they have on their dashboards) on the surface it could be a positive move to match retail supply with demand.

Positive:

eBay has been guarding their data for years and only trot carefully selected portions of it out when they think it will give them backing for the policy of the moment. Maybe someone in a position of power has finally realized that sellers can use data to offer stock that buyers are looking for. That is a radical concept which takes the first tiny baby step towards realization that eBay and sellers should not be locked into an eBay fomented adversarial position. Yes, unless eBay is going to Amazonize to the point of stocking and fulfilling orders themselves they do need sellers.

Negative:

Virtually the same set of well connected high volume sellers of brand new goods will receive all the benefits of this program. *If they can qualify.*

Everyone else is invisible, sheesh, just pay your fees and shut up!

From what we know so far, InDemand will be gameable; if it is possible sellers will do it.

In order to prevent gaming the system eBay may well make it effectively unusable

eBay appears to be giving items their own set of eBay ID numbers, why? All this type of product already have ISBN numbers and SKUs.

The devil will be in the details

History has shown that eBay is capable of conceiving wonderful ideas. Implementing them in a usable manner is is a challenge that eBay has repeatedly failed.

*If you qualify for this program and sell the types of items that would benefit from it please satisfy my curiosity and leave a note in the comments section. After checking feedback for several excellent sellers who do not qualify, I am wondering if anybody qualifies.

Implementation of yet another elitist eBay program makes me want to turn into a socialist, or a vegetarian anarchist, or something. Maybe just staying an ex-eBay seller will be less stressful.

Y'all come back!

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“Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others.”

Randy Smythe - My Blog Utopia!

eBay Turns On

2008-10-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

Dinesh is at it again. Yup he of the feather and VP Seller Experience. That is an interesting title. Note they don't say Good Seller Experience. He made an announcement on the 16th about legal gambling on eBay and another one on the 21st to remind sellers to do their chores before eBay turns on the Paperless Seller Experience.

It then took another week for eBay to turn it on. So what else is new? According to Scot Wingo, although he is very polite and sideways about it, it is not quite ready for prime time.

No he didn't actually say 'not ready for prime time', he didn't say "You have egg on your face, Sir" either, what he said, politely, is that there are ramifications to the policy eBay apparently hasn't thought about. I guess they didn't cover that in the MBA program. Scot said he had been talking to John McDonald (big chief eBay's Trust and Safety for the USA) who did not have an answer to the following question:

There is some confusion around international (eBay calls this cross border trade or CBT)- e.g. can I specifically mention in my USA listing that "for DE buyers I take x, y, z?" - assuming x/y/z are allowed in DE, but not in USA?

What a surprise!

Personally I could care less whether a buyer uses Google Checkout, mails me a check or Money Order or meets me at the local Starbucks with cash. Heck if they want to they can even use PayPal, but then I don't sell on eBay any more, so I can be the decider in my business. I like that, it is why I am not an employee drawing a paycheck.

Y'all come back!

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Well Whaddya Know?

2008-10-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

I guess if you aren't an eBay insider or e-comfortable it is easy to get confused.

I can tell you that Pierre was surprised, see for yourself:

There is a short news video clip (scroll down) and I found the most amusing part of it to be Meg's face.

Personally I have always believed Keith Ferrazzi who said that to be credible "the first prerequisite is deep familiarity and facility with your subject matter." On the other hand maybe Ferrazzi Greenlights mission and values aren't a good fit in this case.

Y'all come back!

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That Was The Week That Was

2008-10-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

To be perfectly honest it really wasn't much of a week. All the usual boring eBay glitches, which may or may not be glitches. Anyone who is still struggling with eBay and does not have a multi-channel marketing plan in place deserves what they are receiving. Undoubtedly for some people eBay is still a good thing, or they think it is, which amounts to the same thing.

The economy is still revolting but people can only live at the peak of terror for just so long before they become numbed to it. Our job is to be ready when they want to buy themselves a little treat.

If you enjoy BritLit I have a little treat for you! Alexander McCall Smith is perhaps best known in the USA for his beguiling series The #1 Ladies Detective Agency, set in Botswana. He is currently writing a daily serial book called Corduroy Mansions for the Telegraph.co,uk You can choose to read on line, to receive it by RSS or email, or download it in audio format read by Andrew Sachs, best known as Manuel in Fawlty Towers. Chapter 1

Here is a dose of reality from UK author, consultant and former eBay employee Dan Wilson for you to read, it does have a lot of truth in it and I hope you will share your thoughts in the comments.

A Seeking Alpha article by 'eBay investor' on PayPal and the value the author attributes to PayPal in eBay Inc share price, this is the second article and there is a link to the first. The comments in both pieces are interesting. One wonders why he or she feels a need for anonymity.

A Business Week story about Big Lots move online

The Brews News response to an article on eBayINK. Brews News always writes interesting articles and I highly recommend you add her to your daily reading.

Cliff Alliperti, eBay PowerSeller and Classic Movie expert writes about the Bonanzle experience on his blog Movie Profiles and Premiums and so does fitzcharming on her blog CharmChatter

Y'all come back!

Blatant Counterfeits Continue to Be Offered on eBay

2008-10-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

What a surprise!

An October 22nd 2008 press release from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition has some astounding numbers.

"According to FBI, Interpol, World Customs Organization and International Chamber of Commerce estimates, roughly 7-8 percent of world trade every year is in counterfeit goods. United States "businesses and industries lose about $200 billion a year in revenue and 750,000 jobs due to the counterfeiting of merchandise"; worldwide, counterfeiting accounts for more than half a trillion dollars in global trade each year."

In a brief filed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in support of Tiffany's appeal in its lawsuit against eBay the IACC references eBay's "persistent failure to meet its obligations to prevent illegal sales of counterfeit and infringing goods on its site."

In 2003 Tiffany sent eBay 20,915 notices about the "deluge of counterfeit merchandise"

In 2004 - 45,242 notices were sent

In 2005 - 59,012

By 2006 - the number had risen to 134,779

Robert Barchiesi, President of the IACC said,

"Counterfeiting is a criminal activity carried out on global scale and, with eBay turning a blind eye, broadly on the Internet. In fact, eBay is estimated to provide the forum for 29 percent of the entire online counterfeit market ...It is not acceptable that today eBay still tolerates blatant counterfeits being sold on its website...The brief asks the Court to hold eBay responsible for the open and notorious counterfeiting that occurs, with its knowledge and to its economic benefit on its sites."

A quick titles only search of eBay this morning found close to 2000 "Tiffany Style" items. I haven't visited eBay much recently, preferring to use the Google Shopping search. I was shocked to see so many blatant listing violations. eBay has some good rules to protect buyers but enforcement seems lacking.

I wonder if the exodus of volunteers who routinely reported violations coupled with mass layoffs among support staff has sent a message to less than scrupulous sellers that the cat is away. Not only the mice are playing, sadly I saw some rat sized listing violations in the few minutes I was on eBay.

Y'all come back!

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A Message From ProPay

2008-10-23T11:32:00.001-07:00

Red Ink Diary was honored yesterday by a visit from Brandon Crotts of ProPay who left a comment on my post about the two new payment processing options for eBay sellers. Long time readers will remember Brandon from my post about ProPay vs PayPal in late August.

Thank you Brandon for posting. Here is the question I asked the (very nice) ProPay CSR

I am a silver powerseller (I am not but it was a rhetorical question) and in January due to failure to maintain volume I loose my PS status. What happens?

The answer I got was that on review I would be offered a different plan tailored to my seller status at the time.

From this I wrote in my blog "Are you comfortable with the possibility of losing your payment processor if your PS status drops and/or paying increased fees?"

I am curious to know in what way I "had it wrong", if Debbie and Brews are "right" your implication is, I had it wrong.

If I loose my PS status my rate does not change?

Image courtesy of www.hedweb.com

As an ex-eBay seller I am very familiar with the carrot and stick concept. As a low GMV seller I would be the recipient of the stick, you would recognize me by my shaggy gray coat and very large ears, which hear very well by the way.

What I hear is not something I like. It is not in any way wrong or abnormal in business. It is a fact of life that the more you consume or purchase, the better deal or discount you get. That doesn't mean I have to like it!

As I stated in my response,

ProPay have worked very hard to come up with a plan for eBay sellers which should be mutually advantageous and is infinitely superior to what they were offering earlier this year.

The ProPay eAuction plan is a special deal directly tied to seller status on eBay. If on evaluation you no longer qualify, either because of DSRs, (losing PS because of one below permitted level) or volume you will have to move to a different plan.

I stand by my post. That is something every well brought up donkey knows how to do.

Onward.

My business is about 30% export, or cross border. ProPay does not, at this time, offer an international payment processing facility. I have been told that ProPay has excellent customer service. From my very minimal experience with them this is true. I am pleased and delighted that ProPay were able to come up with a viable alternative to the PayPal stranglehold on eBay sellers. I sincerely hope that ProPay will continue to work on producing an even more comprehensive service for ALL established eBay sellers..

Y'all come back!

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Out to Lunch

2008-10-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

My brain is out to lunch today!

Y'all come back tomorrow! OK? See you then.

Shameless Promotion

2008-10-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Haven't had one of these in a while!

Everybody has a special someone, someone who deserves a special card, something that you don't see in the supermarket card aisle. I sell very special cards (what a surprise!) for very special people.

This is Sinterklaas riding his white Arabian looking horse laden with old fashioned toys.. That is the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. It is a complex die cut card (with cut outs on the inside, not just around the edges) & embossing adds dimension to the card. A piece of thick cardboard is attached to the back, allowing the card to be displayed free standing. Comes with an envelope and is approximately 6-1/4" tall and 4-3/4" wide overall.

These three versions of Father Christmas, Pere Noel, Santa Claus, are reproduced from antique European scrap art of the Victorian and Edwardian eras & make a huge freestanding card, approximately 8" tall and almost 10" wide. This card comes with its own cream colored envelope. A little poem is printed on the back.

May all that's jolly,
Bright and gay
Delight your heart
This Christmas Day.

Serious brownie points on this one men! Mothers flip.

Darling reproduction Victorian Christmas ornament Church with snow covered steeple, printed both sides, die cut and embossed. Comes with its own gold cord for hanging.
Brand new; approximately 3-1/2" by 2-3/4"

Three Angels Dancing a blonde, brunette and a redhead, each has a golden star on her brow. Beautiful complex diecut with many interior cuts, printed both sides, die cut and embossed. Comes with its own gold cord for hanging. Size: 3-1/2" by 2-3/4"

I offer wonderful combined shipping, you pay one shipping fee, the heaviest item, all the rest of your additional items come free.

Many more wonderful cards, gift tags ornaments etc at Felicitations at 200 West Main and be sure to check out the other shops at 200 West Main while you are in the neighborhood.

Y'all come back!

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PayPal Competitive Offer? Yes, but . . .

2008-10-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

This week the policy change requiring all payments on eBay to be electronic takes effect. The press release from ProPay.com October 7th made it clear that ProPay would be no alternative to PayPal on eBay for any sellers below Silver PowerSeller status. Quote from ProPay's website:

Currently, the ProPay eAuction account is exclusively for US-based eBay Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Titanium PowerSellers.

Smaller sellers or sellers who have higher volume with low Average Sales Price (ASP) items are used to only seeing the stick from eBay. All the carrots this year have gone to PowerSellers. Now lower level PowerSellers are losing the carrot. Once again while all are equal, some are more equal than others.

A second press release dated October 19th states ProPay's transaction rates are scaled to PS status:

Silver -- 2.7% and $0.30 USD per transaction

Gold and Platinum -- 2.4% and $0.30 USD per transaction

Titanium level sellers are encouraged to contact ProPay direct to set up custom transaction fees.

I have one major question for the seller who plans on using ProPay.

Are you comfortable with the possibility of losing your payment processor if your PS status drops and/or paying increased fees?

Quietly, with very little fanfare from PayPal labs comes an interesting new offering designed for processing micro-payments. The formula is the familiar decrease on front end with an adjustment in the percentage rate. Also familiar is the confusing language and charts to explain terms. The transaction fee drops to 5c from 30c and correspondingly the percentage rises from 2.9% to 5%.

The tipping point, or transaction size at which the micro-payment plan costs more than the regular PayPal plan is $12. Payments under $12 will save on the micro plan. See the chart here.

The drawback is that you have to choose between the micro-payment program and a regular account. This program might be of value to sellers who are

(a) willing to go through the hassle of opening a second PayPal account which requires a 'fresh' credit card that does not appear on your main PayPal account, and
(b) are able to split their business into total transaction under $12 and the over $12 transaction groups with separate payment processing.

Remember that for PayPal it is the total transaction being processed that pays fees, including shipping, not just the sale price.

Y'all come back!

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That Was The Week That Was?

2008-10-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

Absolutely my top choice blog post this week, Brews News

Not only is the percentage I pay to eBay and Paypal higher than my Amazon fee percentage (total 15% which includes payment processing fees) but my Average Selling Price (ASP) on eBay is significantly lower than other venues. In addition, eBay continues to provide less service for the increased fees I pay.

Runner-Up:

Radical and revolutionary common sense from As Was

Between eBay and PayPal/credit card processing fees, someone can easily be losing 12%, 15%, even 18% of their sale price. We even had a client recently tell us her eBay fees were 20-25% of her sale price. This fee is probably most or even all of your entire markup. You can't have money in your pocket when the costs of doing business leave you with little or no profit (or even a loss).

From eBay and Beyond, this is an older article but the author should be praised for his exceptional clarity of vision.

related article from eCommerce Marketing Radio Network: Bank of eBay

Retro Current
Michael Malone wrote 'This Week, eBay Took the First Step to Becoming an Auction Company No More'

Just for fun: Way to go Ferdinandgingercat!

Finally, are there really people that dumb out there? Uh Huh!

Y'all come back!

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Divide and Conquer

2008-10-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

One of the major effects of John Donohoe's disruptive innovation on eBay has been a polarization of eBay sellers. He used the divide and conquer tactic and for a while it worked. I wrote about it in early April as the first cycle of 'decreased and adjusted' billing completed.

In the days when eBay was a community, experienced sellers, many of them very high volume volunteered in the Answer Center and helped beginning sellers become good sellers. I know this because I was once one of those beginning sellers who was trained to do it right. I have always believed "What goes around comes around" that thought can also be found in the beautiful language of the King James Testament, Galatians 6:7 "..whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap". Years later when I actually knew what I was doing most of the time I too volunteered in the Answer Center.

That ended when eBay 'fixed a system that wasn't broke' with what, with 20/20 hindsight was a precursor of the Detailed Seller Rating system. The search function was 'weighted' to return threads that had been voted on as being helpful or not helpful. How do you think a slightly crooked seller would vote after being roundly told that his listing was in violation and business practices unacceptable?

Soon responders were registering 'posting IDs' to protect their eBay business from malicious buying just to give negative feedback. Both the good guys and the bad guys gamed the votes and eventually 'finding' was corrupted beyond redemption. If you are volunteering and the job is no longer rewarding the incentive is soon gone. Many of the good guys went away and eBay's customer service suffered.

Fast forward to October, six months after PowerSellers started eligibility for discounted Final Value Fees. Many smaller sellers left in May, they were the 'disgruntled noise'. Since then a trickle of sellers, business people who analyzed eBay and found it an increasingly unsustainable venue have quietly (for the most part) formulated an exit strategy, implemented it and gone.

The Brews News wrote twice this week on the subject, Thursday about the effects of lowered fees on their business and today about eBay's seller shrinkage and what the prognosis is for Q1-09. Insightful commentary and I recommend reading it.

What lessons can we learn from this experience? Please add your comments so we may all have food for thought.

Y'all come back!

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Announcements Everywhere

2008-10-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Dinesh Lathi (yes he of the feather fame) Vice President, Seller Experience on eBay, made an announcement. Nice looking young fella isn't he? I bet his Mama is so proud of him. I know, they make announcements all the time to a point where eBay sellers can be found curled up in a fetal position under their desks banging their heads on the floor. In case you have been avoiding it I am quoting the juicy bit here:

Introducing Featured First, a New Listing Upgrade
We’re also introducing a new listing upgrade called Featured First. Add Featured First to your listings for an opportunity to appear in the featured area at the top of the first page of search results. A limited number of Featured First listings are randomly selected to be rotated into the featured area, so there’s no guarantee yours will appear. But this upgrade is still a great way to significantly boost your chances of being displayed on the first page for increased visibility and increased likelihood of a sale. It’s also a great way to jump start "recent sales" for a new Fixed Price listing.

Featured First takes the place of Gallery Featured and is offered for the same price: $24.95 for up to 10 days, and $74.95 for up to 30 days. (italicization is mine!)

WOW! What a Seller Experience enhancing deal, eBay sellers should be grateful, probably surprised and delighted too. Drop $75 for a chance. Is that gambling? Looks like it to me and you get to pay for it with PayPal. Wow!

It was a big day for announcements. Bill Harding Founder of Bonanzle made one too.

Bonanzle's deal is a great deal more open and transparent. Dare I say honest? Yup honest.

Membership Upgrades of Pro Features

Bonanzle is now offering completely optional additional features for a fee. Like just about anywhere else if you pay a lump sum up front you can get a discount, (my website hosting is $50 a year or $72 if I choose to pay monthly for example).

Here is a link to the features page. Hillary over at The Whine Seller wrote a very good post on it and I am not going to repeat it. There was a very minor kerfuffle on the boards with the announcement but I honestly feel the majority see it as a business decision. If you don't need or use the analytics why pay for it if you don't have to? As Bill said

"Upgrading does not change your positioning in the search results. We do not adjust the main body of search results for Premier Members. That would make search less relevant. . . . choosing not to be a Plus or Premier member will in no way affect your ability to do business on Bonanzle. You can continue to setup your booth for free, list your items for free, and do everything else you could already do on Bonanzle for free. We’re taking nothing away, but for those who can help our business stay funded, we are adding some perks to them to show our appreciation.”

Bonanzle now has 5334 registered users, although registration is not required to purchase on the site, and 203762 items listed. There are 1216 booths or active sellers on the site.

Y'all come back!

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The Whine Seller - Bonanzle offers new Plus and Premier Paid Membership Tiers

Is the Honeymoon Over?

2008-10-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

Checking on SellerDome today I noticed something strange about Buy.com which was (and still is, so far) eBay's only Diamond Power Seller. If you search SellerDome for Buy, the most recent monthly sales data is July 5th. It looks like the site is currently processing an update. Below the July figures are updated figures dated October 6th for their current listings.

On July 5th Buy had 1,600,397 listings
By October 6th Buy had 735,962 listings
October inventory is roughly 46% of July inventory.

On July 5th Buy had a sell through rate of 2.3% on 151,162,750 items offered at an Average Sale Price of $42.26. No October figure is available at this time.

If Buy was paying standard insertion fees for Fixed Price 30 day listings on their current listing inventory it would cost them approximately $15,000.00 a month. With an Average Sale Price of 42.26 FVF (before any PS incentives, special deals or discounts) would amount to around $145,400.00 in other words, paying full freight, eBay could expect a maximum of around $160K per month ($1.9M per annum) less any applicable discounts. Ignoring the IF and PayPal, eBay's take is approximately 6.5% of sales. This is fingers and toes accounting or pure guesstimation.

Recently Buy has come into compliance with the PayPal only requirement. Previously they stated "we are unable to accept PayPal at this time". This probably will not add to their payment processing fees per se because of the volume. It does however put them at risk for chargebacks and the endless glitches we endure in any deal that involves eBay. Extra employee hours will be required to reconcile and balance the books. Shrinkage will increase.

Another recent change to Buy's eBay business model is free shipping on eBay inventory. Previously this was only offered on their website. I think this will make it much easier for Buy to get an accurate cost comparison of the costs of doing business on eBay as opposed to their own website.

