Book IX: Offi ce and Legal
Chapter 3: Effi cient Communications for Better Sales
Signing Up andGetting Started
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eBay Is Watching Over You
If you file a report, make your message clear and concise by including every- thing that happened, but don’t editorialize. (Calling someone a “lowdown mud-sucking cretin” doesn’t provide any useful info to anyone who can help you and doesn’t reflect well on you, either.) Keep your comments business- like — just the facts, ma’am. Be sure that the subject line of your report pre- cisely names the violation and that you include all pertinent documentation.
Here’s a checklist of backup documentation you may need for your Trust and Safety report:
✦ A copy of the facts you recorded on your report: And remember to stick to only the facts as you know them.
✦ E-mail correspondence: Attach any pertinent e-mails with complete headers. (Headers are all the information found at the top of an e-mail message.) Trust and Safety uses the headers to verify how the e-mail was sent and to follow the trail back to the author.
✦ Receipts and cancelled checks: These help verify that a transaction took place, and when.
If the clock is running out on your case (for example, you suspect bidding offenses in a current auction), I suggest that you avail yourself of the Live Help link, which appears on the eBay home page. After eBay receives your report, you usually get an automatic response that your e-mail was received.
Several days may go crawling by before eBay investigates your allegations.
(They must look at a lot of transactions.)
eBay’s response may vary
If your complaint doesn’t warrant an investigation by the folks at Trust and Safety, they pass it along to someone from the overworked customer-support staff, who then contacts you. (Don’t bawl out the person if the attention you get is tardy.)
Depending on the outcome of the probe, eBay may contact you with the results. If your problem becomes a legal matter, eBay may not let you know what’s going on. The only indication you may get that some action was taken is that the eBay member you reported is suspended, or turns out to be NARU (Not A Registered User).
Unfortunately, NARU members can show up again on the eBay site.
Typically, nefarious sorts such as these just use a different name. In fact, this practice is common, so beware! If you suspect that someone who broke the rules once is back under another user ID, alert Trust and Safety. If you’re a seller, you can refuse to accept bids from that person. If the person persists, alert customer support by e-mail.
56 eBay Is Watching Over You
Make sure that you don’t violate any eBay rules by sharing any member’s contact information as you share your story in a chat room. In addition, make sure that you don’t threaten or libel (that is, say untrue things or spread rumors about) the person in your posting.
Speeding up a response (or not)
As eBay has grown, so has the number of complaints about slow response from customer support. I don’t doubt that eBay staffers are doing their best.
Although slow response can get frustrating, avoid the temptation to initiate a reporting blitzkrieg by sending reports over and over until eBay can’t ignore you. This practice is inconsiderate at best and risky at worst, and it just slows down the process for everyone — and won’t endear the e-mail bom- bardier to the folks who could help.
If you’re desperate for help and can’t find a Live Help link, you can post a message with your problem in one of the eBay chat rooms. eBay members participating in chat rooms often share the names of helpful staffers. Often you can find some eBay members who faced the same problem (sometimes with the same member) and can offer advice — or at the very least, com- passion and a virtual ear. (Jump to Chapter 8 for more info on discussion boards and chat rooms.)
If you’re a PowerSeller, you can always contact PowerSeller support with your immediate problem. You can get to PowerSeller support by going to the site map and clicking the PowerSeller link in the middle of the page. You can also go directly to
pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/welcome.html
Don’t get caught in a trading violation
Playing by eBay’s rules keeps you off the Trust and Safety radar screen. If you start violating eBay policies, the company’s going to keep a close eye on you. Depending on the infraction, eBay may be all over you like jelly on peanut butter. Or you may safely lurk in the fringes until your feedback rating is lower than the temperature in Nome in November.
