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TAGnotes Wed 15 Aug 2001 Vol 3 Number 89 Issue 350

The Auction Guild Notes for Wed 15 Aug 2001
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$Buck98 on eBay. No reserve. $1.98 opening bid auctions.
Going on NOW http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/$buck98/
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On 13 Aug at 03:28:57 PT users reported being unable to relist, revise
or list items on the ebaY site. Using a third party service provider,
such as www.vrane.com did work. At 16:25:11 PT users reported cgi 3
and 5 were throwing error messages. Users continued to report the
relist problems through 06:42:23 PT. At 17:47:03 PT the Buy It Now
function was not working properly, with the confirmation page defaulting
to "instant purchase" and showing multiple shipping fees including
"additional shipping fees". This is a coding glitch and was
acknowledged by ebaY at 19:04:50 PT. At 18:34:09 PT search by category
was reported as working intermittently with the problem lasting for
several hours. Search was still not working at 19:49:55 PT. Users
continued to report intermittent list and relist problems throughout the
day.

ebaY is taking their system down on Fri 17 Aug from 01:00 PT until 03:00
PT, for regularly scheduled maintenance. Billpoint will also be down
during that time.

On 15Aug at 08:28:29 PT users reported Mister Lister down and the
community boards down. the boards were back at 08:35:00 PT, and no
further reports of problems were forthcoming.   

TO REQUEST REFUNDS from ebaY go to
http://www.auctionguild.com/generic.html?pid=33
Don’t take no for an answer; keep requesting until you get them

The endless problems with ebaY picture services continue. Decline the
ActiveX control if asked and choose to opt to not use ebaY picture
services. Bypass the process altogether by going to
http://cgi5.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ShowPhotoOption&page=167
This takes you to a listing page that skips over the ebaY image hosting.
Another route you can try is
http://cgi5.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ListItemForSaleShow
Another alternative is to simply ignore the java program/ActiveX
request and leave the window open while listing. You should be able to
list items, though the applet is neither accepted nor denied. Once your
listing is completed, deny the java program/ActiveX and close that
window.
A method of bypassing ALL the chronic relist problems on ebaY is to
download the Opera browser at http://www.opera.com. Do all your relists
using the Opera browser.

ebaY's new bid retraction rules are now in effect, though their lack of
30 day notice is a direct violation of the ebaY user agreement.
**If you place a bid before the final 12 hours of the listing you may
only retract that bid under exceptional circumstances, and must retract
the bid before the last 12 hours of the listing. You will not be allowed
to retract a bid placed prior to the final 12 hours of the listing,
during the last 12 hours of the listing.
**If you place a bid during the last 12 hours of a listing you will be
allowed to retract the bid for exceptional circumstances, but you must
do so within one hour of placing the bid.
**You may still retract a bid anytime before the last 12 hours if you
have an exceptional reason for doing so
**Sellers may not add to their item's description during the last 12
hours of the listing. If there are no bids on the item, the seller can
still revise the description in the last 12 hours. Sellers will be
unable to revise or add to their description within the last 12 hours if
there are existing bids on the item; the seller will need to cancel bids
and end the listing early instead.

ebaY is proposing to change the Vintage Clothing & Accessories area.
Send comments and suggestions to vintag-@ebay.com. All input
received by the end of August will be considered before final decisions
are made.
*Accessories would remain separate with new breakouts added.
*Men, Women and Children would continue to be lead categories in
Clothing, and each would be further broken down by the periods of time
in which the items were made.
To preview planned changes go to
http://pages.ebay.com/preview/chg-vintclothing.html

For all you jewelry and gem folks Thaigem, an ebaY corporate seller, is
having some problems. A group of U.S.-based gem dealers have accused
gem e-commerce giant Thaigem.com of misleading the public and violating
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations. Taking their concerns to
the press and, in some cases, the FTC, the small but vocal group claims
Thaigem has been wrongly identifying valuable gems, using the term
"flawless" to describe colored stones where it's not appropriate,
enhancing the brightness of photographic images, and failing to disclose
treatments for individual gems.
For the full article and links to more
http://www.colored-stone.com/stories/jul01/thaigemnews.cfm

