Success with ebay

Paypal Money Laundering

2009-02-25T13:37:00.003+11:00

Two years to implement Money laundering policy

Just recently a colleague, has attempted to withdraw their money from paypal, only to discover that paypal refused to let them withdraw the money.. The reason was that they had implements the 2007 money laundering policy for australia and they had to prove who they were.

The fact that they are registered as a business on paypal and have over 2000 transactions on ebay and they have been using ebay now for three years seems to have been lost on paypal. 2 years ago ebay/paypal informed the ATO that they were condicting business on paypal and that the income was over the $50000 for the current financial year....

now apparently they need to truly confirm that they are the business they have registered and that the person they informed the ato about is truly themselves...

This is just another grab to keep the money by paypal and earn some money on the short term money market.

However this is really the colleagues fault as he allowed the money to build to a level of several thousand dollars before withdrawing it... Normal practice was to withdraw the money at the end of each day. unfortunately he left is several days and paypal got him.....

take back control and do not use paypal any longer, the stories like this are very common and should not surprise anybody any longer...

use paymate as an alternative

$20,000 ebay protection

2009-02-24T12:15:00.005+11:00

ebay Buyer Protection

is not worth the paper it is printed on. During the April 2008 campaign by ebay to introduce paypal as the only payment method, ebay announced that their buyer protection will be upped to $20,000 and this is a good thing for buyers.

Critics at the time pointed out who on earth pays with paypal for such large items and surely you would use an alterneate method to sell such an expensive item..

Many would also argue that the paypal fees on this would be so so high and not forgetting the ebay fees, approximately the fees would be approaching $1000. Surely you cvould negotiate with the buyer on payment methods if you were going to sell such an expensive item.

A friend has recently sold a SPA on ebay, it ORP was around $30,000, and started the bidding at around $10,000. The insertion fee was not as bad as one would think, however it was the final value fees where ebay finnally started to get their claws into this buyers money...Several hundred dollars later, the item was sold and the seller was discussing with the seller on payment methods.

As a friend we warned the seller not to accept Paypal as a method of payment and that cash on pickup should be the only option. Paypal was selected and the fees associated with this were an addition $460 to paypal and feebay.

The clincher was that it was not possible to send the full invoice to the buyer and that two seperate invoices had to be sent to the buyer, meaning that the buyer would not be covered for the full amount, the maximum being only $10000...

so much for the ebay buyer protection... only one claim per item... ha ha all clever ebay sellers now start to send two invoices, this way the buyer can only get some money back or alternatively the second invoice could be for the postage and handling

Free Photos from eBay

2009-02-17T09:30:00.002+11:00

collectors, art and truly rare

overjoyed by the announcement that ebay has now made the second and subsequent photos free in select categories, ebay sellers start torush back thinking oh wow i have never had the option of a free photo before, now I can spend even more time on a ad so that ebay can collect more money from me. Since learning that the pass in rate is gigher than 60% and that ebay with paypal take close on 60% in fees
and for those who have not realised this is higher than any other auctioneer commission and higher than the highest tax bracket and for ebay it kicks in right at the very beginning so there is no tax free threshold on ebay.

Candence daugherty ran the experiment and found that after her time was taken into account, the cost of the original items and the paypal fees and ebay fees then the hourly rate was reduced to just $2.76. this is american money so for those in australia this is equivilent to $4 per hour....

The Truth

Why does ebay not tell the sellers that it is possible to have their second and subsequent photos free for as long as services such as photobucket.com have been around. Are there truly so many new ebay sellers that they are no aware of these services. Perhaps this was the reason why ebay banned ebooks 18 month ago, to keep people ignorant of the alternatives to ebay and the higher charges.

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Mircea driving school

Ebay Censorship

2009-02-10T14:54:00.004+11:00

Discussion boards Censored

in addition to the censorship by the pinks, where they (the pinks) censor each and every post which shows ebay in its true(read bad) light. Now Ebay want to remove all non ebay related discussion boards, namely the chin wag area.

The chin wag area is an area of support within the ebay community where by ebayers (buyers) can get advice and support from the community at large. For some people this is their only outlet and connection to the outside world. It helps these people connect and socialise in a digital world forming friendships and getting to know the other community members.

Ebay Buyers upset

ebay did their best to get rid of many buyers through all their policy changes, particularly the policy where sellers can no longer leave negative feedback, forcing paypal onto sellers and more. Now by taking away the chinwag, buyer will no longer have a place of discussion.

