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TAGnotes Thu 2 Nov 2000 Vol 2 Number 158 Issue 240

The Auction Guild Notes for Tue 2 Nov 2000
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Though today was the day ebaY told its users on 23Oct that all site
functions would be running smoothly, ebaY on 2 Nov at 6:20 PT started
the day off with problems that lasted all day. Title and description
search, seller search and search by number was either down or responding
very slowly. Several regions of the country had no access to ebaY for
periods of time. These areas were all over the map. ebaY posted at
06:30:32 PT that the Sports Category was down from 04:57 PT to 05:59 PT.
At 08:21:16 PT users were reporting problems with access to the ebaY
chat boards. At 08:40:32 PT search again reported down. At 08:56:26
PT the sell your item page was down. At 09:03:51 PT Billpoint on cgi 3
went down.   09:04:40 a user in western Canada reported an inability to
access cgi3 or cgi6 for close to 6 hours.   At 10:24:30 PT users
reported that ebaY's pic service hosted images were not showing up.   
These were intermittent outages and appeared to be resolved at 10:40PT.
At 11:57:51 PT access problems started again and at 12:02:23 PT cgi 5
was reported down along with the feedback system. At 16:05 My ebaY went
down. Again the site seemed to recover with intermittent outages
continuing but very sporadically. At 19:36:20 ebaY reported that they
temporarily suspended End of Auction notices because they were mostly
blank. Both listing and revise item were sporadically down all day. At
00:31:17 PT on 3 Nov ebaY posted that End of Auction notices were
resumed at
20:38 PT. eBay took the system down on 3 Nov at 0:45 PT for
regularly scheduled maintenance.   ebaY was back from maintenance
at 03:00 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 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.

Starting on 2 Nov ebaY's Half.com is giving away one PlayStation 2
system a day to a Half.com customer. Half.com customers are
automatically given one entry in the day's contest for every dollar
they spend on the site that day. The drawings for the winner will
be held the day following each contest day and be chosen by a random
drawing from all eligible entries received.

Recently Krause notified subscribers to ebaY Magazine
Publications that their agreement had expired and that ebaY was
not renewing the contract. ebaY claims its parting with Krause
was amicable, and Krause would provide another subscription for
another Krause magazine or a refund.   Several users noted on the
OAI/OTI boards that they were still receiving renewal notices.
ebaY is considering alternatives for future publications. They
also noted that they received a number of complaints regarding
an email from Krause Publications. ebaY claims that
1. ebaY did not send out this email nor has ebaY authorized this email.
2. ebaY did not provide the email list to them.
3. ebaY's policy on unsolicited commercial email from a third party
has remained the same and is not tolerated. They say users should
report the spammer to the sender's ISP, as well as to an Internet
watch group such as spamcop or mail-abuse.org.

ebaY has started a holiday theme page at www.ebay.com/promo/holiday
and www.ebay.com/promo/holiday/ultimate
They also have a Holiday Shopping Made Easy page for holiday shopping
tips at: www.ebay.com/promo/holiday/tutorial

ebaY is further promoting it's Half.Com site. In the Books, Movies,
Music or Video Games category, you will have the ability to search
on Half.com. They are putting a Half.Com search box at the bottom
of eBay search results that is pre-populated with your search query
and tailored for a search on Half.com in the Books, Movies, Music
or Video Games categories based on the category that the majority
of your results falls into. Thus, if most of your eBay search results
fall into the books category, they will display a Half.com search
a box that is appropriate for a search in the books category on
Half.com. Further, on ebay listings pages in the Books, Movies,
Music, Computers, Electronics, and Sports categories, you will see a
link in the Related Topics area to a related category on Half.com. For
example, if you are on an eBay listings page in the Books category, you
will see a link to Books on Half.com. ebaY also claims that Half.com
is promoting the ebaY auction site on its pages. For
example, users who search for something on Half.com that is not in
stock are prompted to search for it on eBay.

Approx 5.1 million current listing
MedVed 5.66 mil Auctions
http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?EIND
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml
* * * * *
Yahoo Auctions was working on their site causing auction
counters to go back to zero, and the chat boards to be down,
but users report the auction site, search and bidding were all
working well. Yahoo 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 is still having site problems putting its new
Amazon Marketplace in working order. Only some of the features
are available. Listings have a link to the like Amazon item, but do
not appear on the item page as they should.

Amazon payments are still down. Bidders are able to
pay, but the payments are not processed and sellers are not informed
or paid. The seller transaction pages are still empty or locked.
Sellers have needed to contact Amazon to find out if their successfully
closed auctions have been paid for using One Click, so they can figure
out if they should ship.

Items that should have been but were not auto-relisted on 27, 28 Oct
will need to be relisted by the sellers. Amazon claims they can't
recover the auto-relist on these items, that were lost due to the
downtime.

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
* * * * *
SmoothSale is advertising that it is paying a $10.00 bonus to sellers
who register completely with SmoothSale; download the SmoothSale
application from the SmoothSale Site; upload at least one item for sale
into the SmoothDealer application; log on to the SmoothDealer
application for at least three (3) cumulative hours, accept the needed
cookies and enter the SmoothSale site from one of the ads running on
Honesty.Com, AuctionWatch.Com and ProserPoint.Com. For rules
and more information go to
http://www.smoothsale.com/incentiveTerms.html
http://www.smoothsale.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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www.auctionguild.com
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