We'd like to remind business sellers on eBay.co.uk that you should register as an eBay business now, if you haven't already done so.

The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 came into force in the UK on 26th May 2008.  The regulations introduce a general duty not to trade unfairly and seek to ensure that traders act honestly and fairly towards their customers.  It is a criminal offence in the UK for a business to falsely claim or create the impression that it is not acting for purposes relating to its trade, business, craft or profession or to falsely represent itself as a consumer.

Sellers who mislead potential buyers into thinking that they are a private individual when they are in fact a business seller (i.e. by not registering as a business seller with eBay) will be breaking the law.

Find out more about eBay.co.uk - the law and policies that affect you.

Business sellers on eBay.ie should note that the same offence also exists in Ireland (under the Consumer Protection Act 2007 - 1 May 2007).  For more information, go to: eBay.ie - the law and policies that affect you

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Over the last couple of years, we've introduced a lot of changes in the marketplace and made significant progress in our fraud prevention efforts.  We wanted to give you an overview of how our initiatives fit into an overall strategy.

Preventing fraud:

• We've made it harder for fraudsters to open new accounts by using stronger identity verification.
• We've worked with the likes of Yahoo! and Google to block phishing emails before they get to your inbox.
• Later this year, we'll prevent accounts from being taken over by requiring anyone attempting to list an item from an 'unknown' computer to go through identity confirmation.

Removing fraud visibility:

• We prevent items most favoured by fraudsters appearing in search immediately to give fraud detection algorithms and teams more time to detect fraud.
• In March 2008, we expanded the use of anonymised bidder IDs to all auction-style listings, resulting in a 90 per cent reduction in fake Second Chance Offers.
• In 2009, we'll prevent malicious content by controlling 'active' user-generated content in listings.

Ensuring safer transactions:

• We now require all sellers to accept PayPal and sellers of higher-risk items to accept PayPal only.
• Later this year, anonymous email forwarding via our secure member-to-member communication system will keep pre-sale communications safe on eBay and keeps buyers’ e-mail addresses anonymous and protected.  If you ever suspect that an email you receive isn't legitimate, forward it to us at spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com to help protect yourself and other members.

While we do all we can to make the marketplace as safe as possible, you also play an important role.  Your community reports help us to clean up listings that slip through the cracks, so please report any fraudulent listings you see to help protect yourself and other members.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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A charity football match between England and the Rest of the World at Wembley Stadium on 7th September 2008 is being organised by Soccer Aid to help raise essential funds for UNICEF.

As there are a limited number of tickets available, we expect that some of these tickets will be offered for sale on eBay. We have been working with the organisers of the match to further their fundraising efforts, and will apply the following conditions on the sales of these tickets in line with our charity tickets policy:

• At least 20% of the final sale price for any ticket for this event must be donated to UNICEF UK through our eBay for Charity programme.
• Sellers of these tickets need to be registered with eBay for Charity.
• One-day and three-day listings will not be allowed.

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

Regards,

The eBay Team

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PayPal is giving away a year’s worth of eBay insertion, final value and PayPal fees to one eBay seller every month, for the remainder of 2008.

For a chance to win, simply register at the A Year of Free Fees competition page and continue selling on eBay and accepting payments with PayPal.

Winners will have the value of their 2008 eBay insertion fees, eBay final value fees and PayPal fees refunded directly to their PayPal accounts.

For full details on how to enter for your chance to win free eBay and PayPal fees for 2008, visit the A Year of Free Fees competition page.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We wanted to let you know about some changes that we are making to our Seller Non-Performance policy in response to feedback from sellers.

The Seller Non-Performance policy puts in place penalties, up to and including account suspension, for sellers who cause unacceptable levels of buyer dissatisfaction.

While most sellers appreciate the need for a programme like this to maintain service standards on the eBay marketplace, we have heard from many sellers that they would like clearer information about how they are performing against the policy, and that they would like to have a chance to improve their performance if they should happen to breach it.

With this in mind, effective immediately, we will be introducing a 1-month warning period for sellers who breach the Seller Non-Performance policy for the first time. If a seller breaches the policy for a second time within six months of the warning, they will face account restriction or suspension.

To help sellers keep track of where they stand with regard to the Seller Non-Performance policy, we are also adding a new feature to the Seller Dashboard – the Buyer Satisfaction Rating. This rating is made up of a number of weighted elements, including:

• negative feedback
• neutral feedback
• low detailed seller ratings scores
• disputes that closed in favour of the buyer.

These elements are taken as a percentage of a seller’s overall transactions during the preceding 30 days to generate the Buyer Satisfaction Rating. Sellers who are rated as ‘Poor’ or ‘Unacceptable’ will be in breach of the Seller-Non Performance policy, and will be contacted by eBay and given a warning, account restriction or suspension as appropriate.

We hope that sellers find the Buyer Satisfaction Rating a useful tool to help them provide great service, and that the introduction of a warning period gives all sellers an opportunity to improve their performance if they should fall foul of the Seller Non-Performance policy.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We’ve made changes to the eBay User Agreement (UK User Agreement | Ireland User Agreement) and eBay Privacy Policy (UK Privacy Policy | Ireland Privacy Policy).  These are effective immediately for new members and on 13 August 2008 for existing members.

If you accept the new User Agreement and Privacy Policy, you don't need to take any action. If you do not wish to accept the new User Agreement or Privacy Policy, please refer to our Help pages for instructions on how to close your eBay account.

Here’s a quick summary of the changes:

User Agreement updates

The primary changes to the User Agreement are:

New catalogue services
The agreement’s content and liability sections have been revised to accommodate new features that may give sellers catalogues of content and product descriptions, so they can easily include complete and up-to-date product information for the items they list.

