If sellers opt in to Unpaid Item Assistant, they will be able to override it for individual transactions, so if a buyer has stated that they’re still shopping or will be sending a cheque next week, the reminder can be turned off. If you often have people paying by cheque, or buying multiple items over a number of days, a better idea might be to set a reasonably generous time before the Unpaid Item Assistant kicks in, otherwise overriding it will become as onerous as dealing with unpaid items is at the moment.

Over the next few weeks, eBay.com will make the Unpaid Item Assistant available to more sellers and eBay expect that it will be available to all sellers by the end of the month. If you’re a .com seller and want to see if it’s available for your account yet, go to My eBay or Selling Manager > Account tab > Site Preferences > Selling Preferences, and look for the opt-in.

The apps cover everything from merchandising (listing design, video, marketplace research) to accounting shipping and customer support. Many are free cut down versions of the full offering from the developer with some being paid for subscriptions to the full program.

Currently there are 40 applications available to choose from, but opening the services up to all sellers should make it more attractive to developers to invest the time in creating applications or porting them to the eBay platform. Opening the Apps to all sellers should mean that in the near future they’ll expand them internationally and we can take advantage of them in the UK.

The Garden lets users see proposed changes as a mock-up highlighting the new features, or opt in to use them on the live site. Likes, dislikes and bugs can then be thrown back at the people developing the new features.

eBay says:

Your opinions will go directly to the people building these features. Tell them if they’re on the right track, or if it’s back to the drawing board. We want to get this right.

Currently, there’s only one “seed” in the Garden: streamlined search, which adds some neat functionality and sexy design to search pages. It would have been useful to have had a few projects visible for launch, to see just what eBay think the Garden might cover – and then we could have had a Digg-style votey-up-or-down for what we thought was the most important project, as well as just feeding back on each individual one.

Isn’t this just ‘the Playground’ with a new name?

Apparently not: the Garden is much earlier in the roll-out process. Rather than being final testing for new features, features in the Garden are not finished, or even definitely going to happen.

Quite contrary…

Reaction from the eBay community has been mixed. Commenters on the eBay Ink post were pretty skeptical: “i wish i had a nickel for everytime someone at ebay said ‘this time we are listening to your input’… after 10 years of selling and a few years of that in voices, i know better”, while one wag on Seller Central said “eBay Garden? I know what they fertilize it with”.

It’s early days for the feature, and it’s pretty hard to judge from a single project, but I like the idea of the Garden. It *should* help to roll out the worst problems of some new features before they go live: it *should* help to shape the site in a way that’s useful for buyers and sellers. But I see three issues.

Firstly, the things that eBay does that cause most problems for users, especially sellers, are policy changes rather than site features, and these aren’t going to get tested in the Garden. So if eBay think this will make for a site full of happy people (they’re surely not that naive), then they’re going to be disappointed.

Secondly, it’s eBay who chooses the projects that get worked on – the seeds, if you will, that get planted. There isn’t a facility for saying, look, actually, it’s this bit of the site that’s causing us real hassle, so could you fix this, this, and this. It needs a suggestion box for user-originated changes, otherwise we’re still reliant on eBay getting it half-right from the beginning.

Finally, it’s only going to work if both eBay staff and eBay users are committed to it, and use it. I’ve lost count of the number of new features (especially in this community/social/consultation space) that have launched, and gone nowhere. I would hate for the same to happen to this – not only because it could be a great feature itself, but because there are definite signs of eBay trying to open up at the moment, and it will break my heart if that just gets thrown back in its face.

But eBay users have been conditioned out of bothering to speak to the company. We’ve had fifteen years of executives saying “we’re listening” – and then ignoring us. eBay users will need to be convinced, somehow, that this time, they mean it. This time, it’s different. This time, they really will change.

Christopher Payne, vice president of search, called the Garden “a cultural change at eBay.” I’d so love him to be right.

The end of Store Inventory Format (SIF)

SIF listings will cease to exist on eBay.com as of March 30th this year simplifying the choice of listing format for US sellers. Now all listings will appear in the main search results and existing Store Inventory Format listings will automatically become regular Fixed Price listings.

New Stores subscription costs and listing fees

As of March 30, 2010 the eBay.com fee structure will mirror the UK with low upfront costs and the bulk of fees being success based payable only when an item sells.

For fixed price listings the fees are:
No Store Subscription: 50¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, no monthly fee
BASIC: 20¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, $15.95/month
PREMIUM: 5¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, $49.95/month
ANCHOR: 3¢ Fixed Price Insertion Fees, $299.95/month

Casual sellers will be able to list up to 100 auctions with 99¢ no reserve start price for free on eBay.com and only pay if their item sells. The final value fee will be 9% capped at $50.00. Insertion fees for higher start prices will be the same as those for Store subscribers, although subscribing to a store will lower your final value fees.