What is next by ebay, total censorship of the whole ebay environment where you can only talk about ebay in a positive manner otherwise you will have all your listings pulled..

join the fight and sign the ebay petition

sell you hand made items online

Ebay Accepted payment policy

2009-02-03T16:33:00.002+11:00

Payment Policy

will not work as all those that want to pay their customer to pay with check can still find ways around the new blocks which ebay are putting in place

Automated checks

As usual ebay want to reduce the human element and checks involved in running their business. In order for ebay to accomplish this then ebay put in place a filter in order to catch keywords, focusing on the additional checkout instructions. Sellers will always try the simpliest methods first, however the technique to bypass the ebay filter would be to make a image of your accepted payment methods, and include that image into the description of the ad.

As ebay does not have (as far as i am aware, given google does not yet have that technology(techniques is used to bypass the duplicate content filter), the technology to ready the content of an image then this method will be successful in bypassing the ebay filter. The only time you may run into trouble is if you get a disgruntled buyer who reports you to ebay. Use this technique with caution as ebay buyers can be grumpier tham your average customer.

Auctiva to Challenge eBay

2008-12-09T11:52:00.002+11:00

New e-Commerce site in Beta

Hope reigns high for ex ebay sellers who are tired of the fees at ebay and the slow growth of new e commerce sites with little / no buyers coming to the site. Sites such as Oztion in Australia, Trading post, and other small start ups such as bangforbucks, auction8.com, have been slow to take off and are slowly building patronage, but a single exposure on the net mean you are limiting your potential income. Great news has been heralded in the last week, .... auctiva who have been working with ebay for a number of years as an alternative to turbolister, are now in the beta testing stage of their own e-commerce solution.

easy set up

The set up of the store is very straight forward with pdf files to guide you through the set up process as well as a simple set up wizard asking basic questions for the store set up.

Simple Import of ebay items

IF you are currently listing on ebay then you can import your items directly into auctiva, if you have no listed for some time but used auctiva as the listing designer for ebay then you can import your save listings from auctiva.. The process is very simple and straight forward. A lot of thought has gone into the set up and made it much easier than ebay...

Built in SEO

Auctiva have put alot of thought into the entire design with SEO as a primary concern and a base to start your online ecommerce selling. SEO is not an after thought which the seller must think about and add in, it is there from the store front, the categories, asking for summaries, description to help promote your ecommerce store with SEO and Google ranking as the number one priority

Check out the auctiva store now

written by One on One Training

SEO Courses

Improve your ebay Profit Margin

2008-11-12T08:53:00.002+11:00

Viable ecommerce solution

Over the years many ebay sellers have left ebay due to the escalating fee structure which ebay have introduced. Four years ago it was only $10 for a ebay shop and all items in your shop only cost 1 cent to list for 30 days, making a ebay shop a viable ecommerce solution, however times are changing and ebay first changed the cost of the store fees, this was not too bad, then the cost of listing an item escalated, and in unison, ebay reduced the visibility of your shop listings in the search result, meaning the cost of listing was more expensive and you got less results.. Consequently many people deserted the shop format. listing fees kept going up to milk the ebay seller.

Pass in rate

how many people would be selling if they knew the real pass in rate at ebay, at the best 60% of all items pass in, however if you are new to ebay and either have the starting price too low or too high then you are going to find a dramatic change in this pass in rate. Auctiva wrote a little story on the pass in rate and the first time you read this story you think they must have gotten their figure incorrect but you try it out and test the accuracy and in all the figure is significantly higher especially in australia.

Real cost of ebay listing

However you think well I did convert some on my collectibles / treasures from the garage in to cash, but how much did it really cost you.. Candance Daugherty recently issues a press release about the actual cost of listing your items on ebay, leading to the real purpose of the story, which was to promote their new ecommerce solution. However the figure which are in the Press release are genuine and I have experienced similiar turnover rates and profits. The end result of the cost of listing on ebay was that ebay (inc paypal) took 40% of the total monies earned from selling on ebay. Pretty good profit margin given they are only a (tongue in cheek) passive venue. Working out the hourly rate of selling on ebay Candance got only $2.76 per hour for selling on ebay.. This is lower than the minimum wage rate, so why sell on ebay... many folk do not realise this or even rationalise their account and total up the money earned and use separate accounts for each activity.