Here’s the docket of eBay no-no’s that can get members flogged and keel- hauled — or at least suspended:
✦ Feedback rating of –4.3
✦ Three instances of deadbeat bidding ✦ Repeated warning for the same infraction ✦ Feedback extortion
✦ Bid shielding
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✦ Unwelcome bidding after a warning from the seller ✦ Shill bidding
✦ Auction interception ✦ Fee avoidance ✦ Fraudulent selling
✦ Identity misrepresentation ✦ Bidding when younger than age 18 ✦ Hacking
✦ Physical threats
If you get a suspension but think you’re innocent, respond directly to the person who suspended you to plead your case. Reversals do occur. But don’t broadcast your suspicions on chat boards. If you’re wrong, you may regret it. Even if you’re right, it’s oh-so-gauche.
Be careful about accusing members of cheating. Unless you’re involved in a transaction, you don’t know all the facts. Perry Mason moments are great on television, but they’re fictional for a reason. In real life, drawing yourself into a possible confrontation is senseless. Start the complaint process, keep it businesslike, and let eBay’s staff figure out what’s going on.
58 Book I: eBay Basics
Chapter 4: Understanding eBay Sales
In This Chapter
✓ Checking out a listing page
✓ Bidding on an auction
✓ Buying something right now
✓ Visiting eBay’s specialty sites
S
ometimes, when you know exactly what you want to buy, you find not one but many auctions and fixed-price listings with that same item for sale. In this situation, knowing the different eBay sales formats is important.In this chapter, I go over the various types of sales and show you the ways to use each type to your advantage.
Checking Out the Listing Page
All item pages on eBay — whether auctions, fixed-price items, or Buy It Now items — look about the same. Figure 4-1 shows a conventional auction- item page. If you were viewing this auction page on the screen, you could scroll down and see a complete description of the item, along with shipping information.
eBay auction listings have some subtle differences. (With a venue as big as eBay, you gotta have some flexibility.) Some auctions feature a picture at the top of the page and some don’t, depending on how the seller sets up his or her sale page. You may also see the words Financing Available (more on that later). Some auctions also have preset item specifics that appear above the description written by the seller. If you’re looking at an item in a fixed- price sale, you’ll see the words Buy It Now, as shown in Figure 4-2.
60 Checking Out the Listing Page
Figure 4-1:
Wow, if I only wore a size 7!
Figure 4-2:
Bypass the starting bid and buy on the spot for
$24.99.
Here’s a list of stuff you see as you scroll down a typical auction-item page:
✦ Item category: Located just above the item title and number bar, you can click the category listing and do some comparison shopping. (Book II, Chapter 1 offers some more searching strategies.)
✦ Item title and number: The title and number identify the item. Keep track of this info for inquiries later. Some sellers (refer to Figure 4-2) also use a subtitle to pass on more information about their items.
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Checking Out the Listing Page
If you’re interested in a particular type of item, take note of the key- words used in the title (you’re likely to see them again in future titles).
Doing so helps you narrow down your searches.
✦ Watch this item: Click this link, and the item is magically added to the Watching area of your My eBay All Buying page so you can keep an eye on the progress of the auction — without actually bidding. If you haven’t signed in, you have to type your user ID and password before you can save the auction to your My eBay page.
✦ Starting bid or Current bid: This is the dollar amount that the bidding has reached. The amount changes throughout the auction as people place bids. If no bids have been placed on the item, it will read Starting bid.
Sometimes, next to the current dollar amount, you see Reserve not met or Reserve met. This means the seller has set a reserve price for the item — a secret price that must be reached before the seller will sell the item. Most auctions do not have reserve prices.
✦ End Time: Although the clock never stops ticking on eBay, you must continue to refresh your browser to see the time remaining on the official clock. When the item gets down to the last hour of the auction, you’ll see the time expressed in minutes and seconds. You’ll also see the date and time that the listing will close.
Timing is the key in an eBay bidding strategy (covered in Chapter 6), so don’t forget that eBay uses Pacific Standard Time (PST) or Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) as the standard, depending on the season.
