To toot our own horns for a bit, in comparison, Vendio has spent the last year lowering prices and launching an eCommerce Platform that includes a robust, full-featured online store as well as item, order, customer management – all for free.

We were also very surprised that merchants were not being given more time to make a decision (and almost are forced to stay or scramble). Sometimes you just feel that merchants just can’t catch a break.

So – we just wanted to let you know to stay-tuned for a special offer coming to all of you who are impacted by the Auctiva announcement.

We’ll do our best for you, we promise!!

Here are few tips for keeping your sanity

Completely ignore any name-calling – If a customer calls you names (dumb or stupid, thief, crook, etc). Ignore it and pretend it does not exist. Respond to their question in a calm and professional manner. Just because your customer has sank to name-calling does not mean that you have to respond in kind. Report profanity to eBay, but follow the same rule of not responding in kind.
When wrong, Apologize – Nothing diffuses an angry customer like a heartfelt apology. If you make a mistake don’t hesitate to admit it and apologize. There is nothing wrong with admitting an error. We all make them.
Fix the Problem – Replace or refund if the problem was your fault. If you believe that its buyer’s remorse, then attempt to work out a compromise, such as a partial refund or exchange.
Consider the cost – Being right can be extremely costly. When the customer holds the cards, refusing a refund of replacement can be more costly than writing off the expense. Consider the possibility to negative feedback or low DSRs. Many fees and promotions are based on eBay DSRs and slipping only a few points can put your entire account at risk.
Set a Policy – One of the best things you can do for yourself to reduce stress over unhappy customers is to develop a policy on how you handle situations and keep some email templates on hand to help you deal with common issues, such as late shipping or item not arrived.
Don’t Continue a Bad Argument – Don’t continue a back and forth heated email exchange. A few emails should be all it takes to resolve any issue. If it continues past that, it is likely there will be no resolution and you should stop before it continues to escalate.

And one final thought…When you are the buyer, remember how you want to be treated as a seller.

I’ve found some interesting tidbits that I did not know before, so am sharing.

1. A neutral is still counted as a negative in Seller Performance (it’s just not counted in the dashboard view).

I did not know this. I made the assumption when eBay stopped counting the neutral as a negative, that it reverted to the way it used to be. Apparently, a neutral is still counted as a negative for seller performance.

2. PayPal is testing a Student Account.

I wondered if this had eBay implications. So I went looking on eBay to find this out and here is the current help answer:

“When eBay members agree to buy or sell items, they are entering into contracts with each other. Throughout most of the world, individuals under the age of 18 are not allowed to enter such contracts. For that reason, eBay does not allow individuals to register as members until they reach the age of 18.”

3. There is a new  law regarding Children’s Product Safety – http://www.cpsc.gov/cpsia.pdf

I’m sure we’ll see some eBay rules as a result.

4. New Postal Rates are going into effect in January

I still have penny stamps from the last increase.

5. eBay has a Police Blotter Page

This page was very interesting, a bit disconcerting, but interesting.

So, how many of the above did you know?

]]> http://www.vendio.com/vendable/2008/12/08/small-items-of-interest-from-the-ebay-world/feed/ 0 http://www.vendio.com/vendable/2008/11/06/it-is-not-easy-keeping-up-with-announcements/ http://www.vendio.com/vendable/2008/11/06/it-is-not-easy-keeping-up-with-announcements/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:12:34 +0000 crystalwells-miller http://www.vendio.com/vendable/?p=147 There was a recent Auctionbytes article about PayPal eChecks not being released to the seller. This glitch was on ongoing issue beginning in Mid-October and fixed the first week in November.
In some cases this created problems for sellers as buyer did not receive their merchandise in a timely manner, left negatives and/or bad DSRs. Yesterday, in a follow up Auctionbytes article, eBay said it would remove negative feedback and DSRs for affected transactions.

eBay does a very good job in dotting all the I’s and crossing all the T’s when it comes to rolling out new policies. You get little people pictures and long pre-written posts – sometimes even FAQs and helpful tips. For the DSRs release, there was enough information fill a small room. However, eBay seems to have taken a step backwards in letting customers know about system problems. eChecks not clearing was a big deal to both buyers and sellers and not a whisper on the General or System Announcements boards.

It’s hard enough getting sellers to keep up with the announcements – We are seeing sellers who don’t know about the shipping caps in media categories that eBay has instituted, which WAS announced.
By not putting this information out on the eBay boards, it teaches sellers that the place to get information is elsewhere – which is not a good thing for sellers OR buyers. In the case of the uncleared PayPal eChecks, sellers could have pointed buyers to the announcement and eliminated a lot of buyer anger over not receiving merchandise in a timely manner.