How to improve your ebay Profit Margin

So is it possible to improve your profit margin on ebay given that you have no control or influence of ebay policy changes. I feel that this is not possible and that as a seller you need to take actions to monetize your items in other way,

start selling on www.auctions8.com where there is a community spirit and selling is very low

use wordpress and a number of plugins to create a ecommerce solution and sell on your own site

pay someone else to develop your own ecommerce website and then start selling. just get someone to do the SEO for you

written by One on One Training

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Security of PAYPAL

2008-11-05T11:17:00.002+11:00

eCheques not cleared

After almost 2 weeks, the problem associated with paypal australia echeques is still not resolved. Unhappy ebays who were paid with echeques on the 23 October still have not been able to receive their money from the ebay buyers who purchases items.

Communication to the ebay buyers has resulted mostly in an understandable response, however the Australian public were told that paypal is safer and that seller receive their money faster. It was highlighted at the time that echeques can take up to 1 week after the buyer has paid, however the buyer is never told this.. Paypal should send a email to the buyer stating that "as you have paid by echeque, then we will keep the money in our account for up to one week before passing the monies onto the seller".

As reported in Auctionbytes this is not a isolated incident and is impacting many ebayers, however on auctionbytes it is inferred that this problem is related to IRS reporting, however this is also impacting Australian buyer who have noting to do with the IRS or the US tax system.

This morning Australian ebayers woke up to a new message to indicate that their ebay account has been credited to the amount which is being held by payapl and when the monies are clear in paypal then the money from paypal will be debited... Do ebay truly believe sellers are going to send the item when they have not received the money just because ebay has credited their account with the amount which is missing in paypal... No thankyou ebay we will wait to for the money to clear and shoudl you take any longer then we will be asking the buyer to cancel the payment and pay by normal bank deposit (a far safer and faster method to pay ebay sellers...)

written by One on One Training

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Ebay and Paypal

2008-11-01T20:51:00.003+11:00

Help retire Australian sellers

During the past week Paypal have informed a number of australian ebay sellers that since their monthly takings are in excess of $10,000 they need to fill out this additional merchant information on paypal... All you had to do was to click on this link...

No Fishing(Phishing) here

My initial reaction when I received the first call was to believe this was a phishing tactic employed by some corrupt Nigerian president who happened to be related to me and some distant relative which needs my immediate help. However hovering over the link revealed a correct paypal address, so i copied the link to the address bar to check for redirection and there was no redirection.. so this must be genuine ....

Ebay sale

The users received this message to state that there were funds from a ebay sale and that the funds had cleared but they needed to manually accept the payment in paypal.
when you log into paypal you can see the funds but they were not in your account, the funds had cleared but not available...

all attempts to find where we needed to fill out the merchant information amounted to nothing. I suggested to the ebayers that they call the customer to inform them that there is a problem with paypal and to cancel the transaction and to pay by Bank deposit.

next morning the ebayers called paypal and they were told to send the item to the customer and that the money was there and that it will be clear in 24-72 hours later. NO way should any seller send without receiving the money...

ebay have now put up a notice indicating problems with echeques and that they are working on the problem....

1/ how safe is paypal
2/ is there a real problem with echeques and if so how did it happen what changed was implemeneted to make the system crash
3/ was it someone who had hacked the supposedly safe paypal system
4/ was this a tactic employed by paypal to start getting people to send items before payment has cleared and this was the first attempt to change the behaviour

I am guessing one of either 3 or 4 are correct, which one, ebay and paypal will never admit....

written by One on One Training

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How to Buy and Sell on Ebay

2008-11-01T18:35:00.003+11:00

Commercials on CNBC

Recently Blogging stocks ran the story "how to buy and sell on ebay", regarding recent commercials bu video professor about how to buy and sell on ebay.

ebay training

A quick glance at the web site reveals that very little will be gleaned from making the purchase of the ebay learning videos and the fact this guy does not tell you the price of the item I am very skeptical about how much will be learnt and how much they will charge for this outdated information(click on See How It Works and it turns out the charge is $189). I am sure he will not inform you about the inadequacies of paypal and how buyers can scam you left right and centre, little will they reveal that seller are leaving ebay in droves due to the badly mismanaged policies as point out by Tim who commented on the original article.

paypal truth

I am sure he does not tell you that paypal can and will keep you money if they do not like you, your account will be frozen under the guise of protecting your interest where in reality you were just spending the money you had in your paypal account and they got upset as they had not accrued any interest on the monies. He will not inform you how e-cheques take up to a week to clear and that if you have not registered the article with the post office or the buyer does not sign for the delivery then the buyer can state they never received the time and hence paypal will automatically take the money out of your account, heaven forbid if the item cost several thousand dollars..

