Lorrie Norrington

Today, we announced some exciting news that will go a long way toward meeting our goal of a healthy, vibrant marketplace. We also provided the audience with some updates on the changes we’ve rolled out over the past six months, including how members are responding to incentives, pricing and Feedback. Overall, we’re pleased with what we’ve seen, but as with anything we do, we are committed to listening to all of you and looking for ways to improve.

I know that many of you have seen a lot of change over the past six months, and for some it hasn’t been easy. But as I told the audience here, people simply expect more when they come to eBay … and it’s our job to make sure we meet their expectations.

Although we have more work to do, we’re seeing signs of real progress. The news we announced today builds on what we’ve done to date … and I know these changes will make our marketplace stronger.

I’m providing a summary below, and I encourage all of you to read our overview page to learn more about all of the changes announced today.

More rewards for PowerSellers
Last fall, we told you that detailed seller ratings (DSRs) would be an increasingly important success metric for seller standards and rewards. We also stated our intention to turn the PowerSeller label into a badge of distinction, one that buyers would come to recognize as a mark of trust. Today, the PowerSeller program is just that – it rewards sellers for their success in both sales as well as buyer satisfaction as demonstrated by great DSRs.

Today, we announced that we’re adding a new PowerSeller reward to further encourage and reward our best sellers:

• Starting with July invoices, PowerSellers who have a 4.9 or higher across all four DSRs will receive a 20% discount on their Final Value Fees. We hope as time goes on, an increasingly greater number of eBay PowerSellers will qualify for this new substantial discount.

Between now and the holiday season, we’ll do more to support your success and ensure we are price competitive in every key category. The intent of all this change is obvious: We want great stuff and great deals on eBay – new, used, and collectables.

Please stay tuned for more pricing information on the Announcement Board later this summer.

Investments in our best buyers
We’re investing heavily to make eBay.ca safer and easier to use for all buyers. This includes enhancements in our search and user experience, so that you’ll see more relevant, high-quality products than ever before on eBay.ca.

In addition, top buyers are getting more attention from us in terms of service. Starting at the end of June, we will be providing live customer phone support to our US top buyers and we anticipate rolling out similar support to our Canadian top buyers later in the year. We’ve been offering phone support to our sellers for many years, and it’s certainly time to extend that to top buyers.

Feedback progress
I want to acknowledge the concerns many of you have shared about the changes we made to the Feedback system in May. As we outlined in January, we felt strongly that we had to make significant changes to preserve the system’s integrity and to reduce the bad experiences created by retaliatory Feedback that were driving our buyers away. Many of you have written to me personally about your concerns, and I want you to know we are listening.

I also want to share that, while it’s still early, we’re seeing encouraging results. Although sellers feared buyers would leave negative feedback more often, I’m happy to report that the combined rate of negative and neutral feedback is unchanged over the first month. Also, the percentage of buyers who are leaving detailed seller ratings has increased: Now buyers who leave Feedback leave DSRs 76 percent of the time, showing an increased confidence in the Feedback system. And when buyers have more confidence in feedback, they have more trust in shopping on eBay.

That said, this is an evolving system. For example, we’re looking at enabling buyers to withdraw/change their Feedback in limited circumstances to help resolve issues or correct the occasional mistake based on input from our Community. Our goal is to address this by the end of the year. And we’re doing this based on input from our Community, including at eBay Live!.

Other Announcements
I’m happy to tell you that starting this fall both US sellers, and buyers on eBay.com, will receive increased protection when they trade with PayPal. Although resource restrictions prevent us from rolling this initiative out to Canada with the same timing, we do expect to offer the same protections to Canadian buyers and sellers in 2009.

We’ll continue to monitor the effects of these changes carefully, and rest assured we’re make additional improvements as needed.