Author Topic: ebay and the latest ...............................................MEDIA REPORTS  (Read 1195071 times)

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671


bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
eBay International Shipping Issues (Australia, UK)


eBay Australia said it has recently increased the maximum limit for flat-rate domestic postage and handling costs by approximately 4 percent, it said, to reflect Australia Post's recent increase in postage costs. The postage and handling limits apply only to a small number of categories on eBay.com.au.

*smee*

  • Action Group
  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 46854
Its hardly surprising that the eBay traffic flow has diminished ,
where there used to be direct roads to using eBay they have managed to instal cul-de-sacs , roundabouts and roadblocks !!!

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
EBay’s Traffic Drops Amid Identity Crisis


It has been a year and a half since Meg Whitman said she would hand the chief executive’s office at eBay to John Donahoe, and at least by some measures, the company continues to lose traction with both buyers and sellers.


http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/ebays-traffic-drops-amid-identity-crisis/?hpw


bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
Net sleuth calls eBay on carpet over shill bidding


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/10/ebay_and_shill_bidding/

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

*CountessA*

  • Administrator
  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 35154
Disturbing news... Thanks, BNWT, for keeping us all informed about these things.
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is ...a part of the maine; ...any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde"

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
Woman accused of online auction scam


Reichard told troopers he agreed to pay the woman through PayPal, an online payment service, the complaint said. Watson allegedly withdrew the funds for the television from her PayPal account and then closed the account, along with her eBay account, State Police said.

Reichard told police he never received his television set and was never refunded the $1,600, according to the complaint.


http://www.dailymail.com/policebrfs/200907120354

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671


bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671


*CountessA*

  • Administrator
  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 35154
BNWT, I wish we knew more about the case of the Charleston woman. Did Reichard file a complaint with PayPal before 45 days were up? Did he in fact succeed in negotiating a better price with the woman and did he thus purchase off-eBay? He should still have been protected by Paypal of course, in the event of non-receipt of goods, but he might not have lodged his complaint within the 45-day period which would give PayPal an out.

It's good that the woman is being prosecuted, but I hope that poor guy gets back his money.
"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is ...a part of the maine; ...any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde"

Liisa-Sx

  • Knights of the RT
  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 6793
16-year-old boy bought a Sony Playstation 2 for $194 and got $90,000 as bonus

A 16-year-old British boy who bought a Sony Playstation 2 for $194 on eBay got more then game console when he opened the package. There was a whole heap of euros -- €65,400 ($90,000) to be precise -- stacked neatly inside.

The boy's parents alerted police when the parcel arrived. Police are holding the money while the matter is investigated. But, if the money remains unclaimed the family could potentially apply for it to be returned to them.

A spokesman for eBay said: "We know that eBay is a great place to pick up a bargain, although in this case, we agree that the contents of the parcel were somewhat unusual and we will assist with any inquiries the police may wish to make."



God... Why can't I find sellers like that????
They said there would be cake....and there WAS!

ernest_price

  • Guest
Phoney bidding 'rampant' on eBay

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/phoney-bidding-rampant-on-ebay-20090714-djsr.html

An in-depth investigation by an Australian retiree has revealed that fake bids are "running rampant" on eBay, forcing users to pay inflated prices for items on the auction site.

Philip Cohen, 69, from Brighton-Le-Sands in Sydney, found several instances of shill bidding - where phoney eBay accounts are used to bid up the price of items on the auction site to inflate the final price paid by buyers.

He places the blame squarely on eBay, saying that its anti-shill security systems are flawed or non-existent. He says that shill bidding has been encouraged by a new policy from eBay to hide from other users the usernames of people bidding on items.

Cohen's 8000-word analysis was published on eBay's message board and the AuctionBytes website, but it has been inexplicably deleted from the former.

"eBay should not be allowed to knowingly facilitate the defrauding of the `buying' users of its service by those unscrupulous shill-bidding `selling' users nor conceal such crime after the event - which, in my humble opinion, is presently, effectively the case," Cohen wrote.

When buying an item on an eBay auction, a user enters the maximum amount he or she is willing to pay and, if another buyer bids on that item, the first user's bid is automatically increased in small increments up to the maximum amount he or she has entered.

With shill bidding, unscrupulous sellers typically register new eBay accounts and bid on their own items to push bids higher and higher towards buyers' maximum price. If the shill bidder accidentally bids too much and wins the item, the seller is able to remove that final bid to reinstate the previously highest bidder as the winner.

Cohen, who is predominantly an eBay buyer, discovered this practice on several eBay auctions. In two of them, an Australian shill bidder was able to bump up the price of Australian oil paintings by $156 and $153.50, respectively, without the winning bidder even realising.

It was obvious to Cohen that the bids were from a shill bidder because that eBay account had made 190 bids on 41 items in the preceding 30 days, all from just a single seller.

"If there's a proactive system it's just ludicrous to say that they're not picking it up," Cohen said in a phone interview.

In his article he writes: "eBay simply has no incentive to remove fraudsters ... because these many fraudsters contribute to eBay's revenues and, if users don't notice any such untoward activity, then eBay does nothing."

