The policy hammer came down this week on several “fringe” categories with a long announcement from the gang in Belgium. It seems their parliament is determined they will not be as liberal as neighbouring Holland.

Top of the list is this years number one target for eBay worldwide - Weapons - the Belgian announcement says;

Rifles, pistols, rifles to reload, bows, swords, rapiers, catapults, sarbacanes, katanas and samurai swords can not be put up for sale on eBay, even if it is not clearly collector coins and decorative. Hence, the category “swords and knives collections” will be deleted.

I know there has been uproar in the UK from genuine collectors and antique dealers about that one, but eBay’s hands were tied due to the writing of a new piece of legislation (even though the legislation did allow exemptions for bona-fide collectors and traders, eBay decided it would be too difficult to police and would be open to abuse).

The announcement also dealt with erotic accessories (Google translation made me giggle at the sentence mangling in that one) and “test Euros”. However the most controversial part of the announcement deals with non-prescription medicines.

Under Belgian law, the sale of any drug, even drugs that do not require a prescription, is prohibited on eBay.

This is going to wreak havoc with many sellers, and I’m sure there will be many questionable policy slaps in the area of herbs and medical aids (therapeutic herbs are a big niche on eBay, as are things like pain relieving creams, bandages and the like) with many dolphins getting caught in a net that appears to be not of eBay’s making.

Remember to knock out your listings for such items on Belgium in your favourite listing tool, and increase your eBay shop links (in Belgian listings) through to sites that do permit such items for sale, but beware of Customs seizures if selling cross-border, and be sure to warn your customers fully about such restrictions.

Ed

Niche online-auction site WargamesMarket.com has changed name and expanded the sectors it hopes to attract.

Relaunched and rebranded as Games2Trains.com, the original site was conceived in summer 2006 by a disgruntled eBay seller, and launched in January 2007. The current site configuration arrived in the summer of that year after reliability issues with the previous site engine.

Games2Trains guarantees being always fee-cheaper than eBay and runs on a no-final-value-fee model (pun intended). Categories have been expanded (but not alphabeticised) for trading cards, die-cast models, and traditional “lead soldier” collectors and manufacturers. The site owner is extremely interested in attracting manufacturers to list their catalogue, and unusually does allow in listing links to seller’s own websites.

Ed

Announced yesterday in the eBid Forums, the UK team are extending a limited period to attract displaced sellers from Bidville, which closes completely on 13 June according to a notice on its homepage.

The eBid offer includes a free lifetime Seller+ account, and the ability to import previous Bidville feedback into their new eBid accounts.  The Seller+ account includes free listing and final value fees and would normally cost $49.99.  Sellers will still need to validate themselves via a credit card test transaction that does not make a debit from the card.

Bidville, owned by uBid, has been seeking a buyer for some time due to a change in focus of the parent company, but having failed to find one, will close completely in a few weeks time.

Ed

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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QXL UK will close for business at the end of May 2008.

In a simple announcement on their site, they say -

“The QXL UK auction site is closing on 30 May, 2008.

We would like to inform you that we have decided to withdraw from the UK market and close the QXL.co.uk site.

Trading will cease on QXL.co.uk from 12 noon on Friday, 30 May 2008 and all accounts will be closed.

We request that those members who have an outstanding debit balance on their account to settle these as soon as possible. Any credit balances that remain in your account may be reclaimed by providing the customer service team the credit balance details on enquiries@qxl.com, subject to any outstanding fees which are due as at 30 May 2008 or on the closing of your account, which you will remain liable for. Please note QXL voucher credits have no monetary value so will not be refunded.

Please keep the following dates in mind when using QXL during May:
• Listings will not auto re-submit after 9 May, 2008.
• Last day to Bid/Buy: 19 May, 2008.
• Last day to access remaining site tools such as My Account: 30 May, 2008.“

Founded in 1997, they suffered early in the establishment of eBay UK’s dominance, and failed to keep up with fellow UK site eBid, and new entrant TazBar appears to have taken some of their traffic.

Of late, frequent changes of parent company appear to have destabilised management, and failure to implement sufficiently aggressive marketing has cost them severely.  Now would be a good time for competitors to market directly to their user base, or to approach QXL management and make a bid for their mailing lists. 

Ed

It’s great to see the little guys, in any marketplace dominated by a near monopoly, thinking outside the box and coming up with something new. 

The UK’sAuctions-united is a “young” competitor for eBay and the others, but they are already showing promise as a site that means long-term business.

Like many sites looking to build visitor traffic and user base, they operate an affiliate program. In the case of Auctions-united, this is done throughthe clixGalore affiliate network, which has it’s own board in the BuildaSkill forums, and they have introduced some new twists to using affiliate and banner linking. 

These are in addition to their scheme of using their own on-site currency, called CyberCash, as the payment route for services purchased.  Just joining the site gets you a £25 CyberCash Registration Bonus to start you off, and they also also give you a £25 Referral Bonus for introducing your each of your friends and family, plus others who may click through from your links.  Whether you have an existing web site of your own, or are thinking of owning one, joining Auctions-united (with a free in-site store) brings several attractive advantages.

For high volume listers, their price of 1-penny to list an item, and just 1% final sale fee commission, with up to 1 whole year durations, it’s easy and cost effective to build a catalogue of your goods or services on their web space. But all of the above is just “routine” stuff also available on other sites. It’s the list of other schemes and promotions that brought them to my attention today…

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