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

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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eBay’s Director of Global Feedback Policy has released the announcement everyone’s been waiting for.

There are some minor concessions to the concerns of all eBay sellers, and a few “extras” for PowerSellers, but the big problem is to remain in place - sellers will only be able to leave positive feedback for buyers.

Read the full announcement here, and please discuss your opinions in our forums, or add comments to this blog post.

eBay UK have also released their own version of it, and I’m still scrutinising for the exact and implied variations from the Global Policy - with the current UK head of Trust & Safety having constantly expressed the opinion that all sellers are scammers and con-artists (in eBay forums) I just know he’s going to have removed some of the good stuff.

I’ll post again when I’ve identified the differences between the Global & UK policies.

Ed

Update - the US announcement is in, also written by Brian Burke, with slight variations compared to the Canadian announcement above.  It also includes bad news for Half.com sellers, which was not in the Canadian announcement.  This seems to indicate the Global policy will be open to local interpretation and modification on each eBay site - and that’s a major source of concern, especially for UK sellers given the over-zealous whipping that they’ve been getting from the management in Richmond.

The Australian announcement has also arrived, with the same key points, but laid out differently and with a different implementation date (12th May instead of 15th May).  To be expected really given the differences eBay Oz have implemented concerning use of PayPal-only, and the PayPal Seller Protection Policy variations compared to the rest of eBay.

Singapore’s announcement is also in with implementation from May 21st - and worryingly, it clearly omits the criteria for removing feedback if the buyer does not call out seller performance in an unpaid item dispute.  Effectively this means a buyer can still leave a nonsense reply in the UPI dispute and their feedback will not be removed.  This is a clear indicator that the “global” policy is up for local interpretation and modification.

eBay.com logo” height=”33″ style=”width: 85px; height: 33px” title=”eBay.com logo” />As I’ve blogged several times, what gets trialled on eBay Oz, eventually rolls out to the rest of Planet eBay.

Jim Ambach has announced today that the Australian system of moving listings pulled for policy violations into a seller’s Sold Items view in their My eBay pages) has been rolled on eBay USA.  The announcement doesn’t state whether this is going to be global or not.

Major policy violations such as prohibited items, and VeRO take downs are excluded from this, but it should remove a lot of the grief from minor violations such as vague wording that contravenes the choice-listings policy etc.

This allows sellers to edit and relist the items, but again the announcement doesn’t state if relist credit is applied, though I suspect not, as eBay normally refunds insertion fees for listings they take down. 

Interestingly, when a multi-item listing is taken down after one or more items have been sold, my experience has been that they also refund the associated final value fees, even when the buyer has already paid and the item has been shipped.  This would imply an incentive for placing non-compliant listings, but I do caution that the tone of the take-down email sent to earlier buyers from the listing, is enough to make those buyers never return to any of your listings.  In fact, that email is positively libelous, though most sellers are more aggrieved at the take down that at the potential to lose customers - something that has probably saved eBay from many thousands of lawsuits over the years.

Naturally, the safest and least-hassle route is to make sure your listings are compliant in the first place.  Experience has also shown, it’s pointless getting into arguments with eBay Truss & Safety Pin staff over grammar and syntax in your listings that they take down.  They just put you into a loop of cut-and-paste stock answers that wrecks your blood pressure.  If, however, you thank them for spotting YOUR mistake, you will get a personalised and polite reply.  I guess that illustrates they want us to all become drones to eBay mantras?

I’m hoping this policy does roll globally - it is certainly useful on those rare occasions when I make an honest mistake in a listing, and it does go a touch towards humanising the slave masters.

Ed

 Our eBay Discussion Forums - Have your say

eBay UK’s Head of Trust and Safety has really put his foot firmly in his mouth with the UK PowerSellers.

I don’t want to make a habit of quoting directly from eBay forums, especially at length, but this one really does need exposed, considering Young Mr Ambrose’s habit of infuriating his paying customers.

A 22nd Feb UK PowerSeller Board post addressed directly to him, asking if the new performance discounts would apply cross border for UK registered sellers, after he had dodged the question for 3 weeks in another thread, solicited this response exactly 20 minutes after the new thread was started -

“I’ve just had a chat about this with our pricing czar.
UK sellers who qualify for discounts in the UK won’t get any discounts when they list on eBay.com. The same is true in the other direction, and for other sites.
I realise this seems slightly unfair. We’ve taken this approach for two reasons:
1) Having discounts that carry across to other country sites creates very challenging arbitrage situations - unless each country keeps its pricing and discount structure identical, it could result in sellers from one site pouring onto others
2) The technical work requiring to change our pricing system to enable discounts to be applied on multiple sites is surprisingly complex and would take a very long time to do - it hasn’t made the cut vs. other priorities this time around
I hope that clears things up, even if it’s not the answer you were hoping for.
Regards
Richard”

Did he just happen to be browsing the boards sitting next to the pricing Czar?  Or has he got some sort of alarm system that alerts him to a thread starting with his name in the title?  Anyway …

He was immediately leaped on by a PowerSeller quoting all the announcements from various Asian eBay sites (which I blogged here on 1st Feb) who summarised with -

“Basically if we, reg in the UK list on .com we get NO benefits…correct?
Where does that leave us regarding DSR’s then?
If those sales that we get on .com are NOT recognised for a discount then are the DSRs not included when it comes to visibility or not?
This is a complete shambles I have to say.”