Despite ebaY's user agreement and privacy agreement, ebaY sells user
lists. If you opt out of ebaY SPAM, ebaY should not sell your info, but
unfortunately ebaY periodically defaults users back to opt in for SPAM.
One ebaY mailing list partner, ActiveMessage, Inc., is concerned with
the number of hits they are getting from SpamCop. ActiveMessage Inc
runs lists for ebaY/Billpoint and a recent campaign produced approx 4
different SpamCop reports. ActiveMessage feels that SpamCop is being
overzealous in enforcement, and claims to not support unsolicited
commercial email in any way shape or form. Active Message says they
ensure that all their clients use either opt-in list services, or ones
of their own and review all lists and list practices before
ActiveMessenger signs with them. ActiveMessenger thinks it is getting a
clean opt in list from ebaY, when in fact, due to ebaY's "accidents",
those lists are SPAM lists.   One lesson learned from this is that
SpamCop DOES have influence.

ebaY is banning most coin-operated slot machines. The only slot machine
items that can still be listed on ebaY are, antique slots, non-coin
operated slots, and non-functional slots.
ebaY will start with warnings for violations and effective Mon 20 Aug
will end listings that are not in compliance.   ebaY is once again
changing the rules without the requisite notice.

The top of the Home & Garden category page will now show thirteen main
Home & Garden sub-categories, Baby Items; Bed & Bath; Food & Beverage;
Furniture & Lighting; Gardening; Home Décor; Home Improvement & Repair;
Housekeeping & Storage; Kitchen & Table; Major Appliances; Outdoor
Living; Pet Supplies; Tools

Swimming Pools is now part of Outdoor Living and Solar Energy and
Building Supplies are part of Home Improvement & Repair. Home
Furnishings is divided into Bed & Bath, Home Decor, Furniture &
Lighting, Kitchen & Table and Major Appliance.
Send your comments and suggestions to homeand-@ebay.com by 31 Aug.

ebaY is extending the free store promotion until 1 Oct. This
information was first leaked at an ebaY University weekend. Then
jer-@ebay.com at 05:25 PT on 13 Aug on the threaded boards, "Hello, The
free Stores promotional period will be extended to 10/1. The big buyer
promotion is still on track for early September. Regards, Jerry eBay
Community Development". This thread was later removed by Jerry,
jer-@ebay.com 08:00 PT 14 Aug, "Hello, I deleted the post since the
official announcement is coming soon. Regards, Jerry eBay Community
Development". ebaY posted on 14 Aug at
17:47:59 PT that they were extending the ebaY stores preview period and
have waived subscription and Stores fixed price listing fees for one
more month, until 1 Oct.

ebaY says they are is launching several promotions to increase exposure
of ebaY Stores in August and September. They have a Stores Grand
Opening Event coming in September.
There have been widespread reports on the ebaY and OAI/OTI boards about
the poor hit and sales rates in ebaY stores.

In trying to explain the difference in searches on ebaY core and on the
ebaY Stores ebaY posted, "There are three listing types on eBay: regular
listings, which are open for bidding; Buy It Now listings, which are
open for bidding but have a set price that a buyer can pay to buy the
item immediately; and Store fixed-price, where sellers offer items at a
set price for immediate sale. All three of these listings will appear in
a seller's Store, if that seller offers them. Only those items that can
be purchased immediately will appear in eBay Store search. This can
include a Buy It Now listing, as well as Stores fixed price listings.
eBay search will return only those items open for bidding, including
those with a Buy It Now option. It will not return Stores fixed price
listings." ebaY also feels it is the sellers' responsibility to market
their ebaY store. In TAG's opinion, if you are going to go through all
the effort of marketing an online store, you should do it on a more
reliable platform than ebaY, from a place where the fees are not so
high, and from a place where your listings will not be arbitrarily ended
without due process. For more information on the difference between
fixed price and regular listings, and how to sell in each format go to
http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/auction-vs-fixedprice.html

ebaY continues to try to get their unsuccessful Live Auctions, and ebaY
Premier site more positive attention. Beginning this week, ebaY will
make changes to Live Auctions and ebaY Premier.
**An item's bid history will now be displayed on the View Item page.
This will enable buyers to see if their bids have been executed and
sellers to see the progression of bidding on their items.
**Live Auction items are now listed in chronological order. This will
allow buyers to more easily find items on Live Auctions.
**Buyers submitting absentee bids must now bid within the bid increment
specified for each item.
**ebaY has changed My ebaY to display Live Auctions items under "Items
I've Won"; "Items I'm Watching" will now display the correct Live
Auctions end times.
**ebaY has changed Premier My ebaY to include items from other ebaY
sites.

