If you qualify for participation, you will have received an email and a Message Center message. Please look for these to see if you are eligible.EBay once offered its sales to all customers. Earlier this year, eBay had a sale in which only people who had sold in the last month could get free listings. Now, eBay has a sale in which users must receive an invitation. I wonder how eBay decides who should receive the invitation?
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EBay made an announcement today concerning the books category. From eBay's announcement board:
From now through the end of 2009, pay only 5¢ Insertion Fees when you list books, music, movies, and video games on eBay.com in Fixed Price with product details. Your listings will show up on both the new eBay product pages and in search results. That’s double exposure for just 5¢. Plus, get Subtitle free with Fixed Price and Auction-style listings in these categories when you list with product details.The five cent listings promotion means more poorly-described listings with stock photos of books that we do not want to buy. I know someone out there thinks that I, as a buyer, should be very grateful, but I am not. These will not be books that I want to buy.
We’re extending this promotion as part of our commitment to make eBay a top destination for books, music, movies and DVDs and video games. The goal: give today’s buyers the deals and selection they demand, and give sellers the pricing and exposure they need to succeed.
Also, starting in May, Half.com sellers will be able to choose to have their listings show up on eBay product pages at no extra cost. With almost 60% of the inventory on Half.com not currently being offered on eBay, this will go a long way to delivering the selection buyers expect.
Even worse, Half.com's inventory will begin to be listed on eBay. Check out the 150 matches for a Nancy Drew books category search on Half.com. I do not feel that the presence of any of these listings will enhance my eBay search experience. I do not want new books; I want old ones. More clutter will be added to my searches.
This is interesting. EBay's Board of Directors met today. According to Ina Steiner,
eBay's Board of Directors found the company under-performed in 2008 and is awarding no eBay Incentive Plan bonuses to top executives. In addition, the board is freezing executive salaries this year. The board's compensation committee also created a new peer group by which to measure executive performance going forward.So, they are just now noticing that something is wrong?
6 comments:
Hi, Jennifer,
Had to come here to post this really bizarre thing that I have never seen before on ebay.
Saw this item (#230329588214) on my watch list:
ENDING SOON
VINTAGE ANTIQUE NANCY DREW CAROL KEENE GROSSET DUNLAP
ohmyjohnnyo ( 647) 100.0%
5 $99.99
Free
11h 54m
Thought that was a high bid for so "early" in the auction since so many buyers snipe these days. So look what I found in the bid details for this auction:
Bidders:3 Bids:5
Time left:11 hours 46 mins 21 secs
Bidder Bid Amount
Bid Time
d***0( 7 ) US $99.99
Mar-07-09 18:40:44 PST
d***0( 7 ) US $20.00
Mar-07-09 18:39:35 PST
s***t( 6 ) US $10.00
Mar-06-09 20:58:26 PST
d***0( 7 ) US $10.00
Mar-07-09 18:39:01 PST
f***a( 990) US $5.00
Mar-06-09 16:01:20 PST
Starting Price US $0.99 Mar-06-09 12:05:26 PST
It is showing d***0's bid as $99.99 even though the last bid against this bidder is only $10.00!!! What the heck?? And since we don't know who this poor newbie person is, we can't warn him or her that something is wrong with this auction. Some new people don't understand how the automatic bidding works, and might not realize that this isn't supposed to happen. How can you have confidence in ebay when you see stuff like this? OMG - Makes you wonder if some sellers have figured out how to find the "secret" high bids...
I want to comment on today's blog also, but will come back tomorrow to do that. More later...
I wonder whether the auction could have been a reserve auction? Since I did not see the auction sooner, there is no way of knowing. In the past, eBay would keep a "reserve is met" message on the auction after a reserve had been met. If eBay has quit using that message, then they have made another improvement which is not an improvement.
On the left of the bid history page, there is a brief description of the lot. Included in this is a line saying "Reserve met."
OK, it's official now: I'm an IDIOT! LOL! Obviously I wasn't thinking too clearly at 3AM - I shouldn't be writing at that hour - I get delusional and/or paranoid. I guess it is a good thing ebay protects the bidders from clueless people like me who would be "warning" them that their auction is messed up! OMG - as embarassed as I am now, that would've been worse. Thanks for the explanation - I don't know why I was so oblivious - I think there did used to be a comment by the high bid saying "reserve met", but I should've realized anyway.
Hey, it is not just you! I only had a moment when I posted my comment, but I did not see the "reserve met" since I did not look carefully. EBay used to have the "reserve met" prominently located on both the main item page and on the bidding history page. It has been made harder to find, which is not an improvement.
I feel so "special" - I got an email for the free insertion fee. I have no idea why. I've sold very little, very sporadically. It's limited to ten listings, so maybe they are trying to entice the small sellers? I remember replying to a survey in the last year where I said that the fees were prohibitive for small volume sellers to sell items under 10.00 - the total fees - ebay and Paypal - just make up too big a percentage of the item's selling price. Any profit the seller would make, just wasn't worth the effort.
Only one of the item's I've sold was a book - a recent inspirational book, not children's - that I wanted to pass on and I wasn't concerned about making money. They had the 5 cent listing promotion then too. I think it's been there pretty constantly for at least four months. So I thought - okay, this should be easy. I still took my own picture, because I know I hate stock photos, so I didn't want to use one as a seller. And I wrote a very brief description - more my impression of the book than anything else. It was easier to list because all the details about publisher, etc., were done for me. So for modern / new books, I can see the attraction to this method. But for selling/buying collectible books, this will never work.
I have more to say about ebay trying to be like Amazon, but I will post that comment on your most recent blog of today.
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