Following the success of the US campaign, eBay UK and eBay Germany will be launching a similar coupon event to run between 16th November and ending on Boxing Day (26th December).

Around 80 sellers will be involved offering up to 15% savings off selected items. In the UK participating sellers will include Argos, DSG, Tesco, Ed Hardy, Dune, Office and Kookai and in Germany brands such as Redcoon, Medion, Speedo, Eastpak, Fila, Surf4Shoes and Triumph will offer discounts.

We’ll let you know as soon as we find the discount codes, but in the mean time watch out from the 16th if you want to save some money (or if as a seller you compete with any of the businesses involved!)

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.

As usual there’s some small print, so please do read it for the relevant site before you list.

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.

• Audio & Hi-Fi
• Books
• Computer
• Photo & Camcorder
• TV, Video & Electronics

The offer is valid for business sellers’ auction and Buy It Now listings only.

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.

If you pay with PayPal, I need copies of your passport/ID as well as from your credit card that you are using within PayPal (both sides). Please provide these documents as electronic scans immediately after the end of the auction. The tickets will only be shipped after you have provided these documents.

These additional terms are important, as PayPal will only protect sellers from unjustified chargebacks in accordance with the above. You as a buyer remain fully protected through PayPal’s Buyer Protection Policy. So both sides are well protected.

Assuming that Der Spiegel’s identification of this seller with Frerk-Malte Feller is correct, then he’s in breach of the employee trading policy, as he hasn’t identified himself as an eBay employee. The seller also appears to be breaking UEFA’s ticket resale rules (see section 8).

If you read German, there’s an interesting thread on the German community forums about this, but so far apparently no official comment from eBay.

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.

• Audio & Hi-Fi
• Books
• Computer
• Photo & Camcorder
• TV,Video & Elektronics

The 1c insertion fee includes Gallery pictures.

Excluded from the offer are private sellers, Stores listings and Auction listings. There’s a bit more small print, so do read it before you list.

eBay have made lots of noise in recent months about linking fees to seller success (i.e. lower IFs and higher FVFs), and about encouraging sellers to list their entire inventory on eBay. By presenting it as a special offer rather than a permanent price change, they retain the facility to change things as they see how the new pricing affects sellers’ listing behaviour. I don’t think this will be the last of this kind of offer we see.

With a starting price of just €1.00, the listing read “Baby — collection only. Offer my nearly new baby for sale because it cries too much. Male, 70 cm long.”

Saying it was a joke and that she “just wanted to see if someone would make an offer” didn’t stop several people alerting the authorities, and the auction was pulled about 2½ hours after it was posted. The woman is now to undergo psychiatric tests.

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.

photo credit: fazen

 eBay UK have announced that measures to track which computers sellers list from to help prevent account takeovers are now live. At some yet-to-be specified point later this year, the computer being used to list will be checked against this data, and anything unusual flagged for further investigation.

eBay also have a new page about identity confirmation available, which gives a little more information about the process: every eBay seller is very strongly recommended to check that your telephone number is a valid one, and that your “secret question” is one you can answer but no one else can.

Having announced the policy, eBay are doing very little to answer sellers’ questions about its actual implementation. I’ve been unable to discover, for example, exactly what happens when you buy a new computer, or what happens if you list an item from the library so eBay phone you at home and you’re not there.

“Have a mobile phone as your secondary contact number” seems to be the only solution to this, otherwise sellers potentially run the risk of needing to “contact customer support”, presumably to say that, yes, that was them who did a few relists from an internet cafe last night so please could the account be unfrozen. eBay staff who have been involved in discussions have generally been pretty dismissive of sellers’ concerns, preferring instead to concentrate on the obvious security improvements the measures will bring. Some explanations of exactly how this is going to work in practice are now overdue.

Several other European sites including Austria, France, Switzerland, Spain and Germany have announced similar programs starting today.

photo credit: ToastyKen

This week Auctionbytes were given a live demonstration on how phishers can capture eBay user names and passwords.

Falle-Internet.de explained that viewing an auction containing certain code could capture your personal information from eBay, and clicking links could also capture your eBay password.