SilverSisters, the rebutting PowerSeller, has a couple of good points in there.  But not to be outdone, Mr Ambrose came back carrying a 155mm howitzer to fire at his own feet -

“Ah, good point - my mistake for not mentioning Asia.
So to add to my post 3:
The pricing arbitrage risk and the technical complexity associated with offering discounts on all sites is very high.
We would like to recognise good sellers wherever they choose to list, though, so we’re looking into ways around them both. To that end there’s a trial solution being rolled out in Asia (quite small markets, quite a small number of sellers).
I didn’t mention this in my initial post to avoid raising expectations unduly - even if the Asian approach works well, it would still take a considerable time to build an equivalent that works in the much bigger markets like the UK.”

And from there the board got really interesting. 

One poster pointed out that the Asian announcements made no reference to the cross-border discounts being a trial, and that those (cross border) announcements were made in January, plus they pulled Ambrose up on his statement about the disparity in market sizes making it more difficult to implement in western markets. 

As was pointed out, the comment about “small” Asian markets is categorically false.  Five Asian countries (at least) are receiving the cross border discounts - Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Phillipines, and Singapore - representing roughly 20% of the world’s population, and cumulatively far larger than the EU and North America combined.  In terms of eBay registrations, they may not be as large as the west, but they are growing fast, and announcements have not yet been translated from eBay China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or Thailand, but there is no reason to assume those sites will not get the discounts that the rest of Asia are getting.  Additionally, there are fewer members in Australia and New Zealand than there are in India, so why did they not get the cross border discounts?

Another PowerSeller added that the research and technology was already complete if it was in use in Asia, and just needed replicating to the west.  Others then jumped in with derisory comments about such “small” Asian markets swamping their categories (exactly the reason visibility of UK listings was cut from eBay US).

Responding to “unless each country keeps its pricing and discount structure identical, it could result in sellers from one site pouring onto others” is best left to 1porschegirl, who said -

“This is blatantly false - this will increase the number of sellers who create accounts (most likely with false contact information) on overseas sites. This encourages British or German sellers registering accounts on .com with a false American address or American sellers registering accounts on .co.uk/.de with false contact information. Or to even more easily obtain their expected discounts, sellers will simply transfer to an Asian site.
Finally, giving UK sellers the .com discount on their .com sales (as eBay does for Asian sellers) would in no way increase the US sellers’ desire to register on .co.uk, but would decrease the UK sellers’ desire to register an account on .com.”

The rest of the thread relates to variations of the theme that Mr Ambrose is trying to insult UK PowerSellers’ intelligences. 

One point that no-one jumped on yet was the arbitrage point raised in Ambrose’s first post.  There is zero difficulty with that.  Currently if a UK registered seller lists on dot com during a US Cheap Listing Day, they receive the discounted insertion fee on their current account statement, at the point of listing - i.e. it is applied immediately.  Therefore, under the new discounts, when a qualifying seller lists on another site, the accepting site simply needs to check the seller’s home country qualification for discounts, then apply the accepting site’s discount to the insertion fee before posting it onto the seller’s account in the accepting site’s currency, which is then transferred into the registration site’s currency to generate the billed value.

There is very little complication to this when compared to what happens with CLD fees.  So why will eBay not do it?  The answer to that of course, was answered weeks ago in this blog. 

However, to give young master Richard some slack, he may have been instructed in what to say by someone above him, however, there aren’t that many candidates within eBay Towers who qualify for that, now that he’s in charge of Trusses and Safety Pins.

Perhaps he needs this …..

 101 Ways to Stop the Money Leak $9.99 from BuildaSkill’s book & software shop

 Ed  

 Our eBay Discussion Forums (including a private forum for eBay PowerSellers)

Following last year’s cut of trans-Atlantic visibility and a year of tweaking and twiddling restoration for specified categories, then cutting it again on UK promotion days, which all came after the much called-for Location Abuse Policy came into force, eBay has apparently handed it’s most prized territories back to the sellers that were most complained about - the Asians.

