ReliaBlog

Policy Change Requires EBay Sellers to Make Feedback Public

In a move designed to increase trust between buyers and sellers, eBay has announced that members with private feedback will no longer be allowed to list items for sell. Set to go into effect October 26^th, this policy will mean that buyers will always be able to view the profile of those selling on eBay. Feedback is one of the main ways that buyers can evaluate the legitimacy of a seller and determine whether or not to purchase listed goods.

Individuals who currently have their profile set to private and list goods online will not have those items listed before October 26^th removed, but until they elect to share their profile, will be unable to list more items after this date. This is a move by eBay towards increasing transparency throughout the platform. To make your eBay profile public, simply log in to your account and select the "make my profile public" option.

NARU eBay Member's Auctions Still Active

Recently, Auctionbytes.com reported that although eBay user Kmak333 has been suspended from eBay, over 30,000 of their auction listings are still appearing as of this morning.  Suspended over a VeRO (Verified Rights Owner Program) infraction, this is the first mark Kmak333 has received during the 7+ years on eBay.  VeRO was established to provide an avenue for potential intellectual property rights violations.  eBay members can easily report possible violations and eBay's team will investigate matters further. 

With Kmak333 selling popular items that attract numerous potential buyers, such as CDs, DVDs and comics, buyers who do not take note of the seller as "not a registered user", may potentially purchase these items and not receive them.  This situation may be highly detrimental to Kmak333's high feedback rating.  Situations that may incur a VeRO include: copying a description/pictures from a manufacturor/company website or another member's listings, misleading brand name comparison, selling fakes (even if noted in the listing as a fake good),  or listing illegal copies of movies/music.

Industry Expert Gives Insightful Keynote at PeSA Summit

Bob Peck, Managing Director at Bear Sterns kicked off the PeSA conference with a stellar key note address on Wednesday night. During his presentation, Bob clarified for attendees the extent to which the e-commerce industry has not yet been tapped by the average consumer. One of the reasons he cited for this gap between people who go online and people who buy online is the issue of trust.

Bob noted that sellers need to work to increase consumers trust to ensure for greater growth and success within the industry. Also discussed was the effect of eBay store increases on the platform’s profitability. Although Peck was the first to downgrade eBay stock, he had a positive response to the increase. While many sellers’ reactions to eBay store fee increases were negative, Bob looked at the event as a way to “clear the clutter” from the eBay platform, thus increasing the quality of sellers.

PeSA Summit Commences Today

Today, hundreds of the online auction marketplace's largest sellers will get together in San Francisco to network with one another and interact with the industry's largest service providers and major venues at the bi-annual PeSA Summit in San Francisco.

The Summit's title sponsor, ReliaBid, will be annoucing it's new service line for credit card charge-backs, which will be available to sellers and venues in early October. ReliaBid is joined by an outstanding group of high-level event sponsors, including: eBay, Overstock, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, MarketWorks, ChannelAdvisor, Andale, Paypal, Monsoon, Prosper, Cybersource, Doba and Infopia.

Trust: The Key to e-Commerce Transactions

ReliaBid's CEO, Jonathan Rosen, spoke today of the issue of trust in the onlineauction space to the Southern California E-tailers United Group in Los Angeles, California.  The presentation stressed the importance of building bilateral trust within transactions, and particularly those within the online auction industry.

"Buyers and sellesr have remained apprehensive to adopting a high-level of trsut with business partners who are essentially perfect strangers to them," he noted during the presentation, before highlighting a number of key techniques to incorporating trust in online auction listings. These techniques range from tips that enhance the information that is communicated to end users to utilizing third-party trust seals, such as those provided b ReliaBid, SquareTrade and buySafe.  Jonathan will be sharing many of these techniques in a monthly column at ReliaBlog over the coming months.

ReliaBid Proven Over 99 Percent Effective in Eliminating Non-Paying Bidders

ReliaBid, the only service that stops non-paying bidders, released its Annual Effectiveness Review today, confirming the proven nature of its innovative solution. The Review demonstrated that the ReliaBid Seal Program has been over 99 percent effective in deterring non-paying bidders from the company’s members’ auctions.

The ReliaBid Seal Program works by automatically inserting a seal into all the company’s members’
auction listings, reaffirming the message for buyers that if they bid, they are should be committed to completing the transaction. What makes this program so successful is that it has the means to back up the seal: In the rare event that online auction sellers do not receive payment on their items, they have the option of starting a collection against the non-paying bidder. However, ReliaBid members’ in the past year only started a collection approximately once out of every 62,000 auctions listed, once again speaking to the value of the seal.

The extreme effectiveness of ReliaBid’s Seal Programs makes it the perfect tool to allow online auction sellers to protect themselves from the increasing number of fraudulent bidders.