Sellers may (at the moment) opt out of this programme: if you opt out, you will neither have other sellers’ cross promos shown on your listings, nor have the opportunity to appear in cross promos yourself. This one is all or nothing.

The roll-out follows a test begun in January which added cross-promotions to the bottom of some live listings. The new announcement doesn’t specify where exactly on the listing the other items are to be displayed (if anyone sees it, please leave us a comment), but it does clarify that cross-promoted listings will be from the same category: previously, they were just “relevant”.

It’s a tough call: do you opt out and miss out on the extra promotion, or stay in and deal with the extra competition? It would be helpful to know exactly how eBay are choosing the listings that get cross-promoted: does everyone have an even chance? do sellers with more listings appear more often in cross-promotions? is it limited to TRS? We just don’t know. And eBay, of course, aren’t saying.

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.

Best Match on the Canadian site has for some time given a boost in search to domestic items, in the belief that buying from your own country is a better buying experience than a cross border transaction. This will be suspended if you’re in one of the test groups so that eBay can gauge how much the item location affects buyer behaviour.

For sure it’s often a simpler quicker buying experience to buy from a domestic seller but I’m constantly amazed when I buy from overseas just how quickly items are delivered – often faster than some UK sellers appear able to despatch.

We know that many TameBay readers are based overseas, but sell into the UK. Also many sellers based in the UK make a large proportion of their income through selling outside the UK. How important is cross border trade to your business? Would you prefer equal visibility for yourself and sellers from other EU countries, what about the Far East or sellers from the US where customs charges come into play?

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.

As the trial’s been running for so long now, eBay will be running with some version or other of this: the trial now will be more about the minutiae of the wording than the general form. The sliding scale of 1-awful to 10-outstanding feels better than the current DSR labelling, where 4 is called “good” when in fact, it’s not. Of course, 1-10 is a big change from 1-5 or negative-neutral-positive, that could well encourage buyers to abandon the usual habit of “top marks across the board” which for so long has been the norm on eBay: it’s hard not to start imagining a storm of “I did everything right so why 9 and not 10″ threads on eBay forums, but what will really matter is how eBay use the new system as part of their range of carrots and sticks for sellers, and that – obviously – we don’t yet know.

I haven’t blurred the details of this transaction out of the image because the seller was superb. Go buy their stuff.

I know where they’re coming from – some of the computer products I sell are “New and boxed” but about 10 years old with any manufacturers warranty they once had expired. I don’t like describing the products as “Used” as they’re not, but calling them “New” might be misleading to a buyer.

They’re asking selected sellers to suggest additional alternative Item Condition values for certain categories as well as showing the most popular terms submitted by other sellers.

If you want to influence the Item Condition values for the categories you trade in and are a in the group of sellers chosen to vote you can log in to the Community Consultation and make your opinions heard.

eBay UK has announced that it is to launch a new fashion sub-site for branded clothing. Mark Lewis, eBay UK’s MD, made the announcement at the Retail Week Conference.

The new site, at fashion.ebay.co.uk, will offer more photography and a browsing interface in place of the normal eBay “list”. From the RW report, it seems that the new site will be limited to major retailers, as in response to a question, Mark Lewis said that the new site would focus on “sellers able to sell branded items in volume”.

Smaller sellers in the CSA categories, meanwhile, are likely to wonder when a public announcement of this change is likely to be made. It’s a major threat to any smaller business who will be excluded from the site, and should have at least had a follow-up announcement made where every eBay seller could read it.

It seems likely that fashion will not be the last area targetted by eBay in this way, as Mark Lewis spoke of the need to offer a more “segmented user experience” on eBay. The new site is due to roll out in around two months: more details when we get them.

Update 05/03/2010
Don’t get too excited. We’ve been told by eBay that this is basically a rebranding of Outlets. The “Outlets” tab will go, and be replaced with “Fashion”. Any outlets which aren’t fashion-based will be linked from an “Outlets” tab from the fashion site.

Of course being eBay not only are they plugging ads for themselves, but they’ve managed to muck things up. The ad for the eBay credit card is a waste of time when displayed to UK users, as it’s only available to US residents. They’d be much better off with an ad for the PayPal credit card which is available in the UK.

What I find less acceptable is that if you click the ad for laser eye surgery (a third party ad) it opens in a new window. If you click the ad for the eBay credit card it opens in the same window and navigates away from the listing you were viewing. I don’t know if that’s a mistake in coding, or if it’s just eBay giving higher priority to their own ads, but moving away from a listing a buyer was interested in is never a good move.

