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 -
Better late than never, Dinesh Lathi has posted details of the eBay North America January Sales CLD today.
For the remainder of January, insertion fees on 1 and 3 day Auction Listings are half price, IF your 12-month DSRs are 4.5 or higher. New sellers without any accumulated DSRs are also eligible. Throughout the month, the [...]
Better late than never, Dinesh Lathi’s announcement that eBay Canada are matching the US promotions extensions to 31 March 2009, arrived.
The US promotion extensions were blogged about almost a week ago here on BuildaSkill, and as always, you can find the full details in our eBay Cheap Listing Days News Board (login and minimum posts [...]
Both eBay Canada and eBay.com are running 50% off insertion fees for Auctions until midnight tonight. DSR minimums apply for eligibility and the usual warnings about fees not reflecting on selling tools apply, but they’ll appear on current billing fees in Seller Account details. Additionally there are some categories excluded, so check the announcements in [...]
An announcement last week from eBay CA Country Manager, Andrew Sloss, revealed that eBay Canada will use average 4.1 DSRs as the determining factor for whether or not a seller can list on the site.
I’ve seen numerous blog and forum posts claiming the minimum was 4.3, however, 4.3 was the level at which sellers received [...]
eBay Canada have announced another Cheap Listing Day (CLD) for residents only, although in fact it’s two days.
Hitting the inbox after the promotion had already started (Again! – Canada are good at that.), the announcement states that for the whole of 14th & 15th October Canadian ET, Auctions and Fixed Price on the site will [...]
In yet another of their “no foreigners” Cheap Listing Day promotions, eBay Canada have announced 23rd & 24th September as 5-cent insertion fee days for the Auction Format.
When will they learn that attracting buyers relies on wide-ranging product choice, and that excluding non-residents just doesn’t assist with that aim? eBay Australia suffers from the same blinkered viewpoint.
Is this just part of the apparently ongoing drive to further fragment the “global marketplace” eBay once represented?
PayPal UK rolled some site maintenence at breakfast time today and sellers have been unable to view transaction details ever since, eBay Canada suffers a broken Checkout, and is the Seller Dashboard up the creek again?
PayPal UK pre-announced maintenance and site down time for an hour scheduled for before the business day this morning, but [...]
Over the last few years, in various announcements and forum posts, staff at eBay UK have stated that the UK subsidiary has up to twenty million registered accounts, and at different times the active user number has been placed at between six and twelve million. It’s well known that many people have more than one account on the site, whether for differentiating stock between seller accounts, or for remaining anonymous on the public forums to prevent malicious bidding because someone disagrees with a statement posted.
The total eBay staff in the UK has only ever been stated once, and I was very surprised then to read it was under 100 given that the site was, at that time, eBay’s second largest market after the US. Numbers may have grown since that time with the addition of the customer support centre in Dublin, but even that cannot dilute the disparity between the number of users and the number of staff when the user community is up in arms.
And up in arms the users certainly are …
AuctionBytes have published a timely story to remind sellers about several policy deadlines that could have been overlooked with all the recent news of fee and listing format changes. Shipping choices, sale handling time, and returns, policies are all changing this autumn.
Triggered by an eBay Developers Program news announcement, the sequence of events most affecting sellers began on Monday this week with the requirement that all sellers specify at least one domestic shipping option. Overseas sellers can select “Seller’s Standard Rate”, or variations including economy and expedited, in order to avoid having to name USPS services not available from other countries.
In what is becoming typical eBay style, the tools to enable sellers to quickly respond to, and comply with, changing policies will not be available until after the policy is in force. Currently sellers will need to edit listings one-by-one from their “My eBay” or Selling Manager tools, or by going into each listing and doing it from there …
Electronic Payments & Accepted Payments Policy Changes for 2008-2009
Beginning in late October 2008, cheques and money orders will no longer be allowed as payment methods on eBay.com. All listings appearing on eBay.com must accept one of the following payment methods:
Major “Gotcha” - My first reaction to this is that this is a back-door route for a PayPal-only eBay USA. Small sellers, and those whose business model precludes them from obtaining Merchant Services, and sellers outside the USA who cannot obtain a ProPay account, will only have PayPal available to them as a payment method on the USA site during the peak pre-Christmas selling season.
The late summer change announcements for the North American eBay sites are radically different to those with major effects in Europe.
The NAFTA-zone sites are keeping traditional eBay Stores and SIF format, but adding new listing durations and fee structures for the existing Fixed Price/BIN format in core.
Specifically this means that they will retain the ultra-cheap, but restricted visibility, store listing option, and sellers using it will still need listings in Auction and BIN format to drive buyers to their shop inventory. The BIN format listings also get a single unified insertion fee, which remains the same regardless of unit price or quantity in the listing, and also get several eBay-authorised methods to manipulate Best Match search ranking for their listings. The primary kick-in-the-nuts for sellers comes with the new “electronic payments” only policy, that has potential to slide-in a PayPal-only North America via the back door.
Back in January it was announced that from the summer, stores format on eBay.com and eBay.ca would have introduced a minimum per item price of $1 and I mentally noted it, but it then took so long to arrive that I forgot about it because no reminders were issued.
Now, weeks after it was put into force, I find that many of my sub-$1 store-items are still auto-relisting according to Selling Manager Pro (SMP), and according to my Seller Account, I’m still being invoiced the insertion fees, but those US & CA listings are not visible anywhere on any of the sites to buyers – they are only visible within SMP, which had caused me to believe they are live on the site for buyers to find. I stress this only affects store items under $1.00 price per item.
Both North American eBays – Canada and the USA – have announced two weeks of cheap listing fees for fixed price listings.
On both sites from July 16th to July 29th (inclusive), insertion fees for Fixed Price (FP or BIN) lisitngs are fixed at $0.25 in all price tranches. Listing upgrade fees and other options, including [...]
Canada post have provided eBay with a lengthy announcement relating to a new classification for certain lettermail items deemed “Irregular” due to their size or shape. Full details can be found in the full Canada Post announcement in the BuildaSkill Global Post Offices Forum board (login required) with links to all the relevant info pages on the Canada Post website.
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