Store subscribers will get up to 12 pictures on their listings for free!

For most sellers the fee changes will mean significantly lower up front fees so less risk, with final value success based fees largely unchanged. Sellers can subscribe or upgrade their eBay Store now and pay no additional monthly subscription fees until April 2010

New Buyer and Seller protection

eBay buyer protection is rolling over from PayPal to the new eBay resolution process along with automatic final value fee refunds when you refund your buyer. For sellers unpaid items can be opened in the resolution process as few as four days from the date of sale giving faster resolution with eBay handling communications with the buyer.

Top Seller and PowerSeller status

Top Seller status is being expanded to more sellers, eBay Motors traders will be able to qualify and US based sellers will be able to qualify as Top Sellers based on sales on eBay.co.uk, eBay.ie, eBay.de, eBay.ch and eBay.at. To qualify as a Top Seller in EU countries sellers must be registered as business sellers.

From mid April new seller requirements will apply to all sellers, not just Top Sellers and new PowerSeller discounts will come into effect. In addition sellers need to remove all PowerSeller icons, logos and references from their listings.

Multi Variation Listings expanded

Multi Variation Listings will be available in more categories allowing sellers to consolidate products with colour or size differences into a single listing. This not only reduces insertion fees but also as the listings receive sales will boost the listings position in Best Match.

The effect of the changes

No doubt there’s going to be plenty of conversation around the changes for eBay.com sellers, but in truth although the changes are complex for UK sellers they’re almost mundane. UK sellers have already been working for a year with more expensive eBay shop subscriptions, lower insertion fees, higher (in some cases) final value fees and no shop inventory format listings. The net result for many sellers has been a cut in their total eBay invoice, although for UK sellers who sell mainly or exclusively on auction format did see a fee increase.

So if you’re in the US what do you think of the changes? If you’re in the UK are there any clues in the latest US announcement as to what changes could be coming to us when eBay announce changes for the UK?

eBay Daily Deals webslice

This will install a new button on your favourites bar. Once installed click the button and you’ll get a snapshot of what’s on offer today. If you like what you see click the drop down image to go straight to the Deals page on eBay.

You can download either the eBay.co.uk Daily Deal webslice or if you’re based in the US there’s an option to get eBay.com Daily Deals.

eBay Visual Search

Rather than searching Google, Bing or your other favourite search engines you can add eBay Visual Search. Once installed you can click anywhere in the IE8 search box, choose the eBay icon, and your search will reveal eBay results including images of items available to buy.

Again you can install either the Visual Search for eBay UK version, or there’s Visual Search for eBay.com.

eBay Accelerator

The final add on you need is the eBay Accelerator. This allows you to highlight text on any page anywhere on the Internet and then the Accelerator will show matching items on eBay simply by hovering your mouse over it. You can click direct to the products presented or opt to view all matching products on eBay.

Again select either the Accelerator for eBay UK or the alternate Accelerator for eBay.com.

A quick tip is if the Accelerator doesn’t show in the first menu click “All Accelerators > Manage Accelerators” and set it as a default.

Once you’ve installed these three add ons you’ve customised your installation of Internet Explorer 8 and now have IE8 for eBay.

Internet Explorer 8 optimised for eBay updates the Daily Deal as WebSlice in your favourites, allows you to search eBay from your browser task bar showing with auto complete suggestions including image from eBay, and with the eBay accelerator allows you to check eBay prices simply by highlighting text anywhere on the web.

You can download either the IE8 for eBay UK version or for US readers there’s IE8 for eBay.com which shows US Daily Deals and searches the US site.

Removing the graphics used to build these modules will result in faster page loads and eBay say that faster page loads directly correlate to more sales. They also say that they don’t see many clicks to these two sections of the search result pages so impact should be minimal.

In the mean time many UK sellers are still sore at losing the Shops tab from the top of eBay pages. Personally I think there’s less justification for keeping that page element – On eBay UK there are no Shop Inventory Format (SIF) listings left, every item is in main search. There really is no need to direct buyers to a shops search to reveal additional items when every item is visible in the main site search. That’s not the case on eBay.com where SIF listings still exist and 10s of 1000s of items can’t be found from the main site search.

Removing shops visibility is always a touchy subject for eBay sellers, but do the modules really make a difference to sales? I’m pretty sure that there are some strong opinions out there but ultimately eBay are the only ones who see the full click through rates for the definitive answer. What’s your gut feeling though? Do the shops links make a difference to your sales on eBay?

