Laurie Borden of repXchange.com wrote to me last week introducing her site,

“As you know, eBay has announced that they will no longer allow sellers to leave negative feedback on buyers. So as it turns out, a fair marketplace has gone by the wayside and eBay has decided the way to reward buyers (good or bad) is by allowing them to leave any feedback they want, yet sellers must suck it up as the saying goes.
   
As an ex-PowerSeller, I am surprised by the changes eBay is making as I can fully remember the pain of dealing with a bad bidder. The latest changes set me in motion. I thought, how can I try to level the playing field? That is when I decided to launch a new service called RepXchange, short for Reputation Exchange.  Today we are re going live - please take a test drive at  www.repxchange.com and give us your feedback, as we truly value any comments you may have. (Do not expect there to be a lot of blocked bidders in the data base yet!)“

At its core, the service allows sellers to anonymously pool their blocked bidder lists, or black lists, and extract a new, custom list of blocked bidders that fits their own business profile.  With RepXchange, sellers can weed out bad buyers, and by extension, save sellers from spending needless time on re-listing, or worse, filing dispute claims.

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After having heard a lot of mention of AuctionBlacklist.com around various discussion boards and blogs, I thought I’d finally take a nosy at it.

Unfortunately it seems the banes of webmasters lives, the spammers, have been attacking the site with a vengeance.  I was greeted with this message -

After nearly a year of fighting with Spam in the database, I have decided to temporarily take the site off line to repair the problems and to upgrade the site.  We will be back better than ever in hopefully about two months.  Sorry if this causes anyone any inconvenience.  This redesign project will be posted for bid on scriptlance, if you wish to bid for this project.

There then follows a banner ad and jobs list for ScriptLance - a freelance jobs and contracts site for website programming and design.  Site owner Steve Miller said in an email this is where he’ll be obtaining the skills for building his new site,

“I have to complete a project prospectus for the site project, which has been a little slow going, due to a lot of other projects I have been working on. I hope to have the project posted by mid next month. I expect it will take up to a month or so to complete the project after that point.

“Some changes to the site, will be so that I can make the site stay within compliance of ebay.  The site will require a free membership sign up.  This will help control the spam problem.  There will be a seller rating page for users to rate sellers.  I am hoping that it will incorporate all the action sites i.e. ebay etc, so that people rating sellers will have to post actual auctions before they can rate a seller.

“There will be free advertising for 98% sellers and above. There will be live news - relevant news feed updates regarding all types of internet fraud.  There will be information posted on the site to help folks understand much of the fraud process, in other words how fraudsters operate on eBay.

“There will be many changes that I hope will allow me to make dynamic changes to the site as I need to, since I am not really a programmer.  All future postings will require a user ID and password, which will also limit the database from becoming hammered by spam.

“I will try to bring the site live, as soon as possible.  I may have to bring some of the features on line slowly, rather than all at once, in order to ensure that the site operates properly and so that  I don’t become overwhelmed with the changes myself.”

Seems like Steve has some big plans for the site, but it also seems he is going the opposite direction to other 3rd party feedback sites - his will be collecting data about the sellers, rather than the buyers … unless he miswrote his email?

Ed

AfterTheGavel was probably the first of the new bunch of third-party feedback recording sites that sprung up after the eBay announcements in late January 2008.   They also operate under the URL www.LeaveAuctionFeedback.com and it seems this is the name that will be taking over (at least according to the current site promotion banners).

I learned of them from a banner on the AuctionBytes website, and decided immediately that here was a service worth promoting on BuildaSkill.

The site is fast, lightning fast, and makes BuildaSkill look like a slug on prozac.  It has a clean and simple presentation that makes everything very easy to find and read, and the registration takes under 20 seconds.  Included on the site is a sellers’ forum area using the popular phpBB open source forum software, which should be familiar to most users.  The site is totally free to use.

The blurb states that currently the site is open only to sellers leaving feedback about buyers (nice counterpoint to the new eBay policies) but it is not restricted to just eBay sellers - sellers from any site can leave negative or neutral feedback about their buyers (the site does not accept positive feedback to prevent the database becoming clogged and difficult to search). 

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MoneyBookers” title=”MoneyBookers” />Moneybookers, one of the world’s leading online payment providers, and Afterbuy, one of the leading software providers for auction sellers, have joined forces to offer eBay PowerSellers and online merchants the most comprehensive all-in-one payment solution ever available.

As a worldwide innovation Afterbuy customers can now receive payments via more than 40 international payment options instantly. There is no need for further integration with any payment or credit card processing company. To ensure perfect conversion, auction buyers will not need to go through the usual lengthy registration process.  For example, they can select their credit card and pay quickly and easily as if it were a conventional credit card integration. The new solution is available worldwide in 12 languages and with full customer support.  Moneybookers also offers its clients a ZERO Chargeback guarantee.