Hopefully, eBay will begin using the System Announcement board the same way it uses the General Announcement board, to give in-depth information that buyers and sellers need in a timely manner.

Here’s hoping!!

On October  21st eBay announced the new Paperless Payments requirement. You will need to accept PayPal or ProPay . As long as you have one of these options selected, you will have  no trouble with your listings. eBay will no longer display Checks or Money Orders as an option, relists with these options will not fail as eBay will just ignore them. Additionally, if you have any text in your Auction Ads that reference checks or money orders, you have until January 14th to remove that text from your listings

In the past eBay stated that they would suspend sellers who had a 4.3 or lower DSR rating in ANY of their ratings, but they have changed that to 4.1. Now, who have any DSR between 4.1 and 4.3 while be allowed to list, will have their items demoted in search.

For those sellers who have between a 4.1 and 4.3 DSR rating in one or more of their DSR ratings – you will definitely need to increase your ratings or your account will likely be suspended at some point. Here are a few ideas to help you increase your DSRs if you fall into that “at-risk” bucket:

1. List in Auction Format (you may use Buy It Now) – Since you are demoted in search results, ending soonest and newest in the Auction Format offers the best opportunity for your items to be seen. Unless you have rare items, low DSR ratings will put you at the bottom of Best Match search.
2. Only list items where you can offer Free Shipping. Because you are in the “at-risk” bucket, you cannot list items that have high shipping costs without the risk of further low DSRs. If you want to move the needle, you will need to offer free shipping.
3. Ship your item out immediately upon payment. If the item has not cleared PayPal, consider shipping ahead of time (weigh the risk factors – sending before cleared payment vs. low DSR for shipping time). You may wish to consider listing items where your cost is low.
4. Check and answer questions quickly. Make sure you are very specific when buyers are asking about shipping and accommodate buyer requests if at all possible.
5. Review your existing complaints and determine the root cause of the low DSRs and look at ways to ameliorate the issues. For instance, if you are a furniture seller who has high shipping cost – look for methods to help buyers understand the costs. Think about picking up the phone, calling the buyer when you ship the item and letting them know it’s on the way, and explain your shipping charges, for example.

eBay has also announced that when a seller has offered free shipping, eBay will display an onsite reminder that the seller offered free shipping to the buyer when they are leaving DSRs

Feedback Revision also went live this week. If anyone uses this, I’d like to know if it allows the buyer to revise their DSR ratings when they are going through the revision process, or if its limited to just Feedback comments. You are allowed 5 revision requests per 1000 transactions, so it might be best to make sure you have resolved any issue and the buyer is on board with changing their ratings prior to sending requests.

As always, Happy Selling!

First up is the October 15th Announcement, which is really 4 announcement in one (you know it spells trouble when changes are coming in bulk!)

1. New Look for Product Pages – Its strange how things come around. Media items are grouped by condition, which is the half.com (a company that eBay bought and buried) model. Sellers, please make sure you are using item specifics and selecting condition for media items (the default will be the worst condition.

2. Free Subtitles for Media items begins – Please take a moment to read the previous blog post about using Subtitles – it could save you some $$$$$$

3. Introducing Featured First, a New Listing Upgrade – Featured first replaces Gallery Featured – $24.95 for up to 10 days, and $74.95 for up to 30 days. A few things to note about this upgrade..its not a guarantee that you will ever be featured and its only available for sellers who have not been demoted in DSRs. I have no idea what score “demoted” represents – its not one of the dashboard options. So, definitely get clarification before investing in Feature FIrst.

4. Best Match for Store Inventory Format Listings in Search Expansion Box – I had to read this one about 10 times before I understood it. First, Best Match will now be the default search for Store Inventory and second they will increase the number of store items displayed in normal search results from around 30 to 50.

5. Relist Credits for Fixed Priced listings ending. Auctions still qualify.

On October 17th eBay announced that for multiple quantity listings (Fixed Price), they would no longer display the quantity available if it was over 10, they would instead display “more than 10″. I’m guessing that there was unintended consequences of reducing buyer demand because there was a lot of supply. Hmmmm..go figure (sorry, sometimes I cannot resist)

See you next Monday and Happy Selling!!

Okay – here is the nitty-gritty nutshell version of the recent changes:

1. In the UK, eBay will require DVD sellers to ship FREE domestically.
UK has in the past proven to be a testing ground; it may be coming to the US soon in some form or another. Be it unintended or not, it means a seller is now paying final value fees on shipping too.