If you’ve spotted any other ads on private sellers’ listings let us know what you think, and if they’re for anything actually useful for UK residents.

Sellers are able to appeal the business registration requirement, though I’d guess to be exempted, they’re going to have to be pretty obviously selling off their own old items: those who have a continuous stock of similar items they’ve sold over many months are probably not going to be let off.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs in the cases of the individuals who’ve posted on Q&A, this action could not have come too soon. Posing as a private seller when actually operating as a business is illegal in the UK under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (Schedule 6.1, #22: page 29 of PDF, page 25 as printed on leaflet). If you’re elsewhere in the EU, it’s is also against the EC’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, as variously implemented in other member states. Maximum penalities for breaching the CPUTR are a £5,000 fine and/or two years’ imprisonment.

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).

That’s all due to change on the 1st April though, Top Rated and Above Standard sellers will remain, but what slipped through unnoticed in eBay’s January changes is that all Standard Sellers will become failing sellers and be demoted in search. The table below shows the current ratings and corresponding seller status, but what eBay haven’t pointed out is that the Standard Seller status is to be scrapped. All current Standard Sellers will fail to meet the new Minimum Seller Standards.

We’ll obviously have more on this when the ads actually start running. But if I were a betting man, I’d put several quid on a call that this “test” won’t – in the long run – be limited to private sellers who are getting free listings.

Spot the difference

Although this is currently a test I’d expect to see it roll out for all users in the near future. Back in November eBay removed the shops module from eBay.com, and now their testing in the UK unless some surprising results come up the shops module is pretty much history.

It’s also worth noting that for both eBay.com and eBay UK SIF listings (shop inventory format) are no longer available. When much of a sellers inventory could be hidden from the main search results there was a strong case for higher shop visibility. Today Best Match is supposed to surface the best matching listings across the entire site so driving traffic to shops appear less of a priority. Having said that some categories attract browsers who want to pick and mix from a selection from a single seller so removing matching shops could affect some more than others.

eBay say that the module is very rarely used (except by sellers) and the reason for it’s removal is to speed up page load times. I have a better idea for them though… how about removing some of the off-eBay adverts as that’d save a fair amount of bandwidth!

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.

All other fees remain as before

The information on this seems to have been hidden away rather. Some Motors’ sellers say they’ve had an email about it, but there has been no AB post or similar official announcement, and in a thread on the PowerSeller board, James the eBay UK Community Manager said he had no idea and have not heard about any changes in motors pricing nor have seen any announcements to that effect. eBay might want to look again at their communication on this one.

I also question the wisdom of increasing the fee for reserves: NOTHING makes for shill bidding like reserve fees. Free pictures won’t make up for the bumps on the other fees either: I predict a few more eBay sellers will be trying out Autotrader, Gumtree and the like in coming weeks.

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.

To contact support in the future you’ll need to visit http://www.ebay.co.uk/contact where you’ll be provided with a phone number and in the near future a temporary PIN number to automatically identify yourself rather than manually identifying yourself with account details.

Billed as an improvement to Personal Account Managers eBay are also offering a “real” improvement with longer support opening hours of 8am-10pm Monday – Friday and from 9am – 6pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.

The text of the email reads:

Dear Customer,
I’m pleased to inform you that we have enhanced our customer support in order to better meet our customer needs.
Effective immediately, you have access to two new services to help you with any queries you may have in the future. You can contact our Top Customer Care line with queries or questions relating to your account and our Claims Processing team for any queries on unpaid items (UPI) &/or items not received (INR).
You will find our new Top Customer Care contact number & a temporary PIN number at the following link: www.ebay.co.uk/contact . The temporary pin will enable us to automatically verify your details so that you do not have to do this manually over the phone with an agent.
To contact our Claims Processing team simply call the following number: 0800 3586551.
To further improve our service to you, we are extending our opening hours to ensure that you can avail of support when you need it. Our Top Customer Care support line is now open between 8am-10pm Monday – Friday and from 9am – 6pm on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays.
As a result of these enhancements, I will no longer be your point of contact going forward so I would like to take this opportunity to let you know how much I’ve enjoyed working with you & wish you continued success with your business on eBay.
Kind regards,
xxxx xxxxxxxxx
eBay Customer Support

I’m struggling to see how losing an eBay contact who was familiar with my business and who I’d built a relationship with, and replacing them with a general support line is an improvement. The longer opening hours are definitely welcome though, as eBay selling is a round the clock business and we don’t all stop work at 5.30pm.

