TameBay » Checkout

Gift Aid added to donate at checkout on eBay

Chris Dawson — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:18:07 +0000

If you have ever ticked the box to donate to your favourite charity when buying on eBay then you can now boost your donation by 25%. You’ll need to confirm that you’re a UK tax payer but then MissionFish will claim Gift Aid on the eBay Checkout donations you have made, and pass it on to your chosen charities.

eBay say that last year 1.3 million people made donations and if all eBay users who’ve donated at eBay checkout make a Gift Aid declaration, UK charities would receive more than £1 million.

If you want to select your favourite charities so that they will be promoted for you to donate to when you checkout on eBay you can set them in your charity donation account in eBay.

PayPal glitch prevents eBay payments

Chris Dawson — Sat, 14 May 2011 16:43:26 +0000

There is currently an issue with PayPal payments on eBay which is preventing buyers from paying for their purchases.

eBay are aware of the problem and say that it’s affecting 25% of buyers with the message “Sorry, we could not complete your request at this time. Please try again in a few minutes. If this problem persists, report an issue to eBay support”. However some buyers are getting a message which consists simply of a full stop “.”

eBay say the issue is caused by eBay Next Generation Checkout, we’ll update you when the issue is fixed which I hope is soon – I have only had 30% of today’s sales paid and have had telephone calls with buyers one of who hasn’t had a single one of their sales paid for today.

Edited to add This glitch has now been fixed and payments should be completed as normal.

Shopping basket to replace eBay checkout

Chris Dawson — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 18:11:10 +0000

eBay have announced that the Shopping Basket which is currently in Beta is to be rolled out across the site. They say that recent tests suggest shopping basket will be popular with buyers, and that they expect it to result in larger orders and fewer unpaid items.

The shopping basket will automatically replace the eBay checkout. It will also spell the end for the Buy It Now button on eBay which will be replaced with an Add To Basket button. This is a big advantage as it will remove unpaid items for fixed price eBay listings – buyers won’t be able to purchase them until they go to their shopping basket, check out and pay. Until that time the item will be available for other buyers to purchase.

As a seller you don’t need to do anything, but there are a few things that you should consider to maximise your sales, once the basket is mandatory for all buyers:

Offer discounts for combined postage
Postage discounts are a great incentive for buyers to purchase more from the same seller. With shopping basket, all your discounts are clearly marked and buyers can view other items you offer. It’s easy to set up.
Consider offering free postage
In the shopping basket buyers will see two totals – one for the product purchase price and the other total for carriage. There is a chance that some buyers might be put off with shipping charges when buying from multiple sellers and by offering free postage there’s less chance of them dumping your product before paying to reduce shipping costs.
Offer a variety of postal options, including international delivery
Having more than one method of delivery and detailing the cost of each can increase the likelihood of purchase.
Offer multi-quantity listings with a longer duration on fixed price inventory
A listing that expires is a lost sales opportunity. List items for longer and stock greater quantities, so they remain available in buyers’ shopping baskets.

SNAFU: eBay checkout glitch

Chris Dawson — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 09:50:09 +0000

Your buyers might be having problems buying from you this morning. There’s a problem with eBay checkout which is currently being worked on.

eBay say they are “currently experiencing checkout problems. Community members may see errors or timeouts when attempting to pay for an item. We are working on the problem and apologise for the inconvenience.”

Hopefully this will be fixed soon, but if you’re not seeing many sales this morning or payments aren’t coming through at least you’ll know why.

Edited to add: This issue should now be fixed

ChannelAdvisor revamp their eBay checkout

Chris Dawson — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 09:53:03 +0000

ChannelAdvisor have quietly revamped their 3rd party eBay checkout which is now a single page four tabbed process. There’s a pre-populated address check tab, followed by shipping method, payment option and final order confirmation tabs.

As you go through the process a sliding sidebar showing your order total is on the right hand side of the page with contact details for the seller should you run into any problems.