Via Auctionbytes

I know what you’re thinking – why would eBay put them there if they don’t want you to use them? Well it’s simple, eBay want you to spread the love and make everyone you know aware of the cool things available to buy on the site. What’s likely to happen though is people will run through their own listings thinking what a great idea it is to click them all hoping someone will buy. They forget however that all their friends already know what they sell and really aren’t interested.

Social media is already being over run with ways to spam your mates with what you sell. If it’s not cross posting your eBay listings to Twitter (a sure way to lose a ton of followers), it’ll be spamming all your Facebook friends begging them to become a fan of your shop page.

Even eBay, deep down inside themselves, know that self promotion is a bad thing. That’s why on the email share option they say “If you use this service to advertise an item you are selling and the recipient complains to eBay, your eBay registration may be suspended”, with a link to the spam policy.

So to keep your friends and not annoy your followers here are Chris’ three rules for sharing:

1. If you’re going to share make sure it’s an interesting or unusual item.
2. Don’t share your own products, be interesting so that people look to see what you sell out of curiosity.
3. And this is the ultimate rule – Don’t automate sharing, if it’s not personal no one cares

Now go and have fun. When you find the weirdest, whackiest, crazy stuff that makes us love eBay, go click the share button, tweet it, facebook it or if you’re a little old fashioned email it to your buddies. Just make sure it’s something actually worth sharing.

It’s a whole year since PayPal acquired Bill Me Later, and as an eBay company it’s high time it was integrated for eBay payments.

With an APR of 19.99% it’s not an attractive long term finance option, but for US customers who simply want to delay payment until pay day and then clear their balance if full it’s ideal. The minimum finance charge is $2.00.

I have to hand it to eBay with this one: they’ve made it much easier than they normally do to ensure listings are compliant with their policies. A special website allows you to download a list of items you need to change, and changes to the rules for editing listings have been introduced before the policies were enforced, meaning that sellers can edit listings which have had sales.

But do check your listings: it’s all to easy to forget about GTC and assume everything’s running correctly (writes the woman who had a listing still running from 2005…). It’s worth giving your unsold items more of a glance over than you normally might.

Original AB post.

Is this just what the eBay-watching world has been waiting for? Pierre Omidyar’s comment on Twitter has an air of “at last” about it, and eBay Ink writes

believe it or not, there has never been an official corporate website that represents the corporate information regarding eBay Inc. and all of the people and businesses behind it.

Well, maybe. There have been a number of disparate bits of site – About eBay, press office, investor news and so on – which are targetted very specifically, and very well, at different groups of readers. There have been a lot of blogs, some of which have great content and some of which (eBay UK’s Trust and Safety blog, I’m looking at you) never managed more than a couple of posts. It’s just never been all collected together quite so visibly.

eBayInc.com crucially doesn’t promise any new content, only a new platform to collect everything that’s already out there. Right now, it’s hard to see the point. This is a broadcast site: it’s all about what eBay want to tell us, not what we want to talk to eBay about. It doesn’t promise any new accessibility, any new conversation, any new openness: it’s just another place to read the same old same old from eBay PR. If you’re interested in this stuff, you’re already reading it: and if you’re not, eBayInc.com doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

But maybe the point comes later: eBay’s official social media guru Richard Brewer-Hay writes:

…please let us know what you’d like to see added – what do you like most about it? Least? This is by no means a final product, it’s a launching pad for us to communicate and interact on a higher level as a company of individuals and I look forward to enhancing and expanding on this platform over the coming months.

If you don’t want to pop over to eBay Ink and leave an opinion, feel free to leave a comment here.

The applications available range from research and product sourcing to shipping as well as rich media, video and listing templates as well as post sales tools. Doubtless more will be added soon, but the currently available applications listed in order of popularity are below. (N.B. The top applications were those in the limited Beta trials so rankings are skewed in their favour.)

Terapeak provides you with powerful, easy to use market research tools that will help increase your online sales. If you want to know what hot products your competitors are selling and at what prices this is the tool for you.


Your MyStoreMaps will show a custom flash-map in all your listings showing your past buyers around the world. They place a virtual red stick-pin into every country where you have shipped to a buyer. The red stick-pins let your buyers quickly see your experience shipping to their location.


ezSupport for eBay allows you to add an unlimited number of searchable Frequently Asked Questions to all your eBay listings via the Ask a Question link. Customers can browse your FAQs by category or simply submit questions in a search box, and ezSupport instantly returns matching answers.


