When leaving feedback the Buyer is asked, “How reasonable were the shipping and handling charges?” If FREE SHIPPING was offered in the trade, the DSR stars are greyed out – locked – with a blue link next to the line, saying, “Why can’t I enter this rating?” It looks like this capture I made below.

Click to see larger graphic

Because this has not been formally announced, it may only be a test of this set-up. It would certainly be a welcome change with many Sellers who have complained bitterly that any rating lower than a “5″ for S&H was unfair when FREE SHIPPING had been offered.

Today’s “PowerUp” newsletter said, “Starting in October, when you offer free shipping you could automatically get 5-star DSRs for shipping costs when your buyer chooses free shipping.” This would seem to foreshadow this as a permanent change before the holidays. The eBay newsletter added, “Listing with free shipping can also get a boost in Best Match for Fixed Price (where applicable), and visibility in Free Shipping search filters.” An official announcement about all this could come at any time, though eBay may wait until next week’s “eBay On Location” event in San Jose, CA to discuss any change.

Problem is, it isn’t true.

The words in a search are all used (otherwise, what would be the point of the extra Title words? What if the Buyer’s search was more than three words?) Right now, I have an item listed with a Title that is several words long. The last three are printing 1991 LN. If this new urban legend were right, one simply wouldn’t find my item – the search would only look at the first three keywords and skip ahead. My item does get found, however, because all the keywords in a listing title are searchable.

This probably started off as an explanation about search optimization, since making the listing title “human readable” is smart – people do read these things! – but the computer doesn’t care. And because we’re English speakers, the best words first make more sense to us. (I taught this very thing this weekend.) Somewhere along the line this has been misunderstood and passed on that the search won’t find something – not a human shopper – unless the first few words are the best keywords.

This sort of thing will be a problem everywhere on the internet for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, a little fact-checking and critical thought is enough to debunk most of these things. There is mystery surrounding Best Match, and there is concern over unfair placement by eBay, plus the economy, competition from the Chinese, and so forth. People are looking for answers that help explain their situation.

This wasn’t it.

Here is the announcement made by Dinesh Lathi, eBay’s Vice President of Seller and Buyer Experience:

“For two days only—July 27 and July 28—list Auction-style for just 10¢ Insertion Fees, any start price, when you have an eBay Stores subscription. This offer applies to listings on eBay, eBay Motors Parts & Accessories and eBay Canada. Most categories are included, but please check out the information page for full details.”

The announcement and its links can be read in its entirety in eBay’s Annoucement Board.

Experience would suggest that eBay already has something up its sleeve to replace the program’s ad sales – though perhaps not internally to eBay Sellers. If eBay returns to selling off-site advertising, or restricts sales to its favored mass-retail clients, I would anticipate some backlash from smaller sellers who are increasingly vocal about moves that affect their ability to compete in the marketplace.

UPDATE: eBay’s “Griff” said on this afternoon’s “eBay Radio” program that there were no plans to replace the program.

The AdCommerce program was eBay’s most recent “pay-per-click” effort to sell advertising on the marketplace site.  The email announcement, in part, read as follows below.

We know you’ve either registered for or purchased AdCommerce pay-per-click advertising placements recently to promote your eBay Store or listings. We wanted to let you know this advertising program will be discontinued for eBay.com and eBay.ca on August 4 to ensure the most relevant listings from sellers providing the best prices and service are highlighted in search results.

You do not need to do anything-these AdCommerce placements will no longer be available for eBay.com or eBay.ca and any ads you already purchased to appear on these sites will automatically expire on August 4. Your final billing will be sent out in early September.

eBay has been busy the last couple of years picking up the pennies where it could find them.  We’ll have to see what they decide to do next.

A recent PayPal announcement has surfaced of the payment services intention to make several changes in its fees.  This has been met with a lot of complaining and grandstanding, so you’re probably wondering, “What’s going on?”

