Several European eBay sites announced mid-month that from this coming Monday (2nd March) sellers who have uploaded listings with a version of TurboLister prior to v6.5 will have those listings removed. No mention of insertion fee rebates or listing upgrade fee refunds were made.

Following the mid-February announcements from several European eBay sites, sellers are reminded that effective from this coming Monday (2 March) the listing format “New and Now” is being retired and listings will be switched to Buy Now format. It may be that some of your listings do not suit the standard Buy Now format, or that default durations and listing upgrades will not be cost effective for them. Therefore please check your listings on …

A brief announcement from eBay Spain, signed by eBay Canada, states they have changed the default search format results back to Time Ending Soonest.

The crowd goes wild – I know this is what many sellers have been begging and pleading for in the UK. And not just the sellers, I’ve seen many forum posts from buyers demanding eBay ditch both Best Match and New Search, and return to the default of Time Ending Soonest with the option to switch to the standard alternatives (Newly Listed, Cheapest First, Closest First etc.) …

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).

It must have been one heck of a siesta in Spain this summer. The Spanish site have just announced that from 24 September, their PowerSellers will be eligible for 20% FVF discounts if they maintain minimum DSRs of 4.5 across all scores.

Last month, I blogged about the reported disparity in national average DSRs between sites, and posted a special report about the exceptionally low national average in Spain.

The new Spanish announcement about PowerSeller discounts contains one interesting and very worrying phrase -

In an announcement made “in the interests of transparency”, the eBay Spain team have posted an announcement of their national DSR averages for sellers during the month of June 2008, and for the 12 months to the end of June.
The numbers are quite revealing, and I’ve repeated them below with the national averages currently displayed [...]

Starting at the end of June, all listings on eBay Spain must state a shipping method and cost, or the listing will not be accepted. An announcement released today, does permit collection as a shipping type and gives the example of a sofa as being an item suitable for such a method.

Effective 4th March, eBay Spain has followed France and the US in combining the cost of Gallery into the basic insertion fee.
Their announcement states there is a cost saving in the first two pricing tranches, after which the combination fee remains at the total it was before this change. 
It would appear there is going to [...]