Afterbuy is an all-in-one software solution developed by ViA-Online targeting all eBay sellers and online merchants.  With Afterbuy, selling on the internet becomes pure pleasure.  The eBay-certified solution allows users to manage all their products in a database. Later on all data can be reused for professionally designed sales offers which can be placed on eBay and other shopping platforms at the push of a button.

Verified eBay PowerSellers who have registered as users of the BuildaSkill Forums, can find full details of the above facilities in our PowerSeller-only discussion board here.

Ed

Harald and the team at osCommerce.com have announced this week that version 2.2 RC2 is now in public release.

This is backed up by the removal of RC1 from the osCommerce site’s main download sections, replaced with both the full, and upgrade, downloads, documentation, and migration code from earlier versions.  The code for earlier versions is still available from various sources, including the osCommerce site (if you know where to look), and v2.2 MS2 is still the default within the Fantastico script installer provided free by many web hosting companies. 

Considering that most of the osCommerce contributions and add-ons are designed for 2.2 MS2, removing the RC1 downloads is not as big an issue as it may appear.  In fact some add-on coders refuse point blank to update their MS2 code for any of the RC releases, and aggressively state they will wait for the final 2.2 (stable) release before they do so.

RC2 was announced as featuring the following updates and changes -

* Over 15 bug fixes and improvements.

* Improved register_globals compatibility layer for PHP 4.3+ servers.

* New and updated payment modules that include PayPal Express Checkout, PayPal Direct Payments, PayPal Website Payments Standard, Authorize.net AIM and SIM, WorldPay, and more.

* Introduce the ability for payment modules to show checkout buttons on the shopping cart page.

* Introduce the ability for order shipping and billing addresses to be defined from an external source (ie, payment method).

* Introduce a public status flag on order status levels to show or hide orders from customers depending on the order status level.

* Introduce a download flag on order status levels to allow customers to download virtual products at specific order status levels.

* Introduce version signature strings to payment modules that link to the add-ons site for easier version tracking.

The bug fixes are always welcome of course, but early reactions in the developer and implementer community seem focussed on the new and improved PayPal modules.  3rd party add-ins for PayPal integration have been known to be buggy and difficult to implement with ongoing success.  This was not helped by PayPal changing calls from their Application Programming Interface (API), nor their rolling goalposts for successful API connecting by merchants from around the world.  Now, “straight from the box” comes several solutions for differing merchants, created and implemented by the core osCommerce development team, and that is GREAT news indeed.

The new version includes some nice tweaks - the payment modules’ checkout buttons in the shopping cart, and the public order status flags for logged-in registered customers, for example.  Within this category, the ability to acquire shipping addresses from outside of osCommerce will be a winner with the online payment processor users - again, PayPal has been a major source of headaches, in this field, in the past.

And finally, version tracking for payment modules brings osCommerce a tiny step closer to the ease of expandability long enjoyed by implementers of other open source applications such as SMF Forums (which we use at BuildaSkill), Joomla! Content Management System, and of course - WordPress blogging systems.

Having a number of osCommerce 2.2 RC1 stores under development, this version advancement couldn’t have come at a worse time for me, but I’ll take it on the chin and next week implement both a clean install, and a version upgrade from RC1 to RC2, and hopefully be able to report back to you during the following week, so be sure to subscribe to the BuildaSkill Biz Blog via the RSS or XML tools provided, or register as a subscriber.

……. and don’t be scared to add comments regarding your own experiences with the new version (it’d be nice to know someone reads the blog  ).

There’s also been some announcements, this week, regarding the forthcoming major version change to osCommerce v3.0 - but I’ll blog those in a seperate report.

Ed

For the second time in a month, French transport unions have called their workers out on strike, immobilising the country’s rail systems.

Energy workers are reported as also joining the open-ended strike, and university students at several campuses have taken to the streets protesting proposals that could have business controlling curriculums.  I wonder how long before the road transport unions, and the agricultural workers (both known to be game for strikes and port blockades at the drop of a hat) join the rail and energy workers.

The knock on effect is that a lot of deliveries are going to be affected.  France borders many western European countries and their normally fast and efficient service shuttles a lot of mail and freight between Benelux, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain, in addition to the UK since the opening of the Channel Tunnel.

Following on from the UK’s months of postal strikes, this is not good news for mail order and online retailers and wholesalers, nor for offline business relying on postal and small freight delivery services into and out of Western Europe.  Be sure your customers and suppliers are forewarned and their expectations managed …… “the cheque is in the Chunnel”?

Ed

In the UK, the 5th of November is the annual Bonfire Night and Fireworks Festival, held annually to commemorate (or commiserate) the unsuccessful attempt by Guy Fawkes to blow up the British Houses of Parliament, or Westminster Palace as it was then.