MyStoreRewards will send your buyer a single invitation email inviting them to join your MyStoreRewards program. You choose the cash-back reward amounts to give to your buyers. 72 hours after purchase your buyer gets a cash-back reward from you. This is YOUR program, so you choose the cash-back reward to give your buyers based on their total payment to you.


ahTEXT keeps you connected to your eBay account by sending you a text message (SMS) the moment that a buyer asks a question, makes an offer, buys an item, leaves feedback or files a dispute. ahTEXT gives you a competitive advantage, allowing you to capitalize on inquiries quickly and convert them to sales.


UPS WorldShip’s integration with eBay Selling Manager Applications provides a convenient and easy way to ship with UPS without rekeying eBay order details. Designed for professional shippers, the UPS WorldShip software streamlines your shipping processes while providing access to UPS’s list of shipping services ranging from small package to freight.


Find Real Dropshippers & Qualified Wholesale Suppliers – For a one off $299.00 fee receive unlimited access to 8000+ drop ship & wholesale suppliers representing 8 million+ products. Also have access to instant market research data for finding a product niche including competition & pricing research.


Show more, sell more – 123Show allows you to create, manage and publish highly interactive product displays online in under five minutes with zoom, rotation with 360-degree spin to see all sides , colour change, hotspots, multiple view and much more.


Centralize your shipping To Do list in one place with My.ShipRush. Receive feeds from eBay, PayPal and other ecommerce systems. Fast, easy and free. Print shipping labels, look up tracking numbers and shipment status and easily share shipment history with off site customer service staff.


OrderCup is a web-based software service that allows you to process and ship your orders from one or more eBay accounts. They support domestic (US) and international shipping with all leading carriers, allow you to ship from multiple locations, and update your eBay orders with shipping information.


Auctane Shipping Manager is the quickest tool available for generating USPS labels. Auctane will automatically display your sold items, allow you to mark them as paid, and combine multiple orders into the same shipment. Once you generate a label, Auctane will mark the item as shipped in eBay, leave buyer feedback and email the buyer a shipping notification.


Outright provides dead-simple, free, online bookkeeping. You don’t need to know anything about accounting to use Outright. There are no buzzwords or confusing concepts like “charts of accounts” or “debits and credits.” Outright automatically imports your sales and expense information from eBay and makes it super easy to add other business deductions.


vzaar hosts and streams video for sellers looking to improve the quality of their listings. Whether you want to show the products you sell in greater detail or explain in person the range of items you sell, adding video to your listings is simple and easy to do with vzaar.


Review Gadget collects detailed product reviews and displays them on your listing pages, complimenting eBay’s feedback system. Review Gadget is able to gather more detailed product specific customer feedback in relation to pricing, quality, functionality and overall sentiments.


eZ labelZ for eBay makes short work of creating labels with data from your eBay items and transactions. You can even barcode your eBay data with a simple click. eZ labelZ for eBay makes it easier for you to manage your inventory and outgoing packages. It also lets you make professional, custom labels to deliver a rich, more focused brand to your buyers.


Buyers expect well presented & professional looking ad listings which clearly demonstrate that, as a seller, you are trustworthy and reliable. Professional sellers have been using unique customized listing templates for year – Now you can have all those benefits for with FROO! – Free listing templates.


Quantity Manager allows sellers to improve the apparent scarcity of their fixed price listings to encourage more buying activity. Quantity Manager automatically monitors your listings and updates their available quantity to your predetermined levels.

Disclosure: Terapeak, vzaar and Frooition advertise with TameBay.

The biggest changes relate to the new dispute resolution process. Sellers must now have a reimbursement method on file with eBay, and for transactions paid via PayPal, sellers must agree that eBay can remove funds from the seller’s PayPal account to reimburse their buyers. If the PP account has insufficient funds, eBay may require sellers to reimburse them via another method, and may suspend or restrict a seller’s trading on the site until this is done.

There’s also a new intellectual property policy, listed as a separate policy for the first time, which restricts – for example – celebrity material to that authorised by the celebrity themself: anyone printing up their own keyrings of this week’s favourite boy band needs to find some new designs pretty quickly. This covers a range of other areas: the sale of educational editions of software, bootleg recordings and 35mm and 70mm film prints, as well as items which can themselves be used to duplicate copy-protected material.

As ever, if you don’t like it, you’re always free to close your account.

You can see the full comparison of the old and new user agreements on TOSBack.

eBay.com has announced various changes to subcategories and item specifics which will roll out in the week commencing 22nd September. Lots of categories are affected, and a full list of changes can be found here.

eBay UK has announced that there will be changes in Books, Comics & Magazines, Home & Garden, Tickets & Travel and Property.

A definitive and detailed list of the category updates will be available by the end of August 2009.

It didn’t take long for the “two lots of announcements a year” promise to slip, did it?

