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TAGnotes Mon 10 Dec 2001 Vol 3 Number 117 Issue 378
 

The Auction Guild Notes for Mon 10 Dec 2001
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$Buck98 event starts Tues 11 Dec. $1.98 No Reserve Auctions GREAT
BARGAINS and great gifts http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/$buck98/
     * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
New and used women's clothing sizes XXS-1X! Super-low shipping. Visit
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
For quality, variety & great deals, shop the experienced auction
sellers of the EMPORIUM http://www.lynnet.com/~jmm/emporium.html
     * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Support the people who support TAGnotes. Click on their links, bid on
their auctions and buy their products. You too can participate in a Win
Win solution. Support TAG and promote your website or auctions. Seller
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* WARNING GALLERY NOT WORKING CONSISTENTLY*
Sellers are warned that if they use the ebaY Gallery, for which they pay
extra, that it has been functioning very intermittently for several
weeks. TAG recommends that if you do not like paying for a feature that
does not work consistently, do not use Gallery until ebaY fixes the
reoccurring problems. Is ebaY rotating availability to gallery images to
stretch their resources so the site does not crash again? Why are these
gallery images disappearing intermittently?
* WARNING BILLPOINT CHARGING EXTRA FEES AGAIN *
Sellers who are still using Billpoint need to carefully monitor their
accounts because Billpoint appears to be charging extra fees again.
This time the fee is the 1% international transaction fee, which is
being added to ALL payments, domestic or international.

On 7 Dec though the ebaY system was back at 03:21:45 PT the ebaY email
system continued down until 12:21:50 PT and continued to be
intermittently available for the rest of the day. At 07:35:03 sellers
reported that they could not end auctions early and when attempting to
do so received " page cannot be displayed" messages. At 11:11:38 PT
ebaY posted that users reported having difficulty changing their email
address or their User ID within their ebaY preferences. Problems were
caused by ebaY incompatibility with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Workarounds for this and many other ebaY incompatibility problems
include using another browser, such as Netscape or Opera, or going to
one of the ebaY international sites such as ebaY UK or ebaY Canada. TAG
thinks the best solution is to list on sites such as sellyouritem.com,
oldandsold.com and auctions.yahoo.com until ebaY gets off it's bloated
software and fixes some of these chronic and ongoing problems. At
18:27:18 PT after ignoring it for two days, ebaY finally acknowledged
that users were not being credited for relisted items after the item
sells. ebaY claims to have identified and corrected the problem so for
items relisted from 12:00 PT on 7 Dec forward, the credits should be
correct. For those items relisted between 20:30 PT on Wed 4 Dec and
12:00 PT on Fri 7 Dec, ebaY claims it will be correcting the issue over
the next 24 hours. The items will be flagged to credit correctly when
the listing ends. Some items may end prior to the correction being fully
released. If your item ends without being properly credited, you can
request a credit through
http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/select-support.html. At 19:14:20 PT,
users reported search and view items down.

On 8 Nov at 07:32:25 PT users reported that revise auctions was down due
to a known coding error. This reoccurring problem shows up if you use
Opera or Netscape or MSIE with javascript turned off, but not with MSIE
and javascript on. ebaY's never ending coding errors require that you
toggle between several browsers and several versions of same to do the
most basic functions on ebaY. At 15:45:13 PT users again reported the
ebaY email system down, and this remained an intermittent problem
throughout the days. Users also reported problems with sign in/cookies,
list, relist and revise auctions. In addition, Checkout continues to
cause problems for sellers and buyers, with a strong indication that the
messages sent via Checkout are NOT reaching their destination. Since
there is no way for a seller to check if an invoice was sent, and no way
for a buyer to check if their contact email was sent, communication
between buyer and seller is floundering. Checkout is still not
optional, and though the opt out of the Checkout button works on
occasion, Checkout still causes expensive misunderstanding between buyer
and seller.

9 Nov at 19:39:55 PT brought user complaints about "Error 503 Service
Unavailable" messages whilst trying to access the site. At 19:47:17 PT
search went down. At 20:44:16 PT ebaY announced that Title Search was
slow or intermittently unavailable from 19:40 PT to 20:10 PT.   The
problems with sign in/cookies, list, relist and revise, and Checkout,
gallery images, 10 day completed search results and other ongoing
problems, continued unabated.

On 10 Dec at 01:42:56 PT ebaY posted that Billpoint system was down. At
02:49:55 PT ebaY announced that Billpoint was down from 01:30 PT to
02:44 PT. At 03:45:07 PT Search was down again. There was no relief in
the problems with sign in/cookies, list, relist and revise, and
Checkout, gallery images, 10 day completed search results and other
ongoing problems.

