Tamebay » eBay.ie

Free 99p auction listings for private sellers to be limited

Sue — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:27:56 +0000

It’s the policy change that UK business sellers have been asking for, begging for, pleading for for months: eBay UK are introducing a limit on free 99p auction listings for private sellers: here’s the welcome announcement. There are two tranches to the roll-out of the new policy.

1. Beginning this week, there will be a limit of 100 live listings at any one time

for UK and Irish registered sellers with feedback lower than 25, and
for all overseas-registered private sellers listing on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie.

Multiple items on a single listing will all count separately towards this total, so that’s not a sneaky way around the limit either.

Any private seller listing in quantity will be reviewed by Customer Support, and may be required to register as a business, or may be blocked from selling completely. We’ve seen a number of high-volume private sellers being required to register as businesses already.

Sellers registered on eBay.com are bound by the International Trading Policy, which now requires high volume sellers actively listing on European sites to be registered as business sellers. Penalties for breaching the ITP include demotion in search and being blocked from listing on European sites altogether.

2. From June 2010, free listings for all private sellers listing on eBay UK will be limited to 100 per month. Any listings placed in excess of this limit will be charged “an insertion fee”. There’s currently no published detail of whether this insertion fee will be the normal one quoted in eBay’s fee schedule, or whether this will be reconsidered between now and June.

For those who are are thinking this might just be too good to be true, the announcement went live at 2.36pm UK time, well after the 12 noon cut-off for April fools

Free auction listings for private sellers this Sunday

Sue — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:52:54 +0000

On Sunday 15th November, private sellers will pay no insertion fees for auction listings on eBay UK and eBay Ireland, irrespective of starting price. Auction-with-BIN is included, BIN proper is not. Other fees apply, read the small print before you list… you know the score

More info from eBay UK and eBay Ireland respectively.

eBay UK and IE hold half-price Motors' listing weekend

Sue — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:02:10 +0000

eBays UK and Ireland Motors are holding a half-price listing weekend for the 6th and 7th June. Insertion fees for auction and BIN listings will be half the normal rate, so £4 or €4.50. Classified ads do not qualify for the promotion. All other fees apply as normal, and there is some other small print, so do read it before you list.

eBay Ireland aren't assisting with VAT changes either

Sue — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 16:30:43 +0000

Lest UK sellers think they were alone in being given no help from eBay with changes to the VAT rate, eBay Ireland have put out an announcement regarding their own VAT changes which is almost a cut and paste copy of the UK one. Irish VAT increases from 21% to 21.5% on Monday 1st December, and as is the case for UK sellers, Irish eBayers will have to individually amend listings without sales, or end and relist items with sales/bids, in order to be able to edit the VAT rate quoted.

The announcement about changes in the VAT rate was made in October, so eBay Ireland have had even longer to come up with a more useful solution than the week that Alastair Darling gave eBay UK. Irish sellers will no doubt draw their own conclusions from the timing of this announcement, one working day before the VAT change goes live: could it have only been prompted by the change in the UK rate?

One small improvement on the Irish announcement: the patronising tag line

With strong competition and early discounting coming from the high street this Christmas season we know buyers are now, more than ever, being attracted to great value bargains.

which concluded the British one has been omitted.

Action plan for VAT changes to your eBay listings

Chris Dawson — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:00:43 +0000

Due to the large number of VAT registered sellers who will have to update their eBay listings manually this weekend I thought I’d share my work plan for updating VAT rates on live listings.

To do today

Use TurboLister to bulk edit all auctions without bids ending on or after 1st to amend to the new VAT rate. It will then be correct on the date the auction ends.
Bulk edit all templates in TurboLister (you’ll need to do this in two steps – all auction templates and then all fixed price templates)
Consider launching shorter duration auctions to cover any days when you didn’t list. 3, 5 and 7 day auctions can plug the gap and be listed today with the new VAT rate. (If you use 1 day auctions make sure that they are listed with the current VAT rate)
Schedule fixed price listings to start on 1st

To do on Sunday 30th November

End auctions with bids, consider selling to the current highest bidder if an acceptable price has been reached.
Use TurboLister to bulk edit any fixed price listings without sales or best offers, for any subsequent sales before midnight edit VAT back to the old rate on the SMP invoice.

This is potentially the most difficult step as whilst you can see start and current quantities to identify listings with sales (Right click TurboLister columns, click “Customise columns” and make “Qty” and “Available Quantity” visible), it’s not possible to see which listings have received best offers. Attempting a bulk edit which includes just one listing that’s received a best offer will block the VAT field from being revised.
End any fixed price listings with sales or best offers and relist with the revised VAT rate as soon as possible (or schedule them to restart on 1st December) and manually edit the VAT rate on the SMP invoice for any final sales from the 30th.

You should now have all your listings updated showing the correct rate of VAT and can enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Feedback revision rolls out for eBay UK, Ireland, .com

Sue — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:54:41 +0000

eBay UK have announced that feedback revision will be rolled out on 20th October. eBay Ireland and eBay.com will also launch feedback revision on the same day.