Now lets look at the intangibles. Goodwill is nonexistent among many eBay sellers who are justifiably resentful of Buy's 'teacher's pet' status. If each hostile person shares that hostility with ten others the negativity compounds at an alarming rate. This can and will affect sales. Buy harvests contact information from eBay buyers and adds them to their mailing lists. Some buyers see this as spam, nobody likes spam and each time you get one it may reinforce negativity, or, have precisely the opposite effect anticipated or desired.

Buy.com is a business. Just like eBay, decisions are made by looking at the bottom line. Emotion and warm fuzzies have no impact on planning for profitability.

eBay has assiduously cultivated and created a buyer mentality that is unparalleled elsewhere. Buyer expectations on eBay would be greeted with hysterical laughter in any B&M retail establishment. Visualize, customer in Sears, Macys anywhere "This is overpriced I will pay you 30% of your asking price and I expect you to deliver it free, then if I say I don't like it you will refund me 100% and I get to keep it".

Have Buy.com been "surprised and delighted" by their eBay experience? They are not saying but I would bet money they have been surprised, and probably not delighted by the seller experience on eBay.

The big questions are:

Is the sales volume what was anticipated?

Are they committed to eBay for a set period of time and if not, how long will they stay?

Are they contemplating packing their bags and hitting the road?

Time will tell!

Y'all come back!

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My Blog Utopia! - On eBay: The Little Guy Can't Take IT Anymore

Gone

2008-10-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

Susan became an eBay member September 22nd 1999. A few days after her ninth eBay anniversary an eBay representative told her

"everyone who purchased from your store is eBay's customer and you are nothing but a middleman for eBay's customers".

You can see a screen shot of the original discussion board comment here. This gratuitous insult was the straw that broke the camels back. Susan closed her eBay store this week.

Susan has 1182 transactions, 100% positive feedback and Detailed Seller Ratings of 4.9, 4.9, 4.8 and 4.7. The shipping cost DSR is amazing because Susan sells heavy old vinyl records! She is the epitome of the type of buyer and seller who helped build eBay and her 'eBay roots' were deep. Her eBay history closely parallels my own, she has three weeks 'seniority' to me having been a member since September 22nd, 1999 while I joined October 11th.

Susan did not join the February boycott, nor did she strike in May as so many others did. When I asked if she would allow me to write a profile she said

"Please understand, I don't hate eBay. Because of eBay I was able to start a home based business and build a good rep with my customers. I have experienced many changes over the years with eBay, and kept my mouth shut. I just rolled with the punches and kept singing their praises until this year. I think greed and poor management is hurting them."

Susan's story in her own words; this will sound familiar to many of you.

"I started with eBay September, 1999, looking for a bowl to replace the one I broke a few days earlier. The broken bowl belonged to my mother-in-law and I found one just like it on eBay. The auction was coming to an end, only minutes left and someone outbid me, with 10 seconds left I added one last bid and won. I was hooked.

I began selling little things I didn't want anymore shortly after that and loved to watch the feeding frenzy that took place in the final minute. It was exciting to watch how people reacted to what I called "my junk".

In 2001, I had to have major back surgery. Unable to walk for months, I was told I had no choice, the surgery had to take place. After the surgery I was very limited to what I could do and I began to fight depression.

A friend knowing I once sold on eBay, brought me boxes and boxes of record albums. He told me to add them to my collection or try selling them on eBay. I have collected records since the early 60's and love to show off my collection. Since my living room floor was covered in records I started cleaning them, listening to them, taking pictures and listing them on eBay.

I poured my heart and soul into my business. After selling 10 or so records, I decided to open a store front. Countless hours went into building my store."

Clicking on any picture will take you to that item in Susan's new Bonanzle booth, The Record Hut where her inventory now lives.

Why is Susan no longer selling on eBay?

Best Match searching is one of my biggest complaints. I can't find my products in search, what makes me think the buyer is going to have any better chance?

My sales have dropped since May to the point I spend most of my earnings paying the Ebay fees and this month wondering if I will have enough in PayPal to cover those fees.

Instead of listing new items, it seems most of my time is spent revising to meet their newest rules.

The DSR "star system" is a complete kick in the teeth to the sellers,

Only being able to leave a positive for a buyer no matter what they put you through is horrible. Since it started, I have more non-paying bidders than I have had in 9 years.

Capped shipping has effected my business somewhat. I ship mulitiple records, boxed sets, or 78's not DVDs. When I addressed my concerns about this with a customer rep. I was told, to just had the extra on the starting price of the item. Of course this works for them, the FVF's will go up. And once again, the sellers are suppose to "suck it up".

Only accepting PayPal is another problem. Many of my buyers pay with personal check or money orders. I have never had a problem with a check or money order, but by requiring PayPal only, it is more money for Ebay.

I had a phone call from an Ebay rep. who wanted to tell me about a wonderful offer for sellers, "free shipping". When I asked who was going to pay for the shipping she replied, "I don't know". I asked if I took my packages to the post office will they accept them without postage, she said, "No". Then who is going to pay for the shipping? She said, "the script I am reading doesn't say." She will probably NOT be one of the 1000 getting laid off. She fits in their customer service perfectly...clueless!!!

Y'all come back

Related Stories:

And Another One Bites the Dust
Hitting the Highway

A Monday Morning Surprise

2008-10-14T09:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when I fed my hens we has some surprise visitors. We have pigeons and mynah birds every day plus the usual hordes of sparrows but I had never seen birds like these before. My husband tells me they are Kalij Pheasants (Lophura leucomelanos)pronounced Ka-leege, which were imported from Nepal in 1962.

They are quite large, bantam size, and there were two males and a female. One of my Australorp hens likes to fly out of the pen and forage in my next door neighbors yard. My neighbor doesn't mind so I have not clipped the hen's wings. Much to my surprise one of the male visitors chased her up the fence line and back down again until she found a place she could get through into the safety of the hen yard. I had never seen that kind of aggressive behavior in a game bird, my hen was at least twice as large as he was, but being a chicken she acted like a chicken and ran for her life. No eggs from her for a few days!

If you are thinking about keeping a few backyard hens you could do a lot worse than the Australian Black Orpington. They are prolific layers of what the pros call a 'tinted' egg which is medium brown, and delicious.

Y'all come back!

That Was The Week That Was!

2008-10-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

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 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!

Deceptive Doings Down Under

2008-10-10T02:31:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons why I keep going back to this story is that my crystal ball tells me we will be seeing large eBay seller defaults in the USA after Christmas. Learn from history and if you must shop on eBay, always pay with your credit card.

When eBay's seventh largest Australian seller "ebusiness-supplies" (or EBS) went into receivership in July about 4,000 creditors (mostly eBay buyers) were owed about A$1.7 million. In the face of nationwide consumer outrage and considerable negative media publicity PayPal announced the funding of a special fund to compensate all victims who paid and lost using PayPal.

Three months on, it is now clear that PayPal misled the victims and misled the media - its statements and actions since then prove this beyond doubt. It appears the original announcements were little more than a publicity exercise to promote the purported buyer protection benefits of PayPal - at the expense of thousands of defrauded buyers.

Mid July eBay announced second-quarter profit jumped 22 per cent, with strong growth in its e-commerce sites and its PayPal payments service. PayPal, revenue rose 32 percent to $US602 million. CEO John Dohonoe was quoted

"This was a strong quarter and we are very pleased with the performance of the portfolio, particularly with the growth generated by PayPal"

eBay and PayPal have done incalculable harm to the credibility of their business in Australia. Public perception is not that they are simply incompetent, or micro-managed from the USA but that they are dishonest or "twisted." Mid August, less than a month after revealing PayPal revenue rose 32% in the second quarter eBay announced (bolding is mine)

"PayPal has been working through the process of identifying its customers that have recently been affected by the collapse of EBS International (in liquidation), operating on eBay.com.au as eBusiness Supplies and running the website at www.bestbargains.com.au," it said.

"Customers who have been directly impacted by eBusiness collapse have now all been credited by PayPal to either their PayPal account or credit card."

This statement was more than misleading, it was not true.

Australian investigative TV program ABC's 7.30 Report aired October 2nd. eBay's Daniel Feiler was interviewed and filmed. If you have not seen the video go here, Mr Feiler's wide eyed boyish charm rang false. Arrangements had been made to interview and film a spokesperson from PayPal, however PayPal withdrew from this at the last minute. Miraculously several buyers who had been previously denied refunds, received refunds just days before the program aired. The heavy hand of the PR department can clearly be seen at work on the two stories below.

Debbie Robbins of Queensland had filed a claim for $2025 on three items and completed PayPal's statutory declaration. She was fully reimbursed for two items totaling about $700 but PayPal denied her claim for a spa from EBS for $1325 saying she had missed a June deadline. Debbie posted this in the comments section of this story. (bolding is mine)

I am the Debbie Robins mentioned in your online story and I just want to let you know that PayPal did finally refund me the $1325.00 for the sauna that I purchased last week. It took awhile but it happened at last. Kelly Stevens from PayPal read your article and wanted to be sure that I set the record straight with regard to this developement. Feel free to let her know that I have done so. Thanks again Debbie Robins

Paul Foster of New South Wales also received a miraculous reimbursement of $435 after being told he was not eligible for the EBS special fund as his transaction with EBS was "outside its reporting criteria". Mr Foster made lots of 'noise.' Not only did he complain to both eBay and PayPal, he also lodged a complaint with the Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman.

As Auntie May would say "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."

Y'all come back!

Related articles and Links:

Australian IT News - PayPal to Refund More EBS Victims
-PayPal Silent on eBay Refunds Dispute

PayPal's Unwelcome Mat

2008-10-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Bill You Later or Pay You Later?

PayPal's newest advertising campaign in the UK begun in September and is aimed at retailers. IT asks if they are "alienating" customers by not offering PayPal as a payment method.

The "Unwelcome" campaign, which has been created by Base One, shows shopkeepers holding signs saying "Go Away", suggesting that not offering PayPal is the equivalent of sending customers away. It also intends to highlight PayPal as a secure and convenient method of online payment.

Last week I read this blog by Matt O'Hern I found it interesting for several reasons. Matt has been an eBay user for some years, appears to be an occasional seller but more frequent buyer and played an involuntary game of Bait the Bot.

The next item to catch my eye on the subject was a post from the UK. Cliff Saran of Computer Weekly reports casual users are getting upset and think PayPal should be subject to UK banking regulations.

"As it is, it appears to be completely remote and unaccountable to its users and judging from threads I have read elsewhere appears able to act with impunity, and gets away with it."

Well that is a surprise!

In Australia there is a strong movement lobbying for regulation of PayPal. I wrote that Andrew Pipolo the Managing Director of PayPal has been summoned to a meeting with the Reserve Bank of Australia, which will undoubtedly lead to some form of restriction on PayPal's operating methods. Australia will, in my opinion, be the first of many countries to take a long hard look at PayPal; which is appropriate given eBay's fondness for using Australia as guinea pig country.

In the UK, which is highly regulated, there is growing seller dissatisfaction with eBay and PayPal's propensity for both quoting and enforcing handling and return laws and regulations which do not exist in the format eBay policy requires from sellers. There has been enough 'noise' that some policies have been deferred until after Christmas. Will the UK be country number two to impose regulations?

Given the recent purchase of Bill Me Later there might be grounds for thinking eBay Inc. will have something close to a monopoly on online payments. Perhaps it is time for the FTC to be asked to take a look at the situation. The current trend towards acknowledgment of a need for closer oversight and regulation of financial institutions may well be favorable to those who believe PayPal is overdue for inspection. A complaint to the FTC is the first step.

Those of you who read my blog know that sitting in front of your computer and whining doesn't even make you feel better. It is simply depressing. We have to DO something! Write a complaint to the FTC today. It will take you 15 minutes at most.

Y'all come back!

Related articles and Links:

Computer Weekly Cliff Saran
- More Insanity on PayPal
- PayPal Money Laundering Nonsense
- UK Users Attack PayPal's Anti Fraud Policies

eBays Plans For Europe Updated

2008-10-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

This morning we get a glimpse of eBay's plans for Europe.

By the end of Q1 2009 eBay will shut down its operations in Poland and a majority of 39 countries in which it has local versions of its Internet auction portal.

Operations in Europe will be run from two headquarters in London and Bern. The plans mean laying off about 1,000 of its 16,000 strong workforce. "Persons who will stay in the company will be moved to eBay headquarters, or will be employed in PayPal or Skype," said Karol Świtała, spokesperson of eBay Polska.

Changes in the structure of the company should bring about savings of $70-80 million by the end of the year.

eBay currently has European regional operations in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. I am not sure if Turkey would be included in Europe, geographically it would make sense.

UPDATED

Much coverage in the European press as people realize that all country offices will be closed with the exception of course of London and Berne, Switzerland. It appears that all marketing will be run from the USA.

From Germany Der Tagesspiegel reports:
The Ebay speaker confirmed only that management functions are above average strongly affected by job reduction.

From Austria the Wirtschafts Blatt questions eBay's business model citing the cutting of jobs to save an estimated $70M next year while simultaneously spending $1.4B in a shopping spree.

If the supremacy of eBay a few years ago was undisputed it is no longer so, successful online dealers have gradually discovered alternative sales possibilities on the Internet, also in Austria. The strong arm enforcement of Paypal as a payment method has increasingly infuriated PowerSellers, who feel strong resentment at Ebay profiteering at their expense. It has been conjectured the trend to develop their own online Webshops could accelerate. For many dealers Ebay has become too complicated”, says a former Powerseller from Austria.

Y'all come back!

Why Do You Hate eBay So Much?

2008-10-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

A fellow seller asked me the other day "Why do you hate eBay so much?" I could have made a wisecrack answer, but the question was thought provoking and deserved consideration. I have thought about it and this is my response.

I don't hate eBay.

eBay is a corporation and is perfectly entitled to move in whatever direction it's CEO and Board of Directors approve. I am equally at liberty to do likewise.

Consumers always have choice and the most basic of those choices is not to consume. eBay had shown me, personally, in 2006 that it was an unreliable service provider. I am referring to the Stores Inventory in search implementation and subsequent abrupt reversal without warning a few months later. Like many others I had invested a substantial amount in inventory. Unlike many others I have always had a firm policy of not buying on credit. I own my stock and two years later I still own some of it! Strike one for eBay.

Shortly thereafter eBay kicked me while I was down. Store insertion fees doubled. I had begun the (for me) long and difficult process of building a website. My capital was tied up in stock so I could not pay someone to build one for me. I did not want to be at the mercy of another instant e-commerce solution, therefore a stand alone website seemed the intelligent solution. Strike two for eBay.

Auntie May (the fictional dumb small seller of fleamarket junk) & I are fond of aphorisms. You may roll your eyes at this point (although I would bet money you can't do it as well as the Good John does) but there is often a lot of truth in them. this applies to the person who, as Auntie May would say "done me wrong".

Once, shame on you, twice, shame on me.

In the corporate culture employees take their cues from the top. I wrote about this here and here in May. As John Donohoe was preparing to take the reins from Meg Whitman in December 2007 he gave an interview to the Financial Times. There are clear indicators of Donohoe's attitude towards sellers in that article,

Mr Donahoe has cast an outsider's dispassionate eye over some of the site's practices and found them wanting. During an interview at Ebay's headquarters in Silicon Valley, he talks with the clear and untroubled certainties of the consultant, and has the prescriptions to match.

John Donohoe subtly conveys an inner certainty of his absolute superiority in every way to the sellers who pay fees to utilize eBay's services. This contemptuous attitude was absorbed and magnified by lower level employees, aided by Usher Lieberman of the PR department, and now it permeates the entire company.

My colleague at the Brews News commented on this last week and again here. Please note that The Brews News are not hysterical noisy boycotting ex-sellers. They are a group of multi identity PowerSellers who are still trying to run their businesses on eBay. Key phrases in the post are

He immediately became belligerent
he was insistent
he was adament
he was rude
asked me what I wanted to discuss with the TSAM
the rep grilled me and told me to explain

Does this sound like a Customer Service Representative assisting a valued and high volume paying customer? No? More like a self important busy junior executive dealing with intolerable interruptions and inefficiencies from an incompetent subordinate?

A monolith like eBay Inc. makes the decision to follow a course of action and implement policies which are contrary to the interests of it's users. When eBay refuses to engage in a two way conversation with it's customers or listen to their concerns ("we hear you" does not mean "we are listening") the only option is to vote with your feet; I made the decision to not use eBay, either as a buyer or seller, and I sold my stock.

I repeat, I do not hate eBay. This blog is a chronicle of eBay's destruction of the brand. How eBay lost ITs groove. It says so right up top on the header.

eBay Inc opened on the Nasdaq exchange this morning at $18.50 and as I write this has dropped to $16.90. Today eBay announced two classified site acquisitions in Europe and the purchase of the US second largest online payments system Bill Me Later; which will merge with PayPal increasing eBay's near monopoly on online payments.

Y'all come back!

Related Articles and Links:

That Was The Week That Was

2008-10-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Top blog post for me this week was an excellent and balanced editorial by Ina Steiner at Auctionbytes on the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance position paper released on Tuesday October 1st.

Runner-Up: In Australia the reverberations from the EBS scandal are still rocking eBay and PayPal's credibility. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.) TV's 7.30 Report investigated the EBS Fraud (which left about 3,000 ebay buyers and other creditors owed about $1.68 million) and revealed the inherent flaws in PayPal's Buyer Protection Policy. eBay's Daniel Feiler was interviewed and filmed and arrangements had been made to interview and film a spokesperson from PayPal, however PayPal withdrew from this at the last minute.

Retro Current: This is an archived blog post from Adam Nash That Was The Year That Was 2007, interesting in view of the persistent rumors about eBay wanting to sell StumbleUpon and shopping for more classified sites in Europe.

Secrets and Hot Gossip:

Tech Crunch on the not so secret subject of StumbleUpon being for sale.

Brews News eBay hides sellers from buyers Glitch or planned disruption?

John Lawson's video commentary also on the Pesa position paper.

Blog about PayPal, or how to antagonize your customers just because you can.

Take a break!

Just a nice story from a UK newspaper that has nothing to do with e-commerce or business or the economy. Nice photographs!

Also ran:
An interesting article on shipping from internetretailer.com in view of eBay's determination to increase revenue by forcing sellers into 'free shipping'.

Y'all come back!

Related Articles and Links:

How Low Can You Go?

2008-10-02T03:57:00.000-07:00

Picture courtesy of Shah King of Limbo

I am NOT a stock market analyst. I had shares in eBay which I bought mid January 2001. I bought them for all the usual wrong small investor reasons. I was in love with eBay, it was a wonderful thing, nothing but good times ahead. I sold them this March at $30. I broke even, taking into account capital gains tax, commissions, and the decline in spending power of the dollar between my purchase in 2001 and eventual sale 89 months later. eBay shares have never paid a dividend. How could this be considered a good investment?

Using the MSN Money Central chart, I checked eBay stock prices on the first trading day each month between April 1st (when John Donohoe took over) and October 1st, 2008.

Other than a one week 'honeymoon' when the stock rose a whole $1.02 from $31.42 to $32.42, it has been pretty much down hill each month all the way for six months.

Apr 1st $31.42
May 1st $31.78
Jun 2nd $29.31
Jul 1st $27.74
Aug 1st $24.58
Sep 2nd $24.07
Oct 1st $20.85

Auntie May (the fictional dumb small seller of fleamarket junk) & I calculated this is a 33.67% drop under Donohoe's stewardship. Not small potatoes but we didn't even have to take our socks off.

At what point are the institutional investors going to join the sellers in being 'disgruntled' & 'revolting'?

