Despite everything that eBay UK Trust & Safety markets about links in emails, PayPal UK sent me a marketing email last night offering several tantalising buttons to click.

The one that caught my eye was the teasing tagline of -

You list on eBay and we’ll pay your fees

PayPal is offering six lucky eBay sellers the chance to have their combined eBay and PayPal fees paid for them. For a year!

Having thoroughly checked the mail header to ensure it was from PayPal, I clicked through and was given the following explanation -

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VICTORY !

eBay users in Australia will tonight be celebrating like there is no tomorrow.

In a short, terse, and subliminally petulant announcement, eBay Australia have posted on their announcement board that they have scrapped the intended PayPal-only policy for the site.

The announcement includes the opinion that, “We have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay Community“, which will likely anger some of the paying customers who were in no confusion that they didn’t want their freedom of choice restricted, nor their fees increased by being tied to an eBay revenue channel.

The announcement also states that the newly introduced Seller Protection Policy (SPP) changes will remain in force, and rubbing salt into the sores, there is a muted gloating that PayPal must now be offered as an option on all listings displayed on the site. The latter point bringing to mind reports of problems for UK sellers trying to add Australia as a shipping option to their listings, even when PayPal is selected as a payment option - this was reported extensively in the eBay UK forums last weekend.

Further Australia-UK issues are sure to appear regarding the differences in the PayPal SPP - the Australian policy requires only proof of despatch, whereas the UK requires online proof of delivery - concepts that are further apart than just half a planet’s airmiles, and sure to be exploited, under the new feedback regime, by buyers.

Ed

Those of us lucky enough to have regular work that involves travelling a lot in far flung lands, soon become aware that not everyone speaks our native language with the same fluency as ourselves.

In fact, the more we travel, the more we come to realise that English has more variations than eBay Customer Supports’ interpretations of eBay policy for a particular topic. We also, without realising it, soon get drawn into becoming ad-hoc teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), and it is the wise frequent-traveller who keeps a set of notes in their baggage for fulfilling the all too frequent requests to present something on the EFL topic when visiting distant destinations.

Thus it happens that I keep in my “journo-bag” a set of notes for giving a brief presentation regarding descriptive English, which was first presented years ago to a group of undergrad journalism students. It’s a presentation that I can now give from memory, but I keep the notes handy as they can be copied and used as hand-outs, which are always appreciated.

Following up on an email from a BuildaSkill reader, I downloaded eBay Australia’s new 12 page manual for how to use their New Search system, already imposed on the UK and ready to roll in Australia soon. Currently New Search is only available to Australia in the eBay Playground, where in my opinion it should stay. After all, as the BuildaSkill reader said, if it needs a 12-page manual, then it should be ditched and taken back to basics … ummm … a bit like Google search perhaps?

Anyway … browsing through the New Search tutorial, I managed to just in time stop myself from spraying my keyboard and monitor with coffee, and somehow avoided choking myself with it as I burst out laughing at this graphic on page 4 …

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With tomorrow as the deadline for additional information and the public meeting set for Monday, eBay Australia announced today that they are postponing the PayPal-only policy in order to work further with the ACCC.

The announcement, signed by “the eBay Team” rather than Alistair MacGibbon, included the following statements -

Changes to eBay.com.au »”>eBay.com.au scheduled for 15 July are being postponed until the review process with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) regarding its recent draft notice is complete. As previously announced, eBay.com.au is continuing to work with the ACCC to achieve an outcome that benefits buyers and sellers.

Changes that came into effect on 21 May 2008, requiring all sellers to offer PayPal, will remain. These changes mean that all buyers have the option of choosing PayPal, the safer payment method for shopping on eBay.com.au. Payment methods that are currently permitted will continue to be allowed on eBay.com.au until further notice.

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eBay & PayPal Australia have announced the roll-out of their increased Buyer Protection amidst ongoing outrage and controversy regarding making it PayPal-only downunder, and ineffective Seller Protection.

