They just don’t get it, do they?

Is it a deliberate and conscious policy that eBay UK are doing their level best to exclude non-resident sellers from the once-great British site, further pushing down their ranking from being the second busiest (and most profitable) eBay marketplace?

Just as with real-world history, the triumph of eBay UK sellers in what appears to be a persuasion of their site’s management that all overseas sellers are postage scammers, location abusers, and a bad buyer experience, will come at a price …

“Kiss me Olly” – Painting of the death of Admiral Lord Nelson during the Battle of Trafalgar. The painting was created over 40 years after the event, and is, in terms of the location where Nelson died on board HMS Victory, plus the number of crew in attendance, completely inaccurate … just like the extremely vocal attitudes of western hemisphere eBay members towards their Eastern Hemisphere fellow eBay sellers, and now apparently, also like the attitudes of policy makers within eBay UK.

What has provoked this accusation you ask?  An announcement from eBay UK in the last few days is what has caused it (as detailed way down at the bottom of this post), but first the background …

If you’ve been following the BuildaSkill Global Biz Blog this year, you’ll have noticed that with increasing frequency I’ve posted warnings about the growth in policies and decisions punishing and restricting eBay’s cross-border trade worldwide, and since mid-August (this year) the almost Nazi-like persecution from UK staff of all sellers not resident in the UK.  I’m not alone in thinking this.

Irish sellers using eBay.ie have long complained that they don’t get given the breaks that British sellers are given, despite both sites having a common management and support team.  Visibility of Irish listings onto North America, for example, cannot be enhanced with the International Visibility Fee (IVF … or ISV as eBay prefer to acronym it).

In 2005, the punishment of overseas sellers began in earnest, with the introduction of the twice-delayed Location Abuse Policy aimed at preventing entries on item pages such as “Hong Kong, UK”, and as since proven many times – it was often the eBay programmers that were creating that particular problem, not the sellers.

Last year (and this year), eBay have used despatch and delivery times to punish their global entrepreneurs via search and the DSR feedback system.  Failing to provide a DSR-weighting for delivery distance, eBay are knowingly disadvantaging their far-flung paying customers (in every country) compared to those local to the buyers.  Yet today, they are also still charging those sellers the same fees despite organic loss of visibility via the ignorance of buyers not understanding the importance of DSRs to a business.  eBay’s lame and late-in-the-day attempt to educate (buyers) after the injury to sellers, via the interstitial messaging during feedback processing, is insufficient to repair damage already recorded in history.

This year, the focus is all about P&P charges, with eBay consciously and continuously reinforcing their perception that all Far East sellers charge too much, yet refusing to provide an on-site table of links to Post Offices worldwide.  Oriental sellers do not overcharge on postage any more frequently than do Occidental sellers (look it up if you’re not familiar with that word).  In fact, there are more recorded cases of western sellers charging far higher percentages over postal cost, than do the bulk of eastern sellers.

The unstoppable eBay march towards falsely advertised “free P&P” is yet another barrier to cross-border trade, for the simple reason that eBay are insisting on overseas sellers utilising buyers’ domestic postal companies and service nomenclatures, rather than the sellers’ home country service names – this is not just facilitative of false-service advertising, it is both instigative and condoning of such fraudulent activity.

There is no such thing as free delivery until such time as the carriers provide the sellers with free packaging and stop charging for the entire delivery chain.  Even then, the item price will neccesarily contain an element for despatch room rents, utilities, and salaries – where then does the “free” come into it?  eBay should stop advertising and encouraging such false offers to consumers, or they will never regain buyers’ trust.

In the case of the UK management in particular, I know for fact that they have been repeatedly asked to examine the postal options open to overseas sellers, and (again, for example) if a Sri Langkan seller is listing directly onto UK, then only allow that seller to specify the postal services available from the Sri Langka Post Office.  Then, eBay should name that postal service in the shipping display to all browsers and buyers.

Alternatively, if a Maltese seller is listing dropshipped items from Doba in Germany, and inputs item location as Germany, then only allow the seller to offer the services from DeutschePost or a German-based courier such as DHL or FedEx – don’t force them to offer UK Royal Mail service names – they’re NOT in the UK, and doing so is false and misleading advertising under UK law.

Similarily, how can, for example, a seller South Africa shipping from South Africa, state they will use UK “Royal Mail Special Delivery” to deliver to a UK buyer?  Are they going to hop on a flight and drop it into the post box at Heathrow Terminal 3?  If they don’t, they are misleading eBay’s oh so precious buyers.

Until eBay address and remedy this topic, it is impossible to cure the postage related complaints of buyers on any eBay site.

When a (UK) buyer sees “Royal Mail First Class Recorded”, or a (US) buyer sees “USPS Priority Mail”, on a listing page, they expect to see British or US stamps on the package upon receipt – just look at any overseas volume seller’s feedback comments.  When they don’t, the shipment is immediately “SNAD” under PayPal Buyer and Seller Protection Policies, and the seller is stuffed – losing the product, and the payment, if the buyer decides to file a complaint, then mails back an empty box when PayPal automatically finds in their favour.