Ebay let us rejoice

no the ebay rah rah crowd will not tell you the truth they are just the glossy brochure that you receive in you letter box and should be tossed straight into the bin where the rah rah crowd belongs...

written by One on One Training

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ps interesting to note the average cnbc viewer is worth $2.7Millon, so why advertise ebay

Dell Australia on ebay

2008-10-20T15:07:00.005+11:00

Cheat Australian Buyers

by having a lower speced computer on ebay than in their online shop. I first notice this occurrence about 6 months ago and complained to dell, initially believing the user was not really associated with Dell Australia but feedback from the customer service people initially were a little confused and did not know anything about the id however further checking revealed that the person on ebay was indeed dell australia, so 100% legit.

So why on the ebay user id dell_australia are the laptops and computer more expensive than the online shop from dell, they have the same specials as the online store but do not include the upgrades with the items on ebay..

if dell_australia is truly dell australia then why do they not have 100% feedback, surely dell would pay far more attention to buyer on ebay that the present user. My experience with Dell is exceptional and still find it hard to believe the ebay user is truly dell australia

written by one on one training

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EBay attacks sellers again

2008-10-18T09:27:00.007+11:00

Sellers forced again

To cap the price on their postage and handling charges in the latest effort by ebay australia in order to control the market place. The last time ebay tried to force australians into a situation was when they tried to force Australians to accept paypal as the only form of payment back in april this year, which saw the largest number of submissions ever to the ACCC, resulting in ebay withdrawing their application but keeping paypal as one of the payment methods which must be offered to buyer. The result of this action saw many people leave ebay in drove to start up a number of other sites such as auctions8.com , bangforbucks as well as trading post starting their own auction site.

What ebay are stating s that this is for a better buyer experience, if the truth be told then the top execs need to improve the bottom line of ebay auction site as the gross volume being sold has not increased despite the number of listings increasing..

new ebay sellers

The number of listings increasing is directly related to the economic downturn with new online entrepreneurs trying their hand at the ebay experience as they are selling their excess household items which they have accumulated during the gluttony years of the stock market rise. This is reflected in the number of new registration income being generated through the ebay partner network. However because ebay have implemented such draconian measures (eg no neg fb for buyers, registering each and every item otherwise ebay buyers can state that they have not received the item and more), these new ebay sellers do not stay very long, due to one or more bad seller experiences.

Decline of ebay

The glory days of ebay are gone, and will never return no matter how much donna ho tells the wall street reporters and the stock holders who have seen their investment diminish by half going from $30 in April to $15 at close on Friday 17 October, hitting a 6 year low. The next generation of adults (gen y) are more entrepreneurial than the mums and dads of today, they understand about social networking and how to create viral campaigns and will not go towards an online auction site, people understand what Search engine optimisation is, then know that you can use a wordpress blog as web site and that you can get a e commerce site up and running very quickly and without spending thousands of dollars, in comparison to the current mums and dads who in some cases are not computer literate but still try their hand at ebay because they remember the old stories of ebay and believe it is still the same.. sadly it is not the same and once those mums and dads have given up on ebay then ebay will never recover.. i give ebay 12 months to find a new direction away from the traditional auction site which it was built upon initially....

written by aus ecom connections

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ps if ebay had implemented 100 pts of id for each person who registered then many of the problems of scammers would never have eventuated, but ebay wanted the cheapest least involvement by humans so they could maximise profit.. shame.....

New ebay sponsored ads

2008-10-01T08:48:00.003+10:00

Well the first trial of the ebay ads in the seller description has hit its first hurdle, The ad which went live on the 22 September, however due to the number of complains that Foxtel received, ebay withdrew the sponsored link from below the place bid button. However being the large Corportation eBay are, then eBay simply back peddalled a little and placed the ad a little further down the page. As explained in ebay's apology , they introduced the new site feature and sponsored link without informing the sellers. Strange that ebay would introduce something first without informing people, unlike the attempt to make paypal mandatory which was done by stealth..

