The Singapore Straits Times has run an interesting article related to the global effects of the US sub-prime mortgages “crisis”.

 As a microeconomy in the global market, Singapore is often easier to examine for effects and trends than many of its larger rivals.  The Straits Times reported on the last day of 2007 that “THE sub-prime crisis failed to cast a cloud over what has been a boom year for initial public offerings (IPOs) here” and went on to say IPOs during 2007 were up almost 19%.

It did however confirm that they’d slowed down during the second half of the year and were predicted to remain slow during at least the first half of next year.  With overall IPO growth in 2008 estimated to be around 10%.

Interestingly, with south-east and east Asia reputed to be restrictive to foreign ownerships in the region, Singapore reports most of the activity was in foreign owned corporations and expects that to continue next year despite China having sucked in the lion’s share of foreign investment since the millennium.  Thailand’s registered foreign inward investment projects (registered with the Thai Board of Investment) fell from over 2,000 projects in 1999 to just 200 in 2001 for example.  And, despite political tensions, a growing percentage of Taiwanese overseas investment is now heading to the mainland, rather than other Asian countries.

Next year may be the year to re-examine which unit trusts and managed funds you’re using with life assurance and pensions, as it seems the northwestern Pacific Rim countries are re-emerging as the Tiger Economies of the early-mid 1990s.  The restructuring of financial institutions and internal markets imposed by the World Bank and WTO after 1997 certainly seems to be paying off in the corporate arenas, though the “little people” still seem to be struggling.

Ed

I’ve been doing some research (and receiving some from our forum users) regarding the ongoing saga of Hotmail (and others) blocking delivery of our emails to their users.

I’ve bumped into lots of other blogs which cover the topic including John Ward’s Thin End of the Wedge blog in Ireland, which gives some very good advice in terms of prioritising which parts of the problem to tackle first (thanks for the nudge Gaz), and Jim McBee’s Mostly Exchange blog from Honolulu covering Microsoft Exchange Server connectivity and other issues.

Another good primer article Gaz discovered is on the ListServ site, and it covers the technologies and authentication types used by the big internet mail providers.  Quote - “Yahoo! is a primary user of DomainKeys; GMail and AOL use SPF; and Microsoft’s Hotmail uses Sender ID.”  Unfortunately, it doesn’t give links through to the various systems or how to get enrolled with them, so that your emails can start getting through.  (A job for me to put right later ).

 It seems the whole issue is a lot bigger than I first though, and a lot more complicated to fix than simply adding a text record to your DNS records.

More on this will no doubt follow over the next few months - until then, you can catch previous posts of the problems in the Email Systems part of the blog, and the same-named section in the forums.

Ed 

eBay UK” /> eBay UK have announce a double whammy for sellers immediately before Christmas.  In fairness, both moves were pre-announced in one way or another, but it still does not remove the sting for those affected.

The first announcement is the result of a fairly lengthy (4 months) trial - in eBay UK terms, 4 months is an eon compared to their frequent knee-jerk reactions - of compulsory PayPal only in certain categories and listing types.

The PayPal only rule kicks in “around 10th January” and affects all listings in -

• Computing > Software
• Consumer Electronics > MP3 Players
• Wholesale & Job Lots > Mobile & Home Phones
• Business, Office & Industrial > Industrial Supply / MRO

It will also apply to all 1-day only auctions.

This is superficially all fine and dandy, until it is remembered that there are frequent outages in the API connecting eBay and PayPal.  If the seller is using (or forced into using) immediate payment in the categories subjected to compulsory PayPal, then their could be a lot of lost sales all around, and some very high blood-pressures.

The other significant change refers to those with a feedback DSR of 3.9 or below.  Sellers with that criteria will have their listings shown at the bottom of search and browse, “below all other sellers listings”. 

Generally speaking, this is a good thing (unless you want to discuss the merits of unlevelling the playing field set up by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar which remains a core slogan in eBay Global’s marketing messages), however, it does open the door to competitors, and the vindictive, with regards to wrecking a seller’s ability to trade on eBay.  Watch out for “mob for hire” type buyers in the future, whose sole purpose is as feedback mercenaries intent on wiping out targeted sellers.

No doubt, there’ll be more on these topics in the near and distant future. 

With reservation, I’m generally in favour of the DSR stricture (provided eBay introduce revised feedback dispute resolution measures), however, as a seller AND as a buyer, I cannot in any way condone the PayPal-only measure. 

