A spokesman for the bureau said that complaints against eBay were piling up. German eBayers use direct bank transfer much more often than British or American buyers do, and so the imposition of this new rule has caused outrage, primarily because it’s imposing more fees on sellers. Commenters on the eBay Germany sellers’ forum were unimpressed: “well that’s enough reason for me to say goodbye”; “eBay gets less and less attractive”. Sellers who are saying in their listings that buyers must cover the PayPal fees are having those listings ended.

An eBay spokesperson said that the company was “convinced that the introduction of PayPal as one of several payment methods for sellers with fewer than 50 feedbacks, is legally unobjectionable”, and that it was in communication with the bureau to explain what benefits the new policy offered buyers and sellers.

Der Spiegel has more info (in German).

eBay France has a one-day promotion on 18th February. Private sellers will be charged no insertion fees for auction listings regardless of start price: you’ll need to be French-resident to qualify.

eBay Germany has two days of free listings: the 18th and 19th of February. Again, private sellers can list auctions with no insertion fee: you’ll need to have a German address and be registered on eBay.de to qualify.

I have to say, having hated the emails to start with, I’m regretting that eBay have restored them, especially having worked out the best strategy for working with the new emails. Although the wording left a lot to be desired, not having to chase buyers for payments is something I’m in favour of (especially when it’s eBay that take the blame for sending the email and not me!). More than anything though, I just wish eBay would stop tinkering. In the run up to Christmas I should be getting on with the business of selling, not the business of change.

For now you need to go and update your SMP emails pronto the restored email settings will still have your old messages in place. If like me you probably edited them to inform buyers of the steps you were taking for deliveries during postal strikes emails will be going out with that information.

We’ll look forward to the re-introduction of auto-emails at some point next year when they’ll be implemented across the whole of Europe

Edited to add: It’s now been officially announced

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They’re also live for most Home and Garden categories on UK and Germany (the following categories will not have MVLs available: Kitchen > Small Appliances; Major Appliances; Cleaning, Laundry & Vacuuming; Clocks; DIY Tools; Garden & Plants).

If you list through the SYI form or SMP in a category where MVLs are available, you’ll now be offered the option to list with variants. Turbo Lister hasn’t yet been updated, but that should be coming shortly. Updated to add: Now available via Turbo Lister too.

eBay are keen to point out the advantages of listing with MVLs: lower insertion fees, saved time and more visibility; “as buyers start purchasing from your multi-quantity listings, your listings can appear higher in Best Match search results.” It’s certainly a feature that sellers have been requesting for years, though watching buyer reactions is going to be interesting; I’d like to see some proactive marketing of this new feature to buyers, otherwise for many of them, it’ll be too easy to miss.

If you’re using MVLs on your listings – or buying from them – let us know how you’re getting on in the comments.

A drop down allows buyers to select a reason for the return, although they can if they wish enter a message to the seller to expand upon why they’re returning the item.

The page kicks off with the message “Please use this form to make use of your right of withdrawal according to the Distance Selling regulations” (DSRs), although even eBay advise that the DSRs only apply to fixed price formats and not to purchases won on auctions. There is no option to differentiate between the returns policies for different selling formats.

Although many sellers (including myself) choose to allow returns on auctions as well as it makes good business sense, many do not. The page doesn’t mention that only business sellers are obliged to accept returns and that private sellers are under no obligation to offer exchanges or refunds.

The link to Easy Returns is from the drop down in My eBay and appears for 35 days from the sale of an item. After 35 days the buyer may still have legal obligations to offer returns but the buyer will have to contact the seller directly.

I’m wondering how long eBay measure returns for before they start to impose limits which can affect your account status. Possibly in the future if the number of requests for returns exceeds a certain amount it could affect Buyer Satisfaction Ratings and even Seller Discounts.

Currently eBay have given no indication that returns monitoring will affect your seller account status, but it’s almost certainly a metric that they’ll be measuring over the next few months. Easy Returns have gone live for purchases on eBay UK and eBay Germany, but expect to see them rolled out to other sites around the world in the near future.

eBay AdCommerce will enable sellers to bid on selected keywords and those that bid the highest may have an advert displayed at the bottom of search results, when a buyer searches for that keyword. Links from the adverts can only go to an eBay page – the sellers eBay shop or a particular listing.