I spoke to Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor to ask the question why hasn’t the checkout been updated in the past? He told me this is something ChannelAdvisor have been looking at for over two years since eBay first indicated that 3rd party checkouts would be abolished. Due to uncertainty, making changes to the ChannelAdvisor checkout wouldn’t have make sense and this was proved correct when eBay delayed and changed their mind over the future of third party checkouts on eBay.

Since then eBay have announced the final retirement date for third party checkouts and with more fixed price items than ever on eBay there are more opportunities for combined shipping. ChannelAdvisor decided that for the 2010 holiday shopping season they wanted to give their customers the best checkout experience available on the Internet.

The developments won’t be wasted when eBay retire third party checkout, the technology behind the one page checkout will be used in a variety of products including the ChannelAdvisor webstore platform in the future.

The other question I had to ask Scot is why keep the third party checkout at all? The reason is that eBay still don’t provide functionality that many sellers need and has been added over the years. eBay have committed to building the checkout features that sellers use into the eBay platform before 3rd party checkouts disappear for good in June 2011.

Functionality still missing from eBay that can be provided by a 3rd party checkout include:

Tax/VAT calculations – This is essential in the US where sales tax varies by State and even for the UK where VAT is chargeable for EU sales but not for the rest of the world. Also VAT may or may not be chargeable on shipping depending on the product(s) purchased. Sellers need the flexibility to charge VAT/sales tax correctly.
Shipping capabilities – Sellers want to be able to offer different shipping methods based on multiple purchases to offer buyers the best service available.
Promotions – Offering discount coupons, free shipping, buy two get one free and combining orders just isn’t easily available on eBay but sellers still want to offer incentives to buyers to increase order size.
Shipping and tracking – eBay are pretty much exclusive with UPS/USPS in the US and Royal Mail in the UK. Sellers want flexibility to ship with Fedex, Interlink, Citylink and other carriers and to inform buyers at checkout which carrier will deliver their item as well as providing tracking numbers to customers.
Payment options – eBay allow a variety of payment options including the sellers own merchant credit card processing, but they don’t provide the ability on eBay to do this.

Whilst I’ve never been a fan of 3rd party checkouts, I’ve bought a couple of items from ChannelAdvisor customers recently and I have to admit that the checkout flow is a vast improvement. On past experiences where I’ve had up to seven pages to click through to complete a purchase but now it’s simple, straightforward and, unless you want to change any details, it’s pretty much a four click process.

Changing delivery address in ChannelAdvisors checkout is easier than it is on eBay (an improvement eBay could make immediately is to make the “Change” link much more prominent to encourage buyers to enter the delivery address that they want rather than email the seller to request a different delivery address).

The list of features that eBay need to build into checkout before June next year is extensive, but it needs to be completed to ensure that it’s a world class platform and to enable sellers to provide the best checkout experience on the Internet.

Disclosure: ChannelAdvisor advertise with TameBay

“Your item should arrive…”

Sue Bailey — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:14:50 +0000

eBay are now telling buyers when their items should be expected to arrive, based on delivery time estimates and the shipping service they’ve selected. Here’s what I just got on checkout:

A couple of people have mentioned this, but I hadn’t seen it before today; I’m not absolutely sure if it’s a staggered roll-out, or if I just haven’t been paying attention. Either way, it’s one to be aware of: eBay are telling buyers when to expect their parcels, and sellers need to be both aware of and managing those expectations.

Of course, for anyone who shops on Amazon, this will seem very, very familiar

eBay to scrap all 3rd party checkouts

Chris Dawson — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:29:15 +0000

eBay have announced that as of the 30th June 2011 they will be closing all 3rd party checkouts and the only checkout available on eBay will be eBay’s own checkout.

This will impact 3rd party solution provides such as ChannelAdvisor, eSellerPro and 4Sellers and the companies will have to rejig their software solutions to use eBay Checkout. The biggest impact will be on stock control as they’ll need to find an alternative way to deplete seller’s available inventory, especially when that inventory is being sold across multiple marketplaces. eBay say that “the change will not affect any of the inventory management and listing features that you currently use through that provider and we will continue to work closely with them to support these”, although doubtless some service providers will need to rejig their software if they’ve not already done so.