I am no longer an eBay shareholder.

Y'all come back!

Related articles and Links:

eBay Queen of de Nile

2008-10-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

Top news today in the USA is a third quarter PESA/ECMTA Position Paper, "Deteriorating eBay Market Conditions Erode Seller Confidence" dated September 30, 2008. You can read the full text here.

I read this as a rational and businesslike statement of opinion from the organization representing the most privileged group of sellers.

The non PowerSellers, who have no customer service, or discounts or even any voice would agree with the statement "In the first nine months of 2008, we have observed a substantial deterioration in the value of the marketplace for merchants."

Naturally when anyone important drops pebbles on eBay's glass roof there is a galvanic response. Fortunately, Richard Brewer-Hay the eBay blogger who is both literate and likable was the spokesman this time. He manages to convey the official line without resorting to Bayspeak or denigration. Such a refreshing change.

If eBay chooses to parade a dissenting opinion as 'evidence' that this statement is incorrect rather than listening (as opposed to hearing) then, unfortunately eBay will reap the consequences in the fullness of time.

Y'all come back!

Related articles and Links:

Trading Assistant Journal
Professional eBay Sellers Association
eBayInkblog
Barrons Blogs

A Rant?

2008-09-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

NO this is not a rant. Hopefully I will come across as more reasoned than irritated. Which I was. Briefly.

When I make a comparative market analysis I find it helps to compare, for example, apples to apples. Comparing a banana to a watermelon tends to result in skewed data.

This is about a new sales venue, I am writing about Bonanzle.com and a review by well known author, e-commerce expert and collector Hillary De Piano, on her blog The Whine Seller. Her hard hitting, condescending, review twisted my knickers in a knot, and quite frankly irritated the heck out of me. Anyone who expects to find a full blown eBay competitor one month after launch out of beta must also believe in the tooth fairy, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Hillary said

Just like any of the new auctions sites, a few people immediately twisted up their panties and decided it was the ultimate eBay killer...Let me kill the suspense for you right off the bat. While there are a few things to like about Bonanzle, it has a very long way to go before it approaches the customization or the usability of eBay.

Hillary clearly did not 'get' what a Bonanza is, she said

"Every seller gets a store (sorry, a “booth”) right from the start with Bonanzle power (Markdown Manager copycat)"

No it is not a markdown manager copycat. It is a cat of a very different color altogether. A Bonanza is a sale event by appointment, you book your Bonanza, indicate what items you would like to include in the sale and the percentage off, and the site takes care of the rest for a very limited period of time. Add to that the live online chat, meet and greet capability (lets get real here eBay doesn't even want you to have their buyer's email) and you have a Bonanza. Its cheezy and might not appeal to such a busy and professional seller but the buyers sure seem to like it. Maybe one should take a little longer than an hour to assess a site before issuing such a stinging 'review'; if credibilty is an issue?

A fairer although not like to like, (because Bonanzle is not auction format) comparison would be to OnlineAuction.com; in business to my certain knowledge since at least January 2005 which is at least 3-3/4 years ago. (45 months) Again not like to like because OLA does not submit feeds to Google or anyplace else and more importantly OLA charges sellers $8 per month to list. OLA also has the Verified Buyer Subscription plan at $4 a month (which I believe turns buyers off the site). Bonanzle does not charge a listing or insertion fee and submits to both Google and Oodle.

Other valid comparisons might be eBid.net, in business since 1999, eight years. eBid has 1,108,419 listings in auction format which can be bought fixed price if the buyer pays a premium. eBid's fairly complex fee structure favors the $49.99 lifetime membership up front subscription. Perhaps Plunderhere in business since around 2004 with (according to PSU) 57,398 listings or BlueJay, totally fee free, has been around since early December 2004 and has 446,883 items are comparables.

With the exception of PlunderHere (under new ownership) I have checked out all of the above and find Bonanzle to be much simpler and quicker to get up and running. More to the point as a seller, I have had buyers on Bonanzle, including buyers off Google Shopping.

The only honest way to compare Bonanzle to eBay in my opinion would be to look at AuctionWeb (eBay) in October of 1995 a month after Pierre launched. I wasn't on eBay back then so I am not qualified to comment as to usability but I can tell you that early in December 1998 3+ years on, eBay had 1,309,481 items listed. Which makes eBay comparable to eCrater at the same age.

Lets look at some traffic comparisons for September 2008. The first month out of beta for Bonanzle.com. Not too shabby for a newborn.

So far as eBay is concerned auction formats are of little benefit unless you have visibility for potential bidders.

Y'all come back!

Related Articles and Links:

eBay Threatens Canadians

2008-09-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

A story on AuctionBytes this morning highlights what sounds like a threat from eBay.com to Canadian media sellers. An announcement on eBay.ca dated September 29th from Ira Grossman on eBay's 'Shipping Team' (You gotta love it, they do so much shipping!)

While Canadian sellers are not subject to the shipping limits when listing on eBay.ca, we recognize there will be a competitive impact for Canadian listings appearing in the US marketplace. Since the cost of shipping from Canada is substantially higher than shipping domestically within the US, sellers charging actual shipping costs from Canada using either flat rate or calculated shipping may be negatively impacted in Best Match sort or Total Cost sort on eBay.com as a result of the higher shipping costs. We encourage Canadian sellers to consider strategies to lower their stated shipping costs, or even offer free shipping to the US, if, for example, they can successfully shift some of the cost of shipping into their item price and still remain competitive.

Hmm, ship free or die!

Are you tired of this? In my travels on the internet I found what might be an alternative to the hassle and expense of listing, wondering if you will get paid, packing and shipping and waiting for the DSRs to chop off your head. It looks like a good deal.

Full disclosure I have no financial incentive for recommending this site, no affiliate fees, nada.

Buyback Direct was created to provide consumers a way to sell their unwanted Video Games, DVDs, and CDs, directly online. Today, consumers' choices are to take their no longer wanted entertainment inventory to a local store whose location may not be convenient for them and may not purchase their entire inventory. Their other option is to sell their entertainment inventory online through Amazon®, Half.com®/eBay® or Yahoo!®. These channels are full of product that may not sell. Also, if the consumer wishes to part with 50 CDs, they would have to conduct 50 individual transactions with 50 separate mailings - again, assuming that their entire inventory was purchased. What are your chances of selling your copy and more importantly what is your time worth! BuybackDirect.com offers you the best price along with payment by check or PayPal, and free shipping and insurance!

I talked to one seller who uses the website and he assures me it is on the level.

Y'all come back!

Related Articles and Links:

That Was The Week That Was

2008-09-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Top blog post for me this week was a 'shock and awe experience' at Genuine Seller which opened my eyes to the eBay disruptive innovation program. I kinda hate to expose my ignorance but seriously, I always thought that was a joke, urban legend, a sick joke but a joke. For this JohnDo is paid millions in salary and stock options?

Runner-UpThe Brews News on seller motivation. Pay close attention to paragraph 2, Margins.

Oh My Gosh! post award would be Sue Bailey's Tamebay post today. Tamebay is generally regarded as pro-eBay and is always informative, so I sincerely hope someone in a position of power at eBay reads this.

Perennial Favorite, the GOOD John - ColderICE of 3rd Power Outlet who dispenses a rich blend of commentary, opinion and plain e-commerce sense with humor on video. This one on DSRs.

Retro Current. This is actually 'That Was The Year That Was', 2006, the single incident that switched on the light and led to my learning to build a functioning website and begin implementing an exit strategy from eBay. This archived blog post from Blogio, the Vendio blog.

The latest eBay UK scandal, which would appear to step right over the bait and switch line, is covered on the Buildaskill Biz Blog.

Also Ran eBayINKblog is full of the ~~exciting NEW~~ Oh! Wait a minute, maybe its not new, ummm, the exciting resurrected Ad Marketplace keywords Pay Per Click program. Ads will appear "near the bottom of the page when a buyer searches for a particular keyword or is browsing in a particular category". This will be a deeply satisfying income stream for eBay as competitors gleefully click each others ads. Didn't work before, will it work this time around?

Enjoy and have a good weekend. Y'all come back!

Related Articles and Links:

Oh Canada Are You Revolting Yet?

2008-09-27T07:22:00.001-07:00

A September 26th Press release from Toronto-based Segal Communications:

Beginning October 1, 2008, eBay Canada will offer display advertising opportunities on its popular Web site eBay.ca and Segal Communications has been tapped to promote, develop and sell the advertising. Segal will also manage the web auction site's display advertising and forge relationships between advertisers and eBay.ca.

This partnership further strengthens Segal's reach in the new media marketplace, where it already represents the social networking phenomenon Facebook in Canada.

"Segal is building a dedicated sales team to run the eBay.ca account, and we anticipate an excellent response from the marketplace at the news they can now advertise on one of the Internet's most trafficked sites,"

says Rob Segal, President and CCO of Segal. Bringing significant experience and leading the new team is Jesse Cassaday, who was recently appointed Vice President of On-Line Media Sales.

For further information: eBay - Andrea Stairs, Head of Marketing, (416)969-2309, astairs@ebay.ca; Segal - Rob Segal, (416) 588-8727, rob.segal@segalcommunications.com

I am not a Canadian eBay seller and would not presume to say how I think they feel about this. I do know that Australian sellers are less than thrilled about it and I hear that sellers in France, the UK, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy are not pleased either. eBay could care less so long as they get paid as much as possible and as often as possible.

You are NOT powerless! There are several things you can do:

1: email Rob Segal and Andrea Stairs and share your opinion of advertisements on your listing page. This will not change anything, they know what is best for eBay. You are only a fee paying seller or a nuisance.

2. email the advertisers and share your opinion of advertisements on your listing page. Tell the advertiser that not only will you not purchase anything but you will share your negative opinions vigorously.

3. Click victoriously (if these are pay per click advertisements?) but do not buy.

Y'all come back!

They're Ba-aack!

2008-09-26T09:18:00.001-07:00

In accordance with Standard eBay Operating Procedure, on Friday 26th September 2008 at precisely 4.36 pm, on their way out the door, eBay Australia made a quiet announcement regarding the 'trial placement' of advertisements on eBay.com.au.

26 September 2008 | 04:36PM EST

Earlier this week eBay commenced a trial placement of advertisements on the View Item Pages on eBay.com.au. Similar advertisements are already running in a number of markets, including Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, and the UK.

The Australian version of these advertisements went live at approximately 7pm on Monday 22 September and created some discussion among the Community until they were withdrawn the next morning. We apologise for introducing these new placements without letting you know first. We also appreciate the feedback provided and have taken onboard some of the concerns expressed by the Community.

This trial will continue, however the advertisements will be placed lower on the View Item Page and will be clearly marked as a sponsored link. During this trial advertisements will only appear in approximately 10-15% of View Item Pages in the following categories only:

* sport
* movies
* electronics

Regards,
The eBay team

As you can see the new and improved advertisement placement is above the description.

A quote from a seller on the eBay Australia discussion boards

I've found that clever Google ads at the bottom of search results were actually quoting prices. I recently bought some photography gear that way, all the advertiser did was say eg: "1.6m tripod $20.00 incl shipping". That was targetted right to my search terms, and the price was lower than ANY of the BINs on Ebay.

So I clicked it and bought the items off ebay - 3 in fact. The seller was the online shop of a very large Ebay PS, the items and even the photos were identical. And the P&H was heaps cheaper buying direct, too. Now that I know the name of the online shop, I search on ebay but check prices direct with that company too.

Ebay is crazy to allow this - I mean, the companies advertising are ebay sellers, so all that ebay is doing is PROMOTING off-ebay sales. Considering that they won't allow sellers to do this - how totally dumb is that?

Y'all come back!

eBay Anonymous

2008-09-25T01:48:00.000-07:00

Once again eBay has turned Australian users into guinea pigs with their September 23rd announcement implementing the 'anonymisation' of emails between potential buyers and sellers.

Sue at Tamebay pointed out some potential security risks.

Currently, eBay are not verifying that the email used to reply is the “correct” one - i.e. that it matches up with the eBay account to which the message was sent. This is, they say, a “short grace period”, presumably to allow members to ensure their registered email addresses match the ones their email client uses.

So today I’ve been able to reply to trial messages with emails registered with other eBay accounts, and emails that aren’t linked with any eBay account at all, and in all cases, messages sent from the ‘wrong’ email address still arrive with eBay subject lines suggesting they’ve come from the correct eBay member.

Like Sue I did a little testing with an Australian seller friend, Kevin. My first email arrived in Australia very rapidly. It gave the Kevin my eBay ID, the address for him to reply was a series of letters and numbers @members.ebay.com. My response from him had a similar address. Copies of my query and the reply were sent to my registered eBay address. Neither email appeared in My Messages on My eBay.

I asked a second question using my AOL mail and interestingly the links in my signature went through intact. My friend Kevin responded saying I could contact direct but that email address was stripped out, as expected.

A second question on a different user ID showed that the address 'anonymization' is per query. In other words we both got a different address. Kevin was able to respond directing me to a different eBay listing.

The usual 'coding' used on the boards works in the 'anonymized' messages.

So far it works, sort of. The seller is supposed to have access to the buyer's address when a purchase is made, but Kevin says

the buyer who emailed me on Friday sent it from the auction that she won on the prior Monday, but it came through anonymised (but okay).

What is going to happen when eBay suffers the inevitable glitch?

I really can't figure out why it is needed.
Almost everyone who buys on eBay will have a throwaway freebie address, used only on eBay and one that can easily be changed when the spam burden gets too great.
In what way does this protect the potential buyer?
What are we protecting the buyer from? The evil seller?

Just think. When the evil seller mails the package he will know the buyers address! eBay needs to come up with a fix for that ASAP!

Y'all come back

Related Stories and Links:

The eBay Roadmap to Anonymity

Security So Good IT Keeps Customers Out

2008-09-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

Remember all that promotional hullabaloo about the PayPal electronic security key?

We protect your account with one of the highest levels of online security available.

Now, add an extra layer of security when you log in with the PayPal Security Key. It’s easy, secure, and portable – so you can access your account from just about anywhere.

The PayPal Security Key is available for a special nonrefundable fee of $5 USD (including shipping and handling). There are no monthly service fees or hidden costs. You can order replacements for the same fee.

Here is a link to the June 2007 PayPal press release

The PayPal Security Key is a small electronic token that generates a unique security code approximately every 30 seconds. Members can use this code, along with their user name and password, to sign into both their eBay and PayPal accounts, helping to prevent unauthorized users from accessing them.

As we all know eBay and PayPal, winners of the 2007 "Dubya's Heckova Good Job Award" are truly technological movers and shakers. They will be presented with their award in a White House Ceremony next Monday.

Meanwhile, overworked techs are diligently working to restore access and unlock the doors so the paying customers can get in. Hopefully they can get IT patched up by Monday.

Y'all come back

The Place To Find Everything But The Ordinary

2008-09-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

Spunky startup Bonanzle.com brands itself as being the place to “find everything but the ordinary”

In July of 2008, eBay struck a deal with web mega-retailer Buy.com that allows Buy.com to sell millions of books, DVDs, electronics and other items on eBay with a different fee structure from other eBay users.

This move was not welcome by the core eBay community; which helped define eBay in the early days as a sort of “dynamic garage sale.” Those sellers that counted on eBay for their livelihood are now being pushed out by a deal that puts them on an uneven playing field with Buy.com. Many sellers believe this agreement sends a clear message that eBay is no longer interested in the unique items that so many sellers had peddled to build up eBay during its formative days.

For many sellers, the silver lining in this cloud has been the recent move by Kirkland, WA startup Bonanzle to brand itself as a “place to find everything but the ordinary.” Explains founder Bill Harding,

“It is no secret to buyers that Amazon already provides a great way to find and buy newer, mass-produced items. It’s the unique items, the collectibles, the designer clothing and purses, the memorabilia, that neither Amazon, nor eBay, nor anyone else, is catering to. In contrast, at Bonanzle, the small seller with unique items is the only party we cater to. Buyers will recognize Bonanzle as the place to go when they want a unique item, and our sellers will prosper.”

So far, Harding has been right. In the last month alone, Bonanzle has gone from about 5,000 listings to more than 110,000 at the time of this release. This inventory total is comprised primarily of relatively small sellers with unique items. This phenomenon has led marketplace expert Randy Smythe to recently remark in his popular My Blog Utopia!, “You can find eBay’s Soul at Bonanzle.” Smythe goes on to point out that “During eBay's formative years, the site grew as sellers sold their wares to other sellers. It was a real trading community… that changed after they went public… you might say they’ve lost their soul.”

eBay expert, PowerSeller and consultant Scott Pooler recently wrote about Bonanzle on the Trading Assistant Journal

It is more than an alternative to alternatives, Bonanzle is a new animal entirely.

Bonanzle has taken some of the basic concepts of Craigslist (clean design, fast browsing and minimalistic appearance) and the basic concepts of the original eBay marketplace (a socially built marketplace for online commerce, easy to sell and buy, with a graphically pleasing look) and they have trumped both major venues with features that improve the entire concept of selling and buying at an online Bazaar.

Bonanzle sellers, eager to move forward from this new incarnation of eBay, have collectively rolled up their sleeves to help build Bonanzle as their new home. Bonanzle Forums are regularly filled with sellers collaborating on grassroots marketing ideas, including one recent thread that had more than 50 sellers volunteering their personal time and resources to promote Bonanzle. As Bonanzle seller 'cleosgreatdeals' puts it, “The unique item market is what Pierre had in mind for eBay and it worked for many years. When it stopped working for us it was time to move into a new marketplace and learn about promoting.”

Y'all come back

Related Stories and Links:

EBay Deal With Buy.com Angers Auction Site's Sellers – New York Times
"You Can Find eBay's Soul at Bonanzle.com" – My Blog Utopia
Bonanzle - Bodacious eBay Competitor Gives Birth to Fresh Merchandising Format - Trading Assistant Journal

eBay alternative Bonanzle is super simple, list in 60 seconds Auction Wally
Auctions and Antiques Examiner for Examiner.com

Come Sit By Me

2008-09-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

Alice Roosevelt Longworth once said

"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."

My kind of gal.

Y'all come back

That Was The Week That Was

2008-09-21T07:45:00.000-07:00

That Was The Week That Was (TW3), was a British lampoon show of the week's happenings from the BBC in the early 60's. This is my News & Blog Roundup Week ending September 20th 2008

Let's start with The Telegraph here

Next we will visit Genuine Seller who has an amusing eBay game for us.

The Brews News has written a thoughtful and motivational article which should be required reading for ALL e-commerce merchants.

We, as sellers, simply must take full responsibility for our own actions. If we cannot be successful selling on “the new eBay” then we simply cannot sit around hoping eBay will change; we ourselves must change and that change may or may not include continuing to sell on eBay.

While you are there read this amusing story about new seller requirements."

eBay is having the normal number of glitches, this one serious enough to qualify for an announcement,

At this time, we are asking sellers NOT to end and relist these items, because we don't know at this point whether the relisted items will index properly. However, we do know that new items will index properly, so if you'd like to end your affected listing and start a new listing from scratch, that will be fine, and it should index into Search properly.

We will update this post when we have more information. In the meantime, please be assured that we will be automatically crediting fees for all impacted listings (whether active or closed) early next week. Thank you for your patience, and we apologize for the frustration this is causing you.

eBay standard operating procedure policy is 'ignore and it will go away'; it is probably safe to assume the indexing glitch is a large and system wide problem.

The eBay Ink Blog has made one post in the last week, on September 16th. I found the previous post September 12th far more interesting, with a fascinating response in the comments by Dennis Goedegebuure one of the eBay Internet Marketing Specialists.