2. Feedback Revision will be launching soon. In a nutshell, you are able to contact a buyer who has left negative feedback in an attempt to resolve any outstanding issues (which, to me, seems to be a buy off – as there is no incentive for a buyer to do this except a refund or cash back) – There is a limit of 5 requests per 1000 feedback in a 12 month period.

3. As part of the same announcement, eBay will be messaging buyers when leaving DSRs if the seller has offered free shipping. Sellers have been complaining about offering free shipping and still getting less than stellar DSRs for “shipping cost”.

4. Enforcement of the Shipping and Handling Policy will be pushed back until after the holiday season. For those of you who took time off from listing to make all the changes at least you are a bit ahead in the policy department.

5. Maximum Shipping changes should have rolled out last week in Books, DVD, Movies and Video Games.

Perhaps with the holiday season underway, there will be limited actual changes, and more announcements of upcoming changes to lessen holiday season impact? Here’s hoping !!

eBay has reduced its workforce by 10% globally in an effort to “improve our operations and streghten our ability to continue investing in growth”.

Additionally, they have acquired a US based payment business Bill Me Later, and a classified site in Denmark.

In other news, there is a new eBay Pulse page

PESA last week released a position paper that focuses on the eBay marketplace.

News from Vendio – Vendio Research now supports eBay Motors Parts and Accessories.

Vendio supports the 30-day Fixed price options – Make sure you read the post about Best Match and 30 day Fixed Price. This should help you make the correct listing decisions.

Reminder – In previous eBay announcements, you may recall that checks and money orders are not allowed. In January, you will need to revise your descriptions to remove any mention of checks and money orders, so if you are already editing. eBay has a great checklist for these changes.

Keeping up with everything might make you feel like a hamster in a wheel going into the holiday season, so don’t forget to take a breathe now and again and de-stress !!

For example:
If you had 100 items, in the past, you may have created 10 listings with 10 item in each listing. However, with the Best Match, the best bet is to list 1 listing with 100 items. If you normally sell 10 percent of your items, creating 10 listings with 10 items would result in 1 buyer per listing, which would score a “1”. Creating a listing with 100 items would result in 10 buyers per listing, which would score a “10”. The score is higher creating one listing. The best practices below should result in a higher score, thus increased visibility in eBay’s best match search.

Best Practices for Best Match Score

1. List multiple quantities in one listing. Spreading out listings will decrease future success when relisting. This will also reduce your listing fees.

2. Relist within 30 days. Scores will only carry over for 30 days.

3. Use Vendio’s Scheduler to automate your listings so you do not miss that 30 day window. You can also schedule the number of times to relists, and we fully support GTC.

4. When using GTC and paid features (such as subtitle and buy it now) review the costs, as these have increased.

5. When editing your listings, do not change, the title, the category, the condition or increase the price. These 4 conditions will cause you to lose your carry forward score. Use Vendio Research to determine the best category, keywords for your title and price to avoid having to make these changes.

Auctions still factor in ending times, so you should continue to run auctions as you have in the past.

Last week, while at Inc.500, I was reading a blog post by Brewsnews. There were sessions going on and the exhibit hall was pretty empty. When I read this post, I burst out laughing, which echoed quite loudly in all that emptiness.

Frankly, I cannot top the headline, it was perfect. The news however, indicates eBay will begin focusing on changing communication behavior.

ColderICE does commentaries on eBay and is an active seller himself. I always look forward to his commentaries, his expressions are priceless. I met ColderIce at the Rocketplace Conference while we were standing at the registration table, and I kept looking over at him, thinking he looked familiar. He started speaking and I recognized him immediately!! I blurted out, “You’re COLDERICE” (which of course, he knew), and he was kind enough not to mention that I totally interrupted his conversation with my enthusiasm at meeting one of my favorites.

This week ColderIce has done a commentary on the eBay Townhall.

On a more serious note, please check the eBay Systems Announcements. Between September 17th and September 19th some items were not indexed in Search. eBay will automatically be providing credits for these items and this has been resolved as of September 22nd. If you noticed your item was not getting activity during this period, it may be that you were affected and will be getting a credit. You should NOT relist these items. How to tell? Unknown.

The new Fixed-Price and Duration for Media became live last week. It’s too early to really see the impact, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it. Vendio is supporting these new changes and if you have any questions, feel free to contact customer support (once you log in, the customer service link is at the top of your pages). Vendio Research will give an accurate picture of fixed price vs. auctions when more data is crunched, but for now, there is not enough data to determine the impact of the new duration.

Just a reminder (live on August 17th), Media Sellers should be using item specifics for condition. The new conditions are Brand New, Like New, Very Good, Good and Acceptable. If you do not use a condition, your item will be defaulted to acceptable.