Back

TAGnotes Wed 1 Nov 2000 Vol 2 Number 157 Issue 239

The Auction Guild Notes for Wed 1 Nov 2000
********************************************************************
Support TAGnotes - get two of your friends or associates to subscribe.
If you have any comments, questions, information, ideas or
suggestions please email us at tag@theauctionguild.com
********************************************************************
On 30 Oct at 21:47:42 PST ebaY posted they were going to change
the ebaY system on Tues 31 Oct by moving the Sports Categories.
to their own server cluster. They posted later that the move had been
postponed indefinitely. On 31Oct, ebaY ran well, with only the usual
ongoing problems with ebaYs pic hosting not working and/or having
cookie problems; payment information disappearing on relist;
title/description search not updating in a timely manner; revised
listings not updating ever; bids not updating on search lists;
intermittent problems with listing etc.

On 31 Oct ebaY ran well for most of the day. Problems started at
19:37:03 PT ebaY cgi3, cgi6 and most site functions went down.
This lasted until 19:49:26 PT. ebaY posted at 19:51:56 PT that
View Items was unavailable from 19:32 PT until 19:37 PT. At
20:04:06 PT cgi3 acted up again and users were getting slow
reloads, but it quickly settled down and ran well the rest of the night.


1 Nov at 00:57:56 PT users reported ebay slow, pages timing out
before they could reload.   At 02:54:00 PT ebaY posted the seller
search and bidder search were disabled. At 04:51:21 PT title and
description search went down. At 05:25:38 PT there were reports
that when items finally indexed into search, the Honesty auction
counter placed from the ebaY listing page, disappeared.   At
06:11:31 PT ebaY posted that ebaY UK Sell Your Item page was
down from 02:56 PT to 04:59 PT.   At 06:12:18PT ebay posted that
all the problems with seller search and bid history were fixed. ebaY
said they misreported bidder search being down, but users reported
it was. Mister Lister was reported down at 07:59:15, but had been
reported down on the threaded boards for over 10 hours. It was
returning messages in German, when sellers tried to post auctions.
Sellers were arbitrarily getting a message on new listings that said
Insertion Fee: $1.00 (It will be refunded if the item is sold!) This
has happened a few times before during the outages caused by
the restructuring. There were also intermittent cases of categories
showing up completely mixed up again. The site appeared to settle
down by approx 11:00 PT with only transient glitches reported for
the rest of the day.

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 can't emphasize enough that sellers should not take NO for an
answer. If you get a refund denial, keep requesting and
re-requesting refunds until you get them. Some sellers are also
challenging ebaY charges to their credit card, based on services
not rendered. TAG recommends you use that as a last resort, if at all.

ebaY had a detailed post on the AB restructuring the site at 12:26:08.
Earlier this month, they started splitting up the ebaY system to house
different categories of items on different computer systems. They feel
this will improve reliability and increase capacity. This started in
August with the move the Weird Stuff category to its own system. They
plan on moving the Sports category to its own database servers. They
predict the change will be transparent to users. AT 19:32:25 PT
son-@ebay.com posted on the ebaY discuss new feature board that it was
going to be an additional 7-10 days from the actual split/upgrade that
was completed this week until the site stabilized. The original
commitment from ebaY on 23 Oct was that the site would be stable in 7-10
days - or by 2 November at the latest.

In another long post on the AB, Billpoint is offering for sellers, all
Visa payments free of processing charges through 30 Nov, and $1.00 off
for buyers using a Visa card.
http://www.billpoint.com/promotion/freevisa.html
http://www.billpoint.com/promotion/dollaroff.html
They are also holding a contest where sellers using Visa and Billpoint
between 1 Nov- 31 Dec, 100 sellers could win a $100 gift cards and 100
buyers could win all of their ebaY purchases 1 Nov- 31 Dec.
http://www.billpoint.com/promotion/grinchsweepstakes.html

ebaY sellers can now use Billpoint to send payment invoices to any buyer
via email. Sellers can accept Billpoint for VOTE sites (venues other
than ebaY) Registered Billpoint sellers can send invoices by log into
your My Billpoint account and click the "Send Invoices -> General" link
on the left-hand toolbar. To log into Billpoint
https://www.billpoint.com/account/welcome

They now accept card payments from 37 countries
http://www.billpoint.com/services/international.html

eBay will be introducing Buy It Now in mid-November. Buy It Now
lets sellers have the option to sell an item instantly to the first
buyer who meets their specified price.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sellerguide/bpt-ip.html
email concerns to custom-@billpoint.com

My ebaY now limits the seller to show only 300 items on their
page. A workaround for this problem, discovered by a TAG subscriber,
is to go to ebaY UK or ebaY AU and access My ebaY from there.
http://www.ebay.com.au/   http://www.ebay.co.uk/
* * * * *
Yahoo Auctions has an extrapolated calculated listing number of
3.9 million auctions. Yahoo is allowing sellers to turn their feedback
ratings on other sites into credits to pay for special features on
Yahoo. They give $1.00 in credit for every positive feedback point.
http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/promo/ratings_featured.html
TAG has been seeing many posts by sellers who are moving at least
a percentage of their auctions to Yahoo.
Yahoo site map.
http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/promo/sitemap.html
http://auctions.yahoo.com/
* * * * *
Amazon Auction has changed their person to person selling
structure to include a feature they are calling the Amazon Marketplace.
List your used and collectible book, music, DVD, video, or
console-based video game on the page where Amazon.com sells
that item new. Amazon.com collects a fee when your item
sells. Fees are $0.99 plus 15% of the sales price.   (Note: Pro
Merchant Subscribers don't pay the $0.99 commission.) They
add an additional credit to cover book rate shipping costs.
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/subst/help/sdp-shipping.html
/002-8073691-5804006

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
* * * * *
PayPal People now has international capability to and
from 26 countries around the world. Sign up at
https://secure.paypal.com/cgibin/webscr?cmd=_registration-run
for an international PayPal account. Complete a registration form,
confirm your email address, and add a credit or debit card to fund your
payments. Registration is completely free, and all transactions
are conducted in US dollars. All PayPal users in the US have
automatically had their accounts upgraded to be 100% compatible
with international members. Residents in the following countries
are now eligible for PayPal accounts - Australia * Austria * Belgium
* Brazil * Canada * Denmark *France * Germany * Hong Kong *
Ireland * Israel * Italy * Japan *Mexico Netherlands * New Zealand *
Norway * Portugal * Singapore * South Africa * South Korea *
Spain * Sweden * Switzerland * United Kingdom
*********************************************************
*******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.
*********************************************************
If you would like an Auction House or Service Provider added to
this list, please email us at tag@theauctionguild.com
********************************************************************
THE AUCTION GUILD
and eTRADERS GUILD
www.auctionguild.com
Not just a venue
877-SAFETAG
READ TAGnotes
Have the most current information at your fingertips through
our daily email synopsis of announcements and changes from
the Online Auction Industry. Subscribe today at-
http://www.topica.com/lists/tagnotes
or by email to tagnotes--@topica.com
email - tag@theauctionguild.com
********************************************************************
All trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners
Copyright 1999, 2000 The Auction Guild Inc All rights reserved