Dennis G
On 09.12.2008 at 9:28 pm Said:

Hi All,

Richard has asked me to respond on your feedback directly here on the Ink blog.

As Richard has outlined in his post, the new pulse has some changes versus the old Pulse. I understand from your comments that you have been using the Pulse page in the past to find keywords in the deeper categories.

The background of this project is complex. The Pulse page might not be the most important page on the site if it comes to buying and selling, it does give our community great insight of what is in high demand in certain categories. Where the majority of the product resources are focused on bringing the new Search to the eBay platform, the Pulse page was actually in danger to get closed down.

Because I see the value of the Pulse for our users and for the Search engine optimization efforts, I decided to take the Pulse page off platform and work with an external developer to come up with an alternative. This has caused a couple of trade offs which have an impact on the way we are able to display the keywords in every category.

As the Pulse page now is off platform, and maintained by non-eBay engineers and me, we are not equipped to make monthly changes with the normal category changes. This is why we are only able to show the keywords within the current Meta categories.

In return we have looked for more information to be displayed in these categories. This comes in the form of the Internet Pulse, where we look at what experts in these categories are writing about, and more popular searches within a category in the form of the new keywords and movers & shakers. I hope you will see the value in the expertise of the external sources we look at.

This new Pulse is a start for the new life of Pulse. We will try new modules on the page, and I thank you for your feedback on the fact that you now miss out on the most popular searches in the deeper categories. I will take this feedback into any of the ideas we are looking at for further development.

Furthermore, I would like to ask you a question. The module of the most watched items is gamed by smart sellers who are getting more exposure to certain types of items. What would you prefer?
- a list of most watched items in any category
- a list of most popular products in any category
- or a list of the items with the most bids in any category

What else would you like on the Pulse page?

Now that I got your attention, I would like to take the opportunity to point you to a couple of SEO tips for eBay sellers that can help you to get higher ranking in the search engines and hence more buyers. [tip#2 link here}

I hope this will help you to drive more traffic to your listings.

Kind regards,

Dennis Goedegebuure

Thanks Mr G for the courtesy of your response. As always with eBay read the comment and note what is not permitted to be said.

Y'all come back

eBay Stumbles Over Own Feet, Again

2008-09-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month eBayINKblog posted that eBay had been awarded the 2007 National Medal of Technology and Innovation and that President Bush would be making the presentation at the White House September 29th. My thought at the time, heckova job Dubya.

The big news today is from TechCrrrunch who report StumbleUpon, the web based content discovery service is for sale. eBay bought StumbleUpon in May of last year for $75 million dollars. As seems to be standard, anything eBay buys immediately goes downhill. StumbleUpon has dropped 470 places on the Alexa Ranking global scale in the last three months to a comparatively dismal #1256 last week. Scott Wingo said

Apparently traffic has plummeted from 4.4m users to 1m users since the eBay acquisition - ouch.

Naturally this has nothing to do with the noisy hordes of deranged and disgruntled eBay boycotters, some of whom may have actually gone so far as to delete the StumbleUpon button from their blogs because it belongs to eBay. Na Na Na.

Today eBay had a quickie Town Hall with Stephanie Tilenius, announced yesterday. The usual carefully screened calls on the usual subjects with, of course the usual responses. Sellers again tried to get eBay to change the DSR wording and Uncle Griff, master statistician and data expert stated "nobody gets all 4.0 every time". Knock me down with a feather! Griff you are doing a heckova job.

Finally, on the technological achievement front, nobody can FIND anything on eBay AGAIN because finding is broken, as usual. Move along now folks.

Y'all come back

How To Pump Up Listing Totals On eBay

2008-09-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

In one easy lesson.

At midnight Monday September 15th eBay rolled out the very latest of their changes with the new and improved format Fixed Price 30 day duration (FP30) listings. This roll out uses the familiar eBay formula, loudly announcing much lower Insertion Fees and keeping very quiet about the whomping 'adjustments' to Final Value Fees. A sneaky little tranche change was effected at the same time. See changes here

Apparently unannounced changes and 'improvements' to the New Search Experience (eBays caps) are being implemented simultaneously. "We want a more engaging, dynamic experience that is fundamentally driven by buyers." User response could be described as less than positive.

Your "New Search Experience" sucks, and if I ever have to use it again, I will be through as an eBay buyer!

I am so turned off by your newest 'tweaks' that I have severely curtailed my shopping. You have succeeded in ruining my whole shopping experience! For one thing, the new format is CLUTTERED and MESSY! Anything that takes MORE clicks of the mouse to navigate than before is NOT efficient! I am a browser .... I click on a category and then refine my search by eliminating non-essential and irrelevant searches. I can no longer do that .... I had some categories weeded down to 10-20 pages; new they are expended back to 100 or more pp and I don't have the time or inclination to wade through them all! Ebay is suffering from too many 'improvements'!!

On Tuesday the Medved charts showed approximately 16.2M listings on eBay. Today they are close to 17.2M. As Randy Smythe blogged on the FB30 launch today at My Blog Utpia!

... number seems to be lower than expected -- at least from analysts who have contacted me and asked "why the reluctance from sellers" to adopt the new format ... So why hasn't this new format taken off? ... Many sellers have just moved on. They are sticking with what they know works on eBay and putting all of their energy into other marketplaces or their own websites.

It appears that many FP30 listings are appearing twice. That would certainly puch up the listing numbers for Q4. In the first picture the top and bottom items are duplicates. The second picture shows more. Click to enlarge!

The big question?

Are sellers being billed twice?

Y'all come back

Splat! Splat! Gossip

2008-09-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

On September 14th the Fubarometer showed eBay listings dropping like a stone down a very deep well. On their graph numbers fell from 14.5m to approximately 13m.

This matched the stock price which closed close to a 5 year low.

I like to have more than one source of information so I waited for the Medved figures which have proved trustworthy in the past. This was a wise decision.

Medved shows (in their weekly chart for the week starting September 14th) that listings have dropped over the weekend from a high of about 16.04M to below 15.6M

In other eBay news Scott Pooler posted about Jet Blue, rumored to be eBay's latest Diamond PowerSeller in the making. Apparently Jet Blue was making some serious listing violations. Galvanized by this humiliating news eBay removed all Jet Blue's listing within minutes. Good job Scott!

Scott Wingo posted a speculative opinion piece on his blog eBayStrategies about eBay layoffs. The comments on Scott's blog are even more interesting. Will we see a rambling ~~rebuttal~~ clarification from Uncle Griff on eBayINKblog? Probably not because Scott is a Very Important Person; from his biography we learn

As President and CEO of ChannelAdvisor, Scot Wingo leads the company in its mission to provide retailers and manufacturers with the tools and services they need to successfully utilize consumer marketplaces as a sales channel.

ChannelAdvisor, founded in 1999 was recently in the news itself. At the beginning of the month the company announced it had received an additional $20 million in funding to accelerate its growth; and was cutting about 20% of the workforce in an effort to accelerate its push to profitability.

From the NewObserver

The funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from current ChannelAdvisor investors Advanced Technology Ventures, Kodiak Venture Partners, eBay and Southern Capitol Ventures. Wingo said the new funding will be used for general corporate operations, but no new acquisitions are planned. He expects the company to become profitable next year.

A clue!

To be successful one must have both the credibility and ability to borrow $100 million. After that you can take 10 years to show a profit.

Y'all come back

Nothing but Good Times Ahead

2008-09-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

I was e-chatting with an old Evil Empire buddy who had just made her first sale on Bonanzle and barely finished announcing it when she had another sale.

I quoted a favorite fiction character, Sophie Dempsey Tucker "nothing but good times ahead" and my friend immediately responded:

"Happy days are here again,
The skies are turning clear again,
Let us sing a song of cheer again,
Happy days are here again!"

This might seem a pretty goofy way for two middle aged women to be behaving but you have to realize where we are coming from.

For years my day started with checking my email, corresponding with buyers and potential buyers, packing and shipping orders and relisting on eBay. Seven days a week, eleven months of the year. In the evenings, for a change, I was a volunteer on the eBay Answer Center, mainly on the Stores board. Almost all my online friends were eBay, we swapped pictures of babies and grandbabies, my sheep Larry had a fan club for gosh sakes, we sent Christmas cards, it was a community.

All gone. Vanished in a swirl of bitterness and dust.

Randy Smythe wrote on his My Blog Utopia!

Soon after going public, eBay began to change and if you look at the site now you might say they've lost their soul.

It is an excellent and thoughtful post, go read it and leave him a comment.

If you are a small seller who was insulted by being told you had no track record because you were not a PowerSeller, driven out by Best Match and unfinding. Getting to a point where the ceaseless fee increases and micro-management of your business by a bunch of Ivory Tower dwelling MBA's with zero hands on retail experience are driving you into a depression? Sick to death of conflicting messages, bots and Live Helpless? I have a message for you! What once was lost has now been found brothers and sisters!

Come on over to Bonanzle.com I really like it. I have had sales, more sales than any place other than my website since May.

Bill, the CEO says

"We have at least tripled in traffic volume the last two months, and are well on our way to doing it for a third month. At the end of this month, our fourth month since launch, our daily unique visitors are projected to be in the neighborhood of the fifth most visited eBay alternative on the Internet. Except that every one of the other alternatives has been around at least two years longer than us. And our growth is almost entirely grassroots (not to mention our 50k items added in the last 30 days)."

Come on over, check us out it is free to list and FVF are extremely low and guaranteed to remain the same through 2010.

Nothing but Good Times Ahead!

Y'all come back

Two Way Street

2008-09-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

If you look in the right hand navigation bar you will see a Google advertisements frame. Income from this goes to my favorite good works program Kiva.org which has a pro bono advertisement lower down in the nav bar. I wrote about the reasons I like Kiva in this post.

Today's post is an update on our project. Note that our participation in these loans is only a small portion of each loan, usually $25 which is the minimum. We are a part of all the good people from all over the world who participate in Kiva. Making life a two way street by giving an opportunity to someone less advantaged.

Meet Maleyka Jebrayilova who lives in Azerbaijan, clicking on her photo takes you to her profile.

Meet Ninfa, Reategui Cristancho from Peru, clicking on her photo will take you to her profile.

Please meet the newest member of our entrepreneur group Phan Thi Chung from Vietnam, clicking on her picture will take you to her profile.

Three loans in four months looks pretty good to me, thank you so much for making it possible and sharing the love!

Y'all come back

Related Articles & Useful Links:

Give a Man Fish to Eat or a Fishing Pole?

Tools of the Trade

2008-09-13T01:39:00.000-07:00

My husband and I are fairly active in animal rescue. What this means is if he sees a sick or injured animal or one which has been thrown away, which happens here a lot, he picks it up and brings it home. We also tend to get given old and debilitated horses, some of whom are in such bad condition that the kindest thing to do is give them the gift of peace.

For those animals which are salvegeable, I nurse them back to health, spay or neuter, and place them in a good home if they are adoptable. Quite often they are not adoptable, either because they are feral or have special needs. Then they stay.

Left to right and back to front: 2Q Calf bottle, human baby bottle for bigger puppies, calf nipple, kid or foal nipple, kitten or small puppy, lamb.

We have had horses, orphaned or rejected foals, pigs, chickens, rabbits, orphaned lambs and calves, chicks, geriatric sheep and of course cats and dogs. Nursing, dietary and housing requirements are different for each species.

I have a special freezer which contains milk substitute and colostrum for foals, lambs, calves and kids (the goat kind) kitten and puppy milk comes in cans and lives in my 'hospital' cupboard which also contains electrolytes, naso-gastric feeding tubes in three sizes, hot pads and heat lamps, needles and syringes, sterilizing agents, wound wash and a variety of potions, lotions and ointments.

Some of our animals stories are told here they are child safe stories, nothing sad or gruesome.

Y'all come back

Doo Be Doo Day

2008-09-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

Here is where I sit, all cloudy and blitzed

with the Primo bottles lying everywhere

Got a guitar in my hand and a Wesson Oil can

Under my okole for a chair.

CHORUS:

It's Aloha Friday, no work till Monday.

Doo be doo, doo doo be, doo be doo be doo be doo!

(Repeat)

The cousins all here, drinking up my beer

got keikies running everywhere.

I got some poki on the side while mama's trying to hide

the Miller and the Heineken beer.

(CHORUS)

OK. You know when you wanna get away, I mean one ting

about Friday ma, da working work is ovah yeah.

Frankly, ya, I feel good man.

I work hard all week long.

I can't wait to get away, you know like down like the beach.

I'm cruise dis weekend yeah, get one hot concert too man,

dat's the most important ting. But main ting too,

is to get enough money fo gas and to go out to da disco.

I like to see all da beautiful chicks Yeah!

So now I gonna jus kinda cruise, take my Bank Americard,

you know adderwise, how can I get money?

Right, plus den my friends always say

eh braddah, you can buy me one drink then.

THIRD VERSE

Kimo and the crew sucking up the brew

pulehu meat smoking on the side

All the surfers are a-droppin'

while the highschool are a-poppin'

down Kaluakaua for a ride.

CHORUS:

It's Aloha Friday, no work 'til Monday.

Doo be doo, doo doo be, doo be doo be doo be doo!

REPEAT

Y'all come back

Today's eBay Glitch

2008-09-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

Just about every day eBay has a new 'glitch' to surprise and delight their customers.

Today it is the Seller Central discussion board. The board has been down since a few seconds after midnight.

The error message says

500 server error: The url ${requestScope["javax.servlet.error.request_uri"]} had a server error. Sorry for the inconvenience. You can return to the community by clicking

There have been no events worthy of mention on the System Status Board since Scheduled maintenance September 10, 2008 | 11:53AM PST/PT

Situation normal, FUBAR!

Y'all come back

Related Articles & Useful Links:

eBay PayPal Summoned by RBA

2008-09-11T00:35:00.000-07:00

The Reserve Bank of Australia has summoned eBay Australia and PayPal to appear before its Payments System Board which has responsibility for the Bank's payments system policy; to explain why eBay and PayPal should not comply with rules that bind all other payments systems in Australia.

PayPal spokeswoman Kelly Stevens said

“They want to talk to us about surcharging; we don’t have a steering policy and that is in eBay’s area anyway.”

PayPal managing director Andrew Pipolo and eBay vice-president Simon Smith are expected to attend a meeting being scheduled to review alleged anti-competitive behavior. Informed sources say that Pipolo is going to tell the Reserve Bank that PayPal needs more time to grow before being asked to drop its no surcharging rule. This is line of reasoning is unlikely to impress the Payments System Board which is composed of high level banking and finance industry experts, particularly since Pipolo has been bragging "The latest Nielsen report shows that PayPal is now the preferred online payments system, more so than Visa or Mastercard, so our indications are that the PayPal brand is standing up very strongly."

Can't have it both ways Andrew, pick a line and stick to it.

The Reserve Bank, may use its powers to impose an access regime and/or set standards for a particular payment system, it may

* 'designate' a particular payment system as being subject to its regulation. Designation has no other effect; it is simply the first of a number of steps the Bank must take to exercise its powers;
* determine rules for participation in that system, including rules on access for new participants. Since access is inextricably linked to efficiency the Bank works closely with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC);
* set standards for safety and efficiency for that system. These may deal with issues such as technical requirements, procedures, performance benchmarks and pricing;
* direct participants in a designated payment system to comply with a standard or access regime; and
* arbitrate on disputes in that system over matters relating to access, financial safety, competitiveness and systemic risk, if the parties concerned wish.

The RBA's Payment System Reforms as of May 2007 sought to improve efficiency and competition by:

1. more closely aligning the relative prices for different payment services with the relative costs of providing those services;
2. addressing restrictions on merchant behavior that limit competition;
3. liberalising access to payment systems; and
4. improving the transparency of the payments system.

In the Bank’s view, the no-surcharge rule imposed by Mastercard, Visa, American Express and Diners Club limited the ability of merchants to put downward pressure on fees by threatening to charge the customer for using a credit card.

Neither MasterCard nor Visa agreed to voluntarily remove their no-surcharge rules for credit cards and, as a result, the Bank imposed Standards requiring the removal of these rules. In contrast, American Express and Diners Club voluntarily agreed to remove their equivalent rules.

The PayPal User Agreement for Australia states in Section 6.4 Seller Discouragement Policy.

You agree that PayPal may suspend your account or otherwise prohibit your use of the PayPal service if you display PayPal as an accepted payment method on your website or eBay listing and subsequently prohibit the use of PayPal, surcharge for the use of PayPal, or otherwise discourage the use of PayPal as a payment mechanism.

The no-steering rule prevented merchants that accepted American Express cards from encouraging customers to use another method of payment (equivalent rules did not exist in the MasterCard, Visa and Diners Club schemes). Again, the Bank saw this rule as inappropriately restricting competition and, after discussions, American Express agreed to remove the rule.

eBay's Accepted Payments Policy for Australia states

It is a condition of eBay supplying the services at the Site that eBay requires all sellers to offer payments through PayPal (with some exceptions set out in the Policy below).

Robert Vandermeer, is a spokesman for The Group, a coalition of eBay users who are opposed to eBay's repeated attempts to force PayPal on buyers and sellers in Australia. He said

After ebay's humiliating defeat in June, when the ACCC moved to block ebay's attempts to make PayPal the only payment option, this next round of discussions with the RBA appears likely to deliver a debilitating blow to ebay's efforts to force PayPal on Australian consumers.

A link to the letter which prompted the RBA to act is appended.

Henrietta says "Attempting to browbeat Aussies is not wise"

Y'all come back

Related Articles & Useful Links:

Reserve Bank of Australia Media Release August 20th 2006

Where In the World Is The King of Spin?

2008-09-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

As a war of words breaks out this week between eBay and Auctionbytes I am wondering; where in the world is Usher Lieberman the King of Spin?

Ina Steiner the well liked and highly respected editor of Auctionbytes wrote a post titled eBays Operation Catalog Flies Under the Radar on September 6th. This post produced an effect at eBay very similar to stirring an anthill with a stick.

Uncle Griff immediately bustled in to make a long winded and rambling point by point rebuttal of Ina's article. I am a numbers kind of gal, that is why I am no longer selling on eBay, the numbers don't add up in my favor. Just for fun, here are the numbers in this little drama. Ina wrote 258 words. Uncle Windy took 711 to say very little with at least one prevarication

There are no shortcuts. There are no special dispensations for existing policy compliance given to any eBay seller. All eBay sellers, no matter the size of their business on or off eBay, are held to the same seller standards and for Diamond PowerSeller, the privilege of selling on eBay is tied to even higher standards then the rest of the eBay seller community.

and a lot of obfuscation. As is increasingly the norm for eBay, their 'clarification' represents a 275% 'adjustment' on the back end, in their favor.

Griff then went on to say

"The view among some that eBay is somehow a protected marketplace (”don’t let in my competition!”) . . . is unfortunately, misinformed and has no basis in reality"

This is very strange because John Mc stated on Inkblog just the other week (august 20th) that Google Checkout was in competition with eBay and "So we are not going to allow Google Checkout on eBay" If that is not a protected marketplace, then what is?

Could it be a discriminatory protected marketplace?

I asked a question or three on eBayINKblog today I must be in violation because it appears to have vanished, or possibly a glitch. Maybe I will try again, although it seems pointless.

Richard or Griff, or anyone really, please could you answer the following questions, in the interests of further clarification.
Does a Diamond PowerSeller come up through the ranks?
That is register, buy, qualify to sell, attain Bronze PowerSeller, Silver, Gold etc.?
If not is there a contractual minimum dollar Gross Sales Value per month?
Or minimum listing volume requirement

Griff just isn't as smooth at it as Usher is and of course neither of them can hold a candle to Ms Nichola Sharpe who reigns supreme in the art of succinctly saying nowt. (a British word meaning nothing) As David Steiner points out in his response to Griff's 'clarification', it is a classic "non-denial denial". There's a blast from the past for you!