There are three particularly important changes.  The first one, scheduled to begin in late August, makes the $0.30 USD fixed fee paid per transaction non-refundable.  This fee is the set amount charged when a payment is received, plus a percentage fee on the payment.  If a full refund were given to the customer, PayPal had allowed for all fees to refund to the customer.  No more, says PayPal: if a complete refund is given, that’s okay – but the 30 cent transaction fee will not be refunded.  This is typical of the payments industry, and is not a cause for alarm.  Not only is it just like everybody else in the business, but it doesn’t have anything to do with partial refunds for, say, overcharging a buck on shipping costs.  You give the buyer a buck back, and you aren’t charged anything for those partials.

The other fee that’s raising some hackles is the “Chargeback Fee” which PayPal assesses when an issuing bank or Card Service demands a payment be returned.  Again, this is an industry standard, and PayPal’s fee for a chargeback is going from $10 to $20 USD.  Important for Sellers is that chargebacks are not Buyer Protection cases found for the Buyer, or a seller’s decision to  refund any or all money.  Chargebacks are a special circumstance where PayPal is told “we want our money back” from the issuer.  This can be because of automated loss prevention systems, or the buyer saying the purchase was unauthorized or unknown on his statement, or several other reasons.  Chargebacks are often taken care of by a seller qualifying for PayPal Seller Protection.  Chargebacks can also be appealed in the same way that Buyer Protection complaints are handled: proof of shipment, delivery, and messages and feedback showing buyer receipt and satisfaction – they can’t argue they didn’t get something if a seller can show they did!  But if a chargeback sticks, and the seller isn’t covered by Seller Protection, the money goes back and a fee is levied on PayPal – which means on the Seller, and that charge will go from $10 to $20 USD. 

The third thing of note is a power move by American Express for those using PayPal’s Virtual Terminal or Website Pro-type external services for AMEX credit card payments.  AMEX is changing lanes with its own deal out there in cyberspace, so it wants sellers to make a special agreement with them that dictates their service.  It’s all meant to advantage AMEX and their own payment system as they bring it online.  This is also typical for American Express operation, and is just one of those Big Company things merchants have to deal with.

Bottom line for sellers is this is a fee increase of sorts on absolute refunds.  If a forced refund were to result because of a Buyer Protection claim filed against the seller, the seller would lose the refund.  The 30 cent charge for handling the money in the first place remains with PayPal.  If a bank or card company hits a seller with a chargeback that sticks, and the seller is not covered by Seller Protection, the $10 fee will go up to $20.  Lastly, unless a seller has historically processed a lot of AMEX payments, they may have just taken themselves out of the PayPal game – a dangerous gambit with PayPal’s market penetration.  All in all, this is not only just business as usual, but in line with the fees and how business has operated with payment processing for years.  It is part of the maturing of the internet as regular, experienced business gets integrated into operating on the net. 

I don’t care for rate hikes and changing fees and moving rules, but it’s not so bad when it’s something common to how businesses have worked in the past few years.. and it’s really more of what we should expect in the way that businesses operate today.
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The announced changes can be seen here at this PayPal link.

Over a Dozen Tornadoes Touch Down in OK on May 10, 2010

The tornado attack on the Oklahoma City area Monday was an intense time here at Uncle Joe’s studio.  Just as rush hour began, severe weather started to blanket the greater Oklahoma City metro.  Strong winds and hailstones – some as large as softballs – accompanied these storms as they passed overhead. 

And then the sirens began to howl out their nightmare warning: tornadoes!

The first was spotted roping across the western sky in the NW suburb of Yukon.   It didn’t appear to be very strong, but these things are known to quickly become damaging.

Within a few minutes, another tornado was spotted to the southwest near the southern suburb of Moore.  This bedroom community still reels from the memory of a category F5 (300+ mph winds) on May 3, 1999 that carved a mile-wide path of destruction through town. 