Sellers requesting refunds from ebaY for auctions ending during the over
two hour crash on 6 Dec ARE receiving those refunds for listing and
FVFs. Though ebaY SHOULD have refunded those fees automatically IAW
their outage policy, they aren't, so sellers will need to request the
fees be refunded.
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.
http://www.auctionguild.com/generic.html?pid=17
If you don't get your refunds complain to the BBB Online at
http://www.bbbsilicon.org/index.htm
And also file a complaint with the FTC
https://www.ftc.gov/ftc/complaint.htm

Users are also reporting that in the middle of their auctions, a notice
comes up saying the seller's credit limit has been reached. The only
way to prevent this from happening to your auction is to NOT USE
BILLPOINT. To find out what your Seller credit limits are, go to
https://www.billpoint.com/index.html
Sign in and click on Fee Schedule & Policies on the left side of the
screen.

Pink Quote Of the Day - When a user tired to find their ebaY Billpoint
credit limit by going to the above link, they received a message that
said, "Monthly Volume Limit: Billpoint has established an initial sales
dollar limit based upon your eBay sales history. This limit applies to
all transactions that you complete within a rolling 30-day period.
Volume limits are not disclosed for security reasons, but when you
approach your monthly limit, Billpoint will notify you and you may
contact account-@billpoint.com to request an increase to your
monthly volume limit." TAG finds it incredible that ebaY makes this a
secret, when the notice from Billpoint can kill an auction, because it
makes it look as if the seller is a scammer. And whose security is
Billpoint concerned with? If sellers knew about this up front, they
would not include ebaY Billpoint in their auctions, because of the risk
that the out of credit notice could be an auction stopper.

ebaY in it's quest to be all things to all people and bring under it's
logo all things that exist in commerce on the net, is now surveying a
certain subset of it's users about providing an ebaY Yellow Pages for
services. The survey has questions about a new category that would
allow sellers to advertise their ancillary services on ebaY. Examples
of services might include repair services, warranties, custom design,
refurbishing, advice, astrology, etc. ebaY's survey suggested names for
this service - Services Marketplace, iBay, eBay Pages, Advertisers
Yellow Pages, eBay Services, Service Provider Directory
http://forums.ebay.com/dws?50@112.2vFpa8vGsPH^-@.ef12a86

WebTV users have had almost never ending problems with ebaY and ebaY
becomes less WebTV compatible all the time. Some work arounds would be
to use third party service providers to list, host images and relist
auctions - try BayPal.Com and Vrane.Com (an excellent relist tool) as
a couple of suggestion - there are many others. A WebTV subscriber of
TAGnotes suggested unplugging the WebTV unit for 10-15 minutes a couple
of times a day. That seems to erase the backlog of cookies etc on the
machine and helps it work better with ebaY, which seems to clog it up.
The BEST solution is to sell and buy on Yahoo Auctions, which so far we
have heard is very compatible with WebTV!

Don't like search? Join the Search Protest thread on ebaY to change
search. The thread has over 1240 posts with feedback totals in the
hundreds of hundreds of thousands.
http://forums.ebay.com/dws?14@146.9SRVab8ZiV6^-@.eee35ba/0

Problems with Checkout continue since ONLY the button is optional. Even
this option is not working as sellers who opted out are again reporting
that the Checkout button is still appearing on their closed auctions.
TAG advises continuing to use logos to demonstrate you do not use
Checkout. You can also use HTML in the location box of your auction and
post in bold red letter that you do not use checkout. Using the location
box makes your non-acceptance of Checkout visible to the buyer at the
end of
the auction on a page otherwise dominated by ebaY's mandatory Checkout
info. You are limited in the number of characters you can use in the
location box, so keep it short. Several logos are available on the TAG
site at -
http://www.auctionguild.com/generic.html?pid=58

Is Checkout interfering with your online business? Is the new search
slowing down your sales? This is a service you pay for, so file a
complaint against ebaY with the Better Business Bureau, and or The
Consumer Trouble Shooter.
http://www.troubleshooter.com/data/access.html
BBB Online - http://www.bbbsilicon.org
These links could also be used to complain about the false advertising
about the free store listings until the end of the year if ebaY refuses
refunds.