The adverts consist of a title, a short description, and if the seller wishes an image. Similar to a Google Adwords campaign sellers can set a budget and a cost per click – they’ll only be charged when a potential buyer clicks on their advert.

Getting sellers to pay for keyword advertising is nothing new to eBay, a similar keyword program was launched on eBay.com in the summer of 2003 and retired in September 2006 due to low adoption rates.

The original program displayed adverts at the top of search results, but the new program will insert them as sponsored results beneath the main search results where Yahoo!, Google or Shopping.com adverts currently appear.

With the recent changes to selling formats and visibility from a combination of Best Match, Recent Sales and the new Featured First listing enhancement it remains to be seen if sellers are willing to pay for yet another shot at getting their products seen by buyers.

There are limits of two requests per month, and sellers can only make one request per transaction. Once a request has been made a buyer has 7 days to respond, if they refuse, fail to respond within 7 days, or simply ignore the request then the feedback will remain on the sellers profile.

This is currently available only on eBay Germany and is running as a pilot so details may be tweaked in the future. Mutual feedback withdrawal should however roll out across all eBay sites in a similar format by October. It’s a great move as it gives a seller a real incentive to look after their customers and resolve any issues even if a buyer leaves feedback in haste.

The most important change is that Shop items will be converted into a new fixed price format, which will be fully visible in search results. The listing fee for these will be between 1c and 10c which will include free Gallery pictures. There are now five different schedules of insertion and final value fees, depending on which category you’re listing in. I think this means that 30 BINs will now be available on eBay.de as they will be on .com and .co.uk, but the release just says “long running times” with no further detail.

For €299 per month, sellers can upgrade to a Premium Shop, which from 25th September to 31st December, will offer unlimited good-til-cancelled BINs, with no insertion fees.

Sellers will have to offer PayPal for the new BIN listings: eBay reveal the quite astonishing datum that only 70% of German sellers offer PayPal. And there is also a hint that PayPal fees are changing, to be “simplified … throughout the Euro area”, though this is sadly lacking any further detail.

Multiple item listings which have had sales will be advantaged in search results, so it makes sense for sellers to use this route to visibility rather than sticking with multiple single item listings to keep themselves at the top of “ending soonest” sorting. Auctions, however, will still be displayed ordered by “ending soonest” as a default.

As with eBay.com and eBay UK, these changes see eBay Germany moving strongly towards a fixed price format. The emphasis is on favourable conditions for business sellers, who are specifically encouraged to “list their entire inventory” on eBay.de.

According to the eBay Developer blog, the policy is also being enforced in Spain now too: I think we can expect this to become a universally-enforced policy on all eBay sites reasonably soon, so if you’re not already specifying postage in the postage field in your listings, now will be the time to reconsider that.

The problem for UK sellers is likely to be that those who use courier services cannot offer one single flat rate to the whole country, as the Highlands, islands and Northern Ireland are all surcharged by carriers. If eBay are going to require sellers to use the little postage box to specify rates, rather than just putting them within the body of the listing, they really need to allow for the reality of shipping too.

This is a sensible move and frankly should have been made across all eBay sites years ago. There’s no excuse for sellers not to be upfront about their postage costs, and this makes it much easier for buyers to find them, as well, of course, as feeding into a seller’s Best Match rating. What isn’t specified is whether this applies to just domestic postage, or to international costs too.

Many sellers are going to see this as a step too far by eBay. If buyers choose to purchase from a seller with a high shipping price listed, that is their choice; shipping prices are the one area where there shouldn’t be any surprises for buyers post-sale, so why would eBay interfere? In any case now, buyers who didn’t read the listing have the opportunity to mark the seller down on the DSRs anyway. The prices quoted will not cover insured shipping in many cases, nor will they take account that some items are heavier to ship than others: categories like Lamps & Lighting or Wholesale & Metalworking are likely to have a massive range of wildly differing items within them, and trying to standardise a shipping cost is a step too far into the Amazon.

Moreover, sellers who want to avoid the restrictions are likely just to list in a different category, so the whole thing seems rather pointless. Nevertheless, what’s done on one eBay is likely to spread, so expect to see this coming to other sites in the near future.

Vielen Dank to Horst from Shadesavers for the link.

The same changes were made on .com last month, so sellers on other countries’ sites might expect a wider launch in the near future. As eBay will undoubtedly publicise this very well to buyers, it’s worth considering if it’s something you could take advantage of, even if free shipping isn’t normally your style.