Anyway you look at it, the two years of disruptive innovation at eBay have created a new form of virtual communism.
Both buyers and sellers, disenfranchised by the sweeping changes to the culture, ethos, and operations of the auction giant, have migrated out across the web, clustering in new homes in a commune-like fashion.  Whether it [...]

By now, most eBay sellers are sick to the back teeth of hearing about DSRs and the way they are used for the sole purpose of punishing sellers, robbing them of fee discounts, having them suspended from selling, or worse.
I know there’s a minority of sellers who think they’re the best thing since sliced bread, [...]

Coming into effect next Friday (20th November), eBay India has announced a major change to its duplicate listings policy immediately before the seasonally-critical peaks of the fourth quarter selling period.
eBay India has long been a test-bed site for policies that later roll globally across the eBay platform, most notably the International Visibility Fee (used on [...]

Tipped off on Wednesday by a quick message from a fellow seller, I went in search of information concerning a supposedly benign bug that had appeared in the latest version of Turbo Lister for eBay UK sellers. What I discovered through trial and error has left me horrified … and seriously out of pocket.
Updated [...]

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.

I’m of that age when, as a schoolboy I was regaled with tales of Empire and entrepreneurial explorers in far flung places who caused the title “Great” to be placed before the name “Britain”.
Sorry to my American readers, but it’s the truth. It might be why I expatriated to the Far East without so much [...]

Several times last year, and the year before, eBay raised the topic of Community Courts to mediate in feedback dispute resolution cases.
During 2007, on eBay UK, the idea even went as far as to solicit registrations from would-be jurors, particularly amongst PowerSellers.  Last year, simultaneous with most of the world getting the new dispute resolution [...]

eBay North America have just announced that from next week all sellers will be moved to the new item view page when viewing their own listings.
I have mixed feelings about the new page style, and thus far have always opted out of it on each site that has presented it to me.  This is mainly [...]

The eBay Partner Network (ePN) has announced they will be culling large volumes of affiliate marketing opportunities that operate in what they call secondary tier programs.
The move comes as eBay Inc begin expanding onsite advertising (secondary fee charging) for sellers via the adCommerce program, and PayPal pre-announce swathes of changes in the Buyer Protection Program’s [...]

eBay UK announced Thursday, on their general Announcements Board, that the AdCommerce service is now live for the site.
Confusingly, the announcement points to a UK registered domain (www.adcommerce.co.uk), which then redirects to the US eBay Partner Network site, and a generic landing page for the USA AdCommerce service.
I make no secret that I am against [...]

The Auctiva blog had an interesting juxtaposition of articles this week regarding eBay buyers, the much-hallowed “Buyer Experience” and use of PayPal to stem the exodus of shoppers whom eBay insist are the “not a retailer” company’s customers, rather than those of the retailing customers who use the company’s platform.
In an article entitled “eBay Buyers [...]

When eBay CEO John Donahoe announced the Paperless Payments Policy last year, he softened the blow by stating that alternative payment processors would be allowed onto and integrated into the site.  eBay sellers outside of the US were particularly excited to hear the name MoneyBookers mentioned several times, and for it to be increasingly bandied [...]

In a surprise announcement, eBay UK have announced today that Private Sellers will no longer pay insertion fees for Auction format listings with a starting price under £0.99, with a similar offer extended on the Irish site for Auction listings beginning under €1.49.  FVFs have been levelled across the board at 10%.
There are a host [...]

The biggest data breach ever disclosed was announced on Tuesday, January 20th.
A major payment processor, which claims that 40% of their processed transactions are from restaurants across the USA, admitted that tens of millions of credit and debit card transactions were compromised.
This data breach disclosure event follows two other data breach events, in 2008, [...]

Once upon a time, when a user logged into any eBay site and began browsing items, they’d be shown availability from all sellers in all countries.

It’s a couple of years now (at least) since that was a true condition. BuildaSkill is heavily on record regarding the trans-Atlantic visibility debacle of early 2007, and as the news-breaker of the unannounced introduction of fees for International Site Visibility (early 2008).

Last week, Justin Marcucci of eBay’s Global Buying Hub team made an announcement on the main dot com announcement board that seems to have flown under most observers’ radars.

Once again, it is the topic of international visibility, this time supported by the subject of automatic currency (price and shipping) conversion, that looks like it is up for a “revamp” across the wider eBay platform …