Gift Icons $1. http://pages.ebay.com/help/sellerguide/gift-icon.html

ebaY's Butterfields is holding an auction of American paintings and
sculpture. The auction sessions begin at 13:00 PT and 18:00 PT on 12
Dec. Go to
http://pages.liveauctions.ebay.com/catalogs/catalog2365.html

Since ebaY is no longer fully compatible with Microsoft IE, TAG
recommends you have IE, Netscape AND the Opera browsers on your
computer, so you can alternate between them as required. Better yet use
another auction site, where the depth of problems you find on ebaY does
not exist. Opera can be found at http://www.opera.com

For WebTV users, some users have had some limited success by unplugging
their WebTV unit after each ebaY session for sufficient time to let the
unit reset itself.

ebaY categories with the category number
http://listings.ebay.com/aw/plistings/list/categories.html
An off ebaY category number locator page
http://www.kinem.com/files/cat.htm

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

ebaY Community boards
http://pages.ebay.com/community/index.html
ebaY news board
http://pages.ebay.com/community/news/index.html
ebaY status announcement board (SAB)
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/announce.shtml
* * * * *
Amazon Auctions, zShops and Marketplace
http://www.amazon.com

Amazon Announcement Board
http://prospero.amazon.com/n/mb/listsf.asp?webtag=am-sellannounce&nav=start&ctx=0


A very interesting thread for booksellers! These list the books that
buyers on Amazon are waiting, so other sellers can search their stock or
find the books and list them for sale in the Amazon Marketplace.
http://prospero.amazon.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=am-sellconnect&msg=2682.1&maxT=1


Another interesting thread on where to sell books
http://prospero.amazon.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=am-sellconnect&msg=2697.1


Amazon chat boards -
http://prospero.amazon.com/n/mb/listsf.asp?webtag=am-sellconnect&nav=start&ctx=0


Amazon live telephone customer service 16 hours a day
Toll-free in U.S. and Canada: (800)201-7575
Auction Pro phone number 1-877-251-0696
http://auctions.amazon.com
* * * * *
Yahoo Auctions So far reports from WebTV users have been favorable, with
no major problem areas notes.

Remember Yahoo allows links from auctions, and has a MUCH more liberal
and less paranoid point of view on off Yahoo sales. Yahoo's policy can
be found at -
http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/legal/linking_policy.html

On 21 Nov Yahoo announced changes to their buyer protection plan
http://auctions.yahoo.com/phtml/auc/us/ins/protectionpromo.html
Yahoo is trying to discourage Western Union and other wire transfers to
a post office box or to any international location as much of the online
fraud occurs that way.

Yahoo Auctions has user to user help boards at
http://experts.yahoo.com/expertinbox?b_id=383051397&t_id=openboard
and community chat boards at
http://auctions.yahoo.com/html/community/
Live chat
http://chat.yahoo.com/?room=Chat%20Central::1600326456

As of 24 Nov 01 Yahoo Auctions had 274,047 listings on the site.
As of 5 Dec 01 Yahoo Auctions had 399,258 listings on their site
As of 7 Dec01 Auctions had 504,507 listings on their site
http://auctions.yahoo.com/
* * * * *
Sell.Com an online trading site offering fixed price, negotiated price
or no price sales. Listing is free, final value fee is 3.0% with a 50
cent minimum. The site offers listing management, negotiation
management, free image hosting, 90 days listings, and single or multiple
items may be sold. 2339 listings for sale, there is no way to tell what
has sold on the site. http://www.Sell.Com
* * * * *
Project Kink Auction is a seller's coalition for kink-friendly auction
services. For all the displaced legal adult item sellers, this might be
the organization for you. Work as a group to build places to
legitimately sell your wares.
http://www.saroftreve.com/kinkauction.htm

For all other sellers whether you support the sales of "legal adult
material" or not, there are valuable lessons to be learned from this
group. From a well designed web page to an idea that there is power in
numbers and cooperation.   You can contribute to and help control your
own future by working in concert with others. You don't need to
sacrifice all your income and livelihoods, but can still participate to
the degree you can afford and build a better future for all. Numbers
are what corporate America cares about and understands, and numbers are
what attract the critical mass of buyers to develop alternative and
niche marketplaces. Sellers who work together and let all their buyers
know what site they are moving to, will build niche sites where all can
be successful.
* * * * *
Online Auction Users Association
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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Have any information for us? email us at ta-@theauctionguild.com
TAG Subscribers often contribute information reported on in TAGnotes.
Visit their auctions or websites.
TAGassist Contributors

http://www.bllamb.com

http://www.ebaney.com/store.html

http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/pipsaswa/

http://www.TomMullins.com

http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/twheid/
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