✦ Shipping costs: If the seller is willing to ship the item anywhere in the country for a flat rate, you’ll see that here. This area may also link to eBay’s shipping calculator if the seller customizes the shipping expense according to weight and distance.
✦ Ships to: If the seller ships to only the United States, it will state so here.
If the seller ships to any other countries, this is where they will be listed.
✦ Item location: This field tells you at the very least the country where the seller is located. You may also see more specific info, such as the seller’s city and geographic area. (What you see depends on how detailed the seller chooses to be.) The item location is handy if you’d like to go pick up the item — but e-mail the seller first to see whether he or she would be willing to meet you at (say) a local Starbucks to complete the transaction.
✦ History: This field tells you how many bids have been placed. The start- ing bid is listed in light gray next to the number of bids. When the listing is live, you can click the number of bids to find out who is bidding and when bids were placed. (In some circumstances, only the seller and buyer can access this data.)
You can click the number of bids to see how the bidding action is going, but you won’t be able to see the high bidder’s proxy bid (more about proxy bids later in this chapter).
62 Checking Out the Listing Page
✦ High bidder: This field shows you the user ID and feedback rating of the current high bidder. It could be you if you’ve placed a bid!
When you’re bidding, eBay can hide your bidder ID by using anonymous names under certain circumstances. Your actual user ID is shown to the seller of this item only. Bidders are assigned anonymous names, such as a***k. Anonymous names are used for auctions that exceed a certain bidding level.
Sometimes an item has no bids because everyone is waiting until the last minute. Then you see a flurry of activity as bidders try to outbid each other (called sniping, which Chapter 6 explains). It’s all part of the fun of eBay.
✦ Buy It Now price: If you want an item immediately and the price listed in this area is okay with you, click Buy It Now. You will be taken to a page where you can complete your purchase. Buy It Now is an option and does not appear in all listings.
✦ Quantity: This field appears only when multiple items are available.
If you see a number other than 1 in this field and the item is open to bid, you’re looking at a multiple-item auction (Dutch auction), which I describe later in this chapter. If it’s a multiple-item, fixed-price sale, you have no opportunity to bid — you use Buy It Now to purchase whatever quantity of the item you want. You’ll be prompted for a quantity when you buy.
✦ Meet the Seller: This area, on the right side of the page, gives you infor- mation about the seller. Know thy seller ranks right after caveat emptor as a phrase that pays at eBay. As I tell you nearly a million times in this book, read the feedback rating! (Okay, maybe not a million — it would drive the editors bonkers.) Like any community, eBay has its share of good folks and bad folks. Your best defense is to read the seller’s feed- back. You’ll see several things in the Meet the Seller box (as shown in Figure 4-3):
Figure 4-3:
Lots of data on the seller here.
• Seller icons: Various icons that show the status of the seller. A varied color star reflects the feedback level of the seller. If the seller is a PowerSeller, you see the PowerSeller icon. To see if the seller has an About Me page, click on their feedback number and look for a blue-and-red me icon.
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Checking Out the Listing Page
• Feedback score: This number is also to the right of the seller’s name in parentheses. Click the number next to the seller’s ID to view his or her eBay ID card and entire feedback history. Read, read, and reread all the feedback to make sure you feel comfortable doing business with this person.
• Positive feedback percentage: The eBay computers calculate this figure. It’s derived from all the positive and negative feedback that a user receives.
• Member since: You can find the date the seller joined eBay and the country in which he or she registered by clicking the Read Feedback Profile link.
• Read Feedback Profile: This link does the same thing as clicking the feedback score.
• Ask Seller a Question: Clicking this link hooks you up with eBay’s e-mail system so you can ask the seller a question regarding the item.
If the seller uses Skype (eBay’s voice-over-Internet phone service), you may be able to click a nearby icon and chat live or call the seller with an immediate question.