It is trade restriction by proxy (against other payment services), increased fees by proxy, and anti-competitive, potentially infringing both EC and UK laws.  In that respect, perhaps sellers should switch listings in the affected categories from eBay UK to eBay Ireland (listing in Euros) in order to retain the choice of payment methods?

 Ed

Offline, I’ve heard from several eBay sellers in recent weeks, complaining that since Feedback 2.0 and Detailed Seller Ratings, buyers have been getting more belligerent and the number of “keyboard-warriors” is increasing. 

Of particular concern to UK sellers is the Aug 2007 announcement that neutral now equals a negative when eBay assess whether or not a seller can continue to use the UK site, and that eBay has not redressed the effectiveness of the dispute console for non-paying bidder (NPB) disputes.  Frequently reported, to me, has been a rise in the incidence of bidders with less than ten feedback and around one year of trading history, becoming NPBs, and using the “dispute was replied to” method of ensuring they can leave retaliatory negative or neutral feedback.

One seller stated that where previously they could be confident a sub-10 feedback user would ignore the dispute notices, most of them are now placing responses into the disputes, removing the sellers’ abilities to inform the wider community of the NPBs actions without getting their accounts put in jeapardy through retaliation.  Ultimately this will lead to a degradation of eBay for both buyers and sellers when the good sellers become disillusioned enough to leave the site in favour of other venues.

My concern now, is that this disparity of checks and balances between the dispute process and the feedback policy is a carte-blanche to severely damage sellers’ reputations and the eBay marketplace in general.

As an example, I could open a series of eBay accounts, buy a 1p eBook or two on each account, then wait 90-days and go on a non-paying bidding spree. If I then wait for each seller to open an NPB dispute and reply once to each dispute, I can then leave negative feedback with impunity.

With careful seller targetting (by examining their DSR ratings) I could systematically wipe out the competition using a method like that described above, either through normal feedback scoring, or through DSR wrecking, whilst at the same time not worrying about the “buying” accounts, which can be discarded if banned by eBay.  This is not dissimilar to the “troll” accounts that some people open to make themselves a pain to others in the eBay forums.

When eBay introduced DSRs, then introduced the “neutral = negative” initiative for sellers in Aug 2007, they made no adjustment to the dispute process to counter the wide open chasm they opened for malicious manipulation of the dispute and feedback systems.  This needs addressed as a matter of urgency.

eBay announced this month (Dec 2007) they would be taking aggressive steps to curb sellers leaving retaliatory negative or neutral feedback for buyers, and even appeared on BBC Watchdog to reinforce this, but they have made no steps or announcements in this direction with regard to buyers leaving retaliatory feedback for sellers, particularly in the non-paying bidder category.

From my perspective, ANY buyer who fails to complete their obligation (to pay) should have all feedback privileges for the transaction revoked, for the simple reason that they did not complete the transaction and are therefore not a buyer, but a defaulter, and are contravening the eBay User Agreement.

eBay Rule 101 states - “Bidding is meant to be enjoyable, but remember that each bid you place enters you into a binding contract. If you win an auction or use “Buy It Now”, you’re obliged to complete the transaction.”  

The eBay User Agreement (the document they love to use for beating sellers over the head) states - “While using the Site, you will not:

• fail to pay for items purchased by you, unless the seller materially changes the item’s description after you place a bid on the item, a clear typographical error is made, or you cannot authenticate the seller’s identity;
• take any action that may undermine the feedback or ratings systems; “

The eBay Trust and Safety teams need to address this very quickly before the traditional and annual, ”Spring Exodus” of sellers to “greener” pastures.   The loopholes created through blind DSRs and adverse ratings given by NPBs are both tools to “undermine the feedback or ratings systems”.

In particular, they need reminded of the Bear-Sterns reports, issued from Wall Street in recent months, regarding the ongoing degradation of the eBay marketplace for sellers, and the ongoing (no longer seasonal) exodus to other venues.  These dispute-feedback anomalies are one such reason for that happening.

As we all know, sellers are buyers too - “I never bought on eBay until I became a seller” is a frequent quote in forums - and the more they alienate the seasoned and volume sellers, the more they will also be alienating seasoned and volume buyers. 

Traffic report analysis seems to indicate they have been doing this since Jan/Feb 2006, and there is no sign of it slowing, therefore I’m not holding my breath.

Ed

eBay UK have announced that from the week starting 17 Dec 2007, they will begin punishing sellers who gouge on P&P charges.