Other benefits of 3rd party checkouts include advanced shipping calculations and discounts for multiple purchases and the ability to offer multiple payment options such as the sellers own credit card merchant account. It’ll also remove options for sellers to allow buyers to add themselves to mailing lists which will impact the ability for merchants to market to previous customers off eBay.

Many buyers are likely to welcome the move as 3rd party checkouts aren’t universally popular despite their advantages to merchants.

The changes will only impact you directly if you use a service provider who offers a 3rd party checkout and they have all been briefed on the changes and will be able to work with you to migrate your solutions well before the deadline of June next year.

eBay.com gets charity in checkout

Chris Dawson — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:00:22 +0000

eBay.com are adopting the “Donate a pound” eBay for Charity program which has been running in the UK since November 2008. However there is a major difference in how the program has been implemented.

In the UK a random (eBay chosen!) charity is suggested with the option to donate £1 by clicking a box whenever you pay for an item. In the US users can choose their favorite charity or charities and they will have the option to donate between $1 and $25 each time they make a purchase.

Importantly for eBay.com users there will also be the option to opt out and not have the collection tin rattled in their faces every time they make a purchase on eBay. I like this, I do support a few charities chosen for personal reasons, but I want to choose when to support them but loathe being badgered for donations. Also eBay have yet to make it crystal clear what happens to buyers who make a donation and subsequently are refunded by the seller – it’s not the seller requesting the donation, it’s eBay.

Hopefully at some point in the near future the UK version of charity in checkout will be upgraded to the US version and I’ll be able to choose the charities I want to donate to…. I’d probably even start donating at checkout if I could choose the charities I want to support.

eBay UK to expand ‘charity in checkout’ program

Sue Bailey — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:39:54 +0000

photo credit: Annie Mole

eBay UK have announced today that they’re to expand the eBay for Charity program which asks some buyers to donate a pound to a random charity as they checkout.

This program’s been running since November 2008, and eBay have labelled it a “great success”, having raised three-quarters of a million pounds. They’re now expanding the program to all transactions, and to add a new option to enable users to make larger donations.

At the risk of sounding like Mrs Grumpy Pants, I am going to out myself here: I absolutely loathe this program. eBay fail to make it clear to buyers that it’s them asking for money, not the seller, hence it’s sellers who get the complaints from buyers about “chugging” in checkout: admittedly there aren’t many, but why should we have to deal with any when this feature isn’t under our control? Sellers should be given the opportunity to turn charity requests off, and to choose which charities their buyers get to see.

PayPal survey: why shoppers abandon their shopping

Sue Bailey — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:42:51 +0000

photo credit: avlxyz

PayPal have published the results of their second annual Checkout Abandonment Survey, looking at why website buyers don’t complete purchases. Just like last year’s survey, an excessive shipping fee was the number one reason for shoppers walking away. It’s clear that if sellers are able to offer shipping-inclusive prices, this is something that buyers like, however counter-intuitive that might be for those of us who typically sell more than one item at a time. And even if your site charges separate shipping, making that cost transparent at the beginning of the checkout flow – or earlier – is essential.

There’s some suggestion, though, that buyers are getting more savvy with their online shopping: the second most popular reason for abandonment was that buyers wanted to comparison shop, and 25% cited leaving the site to look for a coupon or discount voucher. Sellers should be using this behaviour to their advantage: if you’re not currently listing website coupons on voucher sites, you’re probably missing out on some valuable free advertising, and a fair number of sales.

But there’s some reassurance: a third of shoppers who abandoned their carts later returned to the same site to purchase. Sellers should consider:

making it easy for shoppers to bookmark their site and specific items they’re interested in,
using social bookmarking tools as well as traditional browser bookmarks/favourites
extending the life of shopping cart cookies so that buyers who return later can find the items they’d already added to their cart,
and offering a wish-list facility for longer-term use.

PayPal are running a video presentation later today to discuss their findings further.