Many Sellers are enraged by this tactic as it takes the Buyer away from the their ebay ad and as such they may not purchase, this is also one of the reasons that you should not have too many external links on your own web page as if you give a person a chance to leave your web page then they most certainly will leave your web page.

One logic would say not to click on the ads so ebay will not get monetary value and to show foxtel that the sponsored links are worthless, the second strategy would be to click on the ads and then read the page as if you are going to purchase the foxtel subscription but after a minute or two hit the back button.

Assuming foxtel are paying on a per click basis, then data (included below) from google keyword tool shows that the CPC for foxtel varies between $3.45 and $7.69, so each day when you are clicking on the ad and reading the page sufficiently long to create the impression this is a true click then this will cost foxtel money.

Should sufficient people do this then, I hope that foxtel and other companies will realise this is a futile effort to advertise and it is not worth the money that they are paying to ebay. Send a message to ebay Australia and Foxtel.. WE DO NOT WANT SPONSORED LINKS ON OUR EBAY ADS....

foxtel $3.45 2,900 3,600
foxtel digital $3.98 73 58
foxtel cable $7.69 22 28
foxtel australia $4.12 170 210
foxtel sports $4.99 28 36
foxtel tv $3.59 210 210
foxtel guide $3.66 140 140
foxtell $4.26 46 58
foxtel satellite $3.92 28 28
foxtel broadband $5.06 12
foxtel sydney $3.85

Paypal Security Shilling and Scammers

2008-09-23T13:22:00.003+10:00

PAYPAL Security Not as Secure

This week eBay Australia and Paypal have started to ship to all registered (or should that be ex power sellers) ebay users a hardware digital signature key, so that when you log onto ebay or paypal, ebay and paypal will know who you are and that in theory will minimise online fraud problems.

Shillers and Scammers

Presently the use of this online hardware security key is optional and as such the effectiveness of the security key is non existant as I feel most people are already annoyed at ebay australia for not stepping into EBS saga and then paypal renegging on the deals which they indicated would be honoured and paid out. The scammers and shillers are not going to register their hardware key as it is already a pain to ensure your proxy server is up and running in annomymous mode and / or finding a suitable annomymous proxy server to do your ebaying with. with a hardware key tied to your registered address then they will not be able to shill or scam people as the police will know which registered address the person is at.

No more fake ebay ids

Should ebay send out this hardware key (I believe they should) then all those security id's which are returned, then ebay can simply delete them (or NARU them) from their system, reducing the overall number of registered users. and hence reducing the incidence of shilling.

Imperfect Security

With every attempt to increase the security of a system then it does not take long before the system is cracked, however as each hardware key has a unique id on the back, then cracking it will prove to be somehat harder, however security cards have been cracked in the past so the ebay systems could be cracked with sufficient time.

However why waste time in trying to create your own security key, when all you need to do is to have a registered address at a vacant lot not far from where one is living, or even just using post office box, given that ebay do not require 100 points of id in australia.

Online Security

If ebay Australia really wanted to eliminate online fraud then they could simply send a snail mail letter to each and every registered id which then needed to taken to the post office for verification with 100 points of id. However this would
require employing someone to process the new online registrations and ebay does not want to do this as it is an overhead.

it will be interesting to see if/when ebay makes the use of this key compulsory

written by One on One Training

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NEW ebay Turbolister

2008-09-12T12:38:00.004+10:00

New ebay Turbolister

Well we all knew the day was coming when ebay would replace the original version of turbolister 2 so that that they could implement new policies into the software, and force the mandatory inputting of postage and handling costs.

the new ebay turbolister is difficult to use, it is meant that you now must include a
postage cost before you can start to crate your ad and once you have created the ad then you need to change the postage from local pick up to the correct postage

now how long will it be before ebay force sellers not to profit from the postage
it will just be a matter of time

written by aus ecom connections

SEO Coaching, Training and Full SEO consultancy

is eBay Australia getting desperate

2008-08-25T17:42:00.006+10:00

is eBay Australia getting Desperate

During the last week eBay Australia and PESA, have announced the 2008 PESA summite. This itself is not so extraordinary in itself, but the fact the personal letters have been sent out to power sellers, this year is something extra. Previously I have not received a letter from ebay despite being a power seller, and even this year i have not received a letter, however my partner who is also selling on ebay, received a letter.

