ReliaBlog

eBay Used for Political Gain

What is the number one sign that something has made it into mainstream and popular culture?? When people begin using it to make political statements.  This recently occurred in Isington, a town in the United Kingdom where a teacher decided to place the local public school up for auction on eBay.  With a starting price of 2,000 pounds, Molly Doyle is bringing attention to the issue of education and corporate takeover of the previously government-run school system.  By comparing the idea of privatizing the schools to an eBay auction, Doyle looks to drive the point home that privatization is the same as auctioning children's education off to the highest bidder.

As a special needs teacher in the neighboring borough, Doyle understands the inner workings of the school system and wants other out there to grasp the consider the impact of introducing profit and business into the education of children.  With the ebay.co.uk site amongst the fastest growing sites online, Doyle has effectively managed to take out an advertisement for thousands to see.  Although a cost-effective move, if numerous others follow the eBay marketplace could become bogged down by these political advertisements and drive traffic away from the site and legitimatize the many true online auction sellers.

So far one person has bid on the item, accepting the responsibility for creating a positive learning experience for numerous children.  Luckily for the Islington Council, real estate auctions on eBay are not considered binding contracts.

Clipping Coupons and Increasing Sales

During the holiday season when everyone is rushing to find just the right gifts for those people on their lists, why not give previous customers an added incentive to search your listings?  Another third-party service provider, Andalé, has launched a new addition to their Andalé Checkout program, allowing buyers to enter a coupon code while checking out for discounts. 

Coupons.  What a marvelous way to attract and reward repeat buyers.  And during the holiday season, everyone is looking for a bargain, so take advantage of this opportunity to bring previous bidders back to your storefront and listings.  Depending on the size of your business and the diversity of your listings, targeted direct mail pieces may be the most effective way to reach past buyers and provide them with a discount coupon.  And while the nice thing about emailing individuals is that you are reaching them while they are already online, the large amount of SPAM mail these days may cause your information to get lost or filtered. 

Stay tuned for our November newsletter for more tips on how to increase your sales this holiday season!  If you aren't already on our mailing list, it's simple and free to join!  Just enter your email address on the left-hand sidebar.

Let Us Deal with the Crazies

Just like in offline life, most people you run into are normal and law abiding citizen, but occasionally you will run into those who are not. The ones who are a little crazy. Most of the time this insanity manifests itself in online "flaming" or someone sending you obnoxious emails. But, sometimes those things can go a little too far. I was just reading my morning news and saw this article about an online argument that took a dangerous turn offline.

While the dispute in the article did not come out of an eBay dispute, I would not put such a thing out of the question. When I sold on eBay I had a number of accounts that just turned nasty, including one where I had to notify the police about the other party's threats. I wish a service like ReliaBid had been around then, so I could have just turned the account over and removed myself as the point of communication.

The primary value of ReliaBid is in our ability to deter non-paying bidders- or, in effect, to stop unpaid items before they happen. However, another key value, and one that is often overlooked is that ReliaBid can become the middle-man in dealing with folks that harass you about paying for your auctions. If someone gets obscene or rude in their emails, you can just turn the account over to ReliaBid and let our service handle communication with them and getting payment for you. You not only take yourself out of the loop and prevent yourself from being subjected to undeserved ridicule, but you let a professional team be the "bad guy," rather than you or your business. ReliaBid works with trained collectors that are used to dealing with hostile debtors and trained to maintain a professional "cool" in order to work towards one goal: getting you paid. If you aren't already using ReliaBid in these types of situations, you might want to consider it.

International Buyers Swarm eBay US

In response to a press release issued by ComScore Networks, Lissa McGrath recently published an article on AuctionBytes.com regarding the high amount of international traffic to US sites such as eBay.com.  With the holiday season approaching this could mean that sellers who limit potential buyers to those in the US and Canada may be missing out on huge sales.  According to the study by ComScore Networks, approximately 70 percent of the unique visitors to eBay.com are from outside the US.  The high number of international visitors to the site may be attributed to the lower cost of goods on the US version of the site as well as a larger selection of items to choose from due to the longstanding prevalence of the site.

For many sellers though, they still see selling internationally as a huge risk.  Steps for sellers to take in order to avoid fraud of this manner include requiring payment through an online payment website prior to shipping the goods.  Sellers should also obtain tracking information for the goods they are sending overseas in order to provide estimated arrival times to their international customers.

