We would like to clarify that the statement "On Sunday March 30th, clocks will be springing forward once again, going ahead one hour at 2:00 CET to 3:00 CEST." in our previous post was made in error. It should read "On Sunday March 30th, clocks will be springing forward once again, going ahead one hour at 1:00 GMT to 2:00 BST." We apologise for any confusion this may have caused.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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	***Original: Daylight Saving Time Reminder***
	29 March, 2008 | 10:00AM GMT On Sunday March 30th, clocks will be springing forward once again, going ahead one hour at 2:00 CET to 3:00 CEST. The necessary adjustment to the eBay official time will be made to reflect this change. As a reminder, all items that are listed before the time change will still run for exactly the same length of time of 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This means that if an item begins at 1:00PM before March 30th and ends after the time changes, the ending time will be changed to 2:00PM instead of 1:00PM. Regards, The eBay Team
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We would like to tell you about a new International Site Visibility listing upgrade that will give UK and Ireland sellers full visibility and access to buyers on the US and Canadian eBay sites.

From May, UK and Ireland sellers can reach millions of additional buyers across North America by paying a small additional fee which will provide exposure for their listings in the main default search results on both eBay.com and eBay.ca.

The UK and Ireland fees to use this optional upgrade will be as below:

UK

Ireland

This new feature is a simple and cost-effective way to help sellers expand their international businesses. US and Canadian sellers are also being offered this feature to allow their listings to appear on the eBay UK site. We’ll be adding support for more international markets in the near future.

The feature also means that UK and Ireland-based high volume sellers can gain access to eBay.com and eBay.ca and have those sales count towards Final Value Fee discounts (get more information on discounts for UK and Ireland).

Alternatively, international sellers can:

offer an international postage option on their domestic listings and rely on buyers in other markets using Advanced Search to find their listings.

Please note that for sellers who choose to list on different eBay sites, those sales will not count towards UK Final Value Fee Discounts.

A word about testing – US-UK Collectables

Over the past six months, we’ve been running tests in the collectables-related categories on eBay.com and eBay.co.uk, looking for optimal ways to display international listings. These tests will be concluded as we introduce International Site Visibility as an upgrade.

International Site Visibility will help sellers reach international markets and provide a greater selection of items to buyers. We’ll update you again once International Site Visibility is launched.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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On Thursday 3rd April, pay only 5p per item when you list with any starting price using the Auction-style, Auction with Buy It Now or Buy It Now only formats.

There's no better time to get listing!

Final value and feature fees are not included in this promotion.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Further to our previous announcement, it’s likely the launch of the new Seller Dashboard will be delayed until next week. Additionally, we want to clarify that access to the Dashboard will be available only to registered business sellers.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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	***Original: Monitor Your DSRs with the New Seller Dashboard ***
	27 March, 2008 | 05:03PM GMT Launching this week is the Seller Dashboard - a new tool which allows sellers to closely monitor their 30-day Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs). This first phase of the Seller Dashboard will enable business sellers to keep an eye on the latest Feedback left from their buyers, and to quickly identify and correct any problems reported with their service. The Seller Dashboard will also provide information to sellers on the opportunity to earn Final Value Fee discounts on their future invoices. The Seller Dashboard can be accessed within the My Account section of My eBay. We look forward to updating you further during the rest of 2008 on future phases of development. Regards, The eBay Team
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In January we announced some changes to Feedback, effective in May. Since then, we’ve also been putting measures in place to help ensure that sellers are protected against manipulation of the new Feedback system.

Buyers threatening to use negative Feedback to force an unfair deal
This is extremely rare and grounds for permanent buyer suspension, but we recognise it has happened in the past and will be tried in the future. If you experience this sort of behaviour, please report it to us. Click "Show" next to Additional Information on our Feedback Extortion policy page then click "contact us".

When we identify a pattern of abuse, or if we consider the evidence to be clear from your report, we will remove the negative or neutral feedback left by the buyer and if appropriate, suspend them. We need your help with reporting to make this work.

Removing negative or neutral Feedback left by a buyer who fails to respond to a UPI

We are building in more flexibility for what happens when a buyer responds to an Unpaid Item dispute (UPI). From May, we will retroactively remove negative or neutral feedback left by buyers who do not respond to the UPI process, or respond but do not specifically call out poor seller performance, item condition or transaction problems.

Thank you for continuing to offer your thoughts and suggestions on the changes we’re introducing to make eBay an even more trusted site, where sellers thrive as buyers shop with even more confidence.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We thought you’d like to hear about a new feature that will make it easier for sellers to correct their listings when they have been removed due to a policy breach.

Many listing policy breaches are mistakes that can be easily fixed by the seller - yet because the listings are currently removed from the site completely, sellers have to start again with a new listing to make the corrections. This can require a lot of extra time and effort, so we’ve now simplified the process.

From now on, if sellers have a listing removed for a policy breach, it will be moved to the ’Unsold‘ section of My eBay with a clear indication that the listing was removed. Sellers should check in My Messages for an email explaining which policy was breached. Sellers can then choose to edit the listing and relist the item without having to start from scratch (or to delete it entirely from the Unsold section).