In response to the instances of shill bidding raised in Cohen's piece, eBay took action against - but did not ban - the particular sellers involved but did not make any changes to make it harder for shill bidders in future. It says it has tools in place to detect shill bids automatically but refuses to go into further detail.

Cohen said eBay should reinstate its policy of disclosing the usernames of all buyers bidding on an item and run checks on users' IP addresses to determine whether two different accounts are in fact being used from the same computer.

It should also proactively check bidding patterns to determine if any accounts are bidding an inordinate amount on items from a single seller, and make it more difficult to retract bids.

Cohen quotes Jarrod Trevathan, a computer scientist with James Cook University, who suggests eBay publish a "shill score" out of 10 that rates bidders based on factors such as how many auctions they have participated in, the number of times they have won, how quick they are to bid and what stage in the auction they submit most of their bids.

"Most suspect shill bidding incidents are only investigated when a complaint is made by a legitimate bidder who feels that something is not right," Trevathan is quoted as saying.

eBay Australia spokesman Daniel Feiler said bidding users' account names were hidden to avoid another type of nasty eBay scheme, whereby people who did not win an auction are contacted - often by scammers - with offers to buy the item or something similar from another seller outside eBay.

He noted that shill bidding was becoming less of a problem as half of the items listed on the site were now sold for a fixed price as opposed to the auction format.

"We've had systems for [detecting] shill bidding since eBay's earliest days," Feiler said.

"This person has found a couple of isolated incidents ... there's over 100 million listings on eBay at any one time, so there's bound to be a handful that are problematic, but in the scheme of things it's very, very small."

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
eBay makes changes to fees


Online marketplace eBay says its Australian website is experiencing a similar downwards trend in sales as its other sites worldwide and has cut fees to bolster its local listings.


http://www.watoday.com.au/breaking-news-business/ebay-makes-changes-to-fees-20090715-dk9s.html

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

*Yibida*

  • Action Group
  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 17998
eBay makes changes to fees


Online marketplace eBay says its Australian website is experiencing a similar downwards trend in sales as its other sites worldwide and has cut fees to bolster its local listings.


http://www.watoday.com.au/breaking-news-business/ebay-makes-changes-to-fees-20090715-dk9s.html


"Ms Sharkey cited data from Forrester Research, which forecast Australian online spending to grow from $17.9 billion in 2008 to $27.2 billion by 2012."

Yeh but Ebay aint gonna see much of that, it's competitors like Amazon and the others are going to clean up until [ if ] Ebay find's sanity again !!!!!!!!

Liisa-Sx

  • Knights of the RT
  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 6793
Ms Sharkey is full of the proverbial lol
They said there would be cake....and there WAS!

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
eBay Australia Announces New Pricing, End of Store Inventory Format


The site said sellers who list in Auction or don't own an eBay Store should know there are no changes to the standard pricing.


http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m07/i15/s01

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
eBay scam


video presentation ..... Australia Today Show


http://today.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=838042

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
An eBay Item-Page Redesign Could Affect Use of Templates


http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2009/7/1247777825.html


eBay Considers More Changes to View Item Page


http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y09/m07/i16/s00

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
EBay Expected To See 2Q Earnings Fall


"Despite a very strong brand name and what should be a reasonably recession-resistant consumer value proposition, eBay appears to be getting squeezed at the top end by Amazon and by other direct online retailers and at the lower end by Craigslist," Mark Mahaney of Citigroup wrote in a note to clients on July 8.

 
That said, several analysts believe the company's business has begun to stabilize in the second quarter, though it will take more time to see if the many changes made to the core marketplace business will bear fruit.


http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090717-711719.html

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

tellomon

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 50984
  • You don't get everything you want at Tello's.
    • facebook
In response to the instances of shill bidding raised in Cohen's piece, eBay took action against - but did not ban - the particular sellers involved but did not make any changes to make it harder for shill bidders in future. It says it has tools in place to detect shill bids automatically but refuses to go into further detail.

Yeah, cuz maybe ebay is lying again??? Cuz they really DON'T have the "tools"?

ebay is a tool.

And it's broken.....


 >:(
"The B@zturd Love Child of Comix & a News Organization"

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671


bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
Google Voice: Trouble Calling for Skype?


Google's push into the Web phone-calling market is likely to cut into sales by Internet phone companies such as eBay's (EBAY) Skype


http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jul2009/tc20090717_582966.htm

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
eBay Earnings, Major Policy Changes Ahead


Chief among the expected announcements is a plan to replace eBay's (NASDAQ: EBAY) PowerSelling branding with a "top-rated" icon, though the PowerSeller program would continue for a year or so to be used as the criteria for rewarding sellers with fee discounts and search exposure, according to a source who has been briefed on the changes.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3830816/eBay+Earnings+Major+Policy+Changes+Ahead.htm

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671
EBay: Back To Basics


 ........... eBay's online marketplaces are shrinking. Over the last year, growth rates swung from 19% in the first quarter to a negative 16% in the latest one. That's likely indicative of a maturing auction business, says Jeffries analyst Youssef Squali, but could also indicate that the 10-year-old online auction business is entering a permanent decline.


http://news.alibaba.com/article/detail/technology/100139662-1-ebay%253A-back-basics.html

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671

bnwt

  • Knight of the RT
  • *****
  • Posts: 3671