In the coming week, we will be updating Item Specifics within the Passenger Vehicles and Motorcycles categories in the Automotive section. We will also be adding sortable columns to the search results page for year and kilometre.

• Passenger Vehicles
  
  Adding Manufacturer (to be relabeled as "Make"), Model, Model Year, Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), Kilometres, Exterior Colour, Interior Colour, Number of Cylinders, Transmission, Number of Doors, Condition, Options, Safety Features and Power Options.
  
  
• Motorcycles
  
  Adding Manufacturer (to be relabeled as "Make"), Model, Model Year, Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), Kilometres, Engine Size and Condition.

For sellers, Item Specifics help make it easier to present a clean, well-organized description that clearly articulates important details that buyers want to see. Using Item Specifics is free and optional. For buyers, Item Specifics improves the ability to find the right item for a given application, and buyers will also be able to search for items using Item Specifics a few weeks later.

If you list items manually through an eBay seller tool (e.g. Sell Your Item form, Turbo Lister) or the eBay API, Item Specifics will be available in the next few weeks. If you utilize a 3rd party listing service (e.g., Andale, Auctionworks, etc.), please contact them to verify that they will offer the Item Specifics functionality in the above categories.

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*** 50% off Insertion Fee Sale - July 28, 2005 ***

eBay is having a 50% off sale for Canadians! It all starts Thursday, July 28, 2005 at 00:00:01 EDT (12:00 AM plus one second on July 28, 2005) and ends that same day Thursday, July 28, 2005 23:59:59 EDT (11:59 PM plus 59 seconds).

Insertion fees for Auction-Style and Fixed Price listings will be reduced to 50% their regular fees. To learn the exact fee changes per pricing tranche, click here. These prices will be good for all Canadian residents listing on eBay.ca, eBay.com or eBay Motors. Listings created prior to the promotion and scheduled to start during the promotional period of July 28, 2005 will be eligible for the promotional fee. Please note the discounted fees will not be immediately reflected on the site. You will see a credit to your seller's account within 60 days of your listing.

Items re-listed on July 28 that match the above eligibility will qualify for the promotion. Canadian residents who registered on other eBay sites will still be eligible, provided your registered address is Canadian.

Motors vehicles, Business and Industrial Capital Equipment, Store Inventory Format and Real Estate Ad Format listings will not be included in this promotion. The promotional rate does not apply to listings revised during the promotional period. The promotional rate also does not apply to listings created during the promotion July 28, 2005, but scheduled to start after the promotion ends.

For more details, including the exact price changes, eligibility and exclusions, click here.

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Lynn Reedy

Hi, I'm Lynn Reedy, Chief Technology Officer for the eBay Marketplace, and I'd like to remind you to mark your calendars for the next Community Town Hall on Thursday, July 28th. This month's event will be about eBay's innovative products and features, some of which are Want It Now, Turbo Lister, and My eBay. Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America, has invited Judy Kirkpatrick, our Vice President of Global Product Management, and me to be there so we can hear what's on your mind and to answer your questions about the various features and products around eBay.

Want to know more about how our products and features get created? Have thoughts on how we can make improvements or new product ideas? Starting today, you can submit your questions, and Bill, Judy, and I will do our best to answer them during the Town Hall. Please visit www.ebay.com/townhall for more information.

See you next week!

Sincerely,

Lynn Reedy
Sr. VP and Chief Technology Officer, Marketplace Product and Technology

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To help buyers find items they may like, we have provided them with two more ways to get ideas about items that might interest them.

• Personalized Picks
  
  Personalized Picks is a new section in My eBay. Here you’ll see items similar to those you’ve recently shopped for and other ideas to help you find things on eBay that might interest you. To view your Personalized Picks, sign in to My eBay and click on the “Personalized Picks” link under All Buying on the left-hand side.
  
  
• Expanded Watch Reminder Emails
  
  Soon your Watch Reminder emails (those you receive when items on your Watch list are ending soon) will display additional items similar to those already on your Watch list. The additional items will be based on information such as the keyword search or category you used to find items that you then added to your Watch list.

Sellers who prefer that these additional items not be shown on Watch Reminder emails featuring one of their items will be able to opt out of this feature from the Preferences section in My eBay. However, please note that doing so also means that your items will not be included in the similar items section in other Watch Reminder emails.

