posted on November 18, 2000 10:17:34 AM
I received an email from Auctiva which explains two updates to their service. One concerns the Showcase and the issues with eBay's "two click rule" and Auctiva's solution to this problem along with an agreement with eBay. For those of you who wanted to use the Showcase for other auction sites as well as eBay, you can do it now because the first page of the Showcase can show only eBay auctions and your other auction sites items will be accessable with another click. I personally like the Auctiva Showcase better than the Personal Gallery link because I think it looks more professional and it's also a free tool and very easy to use. The other advantage is avoiding eBay's server problems and functionality issues because the Showcase is on a different server and should still be available even when eBay's Seller Search isn't working. Also, your customers won't be exposed to competing banner ads like this which may draw them away from your merchandise when they look at your eBay's Gallery links.
The second update is a new service that suppliments eBay's "MY EBAY" Seller Tab which recently has limited the amount of auctions you can record to 300. Auctiva's "YOUR EBAY" is a great tool for those folks who run a lot of auctions and need to keep track of more than the 300 limit and it also has some other neat functions.
I'm including the relevant portion of the email I received from Auctiva that describes these updates - I've removed a few paragraphs that weren't "on topic". I don't have any affiliation with this company but I do like their products and wanted to pass on this information.
I write this message - Auctiva's CEO Newsletter - now and
then to keep in touch with you and let you know about exciting
developments here at Auctiva. I hope you'll find these emails
useful, but if you'd like to unsubscribe, you'll find instructions
at the bottom of this message.As always, we welcome your
feedback.
I have a few things to tell you about:
- Auctiva's Agreement with eBay!!
- Our new Auctiva "YourBay" service
- Updates that make our products more useful to you
AUCTIVA'S AGREEMENT WITH EBAY !!
I am very excited to announce that we've reached an agreement
with eBay!
First, some background. As you may know, we've been in the
press a lot over the last month. The Wall Street Journal and other
national media reported that some of Showcase's features were.
well, testing the limits of eBay's policies. For some time now, you've
told us about your frustrations with eBay and fear caused by their
unclear policies:
- "eBay acts first, without notice, and provides information later"
- "I'm afraid to ask eBay about their rules for fear that they'll cancel
my auctions."
- "eBay acts as judge, jury and executioner."
Like you, we believed that several of eBay's policies were too
restrictive and not in the best interests of auction sellers. When
eBay suddenly and without warning canceled the auctions of one
of our Showcase customers, we immediately began a dialogue
with them and surfaced these issues. In these discussions we have
taken a principled stand against these policies, advocating for your
right to clear, unambiguous policies and warnings before cancellations.
I am happy to report that, with your support, we have reached an
agreement with eBay. They have agreed to:
- Formally clarify and explain their indirect linking policies
- Not cancel any auctions merely because they link to an Auctiva
Showcase
- Explain issues of compliance to sellers rather than summarily
canceling auctions
We in turn have added an option to Auctiva Showcase, what we
call the "Two-Click Option": You can now choose to conceal
non-eBay listings in your Showcase when a buyer comes from
eBay's site. While we believe that no seller should have to do this,
we offer this option for those concerned about complying with
eBay's policies. If you select this option, your non-eBay items will
only appear after buyers click a second time to reveal them. To
enable this feature, just go to: http://www.auctiva.com/myaccount/showcaseedit.asp
NEW AUCTIVA "YOURBAY" SERVICE
When eBay is down, we all lose. You lose sales, eBay loses
business, and our support costs increase as sellers write us looking
for answers. With all the recent outages, eBay limited their 'My eBay'
Seller tab (a critical eBay service) to only 300 items to reduce the load
on their servers. Since then, I've talked to users for whom this is a
major problem, particularly high-volume sellers.
To help in this time of outages, our engineers got together and developed
YourBay. YourBay recreates most of the functionality of the 'My eBay'
Seller tab (but includes a few improvements compliments of our engineers).
We hope YourBay will help you have a less stressful and more profitable
holiday season. At the least, it should take some load off eBay's systems
and help keep their auctions running.
YourBay is a FREE service to all Auctiva Showcase users. Think of it as
our holiday gift to you.
PRODUCT UPDATES
More good news. We are beta testing a new version of Auctiva
Poster (formerly ePoster) that supports
- Posting to Yahoo! auctions
- eBay's new "Buy Now" feature
- eBay's new 2-category listing option
It should be available within the next week.
We've also made improvements to Auctiva Showcase
- Now supports International currencies
- Improved search capabilities
