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TAGnotes Mon 23 Oct 2000 Vol 2 Number 152 Issue 234

The Auction Guild Notes for Mon 23 Oct 2000
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ebaY on 20, and 21 October continued to have problems with Mister
Lister, pic hosting services, the new listing form and relisting. These
problems were infrequently intermittent through the weekend.
On 20 Oct 11:39:19 PT ebaY reported that there were problems with
pic services. On 22 Oct 12:54:41PT ebaY reported the issues with
Picture Services, Seller Search, My eBay Seller tab, and Bid History
were fixed on Friday.

Oct-22-00 Users reported that at 16:23:06 PT cgi5 view auctions
went down. At 16:25:22 cgi3 started throwing error messages while
posting on the chat boards. Seller search was also down. At 18:07:41
cgi5 view auctions and cgi6 sellers search were reported down. At
18:11:49 east coast users reported a complete crash, with no access
to search, listings and bidding. At 18:23:50 PT bidding was again
reported down. ebaY posted at 18:27:12 PT that the seller search,
My ebaY seller tab, and bid history functions were intermittently
unavailable. At 19:14:12PT one user reported that the ending dates
on the auctions they had ending on 22 Oct were coming up with
arbitrary time left on the auctions. At 19:35:17 PT all functions were
back up but slow and reported back down by users within 6 minutes.
At 19:44PT some users posted problems accessing ebaY through
back door sites. At 20:17:59 PT all functions were back up and
stayed that way. At 21:48:01 PT ebaY reported that all functions
were working at 20:30 PT.

23 Oct 09:46:07 PT brought further intermittent search, seller search
and listing problems. At 12:01:13 PT the feedback system went down,
when trying to access it user got messages that said, Items in this
category are currently unavailable. There were intermittent problems
all day. At 16:20:12 PT seller search was down, item search was very
slow. 19:10:13 PT users reported cgi 3 down. At 19:38:42 PT ebaY
reported seller search and the seller tab of the My eBay page were down.
These problems continued to be reported by users until 21:00:50 PT.
ebaY reported the problems fixed at 21:28:50 PT.

TAG strongly recommends that anyone who feels their auctions were
negatively impacted by these outages apply for credit. Request listing,
special feature and Final Value Fees. Go to the form at
http://cgi3.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?
SendSupportEmailShow&subject=Credit%20--%20How%20can
%20I%20receive%20credit%20for%20insertion%20fees%3F%20
Send -
* The item number(s) of the ended auction(s)
* The specific fee(s) charged for them
* Your seller's email address or User ID
* The phrase, GIVE CREDIT in the Subject line
This can also be accessed from
http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/select-support.html
PLEASE - IF YOU ARE DENIED REFUNDS LET US KNOW
TAG continues to get reports from members that repeated requests
in the face of refund denials WORKS, so keep requesting and
re-requesting refunds until you get them.

ebaY had a long post on the AB about the system upgrades that are
causing many of the outages and glitches on ebaY. In what TAG finds
an outrageous admission, ebaY posted that some of the outages have
been INTENTIONALLY put in place, with ebaY wittingly disabling
some features, and lying about the problems on the AB. In addition
TAG feels ebaY has defrauded their sellers, by NOT telling the sellers
about the fact that ebaY knew these problems and outages would occur,
giving sellers the information they needed to decide if they should
continue to list on a site that ebaY knew was unstable.
Instead ebaY continued to take fees from sellers, pretended there
were no problems and those problems that occurred were accidental
and unpredictable. TAG is astounded by the total lack of ethical
behavior on ebaYs part, allowing sellers to pay for a service that
ebaY KNEW they could not provide. ebaY's prediction is that
these problems will continue for another 7 - 10 days. The
knowledgeable tech experts TAG talked to, given the description
on the AB of what ebaY is trying to do, predicted problems to
continue for the next few MONTHS. Only ebaY KNOWS
how long the actual problems will last, but since they have spent the
last few weeks flagrantly lying to their users, TAG feels nothing
they say can be trusted. TAG is also amazed that these same site
changes were given as the cause of the August 2000 outages, all
of which were supposed to be completed by mid August.

ebaY says they are reviewing their outage policy, and that it would
require that they take the whole site down for 30 minutes to extend
auctions when they have an outage. Since the outages have been so
ubiquitous, the losses to sellers so frequent, TAG recommends our
readers contact ebaY and let them know if you would prefer auction
extensions in spite of it extending an outage by 30 minutes.

WEBTV users have had severe problems using ebaY since the new
listing page and pic hosting services were implemented. WebTV users
can't list, relist or use categories pages. ebaY has acknowledged these
problems, and Mae-@ebay.com claims that ebaY is working on it.
A workaround WebTV sellers can try is to find the category number
before listing and enter the category number on the first sell your
item page at the very bottom instead of selecting a metacategory.
The category numbers can be found at
http://listings.ebay.com/aw/listings/list/categories.html

ebaY is planning on consolidating the Sheet Music listings in one
location, in December. Changes are at
http://pages.ebay.com/preview/chg-music.html
Send suggestions via email to mus-@ebay.com.

ebaY back door workarounds for when you can't access plain
vanilla ebaY (ebaY USA). Try one of these URLs
http://www.ebay.aol.com
http://www.ebay.com.au/
http://www.ebay.co.uk/
http://www.ebay.compuserve.com
http://pages.ca.ebay.com/index.html
http://www.ebay.digitalcity.com
http://www.ebay.icq.com
http://www.ebay.netscape.com
http://www.ebay.go.com

In addition, if you are having problems with the new ebay listing
pages, try this old listing page
http://cgi5.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ListItemFor
SaleShow&item=0&category=0&oldstyle=0&page=1&u=0

Approx 5.14 million current listing
MedVed shows 5.07 million
http://www.quotetracker.com/cgi-bin/cal.cgi?EIND
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml
* * * * *
Yahoo Auctions
Basic site information http://www.auctionguild.com
Go to OAI Site Basic Details from left side toolbar.
Yahoo site map
http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/promo/sitemap.html
http://auctions.yahoo.com/
* * * * *
Amazon Basic site information http://www.auctionguild.com
Go to OAI Site Basic Details from left side toolbar.
Amazon listing numbers for 26 Sep, 12 of 19 categories actual
counts, 7 of 19 extrapolated counts. Total listings 1,094,439
http://www.amazon.com
* * * * *
Vrane.Com has a set of some of the handiest tools available to
manage auctions on ebaY. These are real problem solvers.
All their tools are currently free, though some fee based tools
might be added n the future. They also do custom work, so
if you need a tool designed for you contact them for an estimate.
Users suggestions are welcomed.
http://www.vrane.com/
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*******VOTE******* VOTE******* VOTE********
The Million Auction March wants to move you to VOTE.
List your items on V enues O ther T han E bay
For more information go to http://www.millionauctionmarch.com
New Auction Houses, Sales Venues and Service Providers are
joining daily. All are offering incentives and specials to the OAI.
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If you would like an Auction House or Service Provider added to
this list, please email us at tag@theauctionguild.com
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THE AUCTION GUILD
and eTRADERS GUILD
www.auctionguild.com
Not just a venue
877-SAFETAG
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