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Sarah Brubacher

Jeff Spaulding

Hi... we're Sarah Brubacher and Jeff Spaulding. Today, we're here to announce that eBay and PayPal are making some updates to our payments policies that will go into effect next month.

Beginning August 19, 2005, all sellers who offer PayPal as a payment option for their eBay listings must accept all forms of PayPal payment. This includes payments made via PayPal account balances, bank accounts, or credit cards, regardless of whether sellers display the PayPal logo with credit card icons.

We've had a lot of buyers and sellers tell us that the current policy is confusing, or felt it was unclear how PayPal's and eBay's respective policies applied to the situation where a seller displayed the PayPal logo but stated in their item description that they only accept payment via a balance or bank transfer. Our goal in updating this policy is to not only provide a consistent user experience for buyers, but also to create clearer policy and to better provide a level playing field for all sellers on eBay.

When the new policy takes effect, sellers who list with a PayPal Personal account may still receive payments funded via account balance or bank account transfers but must also be willing to upgrade to a PayPal Premier or Business Account if they receive a credit card payment via PayPal from their buyer.

Additionally, sellers may not communicate to eBay buyers (for example, in their item description) that they only accept, or will not accept, specific forms of PayPal payment. Doing so in a listing can lead to it being cancelled, and refusal to accept a payment after the auction has ended will constitute Seller Non-Performance.

The details of this policy update can be found both in PayPal's Policy section and on eBay on our PayPal Payments Policy page.

Sincerely,

Sarah Brubacher
Senior Policy Manager, eBay

Jeff Spaulding
Senior Manager, eBay North America Business for PayPal

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We are pleased to announce a new feature called Buyer Status Alerts in eBay Header. With this feature, you will see new alert messages which will notify you when the status of an auction or Buy It Now listing you're involved with as a buyer has changed. These will display underneath the eBay Header (the bar at the top of almost every page with the Buy and Sell buttons).

You will see an alert when the following happens:

• An item that you've been outbid on is about to end.
• An item you're watching (but haven't bid on) is about to end.

From the Preferences section of My eBay, you will be able to modify your Notification Preferences to control the type and frequency of alerts you would like to see.

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In the next few weeks, when you search for an item, we may show Related Search suggestions below the search box on the search results page and other places on the site. These suggestions are based on what has worked in the past for other buyers and are completely optional. Simply click on one of the suggestions to change your search.

We will show two types of Related Searches:

• Suggestions to refine your search
  
  Sometimes adding more keywords to your search will help you find exactly what you want. Say you search on "DVD player". We might suggest a more specific search, such as "progressive scan DVD player", that other buyers have used in the past before ultimately placing a bid.
  
  
• Search alternatives
  
  Other times you may be interested in a certain subject area, but aren't looking for an exact item. For example, if you are a Star Wars fan, you might search for something Star Wars-related. If you type “Star Wars” in the search box, we might recommend also trying a search for “Darth Vader”. These recommendations are again based on what buyers have done in the past.

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This week, eBay Canada begins a 90-day trial of a feature to filter Feedback comments by rating type.

Community members have long asked for a way to only see Feedback of a certain type, such as negative or neutral, and have long debated the addition of such a feature. Many members have said that the ability to filter by different feedback types will help them make better trading decisions. Others feel that seeing feedback within context is important and that viewing only negative comments could unfairly obscure all of the positive comments received during the same time.

This effort is a step toward evaluating this functionality by gathering input from the eBay Canada Community and measuring the effect this has on the entire marketplace.

The trial will be limited to eBay.ca. All other international sites, except for eBay.com, will have this feature available on their country sites. This feature will apply only to Feedback received within the past 12 months.

During the trial, members on eBay.ca will be able to access a new drop-down menu labelled "Period" on the Member Profile page. After choosing a time period, special rating filter links will appear. Also within the filtered view, a new icon will appear next to each feedback comment allowing members to quickly view the feedback left by both the buyer and seller for that transaction (if any).

To learn more about the Feedback Filter feature, please click here. Depending on the results of the trial, this feature may remain on eBay.ca. During the trial period, please send us your thoughts and suggestions about this feature to feedbackdesign@ebay.com. Thank you!

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