Starting from 20th February 2008, PowerSellers in Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines will receive the same PowerSeller Incentives (Invoice Discounts) as sellers in Germany, the UK, and the USA, who list on those three as their home sites.  This concession might also apply to China, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand but I’ve not yet been able to get translations from their announcements pages.  The wider eligibility has been hinted at in some announcements and comments on the South East Asian markets mentioned first, but I must stress I’ve had no firm confirmation of it yet.

Spain has also made the same announcement, and I expect other smaller European sites to follow suit over the weekend.  Keep watching our main eBay Forum for all the international announcements as they arrive from each eBay site around the world.

As European and North American buyers and sellers pause for breath in the heated forum exchanges regarding the feedback, business registration/address visibility changes etc. how many have looked beyond their own borders for further implications?

On eBay India’s International Selling Forum,  there’s no new threads or comments about the changes, despite prominent links to announcements about them.  The “Selling on eBay” board also has neither threads nor comments about the changes.  In fact, I couldn’t find any discussion anywhere on the sub-continent’s site, either for or against the changes.

In Malaysia, the International Trading Board the most recent thread is actually complaining there’s no benefit to being a PowerSeller, and that being one is no fun.   In the General Discussion board, there’s one thread of discussion with the OP (posted by a western expatriate) having links to the early announcements on dot com.  Most of the posters also seem to be UK & US expats.

Strangely, Singapore’s International Trading Board has neither comment nor posts about the new cross border discounts for Powersellers.  Normally it’s a very lively board (and a great initial source of info for new on-eBay scams from China) .  There’s not even any mention of the topic in the General Discussion Board.  In fact, there’s no discussion at all on any of the Singapore boards.

In the Philippines, the same OP as in Malaysia has contributed to a thread in the Filipino International Trading board but in the context of getting a PayPal account verified, there’s no discussion of the new changes.  In the very active General Discussion board (well over 100 threads started since the announcements)  there is one thread about the changes by the same OP as above (he gets around doesn’t he?), it even has a “pink” posting in it, but it has under 30 posts in total - most of them echoing concerns aired by sellers in the UK & US.

The Australian International Trading Board also has nothing about the changes, nor does the PayPal forum.  In the Member to Member board, the feedback restrictions get their own (currently 3-page) thread and a “pink” response, plus a shorter thread.  The lack of fee changes for Oz has a thread as well, but no replies, from the pinks or anyone else.

So does this lack of on-eBay discussion throughout the Asian region mean that Asians are not that bothered by the changes, or does it mean they’re too busy loading up Turbo Lister ready for February 20th?

In the last quarter of 2007, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Philippines were added to the range of countries supported by Turbo Lister.  India and Singapore were added in 2006, and Australia the year before that.  China and Taiwan are in there too, but not in English.  With the wider Asian region already having more Powersellers amongst the expatriate community than most individual European countries have at home, has it been fair to penalise these westerners-gone-east in the way that eBay has done over the last 3-4 years?  They were certainly the core user-base that enabled eBay’s expansion in the Orient to progress as far as it has done.  The anouncements of cross-border PowerSeller Incentives may just be the boost they needed to staunch the haemmorhaging towards other channels that has occurred in the last 18 months.

Should Germany, the UK and the US be concerned about a second tsunami of Asian listings in their eBay markets?  I predict they should. 

The first wave were mainly from the expats and from China/HongKong.  Today, nearly two years after that tide ebbed, the far greater number of users stretched from Karachi to Kamchatka, and from Mongolia to Melbourne are locals, and they have grown dramatically from two years ago.  They’re also far web-smarter than the early adopters, and have access to more payment channels having learnt from earlier lessons. 

Many are the new generation entrepreneurs operating from regular business premises, with bank-provided credit card and merchant services facilities, in addition to online services such as MoneyBookers & PayPal.  In northern hemisphere Asia, an incredible number of them undertook post-graduate education in Europe or the States and have bank accounts there with verified postal addresses - overall, the genuine ones will be far easier to trade with than previously, and will be able to offer far more attractive pricing on many products, than could home-based westerners.

The scammers will resurface too, smarter, sharper, and more experienced of what does and does not work - whether it be outright scams, counterfeits, or simply fake goods. 

With the new feedback policy that buyers can only receive positives, and opening the big three markets to PowerSeller discounts for (all?) Asian sellers, the opportunity is going to be just too attractive to the Orient, whether the seller be genuine or fraudulent.  There will be no way eBay could police it all, despite the assurances from Mssrs Cobb and Donahoe et al.

I think it’s time the West began selling to the East, and listing on those lovely eBay sites with zero or near-zero insertion and final value fees.  Our goods will probably have more visibility that way round (and cost a darn sight less to sell at the same time).

Ed.