Now to that announcement …

The announcement was released last Thursday, and I held off blogging about it as I was waiting to see if other bloggers picked up on what I had seen.  None did, least of all eBay UK’s pet town criers at Tame-Bay, who should have been most attuned to the innuendoes of the Terms and Conditions related to the cheaper fee promotion.

The announcement concerned a 25% reduction in Final Value Fees (FVFs) for listing in the media categories with “free shipping”.  Chris Dawson blogged that this was probably eBay UK dangling a carrot to get media vendors to begin amending their listings, throughout the 2-month promotion (1 Nov – 31 Dec), in readiness for the enforced “free P&P” requirement in January 2009.

He may be right in that being one of the intentions, however, reading the Ts & Cs carefully, there is another agenda revealed – eBay is protecting the declining UK marketplace from overseas sellers during the critical pre-Christmas sales period -

• eBay states - Eligible members (for this promotion) include all users listing on eBay.co.uk who offer a FREE domestic postage service within their P&P options.
  • I observe – it means overseas sellers building postage into pricing will organically become non-competitive with UK resident sellers on item price, and those being genuine about free P&P will be unable to profit from selling on the UK site.
  • As stated above - overseas sellers cannot use a UK domestic service as the named first delivery option, without deliberately misleading UK consumers (see red highlighted items below).
  • I also note – the media category sellers have been the most vocal, over the years, after the technology sellers, in criticising Far East sellers for leveraging their pricing advantage by having lower product prices, whilst being forced to quote higher P&P rates due to distance, and the terms of the PayPal User Agreement, for online trackable delivery.
• eBay states - Specifically, the following criteria need to be met:
  * Domestic postage needs to be set to “Flat: Same cost to all buyers”
  * The first domestic postage service needs to be specified and “0″ needs to be entered into the “cost field” or the “Free P&P” tick box needs to be ticked.
  * Insurance must either not be required or have its cost set to zero
  * Postage service should not be “Local Delivery/Pick Up” or “Other”
  • I observe - Again, this is a devious way of excluding overseas sellers – they are obviously not eligible to set their postage type as the named UK Royal Mail Services without commiting an act of fraud, or getting their DSRs hammered by buyers, and opening themselves to PayPal SNAD disputes, as discussed in the pre-amble above.
  • That last point is particularly important as postal insurance is prohibited under this promotion, forcing insurance cost to be added to item price … oh, wait, it’s an auctions-only promotion – postal insurance is calculated on total invoice value (i.e. product price + postage paid) therefore insurance cannot be added without knowing the final bid price.  Sneaky eBay … SneakBay UK?
• eBay states - There cannot be any surcharges. If the listing is a multiple item listing, the postage cost for additional items must also be zero.
  • I observe - eBay UK staff must be either on drugs, or, acutely aware that overseas sellers (beyond Europe’s borders) simply cannot charge shipping in that manner if eBay wants them to genuinely use free P&P.   Airmail and other services use a flat table rate per weight unit that does not reduce per unit as weight adds up.  In fact, once a package passes the 2,000 gram threshold, the rate per weight unit increases by around 50%, due to passing the limit for “small package” shipping.

From the above, there are only two (sensible) conclusions that can be drawn. Either the UK staff know exactly what they are doing, and have chosen to create conditions that exclude overseas sellers, or, they showed a complete lack of business acumen and management thinking when they set the terms for that promotion.  Had they been open and upfront (like Australia and Canada) and stated the promotion was only for residents, then it would have been a far more honourable communication.

And, in the words that Shakespeare had Mark Anthony say about Caesar’s assassins …

… “Surely they are honourable men?”

—- o0o —-

A second UK promotion announced last Thursday is for a reduced flat rate IVF fee of £0.02 for Auction and Auction+BIN listings, and runs from 6th November to 7th December.

I cannot see any clauses in this one that are directly or intentionally punishing to a non-resident seller, however it should be borne in mind that a seller with a non-British eBay account should conduct extremely careful pre-listing fee calculations at this time.

Non-European residents are billed exclusive of Luxembourg’s 15% VAT (e.g. a £1.15 fee will be billed at £1.00), which reduces the advertised cost of listing.  The IVF fee is also subject to such non-tax status.  However, the direct cost comparison of billed fee goes beyond the stated fee and removed tax.

Until the last few weeks, the Pound Sterling has been very strong in comparison to the US Dollar, particularly in the Asian bourses.  This last fortnight, Sterling has completely collapsed, whilst the dollar has rallied.

Compared to mid-October, Sterling has lost nearly 18% of its value, whilst the Dollar recovered just over 10% against the ASEAN+3 currency average.  (ASEAN+3 is the ten SE Asian countries plus Australia, China and Japan).

Those exchange rate swings make the UK site far more expensive to use today, that it was (even after the September 25/26 BIN fee betrayal) in terms of getting Sterling withdrawn from PayPal to Asian banks.

Non-UK sellers may be better served by listing on the USA and choosing the IVF fee from there, however, if doing so, don’t forget the difference in FVFs between the two sites for different listing types.  Remember too, that smaller eBay sites get default visibility onto the USA, without having to pay for the IVF treatment.

With the dollar on the rise, it could prove profit-boosting to be selling in that currency.

Ed