A Good Powerseller

One may wonder why the difference, we are both Power Sellers maintaining the correct standing according to the rules laid down by ebay, we have both been selling on ebay for a number of years, and a DSR's are above 4.6 and over 99% positive rating so why was only one Invitation sent. We live at different addresses so one letter would not suffice...

Paypal, the Petition and forum comments

One huge difference, and this was that I signed the petition protesting about the mandatory forcing of paypal onto eBay Australian sellers, i Submitted a number of submissions to the ACCC outlining why Paypal should not be mandatory and I participated on the forums on ebay protesting about how unfair it is and that sellers should have a choice..

Sour grapes?

This smack of sour grapes, that ebay is not going to invite any person who spoke out against them, but it does not matter, because ebay sellers have moved on and are now running independent businesses and have made the move from ebay to other systems.

Any other thought on this development, were you invited and if so did you comment on the ACCC notification

written by one on one training

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Paypal Thieves - II

2008-08-12T10:08:00.003+10:00

Paypal and ebay have now lowered themselves to a new low, stealing(withholding ) money from a powerseller, an ebay seller of 5 years and insisting that the Powerseller post the item before before paypal will release the money to the power seller.

The history behind this is that due to the new ebay rules, buyer can leave negative feedback without fear of any consequence. so if a ebay buyer leaves negative feedback then the seller cannot do anything, they cant even leave a negative Positive, otherwise they will be be NARUed. These buyer paid with Paypal, and expected the money to clear immediately. Anyone who has ever dealt with paypal will realise that not all paypal transactions are equal. in fact the only time you ever get a instant payment is when you leave you money in your account for paypal to used and accrue interest, should you start to clear your money out of your account regularly then you will find transactions slowing down...And as they did not receive the item almost immediately then they felt justified to leave negative feedback....

there really should be a stupidity test to verify the intelligence of ebay buyer. if they do not pass then they can only buy from other stupid ebayers... Naturally ebay will now have to implement new seller protection options such as

"Do you want to be protected from stupid buyers" (tick box if you want protection)

personally i think the default should be ticked and you untick if you want stupid ebayers to buy from you

written by One on One Training

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PAYPAL Scammers and Theives - I

2008-08-07T09:01:00.005+10:00

Paypal Thieves

Well it has happened again, the ebay empire (and paypal)have discovered a new way to make more money, whilst annoying sellers one more time and frustrating buyers. This is a difficult task to do all at once and I am sure many management meeting have been instigated to find this new and unusual tactic. NOTE : This is a personal account so it is not exaggerated to any degree...

eBay scenario

A buyer purchases an item and pays immediately with paypal, i note that there is a little hour glasses indicating the payment still had not cleared paypal, i do not worry and check back the next day. The hour glass is still there. I go into paypal to check things out and there is no record. The weekend comes and goes and STILL Paypal shows no transaction. The buyer sends a email asking if i have received payment. I answer no and question which paypal account and was it a echeque(as paypal is slow and can take upto 5 business days to clear an echeque). The email address was correct and it was not an echeque.

Where is my money Paypal

Paypal theives I thought... Investigation on my part reveals that all the email addresses except the primary email account had been removed from my account and this is the reason that I had not received the money. In the mean time, i had sold a number of other items and once again the money went into paypal (lets get some more interest) limbo account.

Paypal Limbo

what had happened 2 days prior to the original sale, I was going into withdraw all my money from Paypal and I were informed that my password was going to expire in 2 days and that I MUST change my password. Paypal then had the gaul to ask me security questions about my account and i then proceeded to withdraw all my money. Shortly after this Paypal Clearly removed all me additional email addresses....

Nice little trick if you are a deposit accepting financial institution and doe not have to answer to the banking ombudsman or any other banking authority in Australia...

Come on ACCC and Paymate Help use and force Paypal to sign the EFT code of conduct

written by One on One Training

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eBay sellers Hit again in Search Results (multiple listings)

2008-08-04T11:54:00.006+10:00

Multiple Listings

Well eBay have done it again, hit the sellers for another 6, and there is nothing that they can do, they have now implemented a new multiple listing policy, which supposedly the sellers have appreciated.....NOT!!!!. The New policy centers around that previously selelrs were only allowed to list 15-20 identical items(depending on which country you belong to).