Thankfully the support line number is an 0800 dial code, so the calls will be free, but I’m seeing the same number for both my main selling accounts as well as for casual buying accounts. It will be interesting to see what the quality of support is if it’s to replace Personal Account Managers who by and large specialised in the particular categories a PowerSeller traded in.

Updated to add: We’ve had it confirmed from multiple sources that some sellers WILL be keeping their Personal Account Managers. If you’ve had the email you’re out of luck, but if you haven’t then you may be one of the lucky ones who will keep a named support contact.

12/2/10 Updated to add: We’ve heard from eBay what’s officially happening with support. There are no redundancies although some are moving to other departments, anyone leaving is doing so through their own choice. All support will still be from Ireland for the UK, with new hires and the support center will be a European Center of Excellence.

There will still be some accounts who have Personal Account Managers but many will now use Top Customer Care. Calls will still be routed according to the type of business you run, so if you sell predominantly in a particular category whoever you speak to should be familiar with that category. The bad news is that many now won’t have a named contact, the good news is that the opening hours for support are considerably extended.

we are in the process of exploring whether to establish a default minimum standard return policy (that reflects the minimum legal standard) for all Business sellers in the CSA category (with a view to roll out to other categories). In addition to the minimum standard, we are also considering offering additional flexibility to sellers to enhance select return policy components by adjusting set variables (e.g. – # days of cancellation, seller pays return costs when buyers change their mind). This would allow sellers who choose to go further than the minimum requirement to keep offering this type of service to their customers.

She then asks for feedback from sellers on this: do we like the idea, do we like the idea of a policy slightly more generous than the legal minimum, do we want to be able to specify who pays returns costs, and – bizarrely – how should eBay roll out this change?

Having argued myself that eBay should enforce the law on returns, I start off being in favour of this change – but when I see them even considering not allowing sellers to specify who pays returns, and how many days cancellation buyers can have, my heart sinks. I’ve lost count of the number of times over the past decade I’ve thought “this was almost a great policy, but eBay screwed it up”.

Please, Elisabeth, don’t let this be another case of that. Enforce the law, but beyond that, let sellers run their businesses. Put a couple of radio buttons in to choose between “buyer pays return shipping” and “seller pays return shipping”. Put a “how many days” box in that can’t be set to fewer than 7 days. It’s not complicated.

But more than anything, do something about the sellers who are ignoring both the law, and the existing eBay policy. We barely need more rules – what we need is eBay to enforce the ones they’ve got.

If you have a PS login, please go over to the thread and leave your thoughts – and, PS or not, leave us a comment here too.

Image credit: Ale Paiva on Stock Xchng

In the meantime, the SYI form is working correctly, so that’s one option for sellers anxious to get on with listing.

Update as of Friday night: Changes have now finally gone live.

personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in India have been suspended while we work with our business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service. During this time, customers can still make commercial payments to India but merchants cannot withdraw funds in Rupees to local Indian banks.

In addition (though not mentioned in the official communiqué), PayPal has apparently reversed all personal payments made to Indian accounts between 1st and 5th February. Payments for services too are being reversed, though an email sent out from PayPal support says that if payments were made for goods, they should be made again using the “Goods” tab and providing a shipping address, and they will be honoured.

Some users are speculating that this is being done by PayPal to stop fee-free personal payments – though PayPal’s own statement suggests it’s something more legalistic than that. More information if we get it.

You can now get a quick look at size and other item specifics with a new “quick look” link in search results, which creates a popup window showing a larger picture of the item and its item specifics, all without leaving the search results page. (This is almost identical with the “more options” link which appears under Multi-Variation listings.) And the particularly good news is that sellers don’t need to edit anything at all to make it work: it just does.

So make sure you’re filling out item specifics if you’re selling in CSA – they’re more crucial than they ever were.

Interflora are stumping up free delivery and Thorntons are offering 25% off, along with a number of other retailers offering discounts and freebies.

Down in India eBay are also ramping up for Valentines with an “eBay – Love Yourself” TV campaign. It’s all about loving yourself so much you get on eBay and buy the things you’ve always wanted, although rather annoymously and eBay India appear to have a large majority of sellers who’ve taken gift wrapping advice to heart.