Y'all come back

Hitting the Highway

2008-09-09T10:43:00.000-07:00

This post is the latest in an ongoing series about the seller exodus from eBay, related posts are listed below. In May 2007 GogglesandGlasses became the Number 1 Apparel seller on Amazon.com. In my opinion this seller exemplifies the type eBay should bend over backwards to keep but does not want.

Gary is a businessman with employees. He did not join in the February seller boycott or the May seller strike, yet, less than 4 months later he is off eBay.

Meet Gary Richardson, clicking on any picture will take you to his website where he sells goggles and glasses of all kinds.

Gary lives in the tiny town of Locust Grove Arkansas and in 2004 worked full-time as an industrial refrigeration technician.

"We started selling on eBay in January 2004. It was purely an accident. We were clearing some items out of our garage and didn't have time to setup a full blown yard sale. So, I decided to try selling some items on eBay and had great success."

Five years and 11,117 transactions later, this top 1000 reviewer (16 reviews) and Gold Powerseller with 99.8% feedback and DSRs of 4.9, 4.9, 4.9, and 4.8 has no listings on eBay. His statement "Goal today = move content and close eBay store...No plans to participate on eBay 4Q at all." caught my attention the other day. This 2005 article reflects an enthusiasm for eBay which has long since evaporated.

In his own words:

"Website, Amazon.com, Neweggmall.com and ecrater.com are all growing. I have decided to not sell on eBay in the 4th quarter. I don't feel like chasing my tail trying to constantly update eBay. I have devoted over 500 man hours to listing changes alone on eBay in 2008. I always told myself that if we put as much time and money into our website as we did eBay we'd have a killer website. Well, we have started doing just that and it's paying off handsomely. As soon as we turned off eBay sales increased. We were our own worst competition, we were paying eBay to compete against ourselves and didn't even realize it. eBay has become a time suck and our least profitable venue."

"I am convinced that feed files are the future and that Google Base is a sleeping giant with 525 million products available, including about 10 million from eBay. If GB slapped a payment button on every item, eBay would be eBay.toast overnight. A bid button could also be very feasible, after all Google is the worlds largest online auction, not eBay. Google base now has ratings, payment and review systems in place. Most people don't realize that eBay relies heavily on google base for traffic or how widely Google distributes product feeds."

"I'm seeing large long time sellers and very small sellers leave the platform, it seems as if eBay wants these sellers to leave. I think eBay is in for a very disappointing 4th quarter this year. I'm pretty happy about that, because it means we are that much closer to someone pulling their head out of their fourth point of contact and turning this pig around."

Today’s Message is LOUD AND CLEAR, eBay management is failing. I avoided eBay for the first nine years because I thought it was full of thieves and scammers. of course, I didn't realize they were all in San Jose :-)

Y'all come back

Related Stories:

And Another One Bites the Dust

Ho! Ho! Ho!

2008-09-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

Like everyone else, cash money is short in our house this year, but Christmas is coming. I thought it would be appropriate to do some early shopping for my e-friends who will all be receiving virtual gifts this year.

For John I bought eyewear, and because platinum is appropriate for this special dude, these. He can wear them to the next eBay Dead and convey a subtle message.

For Biddy I thought this would be perfect, she's an old fashioned kind of gal, and this is the gift enclosure card.

For Cliff I chose this card and a one of a kind repro vintage quilt for watching the games in the cold northern winters. It is special because I designed the pattern.

For Scott P, I had a harder time, after much dithering I thought nothing attracts the fair sex more than the contrast of pearls and rugged masculinity with a Florida tan so here you go dahlin' and good hunting!

For Randy the tour and a mixed case to take home with him.

Last but not least for Hillary, this has a little pony flavor and is vintage so I am hoping she will like it.

Such a relief to get Christmas shopping done,

Y'all come back

So it Begins

2008-09-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

Click to go to Jet Blue Airways eBay Store

Media:
CNN Money
Jet Blue's ontime record
Whoops! Palm Beach Post
Boston.com
Naples Daily News

That Was The Week That Was - Roundup

2008-09-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

HOT! HOT! HOT!
Statistical manipulation and accounting games at eBay? Surely not! What an idea! Buildaskill

If JD crashes the darling of the dot com revolution, will he ever be employable again? Will he care if he’s in line to get a similar golden handshake to the one Meg Whitman allegedly got? Or should all the company’s customers, damaged by his policies, take up the baton now, and report suspicions of what is increasingly looking like Enronesque activity?

Announcement from the Evil Empire, improving Buyer experience by removing tools rather than educating buyers in use of the tools, I see that Tamebay had a post on this too, some interesting and educational (for me) comments there.

... we're going to remove the Bid Assistant tool (which allowed you to bid on multiple similar items in succession) in the next few weeks.

Funny PayPal stuff at "The Spoof"

The new DSR, or Dental Service Record system will be based on a 5 point star system whereas other employees and co-workers will anonymously judge each other based on their dental visits.

Gentle Satire on Genuine Seller

Linked to the exit of several middle and even upper-middle eBay managers is the term "operational efficiency." Evidently moving some people out makes things more efficient. They've certainly been efficient with their sellers this year.

Marketing Tip on Trading Assistant Journal

This is a very good way for small to mid sized online merchants to gain additional exposure for any online e-commerce store.

More Satire on My Blog Utopia!

News from Auctionbytes

... not only will some sellers find themselves competing with the manufacturer of the product they sell, but that competitor is getting free listings and better exposure.

Reasoned Opinion from Brews News

In my opinion, the sheer number and extent of the site issues have reached epidemic proportions. I keep expecting that I’ll wake up one morning soon to find that the eBay.com site won’t come up at all.

Y'all come back

The Crystal Ball updated!

2008-09-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Something Wicked This Way Comes?

For a glimpse of what may be coming soon to an eBay near you it pays to keep up with news on the other side of the pond. eBay UK has told sellers with IDs incorporating website or email addresses to change them by October 2nd, no more grandfathered in, you WILL re-brand right before Christmas. Read all about it on Buildaskill BizBlog.

Italy killed stores this spring, eBay UK is following suit with the end of what they charmingly call Shop Inventory Format September 24th. Shops or Stores still exist although one has to wonder to what purpose below Anchor Level. Presumably eBay is hoping basic stores sellers are not good at math.

Please note: I have roughly translated pounds sterling to $US at a rate of $2 per pound.

To be fair, it is not all one way, the UK will loose the 30c gallery fee site wide and stores subscribers receive a 50% Insertion Fee discount for the new Buy It Now format from the $0.80 Insertion Fee charged to non Stores subscribers.

Essentially, to retain any brand visibility UK store owners are being 'encouraged' to upgrade to "improved shops", translating to subscription increases from $12.00 a month to $30.00 at basic level, from $60.00 to $100 for a featured* store and from $600.00 a month at Anchor* level to a whomping $700.00. **Featured and Anchor Shops require business registration and compliance with other UK/EU regulations.

With the end of SIF in UK Shop owners will have the choice between having their old format listings ended or their listings can be converted to BIN. BIN listings will appear in search. * Qualifying that statement; shop BIN listings will have the same search visibility opportunity as any other BIN listing.

Hopping back across the pond My Blog Utopia! asks will it be feast or famine for eBay sellers in Q4? After reading this and Scott Wingo's eBay Strategies post on the new BIN in which he says

Since eBay started changing the finding experience with the introduction of BestMatch, sellers have lost more and more control over how their items show up. Buyers seem to no longer be going beyond the first page of results. The first page of results has 50 listings and sellers are limited to 10 items/page now so the BEST case is 20% coverage. The worst case is 0.

I should tell y'all at this point that I am not a guru like Scott Wingo, nor have I ever built a million dollar business like Randy. I am just an old broad who has been around the block a few times and went to school when reading writing and 'rithmetic were not electives. I got out of my eBay shares about even (after allowing for inflation) to buy something which pays a dividend.

Do YOU see what I see? Is this deja vu (disagreeable familiarity or sameness) all over again? Those stalwarts who are going to close their stores (talking USA here in case you are confoozed) and list 3000 SIF as BIN 30 are going to have about the same exposure as they did in stores with a more than 600% IF increase.

There are rumors that the red door store link does not work in the new non store item listing page if this is true we would appear to have innovated ourselves right back to pre red door days! Back then you rotated between 5% - 10% of your store listings as auctions with a link to your store in each listing. Would that work now? Your guess is as good as mine. Consultant Scott Pooler has some thoughts and questions.

To add to the gut churning uncertainty that is eBay today, more upper management shrinkage (#6), ominously the eBay Stores General Manager Eric Shoup has left the company and Chief Technology Officer Matt Carey moved to Home Depot. Matt Carey is the man a 2007 article referred to as "Donahoe's key partner".

As Mike who sent me the link said,
"Did someone at eBay finally snap out of it, take a look around then flee?" Are the rats leaving a sinking ship? Time will tell.

Y'all come back

Parallel to eBay

2008-09-05T12:26:00.000-07:00

This is an Australian article about layoffs and cost cutting at an Australian media conglomerate. The brands mentioned are strange to us but the cultural issues discussed are very familiar. Thanks to Kevin T for sharing.

How the Fairfax job cuts are like breaking up with readers

It’s a sometimes unfortunate fact of consumer life that brands change. Some even disappear entirely: remember Ipana toothpaste, The Argus, Buckley & Nunn or Mark Foy’s? When Leyland stopped making the P-76, consumers may have regretted the loss of jobs in the Australian car industry but ultimately accepted that it was a matter of commercial reality.

So why have the recent changes at Fairfax generated so much controversy and anxiety with respect to the future of The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and other papers in the stable? After all, Fairfax is a commercial entity with executives, directors and shareholders who are free to make lawful business decisions as they see fit. Indeed, some shareholders may be quite rational about job losses and structural changes, seeing them as purely pragmatic business decisions. Other brands that attract the same sort of response from conusmers might be Myer or Grace Brothers, the ABC, the AFL and NRL.

But you certainly don’t have to be a shareholder to feel a sense of ownership of a brand. Creating an emotion-based relationship with customers and a sense that the brand and customers share common, deeply-held values are among the holy grails of contemporary brand-building. Speak to different brand consultants and they’ll give you a bunch of different names and models like “brand resonance” or "brand affinity" but they’re essentially talking about the same thing.

Ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi calls them "lovemarks" -- not small welts on a teenager’s neck, but rather brands whose customers exhibit "loyalty beyond reason". Lovemarks "create... an intimate, emotional connection that you just can’t live without...".

Advocates for a cultural approach to branding, like Douglas Holt, make the case that the success of some brands can be better understood by considering cultural concepts, above and beyond mere emotion. Iconic brands attain cultural significance by spinning "potent identity myths" that address important social issues and tensions, representing and sharing values we hold dear and views about what’s important in life.

Brands don’t have to be public institutions to become cultural icons. Fairfax has traded on, and heavily promoted, the cultural icon status of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald for years, deliberately positioning the morning broadsheets as the papers of cultural record and the homes of quality journalism.

You might think that having a brand attain lovemark or cultural icon status would be cause to get the champagne corks popping in the marketing department, but it brings with it some significant responsibilities and constraints. Part of Saatchi & Saatchi’s description of a lovemark rightly hints at this darker side: "Take a lovemark away and people will protest its absence… you never want to let go."

As in any intense relationship, a high degree of emotional attachment may bring a higher risk of infidelity, possessiveness and even crimes of passion. When consumers feel spurned by a brand they love -- and a brand they thought loved them -- well, sometimes hell hath no fury.

An anecdote emailed to Crikey this week by an Age insider suggests that recently-sacked editor Andrew Jaspan had personal experience of this kind of reaction very early in his tenure at the paper. Jaspan apparently told the newsroom that his wife was being abused by other parents when she picked up their kids from a Melbourne private school: "We know who you are. Tell Andrew to stop f@#king around with our paper!"

According to our correspondent, Age journalists found this disturbing but much less surprising than Jaspan’s reaction.

"The damn cheek of these people," he allegedly exclaimed.

"They think it’s their newspaper!"

Threaten to change a brand that is both beloved and iconic and you activate aggrieved consumers loyal to the cultural myth, who are armed with both passion and a culturally-based sense of righteous indignation. This is a potent formula that unions, politicians and even competitors can tap into. Ignore it, or fail to recognise it, and the brand owner risks having the very foundations of the brand’s previous successes undermined.

The world’s biggest brand, Coke, learned this -- to its significant cost -- in 1985 when it changed its decades-old formula and launched "New Coke". As Time magazine reported at the time, many consumers felt that tinkering with the taste of The Real Thing "was like tampering with motherhood, baseball and the flag".

The Coca-Cola Company now looks back and celebrates the infamous New Coke fiasco as part of "Coke Lore", claiming that it stands today as "testimony to the power of taking intelligent risks".

Will Fairfax be able to make the same claim in 20 years’ time?

Author Stephen Downes lectures in the postgraduate advertising program at RMIT University and is a market researcher with QBrand Consulting. Go to original article

Clueless

2008-09-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

Worldwide on eBay sellers are wondering. In a word they are clueless and eBay is declining to give them a clue.

My friend Randy Smythe has an interesting post on his MyBlogUtopia!

"There is an interesting buzz coming out of San Jose these days, as rumors begin to fly, about impending layoffs at eBay."

I started to comment (and as these things do) it turned into this post. As you know, we are of the agricultural persuasion in our lifestyle here. As I sat on my porch swing this morning with my laptop and the marvelous first cup of tea, to greet the dawn I was struck by this thought:

eBay is like a horse that has been eating loco-weed.

Common symptoms include aimless wandering, altered gait, tremors, weakness and erratic behavior. Horses poisoned with locoweed may also have impaired vision and actually bump into things or try to jump imaginary objects. The unpredictable behavior of locoed horses makes them dangerous to work around or ride.

ALL of these symptoms can be seen quite clearly in eBay Management. Unfortunately there is no cure for severe locoweed poisoning.

In the United Kingdom Ed at Buildaskill Blog which is one of the best sources for cross-border or international trading information and resources, says

Sellers are protesting the lack of definitive answers to crucial questions regarding the August listing format and fee change announcements, that take effect on 24th September

Will, or will not, pre-existing sub-99p priced Shop Inventory Format (SIF) products be shown on the site when they migrate to new-BIN on September 24th? UK eBay staff are giving conflicting answers, and even the forum post by Community Manager James, last week, announcing no new listings under 99p start price, does not answer the question of what will happen to pre-existing listings on that date.

Sellers never did get an answer to the pre-existing listings under 99p ($2) question. They found out by doing, no listings are permitted BIN under 99p, this is truly an example of 'aimless wandering' insofar as running a business is concerned.

Almost 2 months ago I commented on an eBay Ink Blog post about phishing. Surely, I said,

The simplest, safest and most secure way to put an end to PayPal phishing would be for PayPal to cease putting clickable links in emails. Any customer communication requiring input from customers should be on the secure site: “You have a message from PayPal which requires response, please log in to your account to access it.”

I would bet money that corporate blogger Richard Brewer-Hay has asked that question on my behalf, but so far no answer is forthcoming.

Today has seen major PayPal outage, no access to transaction details and a page that loads and loads and loads before timing out. eBay Canada has checkout issues, it is down, period.

One seller who operates with an advanced internal network and servers has reported also that during PayPal UK’s never loading page cycle, there is code from PayPal being launched against their servers attempting to extract the seller’s LAN administrator user ID and Password. This begs the question whether PayPal have been hacked (again) and whether or not malicious code has been inserted.

There are persistent rumors about Skype. According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged. The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations.

All this from the company that wants to go paperless, swim against the web 2.0 tide by prohibiting any type of networking or links except paid advertising, and has no concept of customer service.

Those crazy noisy flea market vendors who boycotted PayBay and left earlier this year are beginning to look smarter by the minute.

Y'all come back

Dowager Queen Speaks

2008-09-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

I do not in any way subscribe to Queen Meg's political views nor do I endorse them. I found her remarks interesting as the viewpoint of the $38 million plus (this year to date) former CEO of eBay Inc.

MEG WHITMAN: Good evening and thank you for your kind welcome.

It's an enormous privilege to speak to you tonight. As a young girl growing up on Long Island, as a wife and mother who raised two boys in my beautiful home state of California, and even as President and CEO of a Fortune 500 company, I never dreamed I'd have the honor of speaking to my fellow Americans at such a critical moment in our nation's history.

When I was growing up, opportunities for women were still limited.

When I went to college and graduate school, I lived in environments that had just recently admitted women, and were still getting used to having us around.

And when I began my business career, female executives were still a novelty.

Many of our male colleagues questioned whether we'd make it. But my parents, especially my mom, inspired me.

She'd constantly remind me that I could be anything I wanted to be, I just had to earn it.

Mom believed in me, as any mother does.

She also believed in America.

She knew if I worked hard and delivered the results, I would succeed in this remarkable nation.

And so, from an early age, I was an optimist about America.

America is a nation fueled by freedom, with an abiding sense of justice and fairness, guided by the spirit that we should all have the opportunity to achieve our greatest dreams.

And I am a Republican because our party understands that America's success - the success of her people - comes not from the size of its government, but from the character of its citizens… the strength of its communities… and the nobility and truth of its ideals.

Tonight delegates from this convention will choose our nominee.

We are proudly the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan - and today, we are proudly the party of John McCain.

I've known Senator McCain for several years.

And the more I've gotten to know John, the more my admiration for him has grown.

John's pride in America and his belief in its spirit are electrifying.

And I can say with certainty that when he's sitting in the Oval Office - in every decision he makes - President McCain will put his country first.

For John, putting country first is the calling of a lifetime.

He lives by a code of honor unmatched by anyone in American politics.

And on the most important duty we place on a president - John is more prepared to lead than any person in America.

America faces enormous challenges abroad - but we also face great challenges here at home.

It would be foolish to deny what we all know to be true.

Our economy is struggling and Americans are hurting. We live in a time of economic anxiety and hardships.

The cost of everything from gasoline to groceries to health care has gone up, while the value of our homes and our investments has gone down.

Mortgages once thought to be safe are now threatened, and industries that were once strong are now dying. Since John began his campaign he's heard the concern in your voices and your stories - the stories of hardworking Americans who believe that politicians are out of touch and out of ideas. That may be true of some politicians … but it's not true of John McCain. John's a different breed.

He understands hardship in a way that few of us have ever known.

And, as he has shown this week in supporting the great people of the Gulf States, he has a unique ability to identify with those who face their own struggles.

Most important of all, Senator McCain and Governor Sarah Palin - the real agents of change in this campaign - have solutions for the challenges we face.

In its first 100 days, a McCain administration will put this nation on a path toward energy independence.

John is a man with extraordinary determination - and he will use that quality to push relentlessly for the right energy policies - from lifting the ban on off-shore drilling, to building more nuclear reactors, to promoting conservation and alternative forms of energy.

Energy independence will stop massive amounts of money from going to our enemies abroad; it will lower gas prices at home; and it will reduce the harm to our planet's climate.

Energy independence must be our generation's moon shot - and John McCain and Sarah Palin will lead us in that historic effort.

Senator McCain and Governor Palin will also lead us in another vital effort: lowering your taxes.

In his first 100 days in office, they will put forward proposals to double the size of the child tax exemption, putting more money in your pockets.

They will push Congress to reduce business taxes, so that entrepreneurs and especially small business have the money they need to expand and create jobs.

They will offer tax incentives to every individual and family in America to buy health insurance.

And John McCain and Sarah Palin will simplify our mind-numbing tax code, so that filling out your taxes is not a dreaded annual nightmare.