Warning sirens were sounded again and again as the threats appeared and diminished  just as quickly over the next two hours.   Tornadoes crossed two Interstate Highways.  One TV helicopter pilot reported being underneath one rotating cloud formation while looking at a different tornado.  With the skies boiling, the pilot had to perform an emergency dive to gain enough airspeed to escape the winds clutching at his aircraft. 

The largest tornadoes began near the southern metro city of Norman, OK,  home of Oklahoma University.  One crossed from NE Norman into SE Oklahoma City and beyond to the northeast.   Another formed to the south of Norman and headed E-NE across five counties, wreaking havok in the towns of Tecumseh and Seminole.  These tornadoes produced much of the damage that you’ve seen on television: the wiped-out trailer park, twisted cell and power towers, and the amazing survival story at a demolished Love’s Country Store truck stop.  Over a dozen tornadoes would come down statewide.

The fatal storms injured over 100 and destroyed as many homes.  Nearly 10,000 were reported to be without electricity, mainly due to damage to heavy transmission lines and equipment.  Amazingly, only two deaths have been reported so far in the aftermath of the outbreak.

It reminded me fondly of an earlier time when eBay actively promoted an image that it was interested in the success of the individual, small seller. Achievements in gaining PowerSeller status or the different colored feedback (FB) stars were a part of eBay growth.

Our first eBay office was decorated with a rainbow arch of those colorful FB star certificates. Good fun, and a great confidence builder with students as they walked in. Of course this is all meaningless eBay marketing of their new TRS program… or at least, marketing. But meaningless? A little recognition can go a long way, and eBay’s created a contrary situation with their Seller relations that gives them a long way to go to setting things back on the tracks.

Those problems often stem from all the little things that got Sellers feeling slighted. Perhaps this will mark a change when some little things got started that made Sellers feel a little better about the Marketplace.  Worked for me!

As expected, eBay has the resources (or partnership power) to make most efforts like this pretty good out of the gate.  The announcement describes the function of the on-site label printing suite to include the sort of features I’d expect: automatic pre-fill of Buyer info and appropriate Customs forms; automatic capture of Delivery Confimation/Tracking numbers into the online transaction records; management of labels like reprints or voids; and the consolidation of work into a predictable user interface.

On the other hand, questions looming for me are -

• Is the “auto-pay for shipping labels” going to be driven by the “convenient pay-as-you-print option [that] charges the cost to your PayPal account,” or can I send the charge to a specified credit/debit card independent of PayPal?
• PayPal requires the shipping address used to be the one provided in their transaction record – the “confirmed address” – for certain protections.  PayPal’s reported Buyer address should br more likely correct because eBay doesn’t confirm Buyer identity and location with the same rigor.  How will this line up going forward?
• Is there still a conspicuous absence of the economical (but not tracked) First Class International rate in eBay’s offering (it isn’t available on PayPal)?
• A print one-at-a-time system is inefficient if several labels are needed.  Will this be tempered by accumulating the day’s production and creating a SCAN form for postal acceptance and/or a request for free next-day USPS pick-up?

As the answers to those questions develop, I’ll get back with you.  In the meantime, PayPal’s batch-processing “Multi-Order Shipping” system continues to be the best “free” label printing offering from eBay, complete with adherance to PayPal’s address rules, postage deduction from PayPal account, ease of dealing with partial postage refunds, SCAN form and pick-up scheduling.

[Disclosure: we often use or support PayPal's "Multi-Order Shipping" system for some accounts.  For our own use, we prefer Endicia.]

The move to an “in house” label printing suite continues the split of eBay-related, non-payment operations away from PayPal.  Moves of this type are likely to increase the independent value of the eBay website while making PayPal more independent of eBay.  Both companies are expected to be moving toward a time when the two could be split up as free-standing companies.

We’ve got a lot to talk about.

In the meanwhile, I’m sending you my warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday. I’m looking forward to spending a successful 2010 with you!

Uncle Joe