DevCon gives a taste of things to come

Sue Bailey — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:50:10 +0000

Those lucky souls at the eBay Developers’ Conference this week have had a sneak preview of what’s coming on eBay in the next twelve months. Some highlights include:

Merchant credit card processing integrated into eBay Checkout later this year.
Revise more data in multi-quantity fixed-price listings even after they have sales
A new finding API, which should make for some interesting third-party apps.
Better blocking of buyers in “locations to which I do not ship”: rather than the registration location, this is now being touted as “Block buyers whose primary shipping or registered location is excluded by seller”, so may exclude some of those who register with a UK address but want your mobile phone shipped to their nephew in Nigeria.

That’s the good news. On the flip side, I’m slightly concerned about “All pre-sale member messages intermediated through eBay for safety” – eBay’s email forwarding system at the moment is patchy at best, so if there’s something new coming that’s going to restrict things even further, I’d be worried that it’s going to make communication even more difficult than it is at the moment.

As always, details from DevCon are a bit sketchy because the announcements are not aimed at sellers themselves – so as ever, more details when we have them.

FAQs: How do I give a discount on an eBay invoice?

Sue Bailey — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:23:52 +0000

photo credit: PinkMoose

Lots of sellers seem to be asking on various eBay forums recently about how to give buyers discounts on their eBay invoices: it must be the credit crunch. So even though most experienced sellers know the answer to this one, here goes for the newer ones:

you can’t discount more than the postage amount. There is a “seller discounts/charges” box at the bottom of the invoice: this will allow you to add on extra amounts, and to take off up to the same amount as the postage charge. But if you enter a negative amount *greater* than the postage, you’ll get an error message saying that you’ve entered an invalid amount.

The easiest way to get around this is to invoice your buyer direct from PayPal (click the request money tab at the top of any PayPal page). Remember, though, you’ll be charged FVFs on the full sale price by eBay, so it makes sense to negotiate before the buyer buys, and either alter the price or agree to use Best Offer: that way, you’re only charged FVFs on what your buyer’s actually paid.

We’d hope that in the era of pushing free postage, eBay will see fit to change this silly restriction and allow sellers to change prices post-sale if necessary.

Third-party checkouts changing, not banned

Sue Bailey — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:55:28 +0000

You may have read a blog post yesterday on AuctionBytes reporting that third party checkouts were to be banned on eBay from June. The post cited ProStores and Infopia as saying that their checkouts were to be discontinued, and named the source of the story as “letters sent to some sellers”: surprisingly, it hadn’t been included in eBay’s biannual changes announcement made the day before.

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?

eBay.com allow Moneybookers, Paymate

Sue Bailey — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:55:20 +0000

eBay.com is to add two new services to its permitted payments list. Moneybookers and Paymate will be permitted for US sellers from February. Propay are also opening their service to all US PowerSellers from January 22nd.

eBay.com will also integrate third party merchant services into checkout later in the year. Sellers who want to accept direct credit card payments will need to sign up for a Payflow Gateway account to allow eBay’s Checkout to communicate with their merchant account; these will be available from March, so more details as we get them.

Again, this announcement has been made for eBay.com only, and it’s not clear if any of it does or will apply outside the US.

Checkout glitch estimates delivery yesterday

Sue Bailey — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:24:03 +0000

delivers within -1 day

Several sellers have reported a glitch in eBay’s checkout in the last few days, where delivery time is estimated to be “within -1 day after seller dispatches item”. The problem mainly seems to occur on “sellers standard rate” and international deliveries.

eBay staff on various forums have been made aware of the problem but don’t seem yet to have any information regarding a fix. One PowerSeller support rep actually told a seller that the one day delivery information came from the Royal Mail website. I’m fairly certain the RM website doesn’t say anywhere that parcels will be delivered the day before they were dispatched however.

At this time of year with delivery times becoming more critical, it’s a glitch eBay need to fix as a matter of urgency, and if it can’t be fixed immediately, the estimated delivery time needs to be removed until it *is* fixed. For sellers, in the meantime, communicating with buyers about actual delivery times becomes more crucial than ever.