Ticket sellers must list date as custom item specific

We do know already that sellers in the ticket category will have to list the date of their event as a custom item specific.

There are a lot of changes, and no doubt more detail will emerge as sellers read and digest eBay’s announcement. In the meantime, here are the headlines:

Measuring seller quality: new Top Seller program and DSR changes

DSRs: the low numbers count

When DSRs are used to measure seller performance, eBay will be moving the focus from overall average to the percentage of 1s and 2s. As buyers don’t necessarily have a consistent standard for what “good” is (and eBay tell them that 4 is “good”, while penalising sellers for getting 4s), concentrating on the number of buyers who have had a demonstrably bad experience and have left a 1 or 2, is a more effective way to measure seller performance.

DSRs left by non-US buyers will no longer count at all for this purpose, but repeat US buyers will be counted. There will be minimum numbers of 1s and 2s left before sellers will be penalised under this policy, which is intended to ensure that the feedback of one buyer cannot cause penalties for a seller. (In practice, being a low feedback seller is going to continue to be difficult.)

That said, for the moment, average DSRs continue to be a factor in many aspects of eBaying, including:

New Top-rated Seller program

The new eBay Top-rated seller status recognizes PowerSellers who consistently provide the best experiences to their customers. The program differentiates sellers by their relative performance and offers incentives and rewards for providing great buyer experiences.

PowerSellers with low numbers of 1 and 2 DSR scores will be eligible for this new program, which offers the highest level of fee discounts, increased search visibility under BM, and a new badge for their listings (and perhaps in search results).

Changes to PowerSeller program

PowerSeller icons will no longer show on listings. For PSs who do not qualify for the TS program, their fee discounts will continue until April 2010. After that, non-TS PSs (are you confused yet?!) will receive a 5% discount on their FVFs.

We’ll be looking at these changes in more detail in a future post.

Changes to search results pages

Changes to Best Match

• As of July 27, 2009, raising the price or changing the title will not automatically reset your recent sales.

• Number of impressions (views) versus number of sales will become a factor in BM.
• New BIN listings will be given some exposure under BM even if they have no sales, to boost them at the start.
• Titles, seller performance, shipping costs will be factors in BM. Fixed price listings with free shipping will continue to be advantaged.
• Auctions ending soon will be boosted under BM.

Listing enhancements removed

Featured Plus, Border, Highlight, Gift services, ProPack and Homepage Featured are being discontinued. Featured First will be available only to Top Sellers, but will not be displayed when any other sort method than Best Match is selected.

New search visibility tool

A new tool is being launched so that sellers can measure a listing’s position under BM, impressions to sales, and compare their own listings to those on page 1 for a given search result.

Better selling practices

New “Selling Practices” policy

• Return policy and handling time must be specified in listings

• Sellers can include “only relevent terms and conditions”. Inconsistent or contradictory T&Cs are a violation of this.
• “Listing descriptions must be professional in both language and tone” – “Listings cannot include comments that undermine confidence in the marketplace, such as comments expressing negativity toward buyers or the selling process.”

If we could get rid of “I am not responsible for items lost in the post”, I’d be very happy.

No more additional insurance

Sellers will no longer be able to specify an additional optional or compulsory insurance fee for their listings.

Auctions versus BINs

For auction listings with BIN prices, the BIN price will have to be at least 10% above the auction start price (anyone would think people had been using this to get around eBay fees ).

Things that sellers have been asking for…

More control over ship-to locations

Sellers will be able to specify countries they do not want to ship to. eBay give as an example that sellers can specify they ship to Europe, but exclude Russia and Italy.

Faster unpaid item process

Sellers will be able to open a UID 4 days after the listing ends (currently this can’t be done until 8 days). It will be possible to automatically open a UID, and buyers will not be permitted to leave feedback while this claim is open. Emails will be “more neutral in tone”.

Changes to email

Emails between members will be “threaded” both in My Messages and email clients – so you’ll be able to keep track of an entire conversation without having to dig into message histories. However, buyers will be kept anonymous until after sales are complete. eBay’s emails to buyers post-sale are being streamlined:

Vacation settings improved

Stores sellers will now be able to put all fixed price listings “on vacation” – not just SIF. The same options (to hide listings or display a “this seller is away” message) will be available as now.

Changes are scheduled for weeks commencing 22nd September and 1st October. At time of writing, these announcements have been made for eBay.com only. eBay UK’s corresponding announcement isn’t due until tomorrow, and though we expect much of the content to be similar, in some places, it is bound to differ.

As normal with eBay announcements, there’ll doubtless be more questions than answers as sellers work through the implications of the announcement. We’ll be looking at exactly what sellers will need to do to ready their listings for September and take advantage of new site features once the UK announcement has been made tomorrow.