They will achieve this by using the highly controversial Detailed Seller Rating scores to decide who overcharges for postage and packaging, and who does not.  In this respect they are relying on the buying user-base to be both knowledgable and honest in their ratings.  In other words they are passing the buck, and hoping to avoid fallout and flak from their fee-paying consumers, and in a roundabout way, hoping to avoid falling foul of laws which protect those consumers’ rights - in particular, laws which safeguard the absolute right of a consumer to receive exactly what they purchased as described in any marketing or advertising materials or messages.   In this instance, those consumers are the eBay sellers who now receive different levels of service (at the same cost) based on the opinions of 3rd parties outside the control of the service buyer and the service purchaser.  This is a quagmire of legal implications for all concerned.

If a genuine seller gets slated by the eBay buyers for P&P charges, despite exercising due diligence, and then suffers consequential losses due to the eBay policy, who does the seller sue for compensation?  eBay, or eBay’s buyers?  Do they pursue it through their own lawyers, or take it up through the Office of Fair Trading, or through Trading Standards?  This could get interesting over time - especially if a bunch of affected sellers band together for the UK equivalent of a class action.

The honest truth is that there are a very large number of eBay UK users who did not accurately pass high school exams in their native language, nor in maths, let alone any form of business qualification, and they are therefore not qualified to pass judgement on whether or not sellers are charging fair and reasonable, postage, packaging & handling charges in relation to the specifics of the sellers’ businesses. 

They are therefore subjecting sellers to trial by a very emotive jury, overwhelmed with personal interest in reducing the final price they pay, regardless of actual total costs to the seller.  eBay’s own forum thread for discussing the announcement hit 24 pages of replies in just 36 hours, (despite the pinks pulling a number of posts - according to the posters themselves) and reading the posts, I predict this will lead to even more, professional, honest, and diligent sellers leaving the site(s) - especially amongst those who exercise due diligence in analysing their businesses’ overheads and opportunities.

Superficially, the introducion of a “mass-jury” method of removing postage-gougers is a great move for sellers selling within their own country.  However if you’ve been on eBay long enough, you’ll recognise this for what it is - a blatent attempt to reduce fee evasion (by covering costs of using eBay & PayPal in the postage charges after eBay banned surcharges, by sellers, for buyers using PayPal - but did not ban surcharges on other payment methods) and not because eBay genuinely care about the buyers at the expense of the corporate interests.  If eBay reduced their fees, this problem would subsequently reduce.  If they introduced a tiered fee structured, based on rebates calculated against total fees paid the previous month, this problem would also reduce.  There is so much they could do towards it, but have consistently stated (in forums) they will not do.

This new policy is a further reduction of the viability of eBay as a profitable channel for the many sellers who sell internationally. 

When selling internationally, postage is naturally more expensive, and good sellers display their costs up front (as per eBay Global’s 2-year campaign to get people to do so) and yet buyers still “mark down” sellers’ DSR’s based on both shipping time (instead of despatch time - if you cannot recognise the difference, get a dictionary) and postage costs.

The key piece of vocabulary there, is POSTAGE costs. 

Far too many buyers only look at the value of the stamps (and do so using the exchange rate on the day of receipt of parcel - if they factor them in at all)  and do not factor in the other costs such as packaging, handling, export duties, export licensing, staff costs, business overheads (utilities, equipment depreciation etc.) and as such automatically mark down the seller.  eBay’s own forums are full of complaints about this from sellers who only list items with free shipping - how can you mark a seller down on shipping costs if they don’t charge any shipping costs (as a seperate item)? 

This key, and prevalent, situation raises the issue into the screaming front-page headline status, but eBay have repeatedly said in their forums that it is not a problem.  What they mean is that it does not affect the pockets of the individual staffers and managers, therefore they don’t care that this fundamental flaw exists.

This underlines the blatent unfairness of the system, in which non-business buyers are asked to assess the business acumen of domestic and international traders, often with those buyers having little or no knowledge of local conditions and costs in the seller’s country of operations.  It’s a bit like a Chinese person saying all Americans are red-necked, loud-mouthed racists, based on having seen the movie Mississippi Burning.  The vast majority of Chinese know nothing about true social norms in America, just as the vast majority of western buyers know little or nothing about business burdens outside their own country (including those of other western countries).

This whole system of DSRs and allocating visibility priority because of it, is nothing more than trial by unlearned opinion and libel.  It should be stopped immediately, and eBay should correctly police their site - forgetting the corporate profits and shareholder dividends, and spending money on real people with knowledge of international logistics and business regulations.

Until they do so, I predict they will continue to drive good sellers off the site, or to reduce their usage of the site, to the detriment of buyers, who will be left with no choice but to buy from the scammers and genuine postage overchargers.