ebaY has expanded its marketing relationship with AOL Time Warner
For article go to
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010814/wr/tech_ebay_aol_dc_4.html

Community overview board –
http://pages.ebay.com/community/index.html
ebaY news board - http://pages.ebay.com/community/news/index.html

ebaY categories with the category number
http://listings.ebay.com/aw/plistings/list/categories.html

ebaY contact information including analog mail and email addresses and
phone numbers, regular and toll free, refund info and insider trading
info etc can be found at
http://www.auctionguild.com/generic.html?pid=17

5.73 mil auctions inflated approx 6% by double category netting approx
5.4 mil auctions.
TAG is no longer confident in the numbers that ebaY is posting on their
site, as we and our subscribers are finding more and more significant
inflated discrepancies, so these numbers are very general and may vary
as much as half a million auctions less than reported.
On 15 Aug 2000 ebaY had approx 4.58 mil auctions
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Amazon Auctions, zShops and Marketplace
On 13 Aug Amazon noted that Listings on zShops were not appearing in All
Products search results from the Amazon.com Welcome page, due to
maintenance. Searches from zShops pages were displaying normally.

On 15 Aug Amazon added the 1-Click payment system to Amazon Marketplace
listings, and will display as an additional buying option for Amazon.com
customers whose accounts have 1-Click enabled. The message on the
purchase pages states that 1-Click orders for used items cannot be
cancelled.

At 18:33 PT Amazon announced that due to maintenance, Bulk, Inventory
and Book Loader uploads were down.
Announcement Board
http://prospero.amazon.com/n/mb/listsf.asp?webtag=am-sellannounce&nav=start&ctx=0


User to User boards
http://forums.prospero.com/am-sellconnect/messages/?msg .

Amazon live telephone customer service 16 hours a day
Toll-free in U.S. and Canada: (800)201-7575
http://auctions.amazon.com
* * * * *
eHammer has added free image hosting for auction images on their site.   
http://www.ehammer.com
* * * * *
Just Glass a small niche site for glass lovers. This is a wonderful site
to use for a resource for glass. Easy to navigate, a clean and simple
site without unwanted bells and whistles.
Approx 1239 items listed, no listing or final value fees, and evidence
of some items selling, though limited bidding activity.    
http://www.justglass.com
* * * * *
Online Auction Users Association elections are fast approaching. Run
for a board position!!!   For all details about how to run for the
board, to have input to the organization, and to be an influence for
good in the OAI/OTI, go to
http://www.auctionusers.org/newsletter/0108-final-bid.shtml

OAUA has put together discount packages for their members for auction
management services.    http://www.auctionusers.org/discounts-am.shtml

OAUA has posted a forum for their upcoming Annual Meeting and Board
Elections. Make a difference in the OAI/OTI, join, and participate
http://www.auctionusers.org/forums/Forum4/HTML/000012.html

Interested in volunteering and serving the Online Auction Community?
Check out http://www.auctionusers.org/volunteerop.shtml
Thur 16 Aug 7 - 8 p.m. EST - OAUA Board Meeting
Mon 20 Aug 9:30 p.m. EST - TRIVIA NIGHT with the TriviaMaster Steve
Thur 23 Aug 7 - 8 p.m. EST - OAUA Board Meeting
Thur 23 Aug 9 p.m. EST - OAUA Chat - Topic - OAUA Question and Answer
– Host - Karen
Thur 30 Aug 7 - 8 p.m. EST - OAUA Board Meeting
Thur 30 Aug - 9 p.m. EST - OAUA Chat - Topic - Chat with Ruby Lane -
Host Karen
Thur 6 Sep - OAUA Annual General Meeting, more information to follow
http://www.auctionusers.org
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PLEASE NOTE: Many long links we post in TAGnotes must be
copy/pasted into your browsers URL/Address box in pieces, with no extra
spaces, to get them to work due to HTML limitations
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If you would like an Auction House or Service Provider added to
this list, please email us at ta-@theauctionguild.com
Have any information for us? email us at ta-@theauctionguild.com
TAG Subscribers have often contributed to information reported on in
TAGnotes. Visit their auctions or websites.
TAGassist Contributors –
http://www.pantheus.com/

http://stores.andale.com/maestrommm

http://www.sacoriver.net/~archimedes/au01000.html
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