Reduced search results

In a nutshell this means that the new "Finder Technology" will remove duplicates from the search results, consequently if you have 20 + items then the buyer will only see one of these items. However eBay have implemented a number of rules which will mean that it is possible to have more than one listing.

Duplicate Listing

From the Ebay press release then "An item is considered identical if it has the same title and the same listing format........" .. "..When multiple auction-style listings with the same title have a different number of bids and different prices these are no long considered identical and will all be displayed."

Essentially this mean that all those shillers will now simply just put in a different number of bids so that their results will appear in the ebay search results.

This mechanism is easily circumvented by honest sellers by simply having a different title alternatively having a traditional auction and then starting a buy it now auction 10 minutes later, so as to create a price point. Alternatively a combination of these strategies will once again help to bring up all your auctions..

written by One on One Training

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Chocolate MUG Cake in 5 Minutes

2008-08-02T21:24:00.003+10:00

Ok this is not really related to ebay success or anything related to ebay, but it is late on saturday night and I was hungry and thought it would be nice to share this with everyone

5 Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

you’ll need....
4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
3 Tablespoons chocolate drops (optional)
1 Mug

here’s what you do....

Add dry ingredients to the mug, and mix well.
Crack the egg and add it to your mug. Be sure to mix it well to avoid any pockets of flour in the corners.

Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.

Add the chocolate drops if you’ve got them, and a splash
of vanilla essence too.

Pop your mug into the microwave & zap for 3 minutes on
maximum power (1000watt).

Wait until the cake stops rising, and sets in the mug.
If necessary, run a knife around the sides of the mug, and
tip the still warm cake out of the mug and onto a saucer.

Sit back and enjoy with a coffee - you deserve it!

written by One on One training

Blog Training Online

How to reduce scamming

2008-07-28T18:37:00.002+10:00

Hopefully by now, you will begin to have a understanding of the problems facing ebay buyers
that said, ebay could take a number of actions to help reduce the incidence of scamming and
hence making their site more popular rather than having droves of people leave the system each and every day...

From the Analysis of the 99 cent auction (Success with ebay: 99 cent Auction Part II) and Success with ebay: The 99 cent Auction Part 1 then it follws that if the main reason for shilling is to ensure the seller recoups a fair price for their item which they are selling, then if eBay were to allow a reserve price for all items other than just cars then the buyer would know that firstly they will not get the item for 99 cents and that they need to put in a higher bid. If the seller is to finally make an offer to sell the item to you... Then it is up to the seller to determine if they want to sell the item for that price or not.... this would ultimately lead to a reduction in shilling as the seller will know that they will always get the price they are happy with as well as a reduction in the final and (more realistic) final price.

When a seller starts selling an item at a price lower than the price they want for the item, then the seller is training the ebay buyer to believe that they can get the item for a lower than fair retail price. This impacts the whole ebay community and makes it harder for others to sell similar priced items. This tactic also trains the ebay buyer in believing that they will always get the item for a much lower price and it destroy the market for everyone. The only way to combat this problem is to reaise the price again and even then it will take an additional 4-6 weeks before the ebay buyers start to believe that they must now pay the higher price for the item...

A further strategy which ebay Australia can utilise to reduce fraud and multiple identities, which is utilized in other countries such as US and Germany is to be Verify the identity of the person with a copy of a current utility bill and the current drivers license alternatively sending a snail mail letter to the user and this snail mail letter will contain a code which they need to enter when they log into ebay for the first time....

using one or both of these techniques will minimise the number of id's which fraudsters can generate....

Alas both of these techniques require ebay to put in man hours to process the application and it cannot be automated consequently it will increase the OPEX (operating expenses) and lead to a reduction in profits..

written by Aus eCom Connections

aus eCom Connections - Specialist in SEO Training

Another ebay Scammer - Paypal Protection ??

2008-07-28T13:42:00.004+10:00

How protected is the ebay and paypal buyer protection

I have only recently become aware of another scammer (e business_supplies) operating on ebay Australia where the ebay user id has been in operation since 2003 and had a turnover rate of approximately 800 items per month.

yet i am constantly amazed at how little ebay does to protect the buyer, yes you now have $20000 buyer protection on paypal, the propaganda campaign exclaims, and that paying by paypal is 4 times safer than the other system... well firstly since they have implemented paypal by stealth of hiding other payment methods then i am sure that paypal is not going to be safer and only allows the scammers to transfer money out of the country much more easily and allow the scammers to escape. secondly why has ebay not stepped in to limit the damage by the scammer, even today the scammer is not NARUed and the total number of negative comments has hit 445.

how has ebay protected these 445 people from being scammed,
what is paypal doing to refund each and every buyer who has made a purchase from this person in the last 2 months,
why is it so that before you can get any money from paypal then you must raise a dispute,

surely it is clear enough given the close nature of the relationship between ebay and paypal that there is a problem and that the person is not going to honor their commitment.

