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 [...]

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.

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 SE Asia have promulgated an offer for eBay PowerSellers residing in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan or Korea that provides for the Highlight listing enhancement at half price until the end of the month for all listings placed onto the US site (eBay.com).
The offer applies to any listing that adopts the Highlight [...]

Another promotion has emerged from the SE Asian team at eBay Singapore.  This offer runs until the end of March and yields up to 60% off FVFs in return for designating shipping (P&P) as free.
Simply offer free postage on at least 10 items listed on eBay.com and eBay.co.uk and enjoy 60% (1) and 30% (2) [...]

The eBay Singapore team have emailed eBay PowerSellers residing in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, advising of a special promotion on the USA site valid until the end of March.
PowerSellers listing on eBay.com and using the Highlight and / or Subtitle (see ambiguity problem below) feature, will immediately enjoy a 50% fee [...]

In a move unprecedented in the history of charitable and relief fund-raising on eBay, the appeal for the Australian Bushfires Appeal appears to have gone global.
This is something that did not happen for the Indian Ocean Tsunami, The Chinese or Pakistani Earthquakes, or even for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the USA.
Despite the worthiness [...]

I’ve just had three emails in quick succession – two from eBay and one from Google – that knocked me clean off my chair each time.  Each of them was such a nice little surprise that I’m thinking today must be Christmas Party day in their offices and someone is a little too full of [...]

eBay Malaysia and eBay Singapore have announced to their buyers that those are now fully covered for purchases on eBay.co.uk and eBay.com
The announcement follows on from an initial extension of buyer protections announced in September, and the current announcement cautions -
Coverage and amounts of the PayPal Buyer Protection Programme are based on the eBay site [...]

eBay Australia is providing specially discounted fees for six SE Asian eBay countries from 4th November to 20th December.  Flat-rate insertion fees of AU$ 0.20 across all price tranches are available if you use the “free shipping” pricing model that eBay are pushing globally, and have 4.0 or higher DSRs on all four criteria.  (See [...]

Having blogged, in the last 72 hours, here on BuildaSkill about a swathe of “free P&P” based CLDs from eBays around the globe, and raised concerns that the campaign was a fee-grab aimed at sellers adding P&P into their listing price, eBay International AG (via the Singapore team) landed a couple of emails in my mailbox this morning.

As a seller, I’m not happy about the message in them, as an industry observer, I know how to smell a smokescreen when I see one …

Continuing eBay’s push towards free or inclusive postage on all listings, the four South East Asian eBay countries are offering all their resident PowerSellers 50% off final value fees (FVFs) when they list with “free” P&P on dot com, UK, Germany, Oz, France & Italy until October 9th.

The offer is good for auction and fixed price format and sellers must have DSRs of at least 4.0 across all four criteria, and applies to sellers resident in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, or Thailand.

These discounts are also on top of existing PowerSeller Performance discounts on FVF, which PS’s in those four SE Asian countries receive from the same list of six western countries, and on top of other discounts available to some groups of sellers.

Late Friday afternoon (19th September) one of our readers posted that in a telephone call with PowerSeller Support, they had been told that UK non-resident sellers would no longer receive email or telephone support from eBay UK, even if they had a UK-registered seller account. I called the Dublin support centre and was told the same. The same reader was told by UK PowerSeller Support that the discounts would only be paid to UK-residents with UK-registered seller accounts (I was told this too).

I urge all expatriate UK-registered sellers to contact UK support and PS support, to query the statements at the top of this article – push them hard and don’t let them fob you off. Post in the PowerSeller forum, linking to this post, and demand answers. Then come back and tell us what you were told (in-forum, or on the phone, by eBay UK).

The announcement from eBay SG is in, and like North America they seem to be going with the “Modify BIN but leave shops alone” change model.

There are three main sets of fee savings for western-country sellers that can be achieved by making use of eBay Singapore, though so few sellers seem to realise or leverage this. In this post, I’m not just giving you the news, I’m giving you some serious food for thought for the future of your eBay business. Throw out all your preconceptions about having to work in multiple currencies (they’re likely wrong anyway) and put on your accounting head for a few minutes – you could save your business a small fortune and really send a message to eBay about their fee-extortion in western countries …

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.