Our Democratic opponents view raising taxes as the measure of their compassion and fairness.

John understands the truth.

Higher taxes encourage wasteful spending, demonstrate government's inability to choose among competing priorities, and destroy your prosperity.

As President, John McCain will be guided by the simple beliefs that having worked long hours to earn your money, you should keep more of it; and that government shouldn't spend more than it takes in.

The same kind of frank, common-sense conversations every American family has - about the need to balance the check-book, living within your means, and tightening the belt during hard times - are the conversations John will have with Members of Congress.

Now, Republicans know that John's solutions rest on a set of principles that are true and tested and enduring.

Foremost among them is his belief that there is no challenge that cannot be overcome by individual freedom.

Government has a vital role to play in the life of our country. And it should be effective and efficient in meeting those fundamental responsibilities.

But Republicans understand that government does not create wealth or prosperity - individuals do.

America is all about the inspired individual - men and women who are free to pursue dreams and ambitions in a society that encourages creativity, industry, advancement, and risk taking.

John McCain doesn't want to tax success and achievement, he wants to encourage it.

He doesn't want to redistribute our national wealth, he wants to increase it.

He doesn't want more big government, he wants much more self-government.

John McCain understands that you know what's best for your money, your family, your community, and your life.

John's principles run like a golden thread throughout our history.

This has made America's story the greatest and proudest and most hopeful of any in history.

Make no mistake - Americans today face tough challenges.

Sometimes there is a temptation for us, having borne freedom's burden for so long, to grow tired.

But when Americans have faced their greatest hardships, they have written history's greatest chapters.

We're going to do so again.

The solutions to the problems of our time are found in the ingenuity, spirit, determination, and decency of the American people.

All we need is a leader who recognizes this and who can, by virtue of his character and his love of country, call us to do great things.

When the American people cast their vote for the candidate they believe can best protect our nation, restore our standing in the world, and expand prosperity and opportunity to every willing heart, they will do as they have done in the past - they will put country first.

A Box of Rocks

2008-09-03T15:01:00.000-07:00

Is it an urban legend?

It might be! There are two variations on this theme, here are the stories, you decide.

Variation #1

The latest scam is that they just take the contents out of the box, say you sent an empty box, PayPal will refund the money to them regardless of the fact that you sent them the receipt showing that they signed for it and the package had weight over and above that of an empty box. Of course, this is no new scam, but is a great big hole in PayPal and Ebay's TOS that A LOT of people are exploiting.

I have first hand knowledge of this as I am currently dealing with a brand new buyer who bought a one hundred dollar set of tools, received the item, USPS shows they received it, I submitted the tracking and the receipt showing that I sent a 6 lb 12 ounce package to them, and the rip off artiest simply stated to PayPal that the box was empty. PayPal issued a refund and the buyer simply sent an empty box back to me.

Variation #2

I had a buyer file a complaint saying item not as described, eBay told them to mail the product back...they did. It was a box full of rocks, they got a refund and my product (a digital camera).

Thanks to Ming the Merciless for the sellers solution to this problem, she says:

I discussed the returned box of rocks potential problem with the Expedited Mail specialist at USPS earlier this year.

She advised that all returns should be opened in the presence of an USPS counter person at the Post Office. So if the return is delivered to your home, don't open it. Take it the nearest Post Office and open it there.

Inconvenient? Of course, but it will save you money.

In the event the seller doesn't receive the exact item that was shipped or receives rocks or someone other worthless item, then the Post Office will go after the person who defrauded you for mail fraud AND you now have enough evidence to file either misdemeanor or felony fraud charges against the buyer with either your police department or the police department in the buyer's city. You could even consider filing charges against PayPal for being a criminal co-conspirator in the fraud because it's their half assed policy that creates these situations.

You can then send copies of the reports to PayPal and the Nebraska Attorney Generals Office and demand the restoration of the funds PayPal removed from your account.

There is of course another variation on the box of rocks thought stream which Randy Smythe blogs on today and that is "Dumb as a Box of Rocks" check it out.

Ming you ROCK!

Y'all come back

Paperless

2008-09-01T15:21:00.001-07:00

eBay's Lorrie Norrington recently announced that as part of a move to achieve complete control of the the entire payment and communication process on eBay "checks and money orders will no longer be accepted on eBay". To clarify that statement, she meant sellers will no longer be permitted to accept checks and money orders, not that eBay will no longer accept checks or money orders.

eBay will require approval of merchant CC payment processing services, and all payment methods are to be fully integrated into eBay checkout. For large sellers who utilize ChannelAdvisor or a similar service this will not cause problems. The small seller who would not qualify on volume for CA has few choices; PayPal, ProPay, try to integrate by yourself or quit. Judging by the recent registrations at Bonanzle hundreds have seen the writing on the wall and are moving on.

eBay will become a de facto PayPal monopoly in the USA.

What is wrong with PayPal only on eBay?

PayPal’s ‘User Agreement’

Users of PayPal’s services are required to accept the terms of a contractual ‘user agreement’, which is posted on the PayPal website. Many of the terms of this ‘user agreement’ are potentially misleading, unconscionable, unfair, or unenforceable. Some specific criticisms of the PayPal ‘user agreement’ include:

• Permit PayPal but not the user to avoid or limit performance of the contract;
• Penalize the user but not PayPal for a breach or termination of the contract;
• Permit PayPal but not the user to vary the terms of the contract;
• Permit PayPal unilaterally to vary the characteristics of the services supplied to the user;
• Limit PayPal’s vicarious liability for its agents; and;
• Limit the user’s right to sue PayPal.

In summary

On the whole, eBay appears to be arguing that:
• eBay's customers, the sellers are incapable of choosing the ‘best’ payment option, according to eBay’s definition of what the ‘best’ option is;
• For those customers’ own good, eBay must force them to use the ‘best’ payment option;
• It is impliedly irrelevant to eBay’s decision-making that the ‘best’ payment option is provided by a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay, and will result in a significant financial benefit to eBay.

eBay’s argument is condescending and paternalistic at best, and ignores the fact that eBay users are capable of making rational choices about what they view the best payment method to be. Until recently eBay banned Google checkout on the site by categorizing it with 'unsafe and unproven' Payment Services not permitted on eBay. The wording recently changed

Safety and convenience are at the core of eBay’s policies toward payments. This policy is designed to promote safe online shopping, and to encourage online payment methods that are safer, easier to use, and offer high levels of protection for users

This all sounds noble and altruistic. Unfortunately an eBay executive made the following statement on eBayINKblog, the official eBay blog,
finally an truthful and unequivocal statement of the fact we suspected all along.

Well for goodness sakes!

Y'all come back

Links to topical articles:

The Brews News

It Was Party Time Last Night

2008-08-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

I am so over eBay. It has turned into one of those endless soap operas where the most unbelievable things happen every day, except this is real.

I still go to eBay, to check current pricing before buying elsewhere. It is getting much harder to find comparables with bids. Well, to be blunt, it is pretty hard to find anything on eBay these days.

There is a horrid fascination in tuning in for the next thrilling installment. I am sure it is not nearly as amusing for the poor sellers who are stuck like flies on corkscrew twist sticky paper pinned to the ceiling, buzzing angrily.

Six weeks ago I wrote an open letter to Lorrie Norrington in which I noted a report from Sellerdome that stated there was a 15% increase in the number of inactive registered sellers in the top 100,000 alone in the last month. I said "eBay is loosing good sellers like water through a colander." I got rubbished for that statement at Tamebay where Sue examined the statistics for the top 100,000 eBay sellers and concluded

There were some serious feedback issues going on amongst these sellers... we can’t claim that these sellers were any great loss to eBay: an average score of 95.2% is astonishingly poor for an eBay seller...

which missed my point! "eBay is loosing good sellers"

With 1.3 million sellers (Whitman) on eBay the top 100 thousand are less than 8% of the total. I was never one of the top 100K but I was a good seller with 100% feedback and lowest DSR of 4.6 for my outrageous S&H charges, which averaged $2.25. I am inactive.

This brings me to the 'party' last night. Sellers as far away from each other as West Hawaii to Tampa FL, Canada, PA, TN, CA, MN, IN, SC, and other places I forget were waiting for the 1000th registration on Bonanzle.com Together we welcomed a very startled gentleman from Everett WA at 1:26 AM EST. It was joyous, a community celebration.

80% of those Bonanzle registrations have joined since July 16th and the majority are off eBay. I do not personally know all those sellers, some may even be bad sellers! Any way you look at it, a lot of sellers moving off eBay onto one small but very promising venue.

In the last month Bonanzle which is still in beta, has moved in the Alexa ratings from a global 1,857,292 ranking on August 2nd to global 464,374 and US ranking 59,780 as of today.

Y'all come back!

Link: Bonanzle Blog

ProPay vs PayPal

2008-08-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

Red INK Diary has moved, click here to go to this post on the new site and enjoy much more updated content!

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

Yesterday I got what I consider a spam comment from Brandon at ProPay. According to my posted spam policy I have deleted and reposted the comment, minus link. For future reference Brandon, hiding your Blogger profile and failing to leave contact information gives you and ProPay serious credibility problems with me.

ProPay as you may know is the beard (One who serves to divert suspicion or attention from another - American Heritage Dictionary) eBay suits have donned in hopes of avoiding lawsuits or deflecting charges of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, Sec.5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, and Sec.7 of the Clayton Act which regulates exclusive dealing contracts, tying agreements, or requirement contracts.

Brandon wants you to know

"Right now we only offer a merchant account but at the end of September we will be announcing a new special account for our eBay customers. ProPay will charge a small yearly fee, but will provide several services and we will help our customers fight against fraud."

Isn't that nice?

I am sure that eBay has non standard merchant processing requirements for ProPay to fulfill in order to be allowed on eBay. Sellers will be told what ProPay has to offer on eBay right at the start of holiday shopping season. Would I use an untried payment processor at that time of year? In one word, no. Exactly what PayPal wants.

I do not believe at the present time ProPay is competitive with PayPal for smaller sellers. For web stores ProPay expects the seller to manually input the credit card information, this incurs a security burden I would be unwilling to assume. Further it would discourage my buying from any site using ProPay.

According to the ProPay EFT Agreement a merchant agrees;

As part of this agreement, you irrevocably authorize ProPay to debit your Checking Account for any fees, payments or penalties you owe or may owe ProPay relating to ACH or Intra-ProPay transactions. You authorize ProPay to initiate reversal or adjustment entries and initiate or suspend such entries as may be necessary to grant you conditional credit for any entry.

Gosh & WOW! That sounds worse than PayPal!

The company seems confused as to exactly what charges apply to the various levels of service. On this page Premium is shown as having an annual fee of $29.95 with 3.25% + 35c per transaction and processing limits of $500 per transaction and $3000 per month. Earlier this morning Premium was $59.95 per annum and Basic was 34.95.

I was unable to find any reference to international transactions and four telephone calls to the PR department during the course of the business day netted me voicemail. Here is a little quick comparison chart.

Once again eBay is comparing bananas to pineapples, just because they are both yellow they hope you won't notice. Looks more like a lemon to me.

Y'all come back!

Related articles:

Yes we have no bananas!

eBay Scores Twofer on Doughnuts

2008-08-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Just when you think eBay has scored an own goal so many times that the game is over they pull the rabbit out of the hat and do it again.

This time eBay has managed to alienate two completely different groups of sellers, at one stroke. Way to go guys! Doughnuts all round from media and clothing sellers.

What is the cause of the kerfuffle and precisely who is in a state of discombobulation? Remember the listing insertion fee decreases in February with the concurrent adjustments to the Final Value Fee? This is the same play.

There are some differences. The changes are deeper, deeper is Bayspeak for 'more'. We have the decrease in insertion fees and extension of listing duration which could be beneficial if it were not tied to a 'rebalancing' of the Final Value Fee.

Back in February it was an adjustment, that didn't fly. Six months later we are calling it rebalancing and that will not fly either. Its an increase.

Once again it is take it or leave it time for sellers in the USA. eBay said earlier this year that the USA would never be PayPal only. When eBay moves to an all electronic payment marketplace later this year it will effectively be PayPal only because the only alternative offered is not a viable alternative. Propay carries an annual subscription and a higher rate. I covered this back in May.

Here is the official word from the 8/20 Announcements workshop discussion thread.

"eBay will offer several other electronic payment options in addition to PayPal, namely ProPay to start, with more electronic payment providers to be added in coming months. Google's and Amazon's products and services compete with eBay on a number of levels, so we are not going to allow them on eBay."

Take that Google Checkout!

Y'all come back!

Bonanzle blog

Its a Cluster Cluck

2008-08-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

What are you thinking? Wash your mouth with soap!

I live on an island in the middle of an ocean.

Almost everything we use is brought in, either by sea or air. My family and I are of the agricultural persuasion, my husband is a rancher and I keep chickens, sheep, grow vegetables for the table, all those lovely time honored rural pursuits.

Arrrr! The soil and the man-ewer.

My local feed store is out of chicken feed. Next delivery is anticipated mid September. Maybe.

This is not a disaster on the same scale as the feed store running out of calf milk replacer when that is what keeps the orphan calf alive, (which has happened in the past,) but it is not good news for the chickens, or my egg customers.

Y'all come back!

Good Listening

2008-08-24T14:54:00.000-07:00

Startupnation podcast featuring Randy Smythe & Kevin Harmon on the subject of Change at eBay.

Listen to these two supersellers discussing the reality of eBay and e-commerce today. Click on the Startupnation graphic below to go there!

BUY THIS Jack Russell note card - CLICK

Reading to the Dog

A little girl is sitting on a bench in the garden reading to her Jack Russell Terrier dog, the dog is paying attention. It must be a story about rats or mice.

Y'all come back!

All Work and No Play

2008-08-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

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!

I Can't Get No Satisfaction (from PayPal)

2008-08-22T01:00:00.000-07:00

With apologies to the Rolling Stones!

A Brief History & Timeline:

April 2008
ebusiness_supplies (EBS) eBay Australia's 7th largest PowerSeller, dealing in dirt bikes, quads, home gymnasiums etc places an announcement on their website stating that the company is now under new management. EBS business method was to pre-sell items on eBay at very low prices with high delivery charge mark-ups, then order and import them direct to Australia from China. Their stated delivery time was 30 days which was a violation of the PayPal 20 day delivery on pre-sale items policy in Australia at the time and invalidated any PayPal Protection right off the bat. The eBay pre-sale policy is 30 days.

May 2008
Buyers express concern over 'late' delivery.

June 2008
EBS fails to pay its eBay bill for May, but is permitted to continue listing and making sales. Buyers who have not received items bought in May are reassured by EBS that deliveries are imminent. eBay is running a heavy advertising campaign stating that buyers who pay with PayPal are 'protected' by the Buyer Protection Policy, it is the only safe way to pay. Concerned buyers who did not use PayPal are referred to the Vehicle Protection Policy.

July 2008
EBS fails to pay its eBay bill, again, now owing for May and June, but is permitted to continue listing and making sales. Buyers email eBay with concerns and receive bot driven rubbish in reply, some start leaving negative feedback. July 28th EBS goes into receivership. EBS still has active listings on eBay when eBay shuts them down. Within 24 hours all listings are removed. PayPal protection advertisement campaign ends, quietly.

August 2008
4000 eBay buyers are estimated to be out of pocket. Queensland Police receive complaints and begin a fraud investigation. eBay expresses unhappiness that EBS owes them $184,000 in unpaid fees for May, June and July "eBay is owed just as much as buyers"

Lots of media attention for a few days as buyers discover that PayPal Buyer Protection has more holes than a sieve, in fact, the holes in the scheme are big enough to ride a dirt bike through, but they do a great job of protecting PayPal. Announcement is made on eBay about a special fund.

"The PayPal fund will be available to buyers who have made recent purchases from this seller on eBay”

Note: The announcement does NOT say refunds will be made, it says the fund is 'available'. This is called BaySpeak, we did not say what you thought you heard us say.

The Reality

14th August an email from a buyer to PayPal

Could you please advise what is happening regarding the “special fund” that was to be set up for customers who lost their money with EBS? I understand that Mr Pipolo stated that all who paid by PayPal would receive refunds. Please advise. Many Thanks.

Same day reply from PayPal:

Thank you for contacting PayPal, my name is Ray and I am happy to assist you today.

I do understand that you need clarification regarding the refund EBS promised you.

After carefully checking the details of the transaction, it shows that you made the payment on the 14th of May. What you can do is to come to an amicable agreement with EBS to send you back the money you paid them.

It is my pleasure to assist you. Thank you for choosing PayPal.

Sincerely, Ray
PayPal, an eBay Company

Polite but firm response from buyer:

Thank you for your response. The careful checking mentioned did not identify that this organisation (EBS) is no longer a registered user on Ebay. Additionally, it has gone into receivership. I'll ask the question again....

The Managing Director of PayPal has publicly stated that all PayPal paying customers will be covered for their loss by PayPal. I am able to provide the source of this quotation if required - hence, when will access be provided to the 'special fund' as described?
Regards,

Later that day PayPal says to the buyer:

Thank you for contacting PayPal with your concern, my name is Nathan and I am happy to assist you today! I understand that you would like some further clarification regarding the ebusiness_supplies situation.

It is true that unfortunately, ebusiness_supplies on eBay.com.au / www.bestbargains.com.au recently became unable to fulfill certain purchases made by customers. The seller is no longer operative and is now in the hands of liquidators. I am truly sorry to hear that you were affected by this unfortunate incident. PayPal will be refunding buyers who made a purchase from this seller within the last few weeks as discretionary payment, which is a credit initiated as a courtesy and not compelled by legal right.

This situation is a unique event involving a merchant going into liquidation and is not a common occurrence. Please be assured, PayPal offers buyers industry leading protection. Buyers enjoy the security offered by PayPal. By using PayPal, you never surrender sensitive personal financial information to an unknown seller. We are very sorry this unfortunate incident has transpired.

Thank you for your patience and for being a valuable member of the PayPal community.

Sincerely, Nathan
PayPal, an eBay Company

August 21st
An announcement from PayPal on the eBay.com.au boards

Customers who have been directly impacted by eBusiness’ collapse have now all been credited by PayPal to either their PayPal account or Credit Card.

Judging from current traffic on the AU Discussion Boards this is untrue.

Dear xxxxx xxxxx,

We have concluded our investigation into your Buyer Claim.

Seller's Name: EBS International Pty Ltd
Seller's Email: sales@ebusiness-supplies.com
Seller’s Transaction ID: 3BY14625XB903053W

Transaction Date: 7 Jun 2008
Transaction Amount: -$342.50 AUD
Your Transaction ID: 5LD50651CR229911F
Case Number: PP-508-829-798

Buyer's Transaction ID: 5LD50651CR229911F

You have received a refund via PayPal in the amount of $0.00 AUD.

Yours sincerely,

Protection Services Department

Now What?

To my limited knowledge there is not much that can be done. I hope I am going to get information from Australia soon.

Meanwhile it could not hurt to contact the ACCC and make an email complaint citing Part IVA — unconscionable conduct in commercial and consumer transactions and/or Part V — unfair practices, misleading and deceptive conduct. The ACCC consumer complaint information page is here You can also telephone them 1300 302 502

You should also contact your State or Territory Office of Fair Trading.

Bookmark this blog and come back soon for more information!

Y'all come back!

Links:
1.Sydney Morning Herald

“Those who paid using PayPal .... would be entitled to refunds .... (and) would be contacted in the next few days” Andrew Pipolo, Managing Director PayPal Australia. 29th July

2. The Sheet

"We are talking to the liquidator but the fund will compensate buyers who have purchased from EBS in recent times who have not received an item or a refund." Kelley Stevens, PayPal Spokesperson. 30th July

3. The Age

PayPal managing director Andrew Pipolo set up a special PayPal fund to deal with this incident and said everyone who paid for items using PayPal would be entitled to refunds. July 30th

4. ZDNet Business News

"Given the unique nature of this, and the size .... we're looking after our customers," the spokesperson said.