PowerSeller program and new minimum performance standards for all sellers

At the same time as lowering the entrance requirements for PowerSellers there are new minimum performance standards for selling on eBay. From April sellers can receive no more than 1% or total of three low ratings for “Item as described”, and no more than 2% or total of three low ratings for “Communication”, “Dispatch Time” and the “P&P charges” DSRs. Falling below this level will incur sanctions such as demotion in search and selling restrictions.

Selling Practices Policy for all sellers

Along with higher selling standards a Selling Practices policy will be introduced which is summarised as:
* Sellers are responsible for ensuring a smooth and professional transaction with their buyers.
* This includes setting buyers’ expectations by providing accurate and consistent details about items and the terms and conditions of sale.
* Sellers also must offer excellent customer service from the time of purchase to item delivery. This includes reasonable postage & packaging charges, clear statement on dispatch time, prompt and professional communication, and ensuring the item is delivered to the buyer as described.
* Business sellers need to offer a return policy which is included in the listing description
* Sellers are expected to live up to their stated terms through all stages of a transaction.

Mandatory Business Information displayed on listings

All business sellers will have to display their business contact information on their eBay listings by the end of March. This will be compulsory but introduces a number of issues, not least of which is that it’s added to the item description as text and can not be bulk edited. Any changes such as a relocation to new premises, change of phone number or email address and change of VAT status will result in every single one of a sellers active listings being incorrect.

Many sellers, especially those that trade from home, will be concerned about having their contact details displayed for buyers to see. My main concern is that the way the contact information is inserted into listings means that there’s no way to make a single edit which will update every live listing on the site and in the long term that’s simply unworkable. eBay need to fix this and allow sellers to make global changes to their Business Seller Information in eBay preferences to make this program viable.

International Site Visibility reinstated

At last the International Visibility listing upgrade is returning to eBay UK, from the end of March sellers will be able to use a listing enhancement to display fixed price listings on eBay.com and eBay.ca. Currently that’s only available for auctions, although US and Canadian sellers are able to use the listing enhancement to display their items on eBay UK.

I imagine for sellers who previously used the feature will be pretty happy that this is returning for fixed price listings, and will be able to save money and simplify stock management by not duplicating listings on multiple eBay sites.

The end of mandatory free postage

Mandatory free postage has been scrapped and is a thing of the past, and will be replaced by shipping caps. From March postage caps will apply to a number of categories and eBay have published a list of maximum shipping charge for each category. The postage caps only apply to the first domestic postage option for UK sales. Postage caps will not apply to overseas sales.

Mandatory free postage has undoubtedly put pressure on margins and restricted the type of postage service sellers have offered to buyers. This change will enable sellers to once again offer a premium postage option as default instead of being forced to offer the cheapest possible and of course it’s the end of paying eBay’s final value fees for free post.

Ending old Good Til Canceled listings

From the end of March a new process will be introduced to end Good Til Canceled listings which haven’t had a sale for 16 months. These listings will appear in your eBay unsold items and are available to be relisted. I like this move, it gives sellers a prompt to review their items to make sure the title is relevant, that the listing still has pictures and that the price is still competitive. It will also prompt sellers to update item specifics for listings which have been affected by category changes or other updates.

Multi Variation Listings in more categories

Multi Variation Listings will become available in more categories, and from the end of March will appear in some Home and Garden, Sporting Goods and Baby categories.

Watermarking images

There will be enhancements to the way that images in eBay listings are watermarked. In the future instead of eBay’s default camera image a seller will be use their eBay user ID as a watermark. This should mean the end of stolen images from sellers who spend the time to produce quality pictures.

Sellers’ product photos in catalogues

eBay will be improving the quantity and quality of images in product catalogues, and will do so by using photos from sellers’ listings. All sellers will be opted in to the program as default, but are able to opt out if they wish. If your photo is used as a catalogue image a credit to your eBay ID and link to your My World page will be added as a credit.

Summary

There’s not too much in this announcement to disrupt how sellers do business on eBay, but plenty to please them. Concerns are most likely to be around the display of Business Seller Information, eBay’s use of sellers’ images and of course the new minimum seller standards. There’s much welcome news though, such as the end of mandatory free postage and the re-introduction of International Visibility. Overall it looks pretty good news and more a tidying up of the site and standards than a radical overhaul of the way sellers do business.

It’s one of those things that eBay think is a minor inconvenience – but sellers know can make for unhappy buyers, and can easily turn transactions which are hanging in the balance completely to the bad. Let’s hope they fix this one soon.