Why must people now escalate the dispute to a claim and then wait for paypal to decide..

how difficult is it for paypal to determine that this person has defrauded all of the people, surely the negative comments reflect the fraud perpetrated by the ebay seller...

what is ebay doing to prevent this type of fraud from happening again... the strategy used by the fraudsters is to build a large enough feedback over 12 months and then use the feedback as a trust mechanism to sell higher priced items and when sufficient volumes are being sold, then they simply skip the country and leave people high and dry.. Hopefully the person registered a correct name and address with ebay, because if the fraudsters was true to him occupation then the name, address and contact number is simply fake and given that ebay do not utilise a 100 points of verification then any scammer can set up operation in Australia....

written by aus ecom connections

one one one training - specialist trainers for blogging, SEO workshops and setting up your own online store online training available very soon

Why can I not contact ebay directly

2008-07-23T18:55:00.001+10:00

Anyone who has sold one or more items on ebay will know that answering emails does take a significant amount of time and that is with potentially only 100 to 200 max lookers..

Consider the situation where ebay has millions of users in Australia and many more millions of users worldwide, there are potentially 1000's of emails every single minute, though the more experienced users will know that it is futile sending any email to ebay as they simply will get a standard answer possibly from an Auto-responder, or simply a cut and paste effort by some underpaid employee. In most cases it is the auto responder which is triggered first along with the usual disclaimer that we are not able to answer you directly regard your report/enquiry.

However at around the same time that eBay submitted their notification to the ACCC in Australia, they also change the report form so that there is now a short description field to allow you to include some further "more personal" and "relevant" information. This was an unusual step and most likely prompted by the number of submissions to the ACCC which indicated that for fakes and counterfeits on eBay the reporting mechanism is little or non existent and no possibility to value add information. But the crux of the whole matter it that it is an anonymous submission with no ability to contact the relevant department and / or ability to get a read response generated.

Contacting ebay is not just a matter of email, there is also the need to contact ebay by telephone in the event of being harassed by a buyer who may be threatening you in any manner and / or by intimation. The only option most people have at their disposal is to contact the live help, (which i believe is simply a software robot programmed to respond appropriately). Ebay need to start to take ownership of their site and not say that they are simply a venue. Laws in the US and Australia have shown that bars have a responsibility towards their patrons and are simply not JUST providing a venue for people to gather and chat. some people are now crying that well ebay do not sell anything, where as the bar is selling alcohol.. Wrong..., ebay is selling space on their servers for people to place their ad.... As always ebay wash their hands of the situation and take no action despite the stupid buyer sending all the messages through the ebay message and having direct evidence of the threats, along with every email being also reported/ sent to ebay trust and security.. ebay still did nothing..... it was not until a restraining order/intervention order was obtained in court did ebay deregister the user, YET EBAY did NOT remove the negative feedback he left me....

All the systems implemented by ebay have been designed to minimise human intervention and maximise profit, hence they cannot have people answering emails as this will take away from the profit margin. This also explains why ebay will not actively remove any fakes and or scams from their listing... but thats another topic for another day......

any questions or suggestions for discussion please contact me and i will try to take the issue up.

written by aus ecom connections

Aus eCom Connections - Connecting your Customers to you

ebay Australia Force Paypal on Users - Part 1

2008-07-21T16:20:00.013+10:00

A lot has transpired since my last blog.. too many to mention, but it essentially involves moving from being an ebay seller for 5yrs + to being a trainer to help people who wish to move from the ebay experience to being independent e-tailers. In Melbourne Australia i am now running adult education classes to help frustrated mums and dads. more on this later, most importantly eBay Australian Sellers have been fighting the good fight against a organisation who seem to have forgotten the people who built it into what eBay is today..

ebay withdraw ACCC notification

The first battle has been fought by the Australian Public regarding ebay Australia and Paypal and forcing all Australