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[MyCottage]

Jay, I think it depends on what sort of stuff the seller sells. I know sellers who often sell multiple items to the same buyer were leery of Immediate Payment because there was no easy way to combine different items for shipping, and they didn’t want to end up having to refund part of the shipping or going through a bunch of back and forth with the buyer. It sounds like ebay is going to simplify that process.

Also, I think a fair number of sellers do not even know there IS an “immediate payment” option.

I already use IP, so this won’t have an immediate impact on me. But I do think it might help to alter buyer expectations…buyers will no longer have to wonder whether a particular seller does or does not have an immediate payment requirement. And I think maybe once ebay is satisfied that buyers accept it as the new norm on ebay, ebay might actually try to expand it to auctions and best offers. Just a quess on my part.

[MyCottage]

I tried doing a copy and paste…hopefully this will work:

Devin tweeted this statement this morning: “We are beginning to roll out a more aggressive solution to minimize unpaid items on behalf of our sellers.”
Can you guys provide any insight into this? What solution is he talking about?

Hi Ralph, I would be happy to provide some insight! We are rolling out a program to minimize the number of unpaid items that occur on the site. This program will require that buyers pay immediately for any item listed under $2000, thus eliminated non payments. This is rolling out slowly to ensure no unforseen issues arise, but shoudl be a great win for sellers! ~Jessica
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Ralph Schwalm
Ralph Schwalm Thanks Jessica—does this include auctions that end with a final bid less than $2000?
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Ralph Schwalm
Ralph Schwalm Or is it just for fixed price items? And does it also include best offers on fixed price items?
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eBay for Business
eBay for Business This will apply to fixed price items only. Best offer and auction will remain the same. ~Jessica
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Ralph Schwalm
Ralph Schwalm Hi Jessica, Thanks again I already choose the “immediate payment” option on my fixed price items. So the biggest difference here will be that on items of less than $2000, it won’t be necessary to choose? And eventually buyers will get used to the fact …See More
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eBay for Business
eBay for Business Yes, we are working towards aligning with the retail standard! Keep in mind this program is just now rolling out, and it may take some time. I would recommend you continue adding it for the time being. There’s not a definitive date when this will be si…See More
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Ralph Schwalm
Ralph Schwalm OK, thanks Jessica! Will ebay be posting an Announcement about this on the Announcement Board soon?
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eBay for Business
eBay for Business I haven’t seen an official announcement plan yet. We may wait until it’s fully implemented. ~Jessica
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[MyCottage]

and just for fun, there was also a link to this new ebay ad….here’s the ad on youTube: Arrrgh, trash elves!

[MyCottage]

https://www.facebook.com/eBayForBusiness/

Once you are there, I think you need to click on “Posts” in the left margin, the page will reopen with posts on the right hand side…scroll down till you find the one about Devin Wenig’s tweet, then open the conversation…

[MyCottage]

Fred Ochi

here’s his obit:

http://www.woodfuneralhome.com/sitemaker/sites/WoodFu2/obit.cgi?user=990_FOchi2879

that should give you a good start on researching him

[MyCottage]

Amatino,

What you are suggesting is pretty much exactly what ebay already does: I think we should have an option to report these folks to eBay. Not that we want any action, as such, but that there’s a central database record. If this woman is pulling that one on a regular basis, it will show a trend.

Does ebay pick up on every case? No. Possibly, in part, because sellers don’t always report their suspicions. Posting a “false positive” for a buyer is a good way for a seller to get into trouble, not such a good way to bring a possibly abusive buyer to eBay’s attention. However, I agree with Jay, eBay could do a better job of letting sellers know the option exists.

eBay does throw buyers off the site. The problem with some articles like the one in the Guardian is that it suggests ebay does nothing until the press is contacted. That’s simply not true. But it is true that neither ebay nor Amazon (which also throws abusive buyers off the site) are going to make a lot of public statements about it—-that sort of thing doesn’t encourage people to shop on a site.