As already announced for eBay Australia, the new system will allow sellers to request that buyers edit feedback within 30 days of it being left. Buyers will only be able to revise feedback “upwards” – i.e. a positive cannot be changed to a negative or neutral – and sellers cannot request that buyers edit positive feedback. Buyers will be able to edit the rating, the DSR scores and the comment they left.

Sellers will be able to request 5 edits per 1,000 feedbacks received, though eBay have said that this limit may be reconsidered: when it was announced for the Australian site, many sellers wondered what would be the position for buyers who’d left multiple non-positive feedbacks for combined transactions, so it would be good to see this addressed in the near future.

There’s more detail on exactly how the system will work in the FAQs.

eBay UK will also launch the new Resolution Centre at the end of October: this replaces the current Dispute Console, and just the change of name alone should make trading on eBay a more pleasant experience. There’s not much detail in the announcement of exactly what will be changing, but one welcome addition should be “a separate flow for buyers and sellers to mutually agree to cancel a transaction”: seeing this process made simpler and less antagonistic should be good news for buyers *and* sellers.

Auction your car for free on eBay.ie Motors

Sue — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:30:56 +0000

For the entire month of October, eBay Ireland are offering free insertion fees for car auctions. The offer applies to the Cars subcategory of Cars, Parts & Vehicles, and to auction listings only. The basic auction insertion fee, normally €9, is being waived; all other fees apply as normal. BINs and classified ads are not eligible, though it’s not absolutely clear whether auction-with-BIN is excluded too, or whether those listings will just be charged the BIN upgrade fee.

eBay Ireland appoint new MD

Sue — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:16:47 +0000

Gareth Davis, MD of eBay.ie

eBay Ireland have announced the appointment of a new Managing Director. Gareth Davis joins eBay.ie from management consultants McKinsey & Co, New Jersey, where he worked as an Engagement Manager, leading a number of high profile business strategy and implementation projects for multi-billion dollar companies across consumer goods, healthcare, travel & logistics, food & beverage and private equity industries. He said, “Irish consumers are continuing to embrace the internet and it is an exciting time to join eBay.ie, which offers such great value and such a wide selection of products to Irish online shoppers.”

His predecessor in the role, John McElligott, moves to a global position within eBay, as Director of Strategy and M&A, eBay Global Classifieds, which looks like a timely move.

eBay.ie introduce Best Match and DSRs in search

Sue — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:04:47 +0000

eBay Ireland have announced some changes today which they say are designed to make the site an easier and safer place to shop. Most of these reflect changes made on other eBay sites earlier in the year.

DSRs under 4.3 disadvantaged in search

The most significant change for sellers is that DSRs will now impact placement in search. Sellers with any one of their DSR scores at 4.3 or below will be placed lower in search results. DSR scores for this purpose are calculated over 30 days, so anyone who slips below the threshold due to abnormal problems – perhaps a batch of mail lost, or one very disgruntled customer – should be able to rectify things. eBay’s tips on improving DSRs are always worth a read.

Watch more, checkout quicker

Watch list capacity will be increased to 200 items, and eBayers will be able to create customised lists from items already on their watch list. Buyers will now be able to pay by PayPal without actually leaving the eBay site.

New view item page

This is the same layout as introduced on eBay.co.uk, .fr, .com and elsewhere: you can see a mock-up of the Irish version here.

Changes to search behaviour

Best Match will become the default search sort, though items from Irish sellers will continue to be placed above overseas sellers in search results. Search will now take into account the category the item is listed in, and any item specifics, when presenting search results: make sure you have those item specifics filled out! These changes have been extremely controversial on other eBay sites, with sellers complaining they can’t find their own items, and many buyers also less than enthusiastic, so it’ll be interesting to see if Irish users are any happier about the implementation.

eBay Ireland are rather vague on the timescale for these changes. The new view item page is slated for “late this year or early next year”, though some users may be seeing it already. Increased watch list capacity should be available “in September”, and there is no mention of timing for any of the changes to search sorting.

10c listing weekend for Irish sellers

Chris Dawson — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:59:49 +0000

For Saturday and Sunday, 20th and 21st Sept 2008 Irish sellers can list auctions and Buy it Now listings for just 10 cents.

This promo is just days before the fee changes on the 25th, which will see multiple item Buy It Now listings available on the Irish site for as little as 2 cents for Anchor shops and 6 cents for featured shops. Perversely, given that eBay are about to encourage them, multiple item listings are excluded from the promotion.

Sellers will need to consider their strategy for using this promotion. Relisting items that have sold should retain the recent sales boost in search, but if sellers list multiple listings for the same product they’ll be disadvantaged in search just a few days after the promotion.

A similar cheap listing day for eBay UK was edited to include multiple item listings, to fit with eBay’s current best listing practices.