Ed

Last month I blogged about Microsoft protecting Hotmail from Spam and blocking the world.  This month we’ve got some updates, and useful links. 

The following is a slightly edited version of a post by BuildaSkill member GazLanNaThai, originally posted on the community forums at www.eBid.tv - many thanks to Gaz for the heads-up, and permission to post it here, it saves me writing a post.

We’ve been having a major issue at this end with our mail servers not getting emails through to specific mail hosts - in particular Hotmail, MSN, gmail, AOL, and more recently several others. It came to a head in October 2007 when we noticed our mails were being returned as blocked by several private domain names. The Non-Delivery Record (NDR) gave an SMTP:5.0.0 error message, though the text note varied.

(Ed - same problem as we’ve been having, and the reason for the original blog post)

The prime problem appears if you have the following email setup -
1 - You use a broadband, ISDN, or fixed line connection to the internet, and
2 - you have your own internet domain name, and
3 - you host an internal mail server (e.g. MS Exchange or similar) at home or office

If you use only “Internet mail” through XP / Vista, or similar, on a single PC, you are very unlikely to be affected.

If you have a network of several PCs and use only direct “Internet email” (i.e. each PC uses your ISP mail server settings in Outlook etc) then you are unlikely to be affected.

Problem -

When sending email out to specific domains you get the problem above, but you are able to send email to domains such as eBid, eBay, or to Yahoo or other popular ISP mail users such as BTinternet, BlueYonder etc. But all email to Hotmail, gmail, AOL etc is getting bounced back.

This might be because the recipient has you in their spam list, but it is more likely to be because of a new anti-spam initiative called “SenderID” (by Microsoft and friends), or “Sender Policy File” (SPF) by the wider internet community.

SenderID and SPF are slightly different, but essentially do the same thing in the same way using the same protocols - unless you are a deep level techie, don’t worry about the difference - it only really affects massive corporate networks.

INFO SOURCES

The first thing you need to do is to identify if you’re likely to be directly affected.

The easiest way to do this is to go to www.spamhaus.org and click on the PBL link in the top middle of the header.
Then get your current IP address from your ADSL router or similar - this is the IP address your ISP gives to you each time your router connects to them (it changes each time).
On the spamhaus PBL page, at the top of the left margin is a box to check your IP address - copy and paste, or type, your IP address into it and click the button to check your IP.
If it returns a page with three green links, Great! It doesn’t affect you (today).
If one or more of them are red - then BOO!!!! you’re on the block list - and it’s probably not because of anything you’ve done, but because of what someone who previously had that IP address, has done.

Now you have to start studying - SpamHaus contains lots of reading material, and if you’re in anyway PC-techie, you need to read it all.  It’s a little heavy, but fairly straightforward if you have any IT Support experience.

SOLUTIONS

You’ll find that SpamHaus refers you to a Microsoft page www.microsoft.com/senderid/wizard - be very, very, VERY, careful if you use it. It’s unbelievably easy to make a complete and utter mess of your ability to send or receive emails through your internal server (I know! Been there, done it, got the t-shirt, broke my server ).

If you create a SenderID-SPF file using that wizard, BE WARNED - you DO NOT add it to your internal server’s DNS zones - it goes to your ISP for them to add to THEIR DNS server.

OPENSPF - OpenSPF are the original team who began developing the SPF anti-spam global system (typically Microsoft hijacked their idea and then began customising it to make it proprietary to Microsoft technologies, just like they did with SQL and other technologies).

www.openspf.org contains lots of info about the technology, from the originators, in both plain language and tech-speak - you can choose how deep you want to learn about it.  They also have a wizard ( www.openspf.org/wizard.html ) that does the same as the microsoft one, but it creates a truly universal SPF file - one that can be used on UNIX / LINUX as well as Microsoft servers and other less common server systems.  Their “SenderID vs SPF” page explains the differences in full, and makes a complling case for using the OpenSPF version.

READ the info pages before implementing - again, the SPF file created gets sent to your ISP - do not add it to your own server unless you’re on a permanent IP with fixed line connection.

Once your SPF file is in place at your ISP, and their DNS server has promulgated it around the world (allow 12-24 hours) you should get no more issues with Hotmail & co bouncing your emails due to “anonymous access” issues (read the sites mentioned to understand that).

Any tech questions - please refer to the sites stated, or your ISP support division.  If you ask me for any support, you’ll have to pay for it.  Your ISP’s will likely give you support for free.

Original content by Gaz, slightly edited by Ed.

Discuss this in our (members-only) forums or add a reply here.