In the UK all but the most basic types of HTML or Javascript are banned for all users. Germany however has different rules allowing experienced sellers to use more sophisticated code in their auctions. eBay UK told us each eBay country site have discretion on “how to run their business to suit their marketplace” and this includes whether to allow javascript in auctions. In the UK it is not possible to use the offending code, so all UK auctions are safe to view.

Viewing an auction listed on eBay Germany even though you are logged into eBay.co.uk could still allow the malicious code to execute, the only safe way to view these auctions is to block scripts from running in your browser.

Our recommendation for all sellers would be to use a seperate eBay account for buying. If you’re browsing auctions especially from Germany make sure that you’re logged out of your main selling account. That way, if you’re unfortunate enough to have an account hacked, at least it won’t impact your income.

Different fee structures for business and private sellers

Private sellers can list auctions starting at €1,00 with Gallery picture with no fee. They pay 8% final value fee. Cars, motorbikes, boats, and other motors and sports vehicles can also be listed free; FVFs are dependent on sale price, with a sliding scale from 8% to 2%.

Category-specific pricing for business sellers

Business sellers‘ in certain categories will see a move to the lower-IF, higher FVF model seen on eBay.com and .co.uk.

• The lowest prices will be seen in media categories (films & DVDs, music, PC & video games) and tickets.
• Electronics (hi-fi, audio, in-car navigation, household electronics, TV, video, software and games consoles) do next best, and
• a collection of home and office categories (office & stationery, gourmet, furniture, toys, sports and home decoration) also see some changed prices.

All affected categories will see insertion fees cut for auctions starting at or fixed priced items at €10. The biggest cut is in media, where all items have a 5c insertion fee (private sellers do not get special pricing in the media).

For multiple item listings, eBay.de’s fees are charged according to the number of items being listed and the starting price of each individual item. In relevent categories, IFs for multiple items are being reduced, and the IF cap is also being reduced from its current €4,80 to as little as €0,05: yes, it’s the media categories again.

Correspondingly, FVFs are being increased in the sub-€50,00 tranch. In electronics categories, the higher tranches have FVFs reduced by 1%.

For auctions starting at €1,00 *only*, the price of Gallery is being reduced to 25c.

Further discounts for qualified PowerSellers

Those who are members of the German PS program, who maintain a minimum of 4.6 on all four DSR criteria, and who offer PayPal on at least 80% of their ended listings, will be entitled to discounts on their FVFs of between 20% and 26%, depending on PS level. Qualification will be on a rolling 30 day basis. Those whose DSR scores are all 4.8 or higher will be entitled to an additional 10% discount.

The PayPal criterion is likely to be very unpopular with German sellers: bank transfer is much more widely used in Germany than it is amongst UK eBayers. The rest of the changes are, I think, likely to leave sellers pretty divided: some will like the lower-risk pricing model, others will resent the increase in FVFS, and still more will wonder why their own categories have been ‘ignored’. What I think the rest of us can certainly take from this is that category-specific pricing is likely to become much more common on all eBay sites than it has been previously.

We will change our fee model, and move fees from insertion fees to final value fees, so sellers will pay eBay fees relative to their sales. In addition, I am pleased to offer a special premium program to our PowerSellers. For you as PowerSellers this means that – with fulfillment of the quality requirements – you can count on fee reductions. I’ll let you know all further details about this on the 11th February in eBay-News.

eBay Germany have also CUT auction fees in half for listings with a start price of €1 or less. From now until at least the end of the year the insertion fee will be just 49 cents and that will INCLUDE a gallery picture free of charge. German anchor shop fees have already been reduced from €499.95 to €299,95 since 1st September which includes free MarketPlace Research. In a move to assist sellers they have also reduced the cost of telephone support from 59 cents per minute to 14 cents.

A road show has been announced which will visit six German cities to emphasis the fun of buying and selling on eBay. At the same time they have revamped the community pages with updated forums and groups and a live chat facility will be introduced.

Finally the links policy has been updated inline with other eBay sites to allow video within eBay listings and a widget (similar to eBay To Go) allows listings to be easily showcased on blogs and websites.