There wouldn't be a limit on the amount of money which the company would pay out, they continued, but added that the criteria for refund still needed to be worked out. "We don't know if everybody is due for a refund."

When the company has a better handle on the situation, customers will be contacted via message boards. At the moment, the spokesperson said, "it's all a bit fluid".

5. Angus Kidman at apcmag

"PayPal will be refunding buyers who made a purchase from this seller within the last few weeks as discretionary payment, which is a credit initiated as a courtesy and not compelled by legal right,"

Show Me A Way Away From San Jose

2008-08-20T20:17:00.000-07:00

This is part one of a (hopefully three part) series on life beyond eBay originally written by Mark Dorsey and Bill Harding of Bonanzle.com and liberally 'adjusted' (BaySpeak for = definition changed almost beyond recognition) by myself.

eBay's motto could be

Ask Not What Your Online Marketplace Can Do for You; Ask What You Can do for Your Online Marketplace (and you will use PayPal while you are at it.)

eBay was not built in a day or even in a year. It grew. One of the reasons it grew was the enthusiasm of thousands of small sellers all of whom told their friends "you can find anything on eBay" and at the time it was true. This is a classic example of ‘organic site growth’.

Many of us who boycotted in May have tried a variety of alternative sites. Some have crashed and burned, one turned into a cult complete with Dear Leader. Many have no traffic and one or two work quite well. The market is fragmented, buyers do not know where to go to look for whatever IT is that they desire today. They can't find IT on eBay anymore because their sellers have vanished; either off the site or into the swirling wastes of Best Match. Going through a bunch of alternative sites is boring and laborious.

As sellers we have learned that choosing a venue is not all about what it costs. The saying ‘you get what you pay for’ does not necessarily hold true. It doesn’t matter how much you pay for exposure on a venue if that venue does no promotion, feed submission or SEO optimization. Conversely some of the low cost and free sites have excellent SEO policies.

Ideally a buyer would type their IT of the day into Google product search and find IT on which ever venue or website IT is. Before that can happen Google (or whichever search engine is used) has to be able to find IT. Helping the search engine find YOUR product is called Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is geekspeak for Show Me the Way Away From San Jose. Just kidding.

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What is SEO and How Does It Work

Search Engine Optimization is simply online marketing for your web pages. Search engines such as Google rank web pages depending on the content of your web pages. Sooner or later a search engine will inevitably notice almost any page you post to the web, but what we want to do is grab their hand and show them the quickest way to get to know us. We also want them to like us so they’ll come back often. The smarter the content, the better the chance you have at driving traffic (customers) to your web pages.

For example, let’s look at the page title of an item that Mark has listed at Bonanzle: “Heavy Duty Work Overalls.” At Bonanzle, we have a tool called Booth Stats that reveals the amount of traffic (number of page views) for any item. Booth Stats is a great tool to gauge how SEO-friendly a page is, since it allows you to measure the success of this one compared to others. Looking at Mark's overalls, the Booth Stats show that this item isn’t getting views, so let’s see what he can do with simple SEO to fix that.

If someone comes along and Googles “Heavy Duty Work Overalls Seattle” then we can be pretty sure Mark will have a sale. Bonanzle’s Oodle integration makes Mark's Bonanzle item amongst the top Google results for this query, but chances are slim that particular search is going to happen so he needs to make his listing more visible to search engines. Let’s optimize or improve the page title so it will be more visible. We’ll change it to “Carhartt Type Heavy Duty Work Overalls.”

Now, we’ll still have an equally good chance to get noticed if a user searches for the original query, but we’ll also grab traffic from anyone who searches for the more specific (and illustrious) “Carhartt” brand overalls.

Some points to ponder about search engines:

There are two methods of SEO. Organic search engine optimization provides free search engine positioning, instead of paid for results.

Search engines use automated software agents called spiders, crawlers, robots or bots to crawl text. They are very simple automated data retrieval programs. They can only gather what they can see.

It is all about words. Bots don't understand frames, Flash, images and JavaScript. They can't click buttons, so if there is no static link for them to follow, they will not follow it. They can't navigate drop down menus. They will not run a search on your website to find the content. They can't index a dynamically generated website.

Listings need pictures to sell but bots do not 'see' pictures. Use the 'alt' tag or title whenever possible on your pictures because that tells the bot what the picture is about, if you use the right words.

Google no longer indexes any Auction format pages. The reason for this is that the indexed page has a much longer life than the auction. Months or years later it will come up in search and the searcher is then disappointed because it is long gone (eBay redirects all such queries to the home page).

In part two of this series we are going to look more closely at the content we put into our web pages and make sure that we maximize our chances to be preferred by search engines.

Y'all come back!

The eBay Point of View

2008-08-17T01:00:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, the Lion, the Fox, the Jackal, and the Wolf agreed to go hunting together, sharing with each other whatever they found.

One day the Wolf ran down a Stag and immediately called his comrades to divide the spoil.

Without being asked, the Lion placed himself at the head of the feast to do the carving, and, with a great show of fairness, began to count the guests.

"One," he said, counting on his claws, "that is myself the Lion. Two, that's the Wolf, three, is the Jackal, and the Fox makes four."

He then very carefully divided the Stag into four equal parts.

"I am King Lion," he said, when he had finished, "so of course I get the first part. This next part falls to me because I am the strongest; and this is mine because I am the bravest."

He now began to glare at the others very savagely. "If any of you have any claim to the part that is left," he growled, stretching his claws meaningly, "now is the time to speak up."

Might makes right.

Can eBay Get Worse For Sellers?

2008-08-15T14:04:00.000-07:00

In one word? YES!

Auctionbytes Blog has a post and there is an article and a survey for you to check out.

Lots of rumors flying around. Points to ponder:

High sales season is approaching fast, and in keeping with eBay's customary 'squeeze the seller' policy this is a good time to apply the thumbscrews. If you are still committed to the eBay venue with no viable alternative "Watcha gonna do?"

Bear in mind that this is all speculation and there is no way for a rational person to predict with any certainty which way eBay will go. How could this be better or worse for you as a seller?

I have chosen an item which sold, Fixed Price for $9.99. Shipping on this item, which weighs 14oz packed is $5 and it will ship Priority with delivery confirmation, I will use PayPal and PayPal Shipping. I have not specified cost so there is no profit calculation. Subtract cost from net on sale to get pre-tax profit. Seller is not a PowerSeller.

Note that percentage of 'eBay take' will decrease somewhat for items which sell higher than $25.01 and further decrease for sales over $1000.01

eBay & PayPal 'take' as of today is 19.5% of sale price.

Plan 'A'- no Insertion Fee, 15% FVF on Sale price but not shipping.
eBay & PayPal 'take' is 22.3% of sale price, this is a 2.8% increase, for eBay.

Plan 'B'- no Insertion Fee, 15% FVF on sale price and shipping.
eBay & PayPal 'take' is 29.8% of sale price, this is a 10.3% increase, for eBay.

I have seen many posts today with the writers uttering cries of delight at the prospect of zero insertion fees. Here is one who has completely missed the point; eBay increasing their take on anything that does sell.

As a powerseller with over 20,000 feedback and great DSR. I would list list list and list some more. Everything in my store would be out on auctions. Thats about 15,000 items. Talk about flooding a catagory.

I am not totally convinced that free listing would cause eBay to be flooded. If that was the case why are all the other free to list sites not flooded?

We have to remember that eBay the auction site is a very small part of eBay Inc. Looking at Marketplace (which includes Kijiji, Shopping.com, StubHub, etc) earnings Q1 08, John Donohoe stated that advertising revenues were up 151%. I think advertising is where eBay is going now.

Finally a quote from an interview with Randy Smythe that Ina Steiner did almost two years ago where he asks eBay a speculative question.

What do you want to be? Do you want to be a shopping portal, or a shopping destination? Make up your mind.

They're saying, well we need monetize our null searches, right? We have millions of null searches every single day, we need to monetize that. That's fine. But tell your customers, your sellers, that you're becoming a portal, so they can go and buy keywords ... and move on to their website and not pay you to list product on there.

Points to ponder indeed. I think the evidence is clear, eBay wants to be a shopping portal. If Buy.com is a desirable seller despite a very low sales : listings ratio with free listings, more is better. More space for advertising will do the trick for the next quarter or so. What do you think?

Y'all come back!

Advice For eBay Buyers UPDATED

2008-08-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Buying on eBay got a lot harder this year. eBay has been making improvements to their search engine. They have made so many improvements that it can be quite difficult to find what you are looking for. Here are a few hints.

Finding, or not

UPDATE: Keep the search simple. Think hard about words that describe what you are looking for and use them in your search request.

After you have made your initial search and noted the number of items returned, you may want to check the 'include title and description' box, this is a choice which may appear after you have entered your search terms the first time. A seller can not put every word that may be searched for in the title, many times the word which you associate with the item may only appear in the description.

Don't be surprised if the search page looks different each time you visit, eBay likes to make sure you are awake. Today many of the search options were in the left nav bar.

You must search using eBay's Best Match which eBay thinks is smarter than you are. You will probably get better results by using the Sort by: box right above the first item. Time ending soonest will make sure you don't miss the perfect item from the perfect seller while looking at other stuff eBay wants you to see first.

Choices choices choices!

When you have entered your search terms make a note of the numbers of items found. After checking the first page keep scrolling to the very bottom, past all the advertisements to find the next pages. Below the additional pages bar you will see in teeny tiny print three more options in a Get more results box. You have three options to check there to see items that eBay's very confused search engine thinks are identical, to check items listed at a fixed price in eBay Stores and thirdly if you want to shop internationally.

More choices

If you are able to find what you are looking for on eBay it does not hurt to run a Google Shopping or product search to see what other options are out there on the web.

Many good eBay sellers are now ex-eBay sellers including me! Quite often you will find we offer better prices because we are not paying 30% plus of our gross to eBay and we can pass those savings onto our customers.

Many current eBay sellers only sell old or slow moving stock on eBay and have websites for their better inventory.

Pick your seller!

* Don't assume anything.
* Read the whole listing, all the words.
* Read where the seller will ship to and how it will be shipped.
* Remember to add the cost of shipping to the item price so you know what it is really going to cost!
* If you have any questions ask the seller, if they don't get back to you before the item ends don't be sad. Chances are very good an identical item is already listed or will be listed very soon, most sellers of truly unique items are no longer selling on eBay.
* Read both the feedback received and the feedback left for others.
* Personally, I don't buy high priced or electronics items from sellers who are brand new.
* If in doubt, don't! If it looks too good to be true it probably is.

Big is not necessarily better.

The largest seller on eBay is Buy with over 800,000 listings. Buy is the eBay name or user ID for a company called Buy.com. Before you buy something from Buy you should probably do three things:

1. Go look at other customer comments
2. Search for the same item on Google, you will always find it elsewhere and usually for a better price. Remember to add the shipping cost to the item price so you are comparing apples to apples.
3. If you must buy from Buy pay with a credit card, not a debit card or PayPal for maximum buyer protection. I am not saying they are dishonest. They are just huge and have terrible customer service.

Y'all come back!

Inspiration

2008-08-13T22:02:00.001-07:00

"To realize our true destiny, we must be guided not by a myth from our past, but by a vision of our future"

Professor Mark B Adams.

Y'all come back!

What Goes Around

2008-08-13T15:18:00.000-07:00

Aphorisms of the day:-

What goes around comes around.
Pride goes before a fall.

I just read one of the poorest excuses for a blog ever, at the Wall Street Journal of all places. A rehash of rants from February paired with words of wisdom from a Guru and not worth wasting time on other than the comments.

I am beginning to regard most market analysts and 'journalists' with scorn. The shame is that people who read them for information may well be more informed than the writer. If they are not, they will never know they have been fed inaccuracies and downright wrong information. This is a disgrace.

If sellers are paying for listings that are hidden they will not list.
If buyers can not find what they are looking for sales will drop.
If a venue fosters an atmosphere of dislike and mistrust, visiting there will not be a pleasant experience and visits will drop.

What goes around comes around, or, to put it another way "they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same" (Job 4:8)

eBay did not become a mega-giant one size fits all sales venue overnight. Neither will any of the new ‘alternatives’, but if sellers start listing on the ones that have Google feed and fit their buyer demographic; then as eBay provides a deteriorating buyer & seller experience so the market will shift.

In the words of the immortal Charles Schultz

"No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it."

Small sellers grew eBay to what is was a year ago, it is on the downward slope now but with the help of Google Shopping search small sellers can grow replacements.

Y'all come back!

A Message From Australia on Change at eBay

2008-08-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

"To me, the biggest change in connection with eBay this year..."

Hmmm, yes, it really is only this year. It feels like half of the ten and a half year period that I have been on eBay, but it really is only this year. There have been adversarial issues in the past, but nothing that prepared eBay's actual clientele for the treatment they have gotten this year. I am sure that there were cheers from some sellers when it was announced that Meg Whitman was departing from the eBay corporate structure, but I suspect most of those who were cheering would welcome her back with open arms if she returned to eBay now - assuming of course that those who were alert enough to the issues that Ms Whitman presented, have persisted with eBay this far since.

Some of the shifts are downright bizarre in the business sense. It is one thing to accept that there is a need to keep buyers happy so that they will return to the site and spend money and keep the wheels of commerce turning, but this years shifts in attitude, have created an illogical aura that the buyer is eBay's customer, and the seller is a supplier who is not to be trusted even though they are the ones who pay eBay's bottom line from all angles. PayPal is free to buyers, the so-called "protection" insurance scam is free to buyers, and of course the sellers (rightly) pay the listing fees and commissions for the items they sell, but sellers who attempt to pass on their costs and fees at any point in the transaction are now to be held in contempt (even though the majority of buyers actually see through the flaws in this logic).

Sellers are now the enemy in eBay's eyes, and in order to stop off-site sales and to increase the use of PayPal, eBay is attempting to convince the buyers of this. If they succeed, though, why would buyers return to eBay at all?

So the eBay seller is now an outcast in their own marketplace. The current and recent changes have removed everything intuitive from the search engine on eBay, and punishes sellers for having the audacity to try to build a profit margin into their business, while eBay itself steadily increases the fee structures imposed on sellers. My own business is probably paying at least 25% more in fees this year to eBay, through the listing fee "reductions" and "free" gallery adjustments at the beginning of the year on the USA site, and through the enforced acceptance of PayPal on the Australian site, add to this the steadily increasing postage costs and the inescapable increases in fuel costs which both affect every eBay business but are beyond eBay's scope and control, and I am thankful that I sell old and unusual items which create auction competition and a decent profit margin - I don't know how anyone can "retail" new stock on eBay. At the same time as eBay reaps their increased fees though, they are "rewarding" and "incenting" sellers to REDUCE their prices and offer free shipping - those who don't are punished through poor search exposure and are effectively being labeled greedy and arrogant by, umm, the greedy and arrogant.

The change has been constant and relentless this year for both eBay's customers, and those who buy on the site. Buyers I speak to in person complain of constantly having to relearn how to use the site, how unnecessary most of the change seems, and some reduce the amount they use the site for these reasons. Having to re-adjust each time you buy is just hard work, and becomes hard to justify when it is so constant. Everything that made this marketplace work is being interfered with, and yet the marketplace still works in spite of the way that eBay manages it and interferes with it. How this business model can survive though is beyond me, other than it's mere market dominance meaning that it continues to steamroll through eBay's section of the overall marketplace, replacing it's cast off sellers and buyers at a fairly steady rate. In doing so though, even if it remains a place of commerce that is viable to some, eBay has trashed it's brand beyond recognition this year. Sellers like me continue because, at this stage, it is still viable for my own business model and lifestyle, but any sense of loyalty that I had to eBay has been killed this year. I have plans loosely in place so that I can walk away from the site as soon as it is either nonviable, or I am squeezed out overnight by either policy changes or just waking to find that I am not a registered user. So be it.

Ranting yet again, Kevin

The Nature of Change

2008-08-11T10:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while I was being lazy watching reruns of Ice Road Truckers and napping, two of my favorite bloggers were busy, very busy.

Scott Pooler at Trading Assistant Journal has an immensely interesting (to me) article on changes eBay has recently made to its affiliate program, and potential consequences thereof.

Randy Smythe on My Blog Utopia! wrote on the subject of change which has been on my mind today. He also wrote a separate post comparing Amazon to eBay in apples to apples mode. Good stuff and food for thought, almost as much non ranting reasoned brain food in the early comments as in the post.

Onward; the nature of change...

Full disclosure: I am at the life stage where change, simply for the sake of change is unattractive. I tend to look at change very closely to see if there are benefits to ME.

Change on eBay this year has been and is continuing to be overwhelming. Not only the announced changes, and the revisions to announced changes but the unannounced quietly implemented changes have devastated sellers.

What is the biggest change?

To me, the biggest change in connection with eBay this year is not the changes to feedback, including DSRs, the fee decrease paired with the 'adjustment' or even the unfinding of Best Match, it is the divisive and adversarial tone that pervades the whole site. It is malicious, petty and almost gleeful from the upper stratosphere of executive offices through the Public Relations department right down into the telephone banks of Customer Service (for PowerSellers only) and it is aimed at sellers.

* eBay is no longer the seller's business partner.

* eBay is the guardian and protector of buyers from the bad sellers. Increasingly, bad sellers are defined as non PowerSellers.

* The real bad sellers are left undisturbed because the theory is that the DSRs will sort them out and route them off the site, meanwhile burned buyers are collateral damage who may be offered coupons as compensation. Good luck with that.

* PowerSellers are promoted as being eligible for all the discounts and goodies which causes resentment of them from the smaller sellers.

* Meanwhile PowerSellers are quietly loosing their perks because the goal posts shift and it is hard to make goals if you don't know what you are aiming at.

* Buyers are educated and encouraged to find fault with nearly impossible expectations of sellers.

eBay has become a stew of nastiness. Little sellers against big sellers, buyers against all sellers, all sellers wondering where the nice friendly buyers from the old days went and eBay stirring the cauldron with a big spoon.

Y'all come back!

Update EBS Liquidation and Investigation

2008-08-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

For victims that have not received the EBS liquidators report, please contact:

SV Partners liquidators
phone: 07 3310 2000
email: ebs@svp.com.au

they will place you on the unsecured creditors list, and at the moment it looks like you may receive around 30% of your money once EBS' assets are sold.

You can also try for a Visa/Mastercard refund. In Australia, as in the USA, MasterCard® and Visa® Card Association rules and regulations govern liability with respect to disputed transactions; which includes a 90 day window of opportunity for chargebacks. In the event that a merchant collapses then the acquirer bank (the bank which issued the credit card) meets its scheme obligations and then gets into line with the rest of the unsecured creditors for whatever it is owed. Contact your bank.

If you paid with PayPal and have been refused a refund, ask again. Ask to speak to a PayPal supervisor, be prepared to argue a lot. You may get a refund, others have! As is usual with eBay a 'wait patiently' announcement was made on the Round Table board on 29th July, and nothing since.

Detective Senior Constable Michelle Cavanagh, a member of the fraud squad at Queensland Police, said she was waiting for information from the liquidator to determine where all the money has gone, and whether anything illegal has taken place. The Queensland Police fraud department had received 16 complaints so far, she said. An investigation is in process but it could be months until the investigation is complete.

Y'all come back!