Yes, there are scammers….on any site, and in the brick and mortar world. Fortunately, they are a pretty small percentage…that’s true on ebay, it’s true elsewhere. Could ebay do better? No doubt. So I’m sure could WalMart, Amazon and etsy. There’s always room for improvement. But as a seller, I try to keep my perspective on the big picture. I know sellers who’ve been selling on ebay for more than a decade and have never been scammed, after thousands of transactions.

Recently, a seller on one of the ebay boards , I think she said she’s been selling for two years, offered a convoluted and frankly impractical solution to the problem of buyers returning empty boxes etc rather than the item. This was clearly a big concern for her. But when asked how many times this had happened to her, she admitted: never. But she “knows” it happens frequently because she reads about it happening to others. Of course she does, because no one goes to the Boards or Facebook groups to say repeatedly “Well, that was yet another smooth transaction”.

[MyCottage]

” I suggest eBay should institute a seller-report system where sellers can report a buyer for shady tactics. It doesn’t go on the buyer’s record up front, but remains in the Sellers Only arena….”

Sellers can already report buyers, and ebay does take action against buyers if and when they see a pattern.

[MyCottage]

I agree….pretty sure ebay can link related accounts, and I think their rule is if they suspend one, they suspend all (that may not apply to short suspensions, but pretty sure it applies to permanent suspensions. Of course, there can still be good reasons for having more than one account, but fear of suspension would not be one of them.

[MyCottage]

Thanks everyone! I’ll be looking at “solds” tonight to get some pricing ideas. Tomorrow’s plans are still a little up in the air, but hopefully we will get there. And hopefully prices won’t be crazy….I have no idea what to expect.

[MyCottage]

Linda, If you are talking about the two year thing, you’ll apparently get a notice from ebay before they actually take action.

[MyCottage]

this is a link to the discussion on the ebay boards about the two year listing issue:
http://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Ebay-is-going-to-destroy-my-business-removing-old-listings/td-p/26972829

(If the link is not permitted here, please just go ahead and take it down, and accept my apologies.)

[MyCottage]

Jay, I’m pretty confident that this is real, having read posts from this poster for years on eBay. And yes, an Announcement from ebay would have been appropriate, but the lack of an announcement for something this important is nothing new. ebay will probably say that they told us before that they reserve the right to take down stale listings, and that only a small percentage of sellers are effected by it.

I think—-not sure—-that the seller can relist the items without penalty, but when we’re talking about literally thousands of items, that’s a lot of extra work and expense.

[MyCottage]

I don’t usually bring the ebay Boards to ScavengerLife, but given the discussion about fast nickel slow dime, I thought sellers might want to know about this. This is a post from today’s Seller’s Board (not my post, I’m just quoting the post):

Recieved this email today. Effectively it will destroy my business since I sell long-tailed items which take years to sell. I would have never renewed my Anchor Store if I had known about this since 2/3 of my listing will probably come down. I currently have a little over 11000 listings. I do not understand this.

Courtesy notification about yours stagnant listings SR# 1-114867463539

Hello James

This is a notification to let you know that this Thursday ebay will be ending any listings you may have listed that have not had a sale in 2 years. This is to remove stagnant inventory from ebay and to encourage sellers to make changes or adjustments to their stagnant listings to make their listings competitive or relevant, and to help increase your sales on items that are not currently selling.

Thank you for your understanding.
Thanks,
eBay

[MyCottage]

I’m not sure what you mean by this: “About the only thing, I think, I can do is give them a rating and review bewaring other sellers of this buyer.”

You can’t leave negative feedback for a buyer. If you click “positive” and then write what is, in fact, negative feedback, you can get into trouble with ebay. Besides, sellers don’t need to be warned about this buyer. Experienced sellers already know that buyers will sometimes file an INAD claim in order to avoid paying return shipping. There are literally millions of buyers on ebay, and anyone of them could do it, so your “warning” would be pretty pointless.

If you want to, you can “report” the buyer to eBay.

[MyCottage]

I’ve had 30 day returns with free return shipping (no restocking fee) for several years now, and haven’t had a problem. However, I’ve also had very few returns. Should that change, I’m always willing to reevaluate my policy.

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