When relisting sellers should make sure that their revised listing complies with the law and all eBay policies, and check their other listings for similar breaches as well. Review our listing guidelines

Regards,

The eBay Team

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PayPal is now providing expanded seller protection as an exclusive offer for eBay PowerSellers.

Sellers have asked for more seller protection, especially for international payments, and PayPal is committed to providing a safer and easier way to be paid online.

With this new level of protection, PowerSellers will continue to be protected against fraudulent payments and item not received claims, with the following improvements:

No additional integration required. Sellers won’t need to go through any additional integration steps or change their checkout experience to take advantage of the additional protection.

Expanded seller protection is free and there are no catches. All you need to do is enrol. Learn more.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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From 31st March, we'll start hiding the User IDs of members bidding on all auction-style listings on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie. All bidder IDs on the Bid History page and the high bidder's ID on the View Item page will be masked.

The winning bidder's ID will be shown once the listing has ended but the other bidders' IDs will remain hidden. Sellers will still see all the bidders' IDs on their listing when signed in, and each bidder will see their own ID when signed in.

eBay is an industry leader in helping defend users from the threat of fraudulent emails, websites and phishing attacks designed to extract confidential user information for criminal gains.

In early 2007, we began masking bidders' IDs on auction-style listings once the bid price went over a certain value. This proved very effective at reducing fraud from fake 'Second Chance Offers' (emails that are sent to bidders by fraudulent users pretending to be the seller and offering the item for sale outside of eBay).

Expanding the use of hidden IDs to cover all bids on auction-style listings will help us continue protecting bidders from this type of threat.

Shill bidding (bidding on your own items) is a serious breach of eBay policy. We will investigate any reports we receive and take appropriate action against offenders.

Although the bidder IDs are anonymous, you can still see detailed statistics for each bidder by clicking on their masked ID. Our systems also collect more detailed information on selling and bidding activity than members can access, to help us detect patterns and accurately identify members who may be breaching the policy.

We appreciate that some people prefer to see all the details of who they're bidding against and may find hidden bidder IDs to be unwelcome. However, this is a necessary measure to protect all our members from email scams and fraud.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Buyers are more confident and likely to buy on eBay, and sellers more likely to see their listings convert into sales, when PayPal is offered as a payment method. It also means we can provide protection for buyers should things go wrong.

We’d now like to update you on a number of changes we’re making that will make it safer and easier to buy and sell on eBay.co.uk.

Currently, PayPal is offered on about 95% of listings on eBay.co.uk. Starting in late April 2008, we will require all sellers on eBay.co.uk to offer PayPal on their listings.

Transactions made using PayPal result in significant reductions in fraud, and having every listing on the site offer a trackable, protected payment option will boost buyers’ confidence so that they return to shop with you even more.

Sellers will continue to be able to offer other payment methods alongside PayPal, as per eBay’s Accepted Payments Policy. Listings in the Motors Vehicles category will be exempt from this policy..

As an intermediary step, announced in January, we will require sellers to offer PayPal as a payment method in the following cases from 25th March 2008:

For all sellers who have a feedback score of less than 100 (regardless of feedback percentage)
2. For all sellers when listing an item in several specific categories

Find out more about offering PayPal on your listings.

Holding Payments

We want buyers to enjoy shopping on eBay, so that they return often to buy from eBay sellers.

To ensure this continues, PayPal is targeting a very small percentage of sellers who pose the greatest risk of driving away buyers by not successfully completing a transaction, and holding their payments until we know that everything in the transaction has gone to plan.

This measure is targeted at a small percentage of sellers and the overwhelming majority of sellers will be unaffected.

Find out more about payment holds and who will be affected.

Finally, we look forward to announcing the details of expanded protection for Powersellers in the coming days.

These changes are part of an ongoing plan to evolve the eBay marketplace, and we thank you for your support in helping ensure buyers and sellers are increasingly protected and confident transacting on the site.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We wanted to let you know that we are aware that some sellers are not receiving buyer notes on PayPal emails, and we are urgently looking into the issue.

While we work on a permanent solution for notes visibility, we have reconfigured our systems to minimise the impact to sellers. The vast majority of buyer notes should continue to be shown on PayPal emails as before, but we cannot guarantee that all notes will appear in this way.

We recommend that sellers continue checking the items they sell during the next few days, in order to make sure that they are not missing any buyer notes, by following the steps below. Selling Manager or Selling Manager Pro subscribers should also follow these steps:

At the bottom of the page click on the ‘View note’ link to see if the buyer left any notes.

We appreciate your patience at this time and thank you for your help to identify the issue.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We recently announced substantial changes to the eBay marketplace for 2008. These changes are designed to provide clear incentives and rewards for sellers to continue offering good service, and give buyers even greater confidence to come back more.

Since we announced our Final Value Fee (FVF) discount scheme for high volume sellers who offer great customer service, we’ve been encouraged by the intense focus that our seller community have placed on improving their own Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs). To support this effort, sellers will be excited to hear that we’ve set up an extra bonus discount for Final Value Fees recorded in March.

