Andrea Stairs

In September 2009, eBay Canada received a court-authorized requirement from the Canada Revenue Agency that requires it to release the account information and sales data of Canadian resident eBay members who meet the following criteria:

• Sales of more than $20,000 and at least 24 sales transactions in any of the calendar years 2006, 2007 or 2008, (irrespective of membership in eBay’s PowerSeller program); OR
• Sales of more than $100,000 in any of the calendar years 2006, 2007 or 2008, regardless of the number of sales transactions.

eBay is only required to release sales information for the year(s) in which a seller met the above sales thresholds.

The member information that will be released for 2006, 2007 and/or 2008 includes: full name, user id, mailing address, billing address, telephone number, fax number, email address, and the selling prices (high bids) of the items.

As you may be aware, this is the second court order of this kind that eBay has received from the Canada Revenue Agency. In November 2008, after a lengthy legal battle to defend our members’ privacy, eBay was required to reveal the account information of members who held PowerSeller status in 2004 and 2005.

We recognize that this matter is of concern to our members. While eBay strenuously objects to this violation of our members’ privacy, we are obliged to comply with the court-ordered requests. The court orders, additional information and the answers to some commonly-asked questions are posted at www.ebay.ca/CRAinfo. If you have additional questions about this situation, you may email CRA_info@ebay.ca.

eBay is alerting all members who are affected by the court order prior to disclosing their account information to the Canada Revenue Agency.

We remind all eBay members that they are responsible for ensuring that they are in compliance with all laws and regulations relating to their activities online.

Regards,

Andrea Stairs
eBay Canada

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Dinesh Lathi

As you may know, eBay is now consolidating changes that impact your business into two or three major releases a year, with two months advance notice. This is to remind you that some of the changes originally announced on July 27 as part of the fall Seller Update will begin to launch today, continuing through next week. Highlights of the changes include:

• Launch of the new eBay Top-rated seller status on eBay.com. You can start checking your Seller Dashboard on eBay.com for daily updates on Thursday, October 1, when the new status officially launches. It may take a few more days for Top-rated seller badges to appear on item pages on eBay.com.
• Enhancements to search to improve relevancy (scheduled to begin October 1).
• Streamlined process to resolve unpaid items.
• Faster ways to edit listings.
• More control over ship-to locations.
• Tracking and delivery confirmation numbers for more shipping carriers.
• And much more.

Changes to categories and Item Specifics are also included with this roll-out. Find out if your listings are impacted.

Get a complete overview, including a seller checklist and best practices to take full advantage of these updates. As we’ve mentioned, it will take a few weeks for all the updates to be fully implemented.

Put your questions to the eBay experts, available in person on the special Fall Seller Update discussion board (on eBay.com):

New eBay Top-rated Seller status: Monday, October 5, 1:00 – 4:00 PM, Eastern Time
Changes to search: Tuesday, October 6, 4:00 – 5:00 PM, Eastern Time

Sincerely,
Dinesh Lathi
Vice President, Seller Experience

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Russ Patterson

After October 31, 2009, we will discontinue eBay Blogs.

Although we realize several members have shared some great content on our blogging platform since its creation in 2006, overall usage and page views have not reached high enough levels to justify ongoing operational and maintenance expenses. Closing down eBay Blogs will allow us to focus more of our resources on our core marketplace.

We appreciate all the articles published on eBay Blogs, and we'd like to thank these eBay members/bloggers for their contributions to the eBay Community. If you have created an eBay Blog, we encourage you to print out or save your blog entries before we close this section of our site.

Remember, after October 31, 2009, these pages will no longer be available on the web.

Sincerely,
Russ Patterson

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Many sellers have contacted us about a sudden drop in numbers in their stores traffic reports..

We want to reassure you that the problem is in the tracking and reporting system only and that actual traffic and sales are normal. We are working to restore accurate reporting as soon as possible and we will keep you informed.

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

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