Fee withdrawal from PayPal for fees overdue by 180 days
eBay will take fees that are overdue using a PayPal withdrawal if the balance has been overdue for 180 days and our other collection efforts have been unsuccessful. If eBay withdraws late fees, this will not alter the status of a seller’s PayPal account or funds remaining after the withdrawal.

Privacy Policy updates
We’ve made a few changes to the policy that allow us to offer new services, better tailor the services we provide, and help make our site safer.

Combating Fraud
We're increasing our efforts to combat fraud on the site with a variety of programmes which allow us to address malicious activities using our message systems, or to better authenticate you if you’re using an unfamiliar computer to prevent fraudsters from abusing your account. We're also making sure our disclosures about cooperating with law enforcement agencies allow us to respond in a timely manner to increasingly sophisticated fraudsters and criminals.

Streamlining Services
We’ve made some changes to the Disclosure section to allow our Customer Support team to help you with questions that also relate to our other companies, and streamline your use of the services provided by multiple members of the eBay corporate family. Some of our new programmes also mean you'll see eBay services and content in a lot of places (not just on the site), so we've made some changes to clarify where our policies apply.

Customising Your eBay Experience
You'll be able to sign in and change your advertising preferences in My eBay at any time using a new setting called AdChoice. In some cases, we may also use information from other companies to select the right audiences for our promotions. In the revised Privacy Policy (UK Privacy Policy | Ireland Privacy Policy), you’ll see a new Marketing section that describes in more detail our collection and use of information for these and all our marketing programmes.

Thanks for using eBay.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Earlier this year we made significant changes to the Feedback system to improve seller standards and give buyers even greater confidence and trust when buying on the site.  As a result we’ve already seen more sellers improving their standards, as measured by Detailed Seller Ratings, and fewer buyers reporting bad experiences.

At the same time we’ve heard concerns from sellers about key areas of Feedback.  Based on what you’ve told us, we’re making the following changes:

Recalculating Feedback percentages without neutrals
Effective in late August, neutrals will no longer be counted as part of the Feedback percentage. This means we will be recalculating Feedback percentages retroactively for users worldwide. In the interim, no one will lose their PowerSeller status as a result of neutrals being included in their Feedback percentage.

Helping you resolve disputes and satisfy buyers
By the end of October, we’ll introduce a new process to help sellers resolve disputes with buyers, even after Feedback has been left by the buyer.

This will give buyers a way of changing or withdrawing Feedback in certain limited circumstances.  Please note that this is not a re-introduction of the old Mutual Feedback Withdrawal process, which could be abused by some sellers to place undue pressure on buyers to withdraw their Feedback.

We'll provide more details of this new process soon.

We’ve also recently received lots of feedback from sellers about the Seller Non-Performance programme.  We’ll provide an update on changes to this programme early next week.

Thanks for your continued commitment to making eBay such a great place to buy and sell.  We want to continue an open and constructive discussion with both buyers and sellers while we make major improvements to the marketplace; it means we can respond quickly to address your concerns, and introduce ideas that benefit everyone.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We wanted to let you know that the Community discussion boards will be undergoing maintenance tomorrow, 11 July, between 7am and 9am.

You may notice some disruption to discussion board services during this time. Normal service will resume once the maintenance has been completed.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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On Tuesday, 8th July 2008, Insertion Fees are just 5p for any listing using the Auction-style, Auction-with-Buy It Now and Buy It Now only (fixed price) formats in an eligible category on eBay.co.uk.

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

Terms and conditions apply.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We wanted to let you know that you can read a letter from eBay's Douglas McCallum regarding our fight against counterfeits.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Updated to add link to more information and FAQs about the new My eBay.

As part of our ongoing efforts to make eBay an easier and safer place to shop, we’re working on giving eBay.co.uk a new look and new features.

We’re doing this because better design makes it easier for you to use eBay, and easier to display and find the information you need to buy and sell.  The new designs also let us add useful features while keeping the site simple.

New checkout
Testing on our new checkout system has progressed well, and is now being used by 100% of members.  The new checkout makes it easier for buyers to pay for items on eBay without having to transfer to the PayPal website.  It’s also easier to manage delivery addresses, and P&P costs and P&P promotions offered by sellers are handled better.

My eBay
From today, a small group of UK members will see a new version of My eBay while we test new features.  The new My eBay lets you create customised lists to help you group items the way you want and gives you at-a-glance status information with colour-coding. More information and FAQs about the new My eBay.

Watch up to 200 items
All members can now watch up to 200 items, making it easier to keep tabs on the things you want to buy.

While the new features are being tested or are bedding in, we’ll keep a close eye on things to make sure that the changes we make meet your needs.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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	***Original: A new look for checkout and My eBay on eBay.co.uk ***
	02 July, 2008 | 12:22PM BST As part of our ongoing efforts to make eBay an easier and safer place to shop, we’re working on giving eBay.co.uk a new look and new features. We’re doing this because better design makes it easier for you to use eBay, and easier to display and find the information you need to buy and sell.  The new designs also let us add useful features while keeping the site simple. New checkout Testing on our new checkout system has progressed well, and is now being used by 100% of members.  The new checkout makes it easier for buyers to pay for items on eBay without having to transfer to the PayPal website.  It’s also easier to manage delivery addresses, and P&P costs and P&P promotions offered by sellers are handled better. My eBay From today, a small group of UK members will see a new version of My eBay while we test new features.  The new My eBay lets you create customised lists to help you group items the way you want and gives you at-a-glance status information with colour-coding. More details will be available soon. Watch up to 200 items All members can now watch up to 200 items, making it easier to keep tabs on the things you want to buy. While the new features are being tested or are bedding in, we’ll keep a close eye on things to make sure that the changes we make meet your needs. Regards, The eBay Team
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