If your 30-day DSRs score is higher than 4.6 across all four DSRs at the end of March, eBay will reward you with an extra 20-40% discount on your Final Value Fees for your selling activity in March. That means that sellers could earn up to 80% off Final Value Fees in March.

This offer is open to all business sellers who are currently eligible for FVF discounts on the UK or IE site, and is applicable to all formats. Items must be listed on either eBay.co.uk or eBay.ie. Bonus discounts will be paid as a credit in your May invoice.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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From 18th to 31st March, you can add a Gallery picture next to your listing on the search results page for free. A buyer’s more likely to bid when they can easily see what you’re selling.

Whether you’re an experienced seller or have never sold before, now’s the time to take advantage of this promotion and get your listings noticed.

Terms and conditions apply. Learn how to get free Gallery for your listings.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We are continually optimising how we display search results on eBay.co.uk. As you know, we are already offering better visibility to sellers who offer great customer service (see our announcement on 26th Feb).

From next week, we will be adding new factors into Best Match which will reward sellers who offer fairly priced items and provide relevant and comprehensive title descriptions. This will happen in the following categories:

Continue to provide buyers with a good all-round service which will help to maintain high Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs)

This change is being made as a result of extensive testing and has proven to make searching quicker and simpler for buyers by presenting the most relevant items first. We are confident this will benefit all sellers and lead to increased sales.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We wanted to let you know that we’ve begun to provide credit for repeat Feedback for transactions ending on or after 19th February. Sellers and buyers can now earn up to one Feedback point per week (Monday to Sunday) from the same transaction partner.

We’ve also made cosmetic changes to the Feedback Profile page to reflect this change.

In May, we’ll give Feedback score credits for all repeat transactions that took place between 1996 and March 2008. Around the same time, we’ll introduce the other Feedback changes (UK details / IE details) we announced at the end of January.

This change means sellers will get the credit they deserve when their great service and selection results in repeat buyers, and sellers can also reward loyal buyers with repeat Feedback.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, eBay.ie is encouraging its members to take part in the Big Green Spring Clean.

We estimate that there could be up to €4400 worth of items in the average household that could be sold.

You could recycle these for cash by selling them on eBay.ie. The Big Green Spring Clean provides you with hints and tips on how to organise your own spring clean.

Over the next five weeks, we’ll introduce four themes, along with features about local Irish sellers and a weekly competition to win a bicycle or special edition eBay.ie shopping bag. Terms and conditions apply.

Find out more about the Big Green Spring Clean at www.ebay-events.ie/green.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Tickets to a further two concerts in April organised by the Teenage Cancer Trust to help raise essential funds to build specialist teenage cancer units within the NHS will be going on sale on today (10th March).

Because of the limited number of tickets that will be available, we expect that some of these tickets will be offered for sale on eBay. We have been working with Teenage Cancer Trust to further their fundraising efforts and will apply the following conditions on the sales of these tickets:

One-day and three-day listings will not be allowed.

These conditions will apply to the following events:

8 April: Madness plus guests
13 April: TCT Sessions: Joan Armatrading, David Grady, Newton Faulkner, Amy McDonald plus guests

These dates are in addition to the following dates (previously mentioned in the announcement we made on 22nd February):

9 April: Noel Fielding plus guests
10 April: Paul Weller and Steve Cradock plus Duffy
11 April: The Fratellis plus guests
12 April: Muse plus guests

Thanks for your understanding and for your support of this cause.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We wanted to let you know that we’ll be testing changes to search results pages in the next few weeks.

Based on your feedback from last summer’s tests (see previous announcement), we’ve made improvements to the new search system which we’d like to test. From 9th March, a random sample of 10% of users will be shown new search results pages.

If you’re chosen to see the new search results you’ll see that we’ve updated the layouts and improved the way that search works. You’ll have greater flexibility in how to refine your searches and your search results will also be more comprehensive.

If you want some more information on how to use the new search system or locate your favourite options, there’s a quick guide available. Otherwise, click the help panel that will be shown across the top of the new pages.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We’ve recently been working with a number of charities in the UK to look at how they can benefit from the resale of event tickets on eBay.co.uk through our eBay for Charity programme.

As a result, we’ll soon be applying the following special conditions on the sale of tickets for any concerts or events where 50% or more of the proceeds from the original ticket sales are going to charity:

We’ll also be banning the sale or resale of tickets for events for which all the tickets are free, such as awareness-raising events and free concerts.

We’ll be applying the new conditions some time in the next few weeks. We’ll be asking event organisers and charities to apply for their events to be covered by our new policy and will keep you updated on which events the policy will apply to.

Thanks for your support. We look forward to raising more money for good causes with you.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Pay no Insertion Fee if you list an item this weekend using the Auction-style format, in eligible categories, with a starting price of 99p or under.

You’re free to list as many items as you like, so why not take advantage of this offer and have a spring clearout?

Final value and feature fees are not included in this promotion.

Terms and conditions apply

Regards,

The eBay Team

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