In the meantime, what do you think – good, bad or indifferent changes? Just what eBay needs, or too little too late? Leave us a comment.

Options could include scrapping the almost universally hated Detailed Seller Ratings (no surprise there – regularly getting 4 stars out of 5 for free shipping pretty much shows they’re not working that well). Coming in with a marks out of 10 score is the simple question “How likely is it you would recommend this seller?”

Click image to embiggen

That, to be honest, is possibly the most important feedback question that could be asked. Forget the fact buyers may have overpaid for postage, returned the item for refund or even had an item go missing or damaged in transit. It’s all about how the seller handles their customers and did they leave the customer happy enough to recommend them to others.

Having said that just how many more changes to feedback will there be? DSRs have come and they may well go, for selected sellers if not for all. DSRs are a pain for buyers to complete, especially for multiple purchases and some sellers still feel victimised that they can’t leave negative or neutral feedback for buyers if they feel it appropriate.

The good news is that regardless of the test results there are no feedback changes planned for this year. Tests normally result in changes though, so what sort of feedback changes would you like to see? Do you want to be ranked out of 10, have you grown to like DSRs, or is there another feedback option that you’d prefer?

eBay say this is open to all sellers, but that’s not quite true. To qualify you have to use either the Sell Your Item (SYI) form or Simple listing form, you can “opt out” by using an eBay tool or third-party listing solution. Quite frankly not many pro-sellers will want to use the SYI form so simply won’t be eligible, which is probably a good thing if you expect your item to sell for a high price (More than $62.00 final value and you’re cheaper “opting out”.

Also if you’re going to list an item with a Start/BIN/Reserve price of $18 million or higher you’ll sadly be excluded from the promotion. I’d suggest starting your item at $17,999,999.99 as then your final value fee will be just $20

I spoke to ChannelAdvisor, who said that their own checkout was not being discontinued, though changes were to be made. There’s currently no detail on just what those changes are, but Scot Wingo wrote a long and impassioned plea for CA customers to defend their checkout.

Then eBay weighed in with their own post: Dinesh Lathi writes that third party checkouts will only be available from a select group of providers who “have updated their user interface according to a set of eBay guidelines. Our goal is to give buyers a more consistent checkout experience.” Again, there is a conspicuous lack of detail about exactly what these changes will involve, so sellers using one of the approved providers on Dinesh’s list should contact that provider for more details.

As eBay have been talking since at least eBay Live in Chicago last June about “a more consistent and safe checkout experience”, my guess would be that the new rules will force less merchant branding, no offsite links and definitely no off-eBay upsell. 3P checkouts will remain available for payment processing and stock control purposes, but the way that they’ve been used to siphon customers from eBay to merchant’s own sites will be stopped. But all that is only my guess, and eBay have given me no information on this whatsoever. As Dinesh writes:

Please keep in mind that the definitive source of information about eBay is eBay. You can find accurate information about any planned changes through this Announcement Board and through emails, calls and other official communications from eBay.

The problem is, when eBay themselves don’t give out the information, give out incomplete information, promise announcements and then don’t deliver them, where are merchants and 3P providers supposed to turn?

There is a lot of detail in the announcement, and I would encourage all sellers to read it for themselves. Here are the highlights, and no doubt more information will be forthcoming over the next few weeks:

Multiple variant listings

Sellers will be able to offer variants of products – for example, shirts in different colours and sizes – within the same listing. It will be possible to vary the price (but not the shipping) for different items in the same listing. This is as announced by Mark Lewis for eBay UK at Catalyst last month.

Multi-variant listings will be available in Mens’ and Womens’ Shoes categories from the week commencing 15th June, and for the rest of Clothing, Shoes and Accessories plus Home and Garden from mid-July. Rollout across all categories is planned, but currently has no implementation date (the rumour I hear is 2010).

Amazonification of product pages

There will be an expansion of product pages: frequently used to group identical items in Music and Electronics (e.g. all the copies of one particular CD), expect to see these in Books, Movies & DVDs, Music, Video Games, Cell Phones, and Tickets, with more categories to follow. More sellers will be chasing the highlighted “value box” at the top right

The new view item page which eBay have been testing for the past year will roll out to “most” buyers by mid-June. “Photo zoom” is coming later this summer, together with an animated countdown timer for auction listings.

Dispute resolution moves from PayPal to eBay

eBay are touting this as a “new dispute resolution process”, but in fact, it looks very much like the old PayPal dispute resolution process, only hosted on eBay instead of PayPal; eBay themselves say that they will “retain substantially the same definitions and policies that PayPal uses to resolve item not received and item not as described disputes”.