With such a large opportunity for sellers to expand their reach to international consumers without leaving the eBay US site, the question must be asked--is it worth it for sellers in the long run to risk NOT selling to those overseas??

Online Seller Would Make Dog the Bounty Hunter Proud

One woman has taken receiving payment for the items she sells on eBay to the next level.  Connie Lang of Naperville, Illinois recently made a cross-country trip to track down her money after selling her family’s RV camper in an online auction for $11,000.  The winning bidder sent a deposit check for $500, which cleared quickly and thus assuaging any doubts Lang, a new online auction seller, had about the transaction.  Two weeks after a driver came to Lang’s home to pick up the camper and drive it back to Albuquerque, where the winning bidder, Ken, lives, Lang found out from her bank that the check for $10,500 bounced.  After a few additional weeks of run around from Ken, Lang decided to take matters into her own hands.

By gathering all of the details she knew about Ken, Lang managed to piece together a very accurate picture of the situation—Ken was to be receiving a bank loan soon for a down payment on a new house.  From the details she acquired from their discussions, Lang knew the name of his bank, and through a bit of detective work, determined the day and time when Ken was scheduled to meet with his bank loan officer to receive payment on his house loan. 

A quick call to the airlines and a few frequent flier miles later and Lang was landing in Albuquerque filled with a vigilante’s determination to receive payment for her camper.  Arriving at the bank and sitting in the lobby with an oblivious Ken and his daughter, Lang made small talk while waiting for him to be called.  When the loan officer called Ken forward, Lang rose and introduced herself as well.  After explaining the situation to the bank loan officer, Lang received a check for the amount owed, plus $100 for her troubles, from Ken’s house loan.  Within 24 hours of leaving Illinois, Lang had flown to New Mexico, received money from her non-paying bidder and headed home.

While this is a bit of an extreme case—most sellers do not travel cross-country to receive payment on their items—it is still a very common problem in the online auction marketplace.  Most online sellers have become accustomed to a portion of their items going unpaid due to non-paying bidders and have accepted this as a cost of doing business.  Imagine if every seller tried to physically locate and in-person demand their money from their non-paying bidders—the time and money they would spend doing this would destroy their companies. 

For suggestions on how-to avoid these cross-country missions to receive payment for your goods, please feel free to contact our seller support team.

eBay Moves Away From Neutral Position

eBay has recently made a decision to take an active stand against fraudulent sellers of high-demand goods this holiday season.  eBay has decided that they will take actions to reduce fraud in auctions of PlayStation 3 and Wii gaming systems set to take off later this month.  With the launch of these two hot gaming systems during the second week of November, eBay has posted restrictions on who can sell these items.  EBay is asking sellers to prove that they have the actual items before being permitted to list the products on the auction platform.  Sellers must have a feedback rating of over 50 (98% positive) and may only list one of each console as pre-sales before the items are released.   Other requirements as outlined by eBay include:

• The seller must only accept payment through PayPal
• The pre-sale item must be listed in the 3, 5, 7 or 10-day formats, and cannot use Buy It Now.
• The listing must include a photo of your pre-order receipt in the description.

If eBay is willing to essentially monitor and restrict those who can list these items, is this a course that they are willing to take for other high fraud categories?  Many sellers would be interested in seeing similar restrictions placed on items where counterfeit goods flood the market, such as high-end designer name clothing and accessories. 

However, if eBay was to start requiring this type of confirmation of authenticity prior to a listing being permitted, there may be as many negative ramifications as positive.  For instance, although the move would help to weed out the marketplace of fake goods, the red tape it would create might further hinder sellers from growing their businesses most effectively.

eBay's "it" Ad Campaign

I’ve seen the new eBay “it” ads. I’m not thrilled. In fact, I really am not that thrilled with the entire “it” campaign. When I showed up to eBay Live 2006 and saw a glimmering "it" on the concourse, I thought “What the heck is this!?”

It isn’t that I don’t get it. Though it took me a minute or two to understand that eBay is saying you can get anything on eBay by generically terming a purchase/item  “it.” However, I use eBay every day. My life gravitates to eBay. So, if it took me a minute to get it, what do you think everyone else will think?