On planet eBay, 5th November 2007 will be remembered for many things -

•  India announced a 20% REDUCTION in Front Page Featured Fees which will last for 5 days.
•  Italy announced a week-long FREE listing period for Motors & Motorcycles.
•  Canada announced a 5-week period of FREE Gallery in core listings.
•  USA also announced a 5-week period of FREE Gallery in core listings.
•  USA announced a 5 week period of INCREASED STORE LISTING VISIBILITY in core search & browse.
•  USA
  announced that browsers can use GUEST BUYING to buy on eBay.com without an eBay or PayPal account.
•  India announced MAJOR CHANGES to PaisaPay terms including a maximum delivery period that must be adhered to.
•  Germany announced that seller email addresses will no longer be shown to buyers after a sale, in an attempt to curb harvesting for Spam purposes.
•  UK announced it was changing how SELLER ACCOUNT BALANCES and calculations are shown, this followed closely announcements on several other sites.

All these announcements come hot on the heels of a flood of announcements, during the last week, regarding all sorts of functional and cosmetic changes to how eBay are going to treat or do business with their buyers and sellers.  In no particular order, they included  -

•  eBay Gift Cards launched in the USA with a major marketing program.
•  Finally, eBay saw the light and announced Skype buttons would be allowed on all listings in all categories on the UK and USA sites.
•  USA announced a November competition for Stores Sellers with $2,500 prizes up for grabs, which looks miserly next to Canada’s $50,000 competition.
•  Hong Kong announced the Beta of their site in both English and Chinese, obviously hoping to pick up some international buyers for their manufacturing and exporting sellers.
•  Both UK & USA made announcements regarding re-introducing TRANS-ATLANTIC VISIBILITY in certain categories, subject to sellers meeting certain criteria, which discussions on eBay forums, backed up by comments by UK staff, prove to not be getting applied evenly on both sides of the pond .
•  UK then promptly announced that the trans-Atlantic visibility will not apply to CLD listings, nor to listings inserted between 10am the day before, until 10am the day after a CLD.
•  Meanwhile, almost every site has been announcing changes to the sign-in pages, and Canada announced the launch of a new shipping calculator, which will surely add to the global problems of the bug-ridden eBay checkout’s, combined shipping calculations?.

So, there’s lots of changes going on at eBay around the world, and the general impression is one of trying to improve the safety reputation of the sites, whilst further fragmenting the “global marketplace” that is continually touted in eBay marketing and PR.

There is also an increasing appearance of desperation to maintain volume of listings and the GMV of sold items.  This of course, is perceptual, and should only be thought about with long experience and knowledge of what has been happening on eBay over the last few years.  After 20 months of punitive measures seen as anti-seller / pro-buyer policies (always denied by eBay) the swathe of fee reductions (albeit only for limited promotion periods) brings some welcome relief to the long-suffering sellers. 

The changes and promotions do not change the basic position that eBay has milked and squeezed their paying customers to the point of causing a mass exodus to other venues, whilst trying to set itself up as a replacement for the government agencies that should be regulating consumer protections, and ignoring eBay’s own liability to the people who buy services from them. 

They do, however, show there is a glimmering of recognition that the sellers are no longer happy to use eBay, and that eBay is haemmorhaging the experienced and knowledgable long-term business sellers, who, no longer available to help the newbies, have moved off to their own sites, and other venues such as Amazon and eBid.  Such contractions of user-base knowledge must be having a punishing effect on eBay’s notoriously sluggish Customer Support, especially when coupled with the wholesale banning of many sellers from the eBay Community forums - newbies now have to rely on other newbies for help and advice, much of which is incorrect or misguided.

It would seem that, following eBay’s withdrawal from China,  they are living under the Chinese curse of “living in interesting times”.  Or, have they been preparing for the flotation of alibaba.com, which launched on the stock exchange on 5th November, and doubled it’s market value in the first 24 hours .  It is now China’s largest dot com by stock value, and now eBay’s largest business to business+consumer, online-marketplace competitor.  No doubt now being a public company, it will not be long before it expands dramatically in eBay’s core market regions, and that level of competition may also explain what is becoming a general reduction of eBay prices, by proxy of promotion days.

Ed

Discuss this in our forums

Small businesses put off engaging in e-commerce

Britain’s Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has highlighted the significant numbers of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) being deterred from e-commerce, following a report by the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee. 

Despite the fact that the geographical reach of the Internet makes it possible for SMEs to compete in the global market at low cost, just 18% of SMEs are selling on-line.  Less than one percent of those derive all of their sales through the Internet. 

The risk of credit card fraud is a significant concern to 19% of businesses, yet only 6% have actually experienced on-line credit card fraud. 

Recent recommendations made in a report on Personal Internet Security by the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee, many of which are backed by the FSB, include

• increased research into e-crime,
• e-crime victims having the opportunity to report Internet crime to the police,
• and to receive a crime number in return,

just like in the reporting of any other type of crime.

The FSB supports work to establish a national e-crime co-ordination unit with the Metropolitan Police, and applauds efforts by organisations such as GetSafeOnline to engage with small and micro-businesses. 

The FSB also supports recommendations for legislation that banks should take some responsibility for losses incurred as a result of electronic fraud.  Many small businesses and online retailers are caught by charge-backs from card fraud which they often receive months down the line, even after they think a transaction has been successfully processed.   (more…)