Buyers will have the current 45 days to file a non-receipt or SNAD claim with eBay. Exactly how this will differ from filing a claim with PayPal isn’t immediately apparent, except that buyers will be able to file the dispute whatever payment method they have used. Once the claim is filed, buyers “may” be given the option to contact eBay by phone (we’ve heard from some people involved in the testing process that this has been done). The case is then reviewed by an eBay Customer Service rep, who will consider transaction details, buyer and seller track record, shipping information and item location; if the buyer’s claim warrants further investigation, the CS rep will contact the seller. eBay say:

We’ll be taking a more active role, and in certain cases when we determine the seller was not at fault we may refund the buyer at our own expense.

Optimistically, it’s possible that this new process might stop serial non-receipt claimants on eBay. Sellers, though, are going to see it as the loss of yet more control over the transaction, with eBay likely to be just as trigger-happy with refunds as PayPal are.

The new resolution process applies to eBay.com only; there’s no news when or if it might roll out in other countries. The transition process from PayPal disputes to eBay disputes begins Q2 2009 (i.e. now) and the change should be complete before the holiday selling season. I have no doubt that sellers will have a raft of questions about this, so leave us a comment and I’ll do my best to get more info as required.

Returns and handling time info required by 15th June

eBay have extended the time allowed for sellers to add returns and handling information to their core listings until 15th June. GTC listings must have this information by mid-September.

USPS & UPS tracking information can show in My eBay

For sellers who print shipping labels through eBay or PayPal, tracking information will automatically show in the buyer’s My eBay. Information can also be added manually, but this will only work for USPS and UPS tracking. (This really is very cool and I wish they’d do it for all carriers.)

Smart FAQs

An expansion of the current facility to add “frequently asked questions” to your listings, Smart FAQs will allow sellers a little more control over the pre-written responses buyers and potential buyers get to see. For those who get a large number of ASQs, it may save them some time.

(In view of a recent comments thread, we’ll be looking at ASQs in a bit more detail later in the week.)

Cleaning up Fine Jewelry

photo credit: stephend9

There are some major policy changes in the Jewellery and Watches category, which will be enforced from mid-July:

• Items may only be listed in Fine Jewelry if they are solid precious metal, and if the stones named in the piece have the optical, physical and chemical properties of the naturally mined stone.
• Manufactured stones are not permitted in Fine Jewelry.
• Manufactured stones may only be listed in Fashion Jewelry or Engagement & Wedding.
• Plated or filled metal items are not permitted in Fine Jewelry.
• The word “diamond” may only be used to describe stones with the “exact mineral composition of a diamond”. “Imitation diamonds” must be described as what they really are. This affects all jewelry categories.
• Fine jewelry should not be listed in the Fashion Jewelry category.

And that’s not all

Other changes include some alterations to categories and item specifics. Seller Manager will be free for all sellers beginning 15th June (it’s already free in the UK).

And the UK?

We already know a lot of this is coming in the UK too, as Mark Lewis announced it at Catalyst last month. There’ll be a separate announcement by eBay UK tomorrow: rumour has it that compulsory free shipping in some categories is on the cards, so don’t move that dial

eBay’s preamble to the announcement says:

Keeping eBay a thriving marketplace requires a close partnership between sellers and eBay to give buyers the experience they expect. We continue to invest in driving traffic and buyer loyalty, and we need your help to make buyers happy and keep them coming back. For our part, we’re also taking steps to make it easier and more profitable for you to sell.

With the exception of variant listings, I’m not seeing a vast amount for sellers in this. Most of it – tracking in My eBay, Smart FAQs, the expansion of product pages – is just tweaking changes eBay have already made.

The change that most sellers are going to focus on is that dispute process, with its unclear refund process. Sure, most of us get that happier buyers come back to eBay more often, they spend more money and so we sell more, but is eBay’s aggressive couponing strategy really achieving that? Is eBay telling buyers “don’t worry if you get ripped off, we’ll refund you” really going to make them feel safer? And given that sellers with appalling feedback and appalling terms and conditions are still selling on the site, is making buyers feel more secure going to make them do more shopping? I don’t think so.

Smart FAQs and zooming pictures are nice for sellers to have, but they don’t make up for years of being beaten down by eBay’s management, and they won’t bring the upturn in sales that lots of smaller sellers especially are demanding. For a twice-a-year-only “big announcement”, this feels curiously flat and empty.

Selling Manager Applications will become available on eBay.com for Selling Manager subscribers. UPS will be the first shipping provider to launch a Selling Manager Application which will eliminating the re-keying (or copy and pasting) of information between eBay and UPS WorldShip.