Their announcement today is full of more spin than a DJ’s record player and is likely to do little to appease a trading community migrating ever-faster to alternative venues.

eBay are intent on rolling the PayPal-only policy next month (delayed by 28 days, due to the Australian ACCC’s draft report blocking them from doing so, this month), and the site have said they will file an appeal and fight the decision.

Even eBay Singapore is blazoning announcements about the ensuing legal battle and the pressing on with the new PayPal-only policy. Incidently, the Singapore announcement board is a good location to get consolidated news about policies affecting multiple sites. eBay India also released several useful summary announcements, in particular, this one.

Meanwhile, the UK has launched it’s “PayPal available on every listing” policy simultaneously with the start of enforcement of the amusingly named Misleading and Discouraging Payments Policy. They have also updated the UK’s Accepted Payments Policy, and the Misleading and Discouraging Payments policy has been rolled into that.

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In an announcement today, eBay Australia have stated they will remove from the site, any listings not complying with the new PayPal-only restriction.  They particularly draw attention to Shop format “Good Until Cancelled” listings.

If you have Good ‘Til Cancelled store inventory listings that do not currently offer PayPal or contain details of payment options other than PayPal or pay on pick up within the item description they will be removed from the site as of 17 June.

Nothing was stated as to whether sellers would have fees credited for listings removed in this manner (eBay normally credits back all fees when they remove listings for non-policy compliance), however, contradicting the above dictate, the announcement also stated -

Any item listed before 17 June can still offer other payment methods along with PayPal. These listings will be allowed to expire naturally as the only payment methods visible to buyers from 17 June will be PayPal and pay on pick up.

So which is it eBay?

Will Shop GTC listings be allowed to expire naturally (i.e. sell out and close) or will you be pulling them from 17 June?

What happens if the ACCC investigation goes against you?  You’re going to have a lot of policy revisions to make, and pressing on regardless as though expecting the ACCC to support you, could be a foolish move right now - it would cost you nothing to delay things for a month, and would be viewed as the prudent approach given your historical record of implementing programming change.

Ed

An announcement on eBay Australia has clarified the confusion over the multiple-item shipping clause of the Seller Protection Policy (SPP).

In a nutshell, if the multiple items are paid for in a single PayPal payment, they are covered, but if a buyer pays for items with multiple PayPal payments and the seller ships them all in one package, the seller is not covered.

This may explain recent increases in very experienced buyers (i.e. high existing feedback numbers with long membership of eBay) making numpty-like multiple payments for purchases, even when the purchases are from the same site and in the same currency.  If you notice a buyer doing this, ensure you package and ship each payment’s items seperately, otherwise you may be opening yourself up to fraudulent chargebacks based on being ineligible for the SPP.

The same conditions also apply to the new Enhanced Seller Protection Policy (ESPP) now available for PowerSellers in some countries.

On a similar note - exactly when will Bill Cobb & Rajiv Dutta’s promise (from eBay Live 2007) be made into actuality.  I’m talking of course about the promised function of multi-currency invoicing on eBay and PayPal.  They promised it would be in place before eBay Live 2008.  It’s not here and there’s been no rumour of it on any announcement board. 

With a month left before this year’s event, is it a broken promise, or was it a deliberate lie?

Ed

eBay UK have announced all listings from all sellers must offer PayPal with effect from 4 June 2008.

I’ve posted a log in our forums detailing how this policy grew from being applicable only to 4 categories renowned for seller fraud in August last year, to encompassing all low feedback sellers, to now tarring every seller and category with the same you-are-a-scammer-sir/madame brush.

Coming whilst everyone and his uncle plus government agencies are fighting the PayPal-only announcement in Australia, eBay UK seems to be using policy-creepage to sneak this one past the regulators.

The only upside of the UK’s policy that I can see, is that it will reduce overseas listings on the UK site. 

With Australians overwhelmingly rejecting PayPal, and large numbers of (genuine & honest) sellers in East Asia not having the financial instruments to get a PayPal account, this should relieve the listing-count pressure on UK’s open-to-all Cheap Listing Days, as well as at other times.

Ed