For any sellers who do wish to stick to the suggested delivery schedule, you can purchase your tardis on eBay.

PayPal transactions reversed without warning

Sue Bailey — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 12:10:11 +0000

I’ve had a bizarre problem with PayPal payments over the last week or so. Certain payments have been – apparently at random – reversed in my PayPal account and the money returned to the buyer, without any action from me or from the buyer. They’ve all been related to eBay purchases, and in every case, I’ve had the payment email from PayPal but no email about the reversal.

In some cases, there’s been a second PayPal payment, which has successfully completed and the item shows on eBay as purchased. Other times the item listings don’t show a corresponding purchase, My eBay and SMP don’t show the transaction, and the item remains available for purchase: it’s as though nothing ever happened.

The one glimmer of cheer is that the reversals seem to take place immediately, so checking a PayPal account via their site does show whether the transaction is successful or not.

I’m not the only person with the problem: a thread on the PowerSeller board has many sellers with the same issue, but sadly, no solution from eBay.

This is what PayPal support have said:

this transaction was reversed as a result of a failed Ebay transaction.

This customer had attempted to purchase this item via Ebay, however the Ebay transaction had failed. As a result of this transaction failure, Ebay had instructed PayPal to reverse this transaction. You are unable to view this transaction in your Ebay account because of the fact that the transaction failed.

If you wish to obtain additional information as to why the Ebay transaction failed, we recommend that you contact Ebay customer support for further details.

eBay Support say they are not aware of any problems with Checkout.

Fortunately, in most cases, my buyers have been sanguine about it. Most (the ones with the duplicate payments) aren’t aware of any problem. One, who had multiple failed payments, said he knew something odd was happening but would just keep trying til it worked, and has – more buyers like him please! One lady insisted that she had an email from PayPal saying she’d paid me, and she hadn’t cancelled, so she’d paid. Only after repeated pleas from me to look at her PayPal account did she see that, yes, the payment had been reversed. I think she thinks I did it, but at least we’ve resolved the matter.

If I ever get any sense out of Support, I’ll post it here: otherwise, anyone who relies solely on PayPal emails to manage their dispatches, needs to start checking their account.

eBay UK make changes to Checkout, My eBay

Sue Bailey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:28:15 +0000

eBay UK have announced some tweaks to Checkout and to My eBay.

All members will now be able to checkout and pay with PayPal without actually leaving the eBay site. I love this one: paying feels so much quicker and easier. I’ll be interested to see what “P&P promotions offered by sellers are handled better” means: hopefully that free P&P offers via Markdown Manager may become available for UK sellers, as they are in the US.

There are also some changes to My eBay which parallel those made in the US last month. Watch lists are increased to 200 items, and users can create their own lists within My eBay to organise items the way they want them. Only “a small group of UK members” will be seeing this new version, so if you’re one of the lucky ones, do leave us a comment and let us know what you think.

eBay.com.au indefinitely postpone PayPal only

Chris Dawson — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:57:14 +0000

eBay Australia have for the second time delayed implementation of the PayPal only policy, but this time a little more permanently

On the 21st May Australian users became obliged to offer PayPal on all listings, and it was planned that eBay Australia would go PayPal only on the 17th June. This was then delayed until July 15th but now pending the outcome of the ACCC decision PayPal only on eBay Australia has been postponed indefinitely.

eBay apologise to users for the change saying it “regrets any ongoing uncertainty that this further delay may cause” and that “eBay appreciates the feedback received from the Community and will use this input to consider where we can make improvements that benefit both buyers and sellers.”

In what sounds like a sea change they also say they are “committed to improving safety and we will continue to look for ways to improve the shopping experience for buyers which will subsequently benefit both sellers and eBay”

This looks like a smart move by eBay, rather than again push the date back in the face of a probably negative decision by the ACCC, cancelling PayPal only plans for eBay Australia now will avoid being forced to if the ACCC decision is against them. If they do have a surprise win they can easily resurrect the policy.