Developers can choose to charge a one off fee, or an ongoing subscription but must agree to a revenue share, with eBay getting a 20% cut. In the future usage based charging will be added giving developers more flexible charging options.

Currently the Selling Manager Service Beta platform is only open for applications on eBay.com with the full release expected towards the middle of the year followed by a worldwide roll out. eBay Ink has some video footage introducing the new service.

As a user of an array of eBay tools including Terapeak, Tradebox, Frooition and Aimco Packing Partner it’ll be great to start accessing some of these services from within eBay. I’m hoping that the larger UK carriers and Royal Mail also incorporate applications to streamline shipping once the services spreads to the UK.

Most sellers have at least one third party application which they simply couldn’t do without. What are your favourite eBay applications and which would you like to see available at the click of a mouse within Selling Manager?

I also asked if it will ever be possible to advertise something other than your eBay listings via Adcommerce: i.e. I want to advertise my website rather than my eBay Shop. The answer I got was extremely non-committal, but I get the feeling that eBay haven’t entirely ruled this out as a future development.

There were also more details on the “multi-variation listings” which Mark Lewis announced yesterday. These are to roll out in three stages:

1. June 15th: UK, US, DE in men’s shoes and women’s shoes only.
2. July 15th: UK, US, CA, CAfr, DE, IE, AT, CH, IT in all clothing categories and some Home and Garden.
3. Date TBC: rest of Europe, all categories.

In the US and Canada, any seller currently permitted to offer multi-item listings will have MVLs available, but in Europe, a Shop subscription will be necessary.

It will be possible to vary the price within listings: e.g. larger shirts can cost more, but shipping prices cannot be varied. Sellers can remove particular variants from a listing with sales without needing to end the entire listing. Variations will be indexed for search, so you can list red, blue and yellow shirts without necessarily needing to mention each colour in your title.

MVLs are a voluntary feature: if sellers want to carry on listing variants separately, they’re free to do so. I’ll be testing this one to see how buyers react to it – they’re so used to single-feature listings on eBay that it’ll be a bit of a shock to suddenly have variants available.

eBays say that 90% of users are now using the new format, and that “response from the Community to the new finding has been great”. A thread on the US discussion board is less enthusiastic: one member writes “the biggest single enhancement the users have asked for is to keep the OPT OUT link working because we don’t like or even want the new search”.

The announcement’s been made only for eBay.com, so it’s not quite clear how this will affect other sites: eBay UK had said the old system would be retired in March, so it’s possible we’ll see the option to opt out disappear before .com users do.

It’s not quite clear at the moment whether the buy box will remain the exclusive preserve of just one seller, or whether different sellers can appear in it at any one time: initial testing makes me lean towards the former scenario, but eBay haven’t specified exactly how this will work.

Of more concern is that the buy box is not necessarily comparing like with like. I’ve been searching for a camera where the item in the box is a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than the average; this turns out to be because, unlike the normal kit, it comes without a lens. eBay really need to work on refining this system, because buyers are going to assume that the buy box is the “recommended purchase”, and read the listing less closely even than they normally do.

In media categories, items will be sorted by condition: newer items are listed above used ones, and the initial search results page shows a selection of each condition, with a link to “view all like-new items”, etc.

eBay says that the new page layout “makes it faster and easier for buyers to find the book, music, movie or game item they’re looking for from sellers they trust.” Sellers, however, are likely to be less enthusiastic about the changes; the new pages will give buyers very little incentive to move beyond the first page of search results, and that’s not going to be popular with many sellers who are already complaining about plummeting eBay sales.

Currently the new product pages are on eBay.com only, but I’d be very surprised if they don’t roll out across other eBay sites in the next few months.

The first picture for all eBay listings is free, but as of February 18th, listings in these categories will get Picture Pack and Gallery Plus free, for all listing formats and durations. Picture Pack allows sellers to add up to twelve extra photos to the listing, and Gallery Plus displays a larger picture when buyers hover over a gallery picture on the search results page.

eBay says that

more free photos will allow sellers to provide buyers the visual details they need to make these decisions, lower buyer questions, and increase seller sales.

Though most collectibles’ sellers post extra pictures using their own hosting, this should make it easier for everyone to post plenty of images on listings that really need them (though I sincerely hope it doesn’t presage eBay limiting photos on listings to eBay-hosted ones). Gallery Plus is a superb feature, and it would be great to see that freebie expanded over the whole site.

There are more enhancements to the “visual shopping experience” promised for eBay.com too: more information as soon as we get it.

Please note that this announcement has been made for eBay.com only, and does not apply at the moment to any other site.