eBay UK launches Enhanced Member Reporting
23/09/2008 at 14:58
We’re hearing from several eBay members of invitations being sent out by eBay UK to join a new programme, Enhanced Member Reporting, which will allow selected trusted eBayers to more easily report listings which breach eBay policies. Reports received via EMR will be given higher priority for investigation by support staff. One member who joined up supplied me with some screen shots:
Members of EMR are able to report multiple items at once, without the tedious cut and paste of item numbers that the rest of us have to go through. They are also apparently able to report another eBay user, rather than simply their listed items: useful for shop headers or user IDs that breach links policies, for example.
Though eBay seem to be targetting members they believe to have expertise in specific areas, they’re keen to point out that abuse of the program won’t be tolerated. The email sent to new joiners spells this out:
Abuse of this tool in a pattern of unfairly ‘targeting’ items that are not in violation would result in removal from the Enhanced Member Reporting program at a minimum.
As the initial email asking if members are interested in joining EMR is sent out as a text email and does not apparently appear in My Messages, several recipients have assumed it’s a spoof. Forwarding to spoof@ebay.com gets it confirmed as a spoof, but in fact, it’s genuine.
Those who don’t reply to the initial email are then being contacted by eBay by telephone, again with no actual proof that they are calling on eBay’s behalf. When the company is putting so much effort into other programmes to ensure member safety, it’s a shame they can’t follow a few of their own guidelines.
Whirly says
3:34 pm on 23/09/2008
Can you imagine if one of the Liveworld Button Pushers get’s picked !?!
Chris Dawson says
4:06 pm on 23/09/2008
#1 I heard a rumour about this idea years ago and at the time the idea was people invited to join the program would already have a track record of accurate reporting. Plus the “removal from the Enhanced Member Reporting program at a minimum” should ensure it’s not abused
Steve says
4:08 pm on 23/09/2008
“Enhanced member” in the subject title of any email received is likely to get it filtered straight into a spam folder!!
northumbrian says
4:14 pm on 23/09/2008
official snitches
Now, don’t you tell it to the breeze
‘Cause she’ll run ‘n’ tell it to the birds and bees
And everyone will know
Because you done told the blabberin’ trees
Yes you did, ya told ‘em once before
So that’s why it ain’t no secret anymore, mm-mm-mm
Whirly says
4:17 pm on 23/09/2008
#3 Lmao.
Personally I find the idea of a gestapo style reporter disturbing,,
still if eBay can get people to do it for free……
“Plus the “removal from the Enhanced Member Reporting program at a minimum” should ensure it’s not abused” You have much more faith than I do.
northumbrian says
4:18 pm on 23/09/2008
Business is business and If I can make life awkward for my compitition by dobbing them in I will [ never works though] but these olympic standard snitches are another matter
Gill says
4:47 pm on 23/09/2008
Just strikes me as a way for ebay to save money on customer support staff.
Presumably they will act on these reports as gospel, unless challenged. Meanwhile reports from ordinary mortals, however genuine, will continue to be ignored as appears to be the case now.
Whirly says
4:49 pm on 23/09/2008
#7 Eureka Gill Lol.
The 10% layoff’s will be replaced by free labour, genius.
allotment says
5:43 pm on 23/09/2008
One of the antiques/collectibles auction sites has something like this, trying to remember which one.
On that site they call the Enhanced Members something like Category Moderators (which seems a nicer name). They were focused on a single category. I think they give them some listing benefits in return for their work. In addition to reporting policy breaches they acted as a communications filter for other site users, collating suggestions and problem reports etc.
Driving me mad that I now can’t remember the site name, it was nicely designed, USA based. Bereft of buyers.
northumbrian says
6:03 pm on 23/09/2008
strange thing is I get sent to the headmaster for the daftest reasons though if I complain to teacher, I am ignored
northumbrian says
6:05 pm on 23/09/2008
9
the name has to be” R SOLE” ANTIQUES
DBL says
7:56 pm on 23/09/2008
Enhanced Member Reporting mmmm … so now we report Big D***’s
no wonder it’s being thought of as a spoof and thrown into spam bins 
not enough time in the day me thinks.
Nice one Gill
Sue Bailey says
8:19 pm on 23/09/2008
DBL says what I was thinking
Gerry007 says
8:25 pm on 23/09/2008
We had an incident earlier this year, when an item we have been selling on ebay (exclusively) appeared from unother seller. OK thats fair enough, but when i read their listing, they had lifted all the text words P&P costs and item description from our listing description. The only difference was that they had changed the postion of the text, so whilst reading the same, was in a different order.
I reported them to ebay, who DID NOT remove their listing or slap their ahnds. Ebay found no breach of their policies.
I was bloody annoyed, as they were also infringing ebay rules by offering contact, other prices & P&P costs for higher amounts that the listing had for sale. So I reported them again for SNP avoiding Ebay fees etc. This time ebay removed the listings, no doubt because they were potentually loosing fees.
The other seller was actively altering their prices to undercut us by 10p per item everytime we listed it.
Within a day ebay started to have a go at us, removing our listings for all sorts of stupid reasons (ending up as SNP).