• View seller’s other items: This link takes you to a page that lists all the seller’s current auctions and fixed-price sales. If the seller has an eBay store, a link to it appears here as well. I give you a step-by-step guide on how these links work later in this chapter.
✦ Description bar: In this section, you find the item description on the Description tab. It will state “revised” if the seller has made any revi- sions to the description during the run of the listing. There may also be a colorful header with links to the seller’s eBay store. Also, if the seller is bonded through BuySAFE, that info will appear in the item description area. Read all this information carefully before bidding.
By clicking the Shipping and Payments tab, you’ll find some other important data on the typical listing page, as shown in Figures 4-4 and 4-5.
Figure 4-4:
The shipping and handling details for the item listing.
64 Bidding on Auctions
• Whether the seller is charging flat shipping or is offering more than one shipping option through a shipping calculator.
• Who pays (usually the buyer).
• Whether insurance is offered.
• Which states have to pay sales tax (if any) and the sales tax rate.
• Whether the seller is willing to ship to your area. (Sometimes sellers won’t ship internationally, and they’ll let you know here.)
Be sure to also check the item description for other shipping information and terms.
Figure 4-5:
The seller’s return policy.
✦ Item-related links: From here you can e-mail the item to tip off a friend on a good find, get some advice from an antiques or collecting expert, or run the auction by someone who’s been around the eBay block a few times and ask for strategy advice. You also have a link to a printer- friendly version of the page and an additional link you can use to ask the seller a question.
Be sure to use the Watch This Item feature when shopping around.
Organization is the name of the game on eBay, especially if you plan to bid on multiple auctions while you’re running auctions of your own. I figure you’re in the bidding game to win, so start keeping track of items now.
Bidding on Auctions
To give you a sense of the auction process, here’s a real-world example of my addictions put to the eBay test. I searched and found an item that I wanted, a “New York Pizza.” After reading the seller’s feedback (and skip- ping lunch), I wanted the item even more! None of this seller’s previous buyers were unhappy with the product. As a matter of fact, no one seems able to say enough about the quality of their food. Yum! (If I buy the pizza for research for this book, it makes my pizza a tax write-off, no?)
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Bidding on Auctions
The pizza’s starting bid is $9.95, and the auction ends in over four days. So I need to observe several things about the auction. How many more are up for sale? A simple search shows that only one is up for auction. What did they sell for in the past? I run a completed auctions search, and see that they’ve sold for up to $20. (Shipping is free — this is as good as Domino’s!)
You have to make some decisions. I have observed that these pizza auc- tions have an active bidding pattern, so at this early stage I bid the minimum amount just to get the item to show up as one of the items in the All Buying area of the My eBay page.
Bidding can be like games of poker. If you want to win a one-of-a-kind item, don’t show your hand to other bidders. Simply mark the auction to watch.
However, this strategy isn’t necessary for an item that will be sure to be listed again, like the New York Pizza.
When it comes to auctions, the highest bid wins. Remember this, please.
People are constantly boo-hooing because they’ve been outbid at the last minute (or sniped, as I explain in Chapter 6). You can’t be outbid if you’re the high bidder!
Automatic bidding
Bidding on eBay goes up by prescribed increments. But what if you’re not able to sit in on an auction 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, upping your bid every time someone bids against you? (You mean you have a life?)
You do receive e-mail messages from eBay to let you know that you’ve been outbid, but eBay’s computers are often busy doing other things and you might not get the notice in time to place a new competitive bid.
If you’re interested in an item but you don’t have the time to follow it closely from the beginning of the auction to its conclusion, you can place a proxy bid using eBay’s automatic bidding system to place your bid for the highest amount you’re willing to pay for an item — without spending your valuable time constantly following the auction.
Instead of waiting it out with eBay’s automatic proxy bidding, you can also go to the seller’s eBay store to see whether a duplicate item is for sale at a fixed price. Or, if the seller has set a Buy It Now price and (again) you’re too impatient to wait until the end of the auction to win, click Buy It Now and go from there.