WHOA—SOMEBODY ELSE HAS MY STORE NAME!

Can you provide us links of your store and this other store?
i think you may be confusing username with store name.
Not sure till we see the difference.

One is: Toni’s Treasure Trove
The other is: Toni s Treasure Trove

One has the apostrophe and the other doesn’t.
I wonder if that’s enough to make a difference.

Probably be a good time to call eBay and ask.

not sure how they are able to Name their store something other than their URL, that might be a new thing. their URL is
http://stores.ebay.com/Sitogeur
while yours is the name of your store–
http://stores.ebay.com/Toni-s-Treasure-Trove

not sure how that works these days, we’ve had our store for so long, i don’t know if they’ve changed how people can name them.

I would offer that you not change your name without first calling ebay. Changing your name could cost you findability and sales. That may not be good right now during the holiday season. On another note, even though people don’t necessarily search by store name, if they were going to they would probably find yours because apostrophies don’t tend to be included in searches. What was your experience when searching for your store? What came up first?

When eBay validates a store name it’s a literal search and not a fuzzy search. So those two names are entirely different.

I doubt if we will ever see a fuzzy search for matching store names. It’s either a match or it’s not – no semi match.

I’ve seen this many times with dashes, and apostrophes

People do it with dashes too. “Joes-Toys” and “Joes Toys” and “Joe’s Toys” … 3 different names.

I seriously doubt that eBay will help your issue. But let us know what they say

When I did a search using Internet explorer simply typing in tonis treasure trove, yours came up first. When I did the same in Firefox, the other one came up first, second, third. That means its a browser programming thing. I agree with theMezz, ebay is very exact when you are choosing your name. When you set it up, if the one with the apostrophe was already in place, it probably found the next closest version which is considered to be its own ID/separate name.

I see you have a newsletter. If you are going to change your name, you may want to do it over a 3 to 6 month period. Announce it in your newsletter. Announce it on your page in someway. Have a date when you will make the change. This will allow any of your followers and/or people who get your newsletter to expect the change. People don’t tend to search for stores on ebay unless they know about it, so I don’t think it is as much of an immediate concern as it seems that it might be. If you want to attract more shoppers, see if you can list some items that have well known names which will attract shoppers and possibly even followers.

No, I went to your store.

http://stores.ebay.com/Toni-s-Treasure-Trove

All the way down at the bottom on the left side, you have a Store Newsletter banner and a note about receiving an email newsletter.

Store Newsletter!

Add my Store to your Favorites and receive my email newsletters about new items and special promotions!
General Interest

Hi Toni,

Please don’t change your store name. I’ll change mine! 🙂

Yup, believe it or not, I’m the other store! 😀

When I created my store, the “upgrade” page asked for a store name. There’s no guidance on how you do it, and I thought it was rather odd that they didn’t just use my user name, but apparently your store name and your user name is not necessarily the same. As my store name is not my user name, it won’t affect me to change it. I’ll do it today!

Merry Christmas!

You may find that even if you change your store name, the URL will remain from the old store.

I changed mine a while back and it happened to me.

I did it immediately after I posted that message, figured I’d do it before I got distracted with the day, but eBay generally takes 24 hours or so to “populate” a store change. Go ahead and try it whenever you like, but don’t stress if it won’t allow you to make the change until tomorrow.

I’m now Sensational Sitogeur! http://stores.ebay.com/Sitogeur?_rdc=1

Figured it was unlikely anyone else would have that name seeing as I made it up. 😀 It occurred to me to make it Centsational Sitogeur, but that’s rather cheesy. LOL

How funny this all has turned out to be!

I just heard your story on eBay Radio. I laughed when you started telling the story!

Scavenger Life made me feel like an insider!

One of them called in…not sure which. I can’t keep straight who had which store!