In our case we were just trying to protect our copyright, not grass someone up for the sake of it, ie; become a little Hitler (we could all do that, as there are so many listings that break ebay rules with wordings & contact info etc, etc).
The motive of this is NOT to grass other people for any reason, because ebay will turn on you afterwards. Unless of course they have ‘employeed you’ to do it!!!!
northumbrian says
9:12 pm on 23/09/2008
I dont think ebay are malicious
its more a case of sellers who have listings finshed for daft reasons getting the hump and reporting all they can find
I once has a listing removed for a minor policy breach I wass o annoyed I spent the next few days dobbing in all others that had the same fault simply to make a point,
I got bored before I ran out of listings to report
Whirly says
11:35 pm on 23/09/2008
#15 Guilty as charged, I’ve done the same thing Norf.
But I tell you what these days I wouldn’t bother, I know I’ve broken some rules and I know I probably have a few older listings that are still breaking the rules but I wouldn’t dream of dobbing in my fellow bath sellers simply because they don’t do it to me, sellers need to stick together these days as the only battle worth winning is the one against the organ grinder.
I spent the best part of 2 months reporting 4 shill bidding accounts with an addiction to purchasing Ipods etc from a seller in the worldwide top 10, eBay couldnt have cared any less if they tried…Here’s a clue 200254939557 not that I want you to check the winning bidders buying history or anything!
ebuyerfb says
5:23 am on 24/09/2008
I’ve probably filled out 100 reports on listings that don’t conform to eBay policy and I think the only one that ever got removed was one where they stole my images. Granted some of these reports were about eBay employees not putting the fact they were employees in the listing. Does this mean I’m not likely to be selected for the US equivalent?
Exactly
northumbrian says
7:02 am on 24/09/2008
too right whirly
not that I have anything against the organ grinder but if he cant get his monkey to dance why should I dance a jig instead
and this community sprit thing is hog wash ebay
is all about money
another-postage-rip-off-merchant says
9:12 am on 24/09/2008
# 16 Whirly, we’ve reported that lot too but apparently having 129K+ feedbacks makes you immune from action being taken against shill bidding?
Perhaps someone from Trust and Safety (?) could comment?
liz says
12:22 pm on 24/09/2008
How many times can i get a listing cancelled ? Sometimes i’m not even sure why ?
Frank says
1:32 pm on 24/09/2008
This has been going on on the eBay US site for months now, testing EMR, same setup as reported. eBay staff has been very fast to pull listings reported by EMR, at times within 15mins of clicking the report button. One this goes into full swing, listings are going to vanish faster than you can list them.
Gary says
2:06 am on 25/09/2008
Your eBay account contains a reporting score ratio. Internally ebay refers to this as a “Narcscore”. The Narcscore was introduced around June 2005 it does not include Liveworld reports.
If you find yourself interacting with someone from ebay ask them what your narcscore is, you’ll get some very cheap entertainment
Board_Surfer says
9:19 am on 26/09/2008
two words :-
Oh dear.
Harmony says
10:28 am on 28/09/2008
Some folk have too much time on their hands!
eBay should be adapting the listing forms in such a way that breaches can’t be made. Ultimately they run the site and responsibility is theirs, isn’t it??
The introduction of item specifics is close to being along these lines and that’s a start, but it’s not enough. Perhaps the system could be set up to ‘pick up’ certain words or phrases that are taboo and freeze the attempt to list. If a bona fide entry is being attempted, well we can all use phones can’t we? I’m sure eBay staff are well equipped to separate the ‘stars’ from the dross and surely there’s enough revenue to cover this with recent listing fee increases.
As for emails, nothing eBay related gets opened in my email cache.. only ‘on the platform’ data. eBay should practice what they preach and keep all of their communication in-house, with respect.
Richard says
2:38 pm on 09/10/2008
Well someone has been having fun! I am an Ebay Powerseller with a Business account, featured shop and over four years trading plus 7500 positive feedback and because of some malicious individual I have been suspended for ‘alleged’ Copyright Violations. I sell ebooks, video tutorials and software that I have either a) bought the resale rights to or b) are open source.
Thing is Ebay can’t tell me which product ‘allegedly’ broke that rule because they don’t know! It certainly wasn’t in the email they sent me.
Having been on a forum dedicated to information product sellers (like myself) it seems at least four other members had the same done to them on the same day. Coincidence? I doubt it.
One of the sellers had a secondhand book in his listings and this was also reported for ‘Copyright Violation’!!!!!!!!!!!
I will be emailing eBay with the other seller id’s along with my own. Hopefully they will see someone on this ‘Enhanced Bulls**t Gestapo Style Member Reporting’ list is abusing their position and will have THEIR account terminated (hahahahaha I’m living in cloud cuckoo land aren’t I).
Ebay will be finished by 2010 anyway and I will be long gone from them before that.
Whirly says
2:43 pm on 09/10/2008
eBooks?
I thought they were banned, are you sure that is not the reason?
Chris Dawson says
3:28 pm on 09/10/2008
#26 Think you can still sell em if you supply them on CD/DVD