It’s time to move on, and to look at new ways to increase security on the site. A great improvement would be to introduce new checkout features like the ability for merchants to offer alternative payments in the checkout flow enabling eBay to verify that the buyer has paid. That’s one change that would definitely appeal to sellers who have been calling for choice.

Choice listings, anonymous email, but definitely not PayPal only on eBay.com

Sue Bailey — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:38:23 +0000

Adam Trachtenberg, eBay’s Director of Product Management for Platform & Services, gave an overview this morning of where eBay is going in the new few months. Though this was aimed primarily at developers, it provides some great news, and some not so great news, for sellers as to what we can expect for the rest of the year.

Project Echo : merchandising API

This will enable cross-merchandising, in the same way that many websites now highlight “people who bought x also bought y” items. Data based on geography, buying and search histories and user profile will be made available, as well as currently popular items.

Four new API calls have been released: most watched, deals, related category items and top selling products. More are on their way!

Improvements for large sellers

eBay aim to become more efficient and responsive to the needs of larger sellers, with a better API and business process support. Processing will be faster and there will be fewer timeouts with an asynchronous bulk interface: in effect, sellers will be able to manage their entire business away from My eBay, and will be able to organise inventory by their own SKU rather than by eBay item number.

Choice listings are coming

Sellers will be able to list variants of the same item: by colour, size, memory, material etc., compressing multiple listings into one single listing offering buyers a range of options. Interestingly, this was presented as enhancing the *buyer* experience by cutting down near-duplicate listings: I think eBay are missing a trick there, because many sellers have begged and pleaded for years to be allowed to offer real choice listings.

Changes to email communications

Sellers will be able to specify more than one email for message-forwarding: for example, customer service emails from buyers can go to one address, and eBay invoices to another.

Emails between sellers and buyers prior to a sale are being anonymised: buyer email addresses will no longer be visible on ASQs, though “reply” will still work as eBay will handle mapping between the anonymised email and the buyer’s actual email. Post-sale, both parties will be able to see each other’s email addresses. This should – say eBay – cut down on fraud: it will of course also limit off-site sales, and many sellers will complain that it will restrict communication between trading partners. They should also note that it will no longer be permitted to display an email address within the body of a listing.

Mandating essential information

eBay are forcing sellers to include information material to the transaction, some of which has previously been optional for inclusion within a listing. For example, on .com sellers must specify at least one domestic shipping service with pricing, as well as handling time, which will be used to display an estimated arrival time to buyers. A returns policy and who pays for the return of the item will also have to be specified, though on .com at least “no returns accepted” remains an acceptable policy (the same does not apply in most of Europe).

A consistant and safe checkout experience

Various approaches are being tested over different national sites: eBay Australia will (perhaps) be PayPal-only from mid-July, and UK sellers must offer PayPal though may offer other payment methods too. The US will “definitively” not be made PayPal-only, though eBay are “looking at data and talking to people” about the way forward on this issue.

New applications for third-party checkouts have now been closed: as a buyer, I can’t help but cheer here. I’ve been buying on eBay for nearly a decade and I still hate 3P checkouts, so how must new buyers feel?

A whitelist approach to HTML

Currently, eBay have adopted a blacklist approach to HTML, CSS and javascript, blocking known-bad code from use on the site. This will change to a whitelist approach, whereby known-good code will be permitted and everything else blocked. For the majority of sellers, this won’t make any difference whatsoever (Adam joked that there will be no block against ugly templates ) but anyone using javascript and Flash widgets within their templates may be impacted.

In an attempt to limit possible damage from bad code, descriptions will now be served from a seperate domain so that scraping of sign-in information within the eBay site should no longer be possible.

Verification of new sellers

New sellers will have to complete telephone verification and one of either PayPal or Live Chat verification once they have sold their first few listings, or when attempting to list a high dollar amount. This should keep the site a little more secure.

Adam wrapped up with what is definitely the theme of this DevCon: “we want your feedback”. eBay are certainly doing their best to appear to be listening to developers: they need to make buyers and sellers too feel that they’re being listened too. With big hints that “more change is coming”, the rest of this week is shaping up to be very interesting indeed.