I don’t think that the average non-user will get this campaign. Get “it” on eBay? How about showing a bunch of items that people do want to get and showing the range that way? Pump some categories up. Pick some hot sellers. How about the PS3 later this month? Make some co-marketing agreements and offset your ad costs eBay… but this random “it” thing? I really feel like this is one of the worst marketing campaigns ever.

My bottom line is that I get the campaign, they (eBay) get the campaign, even you may get the campaign, but does the potential customer both eBay AND you hope to acquire, get the campaign?

eBay Attempts to Combat Email Phishing Scams

In an attempt to help stop users from falling victim to eBay phishing scams, the online auction company has launched a new private email feature. The way eBay's new email service will work is that messages sent via eBay's private messanging service will be delivered to members' selected contact email rather than to their "My Messages" folder on the eBay site. Numerous phishing scams have taken eBay members' login information by replicating emails sent by eBay to members. These fake emails ask members to follow a hyperlink to sign into eBay to receive either a message or update their information. Hyperlinks included in the email take eBay members to a different site designed to look like an eBay login screen. Information inputted by eBay members is then stolen causing their accounts to be hijacked and information stolen.

The new emailing system by eBay will allow messages to be sent from members' own email clients by attaching anonymous email addresses to the messages. EBay will then re-route the messages to their intended recipient. This new anonymous email system will help to simplify the question/answer process for high-volume sellers by allowing them to respond directly to buyers.  A similar anonymous messanging system is used by craigslist.org, a company in which eBay owns a 25 percent stake.

Previously, eBay launched a campaign to combat phishing/scam emails by sending all messages from email account "UseTheYellowButton@ebay.com". A yellow button displayed in the email would hyperlink the recipient to a login page where they were taken to their "My Messages" in order to respond. For high-volume sellers who receive hundreds of emails a day, this process is overly time consuming. Also, if individuals were to respond to these emails via the reply function, the messages would not be forwarded on to the correct person from the UseTheYellowButton@ebay.com account.

What Risk Did You Accept on eBay?

I was speaking with a friend recently about eBay and why people shop there. The number one reason we settled on was “cost savings.” So, people go to eBay to save money. That makes sense, I know I frequently do.

How is it that we can expect cost savings on eBay? Among other things, sellers on eBay frequently have a lower overhead than brick and mortar retailers. We don’t have to pay for commercial space, as much staffing, infrastructure, etc. so we can offer products for less than the cost of a normal retailer, and pass the savings along to the consumer.

However, I think frequently the consumer expects the same level of service from an eBay retailer as with a store like Macy’s. But, that isn’t always possible. With lower margins, smaller sellers aren’t always able to provide the same level of service as Macy’s. Service has a cost and the more service one offers, the more it impacts margins. Some larger sellers are able to offset that cost to a degree by buying in even larger volumes, driving their original cost down to accommodate the cost of raising service standards and infrastructure.

I think that buyers on eBay accept a level of implied risk. When shopping on eBay I think buyers focus a great deal on how much they are saving, without necessarily considering the cost of those savings. There’s an implied level of risk in shopping on eBay, and while feedback may mitigate some of that risk, feedback itself is a flawed system. But that’s a whole different story…

eBay Sleuth Solves Crime

Hardy boys, beware, there is a new sleuth in town. Recently, an avid eBay user solved the case of the missing welder/tool chest, all without ever leaving the comfort of his home. In December 2004, Curtis Pittman, President of Midstate Manufacturing, had a commercial welder and a chest of tools stolen from the business. While there were suspects at the time of the crime, there was not enough evidence to arrest anyone. 

Yet, good things come to those who wait, and wait Pittman did. While perusing eBay recently for more welding equipment for his workers, Pittman came across the exact make and model of the one stolen from him nearly two years earlier. The seller was located in a nearby town. Suspicious, Pittman notified police of his suspicion and began communicating with the seller, who turned out to be an old employee of Midstate Manufacturing, Brian Berggen. Police arrested Berggen who is being charged with breaking and entering and two counts of burglary. 

As for the tool chest—Berggen told police it was located under a bridge, but by the time officials arrived, the tool chest had been removed. Pittman placed an ad in the local paper requesting help in finding the missing tools. A local farmer responded and returned the found items. New slogan for eBay—"Shop Online—Solve a Crime".