Heavily journalled all over the internet, once ardent and dedicated eBay sellers have been leaving the auction site in droves since John Donahoe took over from Meg Whitman, in early 2008.  Some would say it started before that, and some charting has been done to show annual seasonal migrations as far back as 2002.  However [...]

eBay posted their financial report for the last quarter of 2009, this week, and opened the statement by blaming Skype for causing a 3% drag on gross revenue growth.
The leader paragraph states that comparing Q4 2008 to 2009, revenues rose 16% inclusive of the Skype ownership period, but that factoring Skype out of the numbers [...]

eBay UK have announced an extended cheap fees promotion for private sellers in the media categories, but beware the terms and conditions.
The folks at Richmond must have been drinking a lot of the corporate Kool Aid with the new give away of free insertion fees for auctions starting at under GB £5.00, which runs from [...]

I keep a close eye on the topics that readers search for that bring them to the BuildaSkill blog and forums. Over the last few weeks there has been a growing trend in the number of searches with key words such as “eBay forced business registration” and “eBay private seller listings blocked”.
I know all [...]

By now, most eBay sellers are sick to the back teeth of hearing about DSRs and the way they are used for the sole purpose of punishing sellers, robbing them of fee discounts, having them suspended from selling, or worse.
I know there’s a minority of sellers who think they’re the best thing since sliced bread, [...]

eBay SE Asia have announced an “invitation only” listing promotion for sellers in their region.
Sellers who list on the US site from now through to 31st December, and offer free shipping, will receive 25% off final value fees … provided at least 25% of their listings total qualify for the promotional rate.
The emphasis on free [...]

Coming into effect next Friday (20th November), eBay India has announced a major change to its duplicate listings policy immediately before the seasonally-critical peaks of the fourth quarter selling period.
eBay India has long been a test-bed site for policies that later roll globally across the eBay platform, most notably the International Visibility Fee (used on [...]

The announcement Boards at eBay Malaysia and Singapore revealed an ominous amendment to the eBay user agreement late last week.
Some will view it as positive news, but it will send a chill down the spine of any (like me) who have been sent to the dolphinarium for a holiday at any time. I’ve not found [...]

Tipped off on Wednesday by a quick message from a fellow seller, I went in search of information concerning a supposedly benign bug that had appeared in the latest version of Turbo Lister for eBay UK sellers. What I discovered through trial and error has left me horrified … and seriously out of pocket.
Updated [...]

eBay SE Asia, headquartered in Singapore and overseen by eBay UK, have joined the march of eBay colonialism by introducing policy to move sellers’ legal compliance requirements out of the countries where sellers operate, and into the countries where they list items.

The World Wide Web is supposed to mean that a supplier can create an advertising/sales channel from their own territory, available to all other territories, and even when the server and code is not located in their own territory, the seller is supposed to be able to state in their terms of sale, which territorial jurisdiction applies to transactions – eBay does this in Europe via eBay S.a.r.l. in Luxembourg, and in North America via eBay Inc. in San Jose …. but they are now removing the same privilege from their own paying customer merchants.

In one of those classically nonchalant Announcement Board posts that epitomises eBay increasing fees, the Indian site has thrown a 50% additional listing-fee hike at volume sellers in most categories.
Please note in correcting an inaccuracy in the first edition of this article, I have also added several points I missed earlier, and this version is [...]

I’m of that age when, as a schoolboy I was regaled with tales of Empire and entrepreneurial explorers in far flung places who caused the title “Great” to be placed before the name “Britain”.
Sorry to my American readers, but it’s the truth. It might be why I expatriated to the Far East without so much [...]

eBay South East Asia have issued another survey for sellers – possibly in continuance of the drive to acquire more sellers onto the region’s sites that saw the ending of affiliate commissions for product sales, using the eBay Partner Network, last winter.
The survey is structured in a “what were you”, “where are you now”, “what [...]

eBay US announced Tuesday that sellers on the dot com site could get five free auction listings per month, and eBay CA followed with the same announcement on Wednesday.
Between the two announcements, a lot of sellers “did the maths” and discovered several cautionary points -

eBay North America have just announced that from next week all sellers will be moved to the new item view page when viewing their own listings.
I have mixed feelings about the new page style, and thus far have always opted out of it on each site that has presented it to me.  This is mainly [...]