Eggs in A Basket

2008-08-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

A thread posted on the eBay discussion boards yesterday, now deleted said

Just a couple days ago buy.com's listing count was hovering just above 500,000 but now all of a sudden it jumped to over 800,000.

eBay's daily listing totals in the last week have dropped from approximately 15.3M to 14.5M ( 0.8M) and of that 14.5M, around 18% are buy.com listings. That is a lot of eggs in one basket.

My friend over at The Brews News has a moving and powerful post about a conversation with an eBay rep and the future of their business

I hope the “smart” people at eBay making the decisions can find a better way to communicate their plan to the rest of us less smart folks. If the eBay decision makers have a plan, now would be a good time to unveil it since eBay sellers are really in the dark.

and in an earlier post on the same blog . . .

There has been a slow movement of reputable eBay sellers who have been leaving the last 3 years but after January 2008 there appears to be a mass exodus. Sellers are leaving in such alarming numbers that it is more like a stampede out of the gates than a gradual movement. The severity of the problem is not being shown in eBay’s statistics yet because there are many sellers just like us who are trying to liquidate their current eBay inventory at a rapid pace. We are working hard to be set up in time to take advantage of our sales opportunities on Amazon and our websites for the 2008 holiday season.

Brews is not a small seller like I was and many of you were. They employ people, have a warehouse and a loading dock! This blog is written by a business person, a ten year eBay seller. Not a ranter. Not a whiner. A professional seller . . .

How sad that a seller with ten years on eBay, over 34K positive feedback, an average 99.8% 12 month rating, and three selling identities, is taking their basket of eggs and leaving. What eBay buyers will get is leftovers,

and buy.com

Y'all come back!

eBay PayPal Only Policy

2008-08-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

This post was written in August 2008. Information may be out of date.
Red Ink Diary has moved lock stock and barrel (including this post) to HERE where you can read the latest eCommerce, Bonanzle, PayPal and eBay news.

It is hard to pick a single subject when it comes to writing about eBay, they have outraged so many of their customers they may well be the most hated corporation in the USA. It is very hard to remain objective about anything when it affects the way you earn your living. It is hardest of all to change the way you do business after years of learning that 'this' is the way it is done; but change we must if we are to survive as sellers with or without eBay.

eBay has asserted there is no PayPal Only in the USA policy. The reason for this is that we have laws preventing it. There may be no such official policy at eBay but we have now reached a point where there is a de facto policy, and this is open contempt of the law.

Here is a link to the relevant eBay page.

All new sellers must offer PayPal as a payment option.

I received this document last night from a colleague. I urge you to read, cut and paste anything that reflects your opinion and then forward a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission and to the Attorney General of the state in which you live and do business.

I would like to point out that I do not personally have a problem accepting any kind of payment, even PayPal. I am infuriated by eBay's open contempt both for the law of the land and their customers. It is a corporate disease and the only cure for that disease is legal action. I realize that almost nobody has both the desire and the financial means to take eBay to court but what you can do is make noise. Look at the example of what the Australian sellers accomplished, eBay backed down but is trying the same back door policy there as they are using here, clearly expressed in the Discouraging Payments Policy.

You have three choices. Accept everything eBay does to you, quit or fight back.
What will your choice be?

Y'all come back!

The FUBAR Effect eBay IT up

2008-08-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

We often hear the phrase "Amazonization of eBay" these days, which is in my opinion a legally actionable insult to Amazon; but maybe it is time to coin a new phrase to refer to the FUBAR effect on the eBay.com site, used as a verb, to "eBay IT up.""

An astounding statement after the eBay announcement regarding the PayPal transaction reporting requirements which will become law in 2011 as part of the American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008. Under the legislation, PayPal will be required to report to the IRS the total payment volume received by PayPal customers in the U.S. who:

1. receive more than $20,000 in payment volume in a single year; and
2. receive more than 200 payments in a single year.

This is in no way shape or form eBay's fault. It is just another step in the transformation of America into George Orwell's 1984 by our elected officials. Big Brother is watching you and wants to watch more. I don't actually have a problem with it, I pay my taxes.

BUY THIS Noah's Ark Note Card - CLICK

One good thing that may come out of it is that eBay and PayPal will be forced to upgrade the ancient version of Quickbooks they bought off Noah's online garage sale. The one that is not compatible with anything newer than an Apple IIe. We can always hope.

Ken Swab who is the senior Federal Government Relations officer at PayPal blogged on this on Tuesday morning. He said:

I want to emphasize that this new law affects a small percentage of PayPal customers.

Say what?

Either this guy doesn't know what he is talking about, always a possibility, or eBay as we knew it has disappeared a lot faster than we ever thought it could.

$20,000 a year averages out to $1666.66 a month, making you a 'gasp' PowerSeller! It would not be unreasonable to peg overhead at 30% of that if you include all eBay and PayPal fees, item cost, repeat listings, internet access, hardware, software and postage and packing expenses. Pre-tax, federal and state, net would be $1165 a month (rounded).

On a 60 Minutes program aired March 11th this year just before she retired, Meg Whitman said

"We have about – around the world, about 1.3 million people make most, if not all, of their living selling on eBay."

This was echoed by presidential contender John McCain in Martin County Kentucky who can be heard on NPR's Morning Edition, 25th March 2008 (1:28 into the tape) adding the information

"... most of whom are in the United States."

Yet Ken Swab "says this new law affects a small percentage of PayPal customers" The question is who is eBaying it up? The ex-CEO of eBay, Presidential hopeful John McCain or Ken Swab?

Ms Whitman, $1166 a month pre-tax is not making a living. Advice to you folks out there hopeful of "making a living on eBay" . . .Don't quit your day job!"

Y'all come back!

UPDATE:

Scott Pooler on Trading Assistant Journal has a different angle on the same subject.

Out to Lunch

2008-08-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

My brain is out to lunch today!

Y'all come back later! OK? See you then.

New Phishing Storm Aimed at PayPal

2008-08-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

Today Richard Brewer-Hay, the eBay corporate blogger had a post about PayPal's 10th birthday on eBayInkBlog.

To celebrate the occasion the Phishing crooks & scammers have unleashed a storm of phishing emails.

On July 7th Richard had a post about phishing. I commented at the time,

The simplest, safest and most secure way to put an end to PayPal phishing would be for PayPal to cease putting clickable links in emails. Any customer communication requiring input from customers should be on the secure site.

“You have a message from PayPal which requires response, please log in to your account to access it.”

About three weeks later somebody called Square said,

Henrietta’s suggestion sounds simple enough, but it was already done in the last year and then changed back. I don’t think there was any explanation when it happened or was reversed, I’m guessing that enough sellers, who get tons of these emails and end up click on the transaction link to get more info, complained about the inconvenience. It may be like a safer approach, but it’s also creating an extra step to check on your payments, which is a pain when it multiplies out many times.

I have no knowledge whatsoever of PayPal doing what Square says they did, you would think I might have noticed since last year I was still selling actively on eBay and I accept PayPal on my website, but whatever. Personally I would never, ever, click on a link in an email purported to be from either eBay or PayPal. My advice to you dear reader would be to do the same, send them straight to spoof@paypal.com.

I have received three very high quality and almost believable Phishing communications today. You can see two of them here and here. Links have been disabled!

Giving credit where it is due PayPal responds very fast to reported phishing attempts.

Dear XXX,

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking emails.
The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security team
is working to disable it.

Do you have any knowledge of PayPal ending clickable links in email messages last year and then reversing it?

Y'all come back

Obstruction of Justice as eBay Removes Evidence

2008-08-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

I really hate to keep banging the drum on this ebusiness_supplies scandal in Australia. The fact of the matter is, not only is PayPal Australia back-pedaling as fast as they can on Buyer Protection

I emailed Paypal and after about 5 emails and a lot of frustration, I got the buyer protection ... Paypal was a disgrace really, they closed the dispute and blew me off initially. Until I wanted it in writing that they would not honour the Protection..only then did they come good.

but eBay is busily removing any trace that the seller existed.

It is fact that eBay did nothing to shut down this seller for weeks despite repeated reporting of policy violations in listings. It is also fact that because of the policy violations many of the listings which carried PayPal Buyer Protection buttons were not eligible for PayPal Buyer Protection. This is deceptive trading any way you look at it.

There is some speculation in Australia that eBay took no action beyond removing active listings in order to run the clock out on time limits for filing a dispute. This would not surprise me at all.

What does surprise me is that eBay would remove evidence in what is now an active criminal fraud investigation. This is obstruction of justice.

eBay and Paypal are NOT serving the best interests of the buyer. Naturally eBay claims they are "simply a venue" but I wonder how long that will serve as an excuse in Australia.

Y'all come back

Links:
Western Australia Today

Red Ink: July 29th 2008
Red Ink: July 28th 2008

Its Saturday, Lets Go Holoholo

2008-08-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

Holoholo is a Hawaiian word, it means something along the lines of a fun trip, goofing off. As with so much in the islands it is also a hula, learned by little kids and remembered always. Here is Holoholo Ka'a, from the days when a ride in a car was something special. Listen carefully, there is an english verse towards the end.

Now that we are in the mood, first stop Genuine Seller, Mr 'How to Amazon', Steve Lindhorst, author of Selling On The River, is an ex-eBay employee and an excellent writer. Read a recent post "eBay and New Coke - Lessons Lost", no rant just a succinct analogy.

We've all been in those malls on the edge of town that only have a couple of second rate shoe stores and a lot of closed stores - after a time or two of not finding what you came for, you don't go back right?

Next stop The Brews News who has an excellent post on the fallacies of the PowerSeller discounts written from the viewpoint of a PowerSeller, and someone who walks the walk, daily. Here is a taste:

In our business, we always prioritize orders that are placed through our website and through Amazon because the rewards for shipping timely are greater for us on those venues. We still ship eBay orders timely, just not necessarily the same day or the next day. And that is because even if we ship eBay orders 2 or 3 days after we receive them, our DSR for Shipping Time will never fall below our DSR for Shipping & Handling. We provide very good service to our eBay customers but we provide the BEST customer service to buyers who purchase from us elsewhere.

A quick hop across the pond to international eBay trader Ed at Buildaskill who highlights yet another example from the dirty tricks (or is it just plain incompetency, you decide) department at eBay. Check your invoices!

On to my Twitter friend Randy Smythe, the master of concise and incisive, on his My Blog Utopia! for a very interesting post on traffic sources.

Scott Pooler at Trading Assistant Journal has an informative piece on a nifty free tool.

Finally check this out, full disclosure: There are mature words in this blog, if this bothers you please don't go there!

I hope you enjoyed going holoholo with me,

Y'all come back

K.I.S.S at Bonanzle

2008-08-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Keep It Simple Sweetie at Bonanzle

This is an interesting site, it was launched two months ago, still in beta, but remarkably functional. This is one of the few new sites that is oriented to buyers on the home page. How about that!

Support is speedy, friendly and to the point. At this time Seattle based Bonanzle is fee free. Unlike some other sites, there is an advertising budget but organic traffic is gaining velocity. The goal was to target primarily sellers in July, and then target both buyers and sellers thereafter. I have seen booth numbers triple in the last two weeks. I am pleased to tell you there have been sales.

So What is Bonanzle?

Bonanzle is bright and uncluttered, easy to navigate and it feels friendly. It appears to be a hybrid of Craigslist, Etsy and the very very old eBay (the community feel) but better and it is not auction format, fixed price only. Booths (Bonanzle for store) have a cart!

This is not a cookie cutter out of the box sales site. It is a carefully thought out uniquely designed sales venue into which founder Bill Harding and his team have put a tremendous amount of work over the last year and a half.

You can entertain offers on your items if you wish, or not, as you choose. You can ship or offer local pickup for large items like couches and furniture. It is extremely web 2.0 in that there is a live chat option, you can list multiple means of contact, IM, Skype, e-mail, social network, website, blog, or plain old fashioned phone.

The listing format is great. It is truly simple and intuitive. When you click the Sell button a single screen comes up, just that one screen has all the fields you need. No html, decimal free (list in round numbers) and you can duplicate items if you have wording or layout you want to keep consistent.

Pictures are quick and easy to upload from your computer, there is a built in editor and more importantly your pictures look good on the site.

I found the listing process to be extremely fast to learn, completing my first ten items in about 20 minutes. Once I had the process down I was listing an item a minute. Wheeeeeeee! There is a feedback grabber from eBay and I believe you can also bulk import listings from Excel, eBay and Craigslist.

Each seller can have a Bonanza once a month, a Bonanza is a short term super sale.

For a few hours we will let all visitors know that you are having a sale, that they had better check it out, and that all in all, we think you are pretty great. You choose the time to put your goods up for sale. We direct site traffic to your booth. Magic happens..

Bonanzle welcomes non US sellers, Bill says

We're open to sellers from other countries registering (quite a few already have), but our shipping is only setup to specify rates within the US right now, and all our prices are in dollars, so it is admittedly not ideal for them yet. We're hoping to add more internationalization in the coming months.

Bonanzle for buyers
As a buyer you have complete control of how you search. There is a semi-conventional search box on the home page which allows you to search by keyword and then price or speed. You can search for local items, most recently listed, shop in a Live Booth (where the seller is online) or browse more conventionally by category. In the Booths you can choose from six sort options.

Bonanzle has a unique cart system, the buyer drags items to the sellers cart, checks off options and makes an offer if that option is checked. The seller can fine tune with any shipping discounts etc and respond. Currently the site is set up for Paypal and Google Checkout.

I have tested quite a few sites since February and I now know which ones I do not want anything to do with. My gut feeling on this one? I like it, it is going places. I am in on the ground floor, which is a good place to be.

So here is a special offer, all sellers who get in and stock their booth before the beta period ends will be grandfathered in, and not be charged fees for six months after everyone else starts getting charged.

Tell 'em Henrietta sent you, (full disclosure, I am not getting paid to do this)

Y'all come back

Just For Fun The Perils of Aging

2008-07-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

My cousin sent me this and it tickled my funny bone.

Y'all come back

We're actually not liable for it says eBay

2008-07-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

A day late and many dollars short.

Yesterday when I wrote about the demise of #7 eBay Australia seller eBusiness_Supply, (EBS) which is now in receivership, the company was still in good standing on eBay. Their feedback showed 4 recent negatives. As I write today, the business is finally Not A Registered User (NARU) and has accumulated 668 negatives as buyers wake up and smell the yak dung.

eBay and PayPal must have known of the incipient problems with EBS for a month or more. On the Australian boards there are multitudinous posts about non delivery from this seller increasing sharply in volume by the first week in July. With all the publicity on PayPal being the only safe way to pay, many of the posters specifically chose PayPal, only to be SOL for refunds.

Listen to a Tuesday evening Radio Australia broadcast, the transcript provided seems to have some confusion as to exactly who said what but the broadcast is clear.

I have said it many times before (just search PayPal in the blog search) PayPal's Buyer Protection has truck sized loopholes designed purely to protect PayPal not the Buyer.

Right now eBay/PayPal Australia are being squeezed between a rock and a hard place. IT is not going to get any better. Large sums have been spent in advertising promoting PayPal buyer protection and safety. This would have paid off in the long term because a few buyers getting ripped off at one time and 'not qualifying for protection' would not garner any attention at all. This situation with hundreds of victims is very different. Note that PayPal's initial response was .. the auction didn't specify PayPal or, so sad, too bad, we can't reclaim funds from the seller.

Many of the high dollar purchasers bought ATVs, which are not covered because (a) they are vehicles and (b) they were not in Australia at the time of purchase. Almost all buyers were 'unprotected because (c)the terms of the auction itself were in violation - delivery over 20 days from time of payment, and then (d) because of all the negatives the sellers feedback was below permitted levels. Add to that the three different legal agreements pre June 7th, between June 7th and June 17th and after June 17th and you have a mess.

Most of the buyers were lulled into inaction beyond eBay's and PayPal's (different) filing deadlines because they knew they were 'protected'.

Some comments from the discussion boards, which are being deleted almost as fast as they post:

Have to wonder on eBay/PayPal's priorities, when they are more interested in pulling posts, rather than openly communicating with the many people who have lost their hard earned money to this lot and keeping us updated on whats happening..

I am also in dispute with paypal, as i used paypal to pay for my item. But the EBS eBay ad didnt actually have a PayPal option(which is weird), so i logged into PayPal and associated the payment with the eBay auction and thought everything would be ok. But now PayPal are saying cause the auction didnt specify PayPal, i am not entitled to any buyer protection!; so much for trying to do the right thing by using PayPal !

I recently recieved a big 'stuff you' email from Paypal whereby they found in my favour but said they couldn't reclaim funds. I couldn't believe they would be so dishonest and offer $20k protection then wash their hands of the matter so I called them up and asked them to recheck. They admitted the email they sent was in error since the listing I purchased from carried the $20,000 protection logo and I was, therefore, entitled to cover. I am expecting a refund within 24-48h from Paypal. To be eligible you need to have lodged a claim and escalated it within the timeframes Paypal stipulate (I did) so don't listen to the scammer's delaying tactics...lodge a claim NOW and you can always cancel it later.

Make sure you grab a copy of your ad before it disappears off the eBay.com.au site. My purchase has already gone and when doing a search and find for the item, it appears as a eBay.com listing, so PayPal are saying you are not covered by .au protection. Lucky i kept a copy that shows it listed as a eBay.com.au listing.

I ordered my item on June 23rd, 2008. So buyers having problems in May, should have had the opportunity to warn people like me who bought in June. I was checking the listings from eBusiness_supplies and BestBargains.com.au a couple of weeeks before my item was won and everything (including eBAY, feedback score) looked healthy.

The biggest factor that influenced my willingness to purchase on eBAY was the belief that eBAY's new hardline with PayPal Protection (all the adverts).

Y'all come back

Newslinks:

Sydney Morning Herald
AsiaOne, Singapore
The Sheet, AU

Will eBay Australia & PayPal Make Good?

2008-07-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

Top eBay news in Australia today is that the seventh largest eBay seller in the country, ebusiness_supplies is in receivership.

According to SellerDome ebusiness_supplies had average monthly sales in excess of $373,000 with an enviable sell through rate on items with an average GSV of $170+. Selling imported high dollar items like quad ATVs and home gymnasium fitness equipment, ebusiness_supplies has had problems in the past. New management took over April 1st of this year and an announcement was made on July 7th offering to refund all customers who had ordered before June 1st.

So what went wrong? More importantly will any of the buyers be covered by eBay's much touted PayPal Buyer Protection?

According to an article in The Age "Those who paid using PayPal, which is owned by eBay, would be entitled to refunds through a new fund set up to deal with this incident, PayPal managing director Andrew Pipolo said."

PayPal's User Agreement for all payments effected using PayPal on or after 12.01am Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) on 17 June 2008:

Amounts that you may receive under PayPal’s Buyer Protection Policy.

IMPORTANT: For purchases made on www.ebay.com.au there is a maximum discretionary payment amount of $20,000.00 AUD.

PayPal is not obliged to pay any amount at all, or if it does decide to make a payment, to pay the maximum amount set out – you may, at PayPal's discretion, receive a payment which is less than the maximum of $20,000.00 AUD, but PayPal will not pay more than the maximum discretionary amount.

For payments made prior to that date but made on or after 7 June 2007 PayPal would exclude buyers from 'top tier protection' because ebusiness_supplies feedback rating was less than 98% at that time. Basic tier protection has a $400 maximum. There too, as always, PayPal's all purpose cop out "The decision whether to offer coverage under the PayPal Buyer Protection Policy on a given listing is at PayPal's sole discretion."

Either way I think there will be rather a lot of unhappy and probably ex-eBay buyers in Australia. It may seem unfair because eBay is not responsible for ebusiness_supplies poor management, but when you raise buyer expectations by deception (PayPal Buyer Protection has truck sized loopholes built in to protect PayPal, not buyers) you must expect to pay the price.

Y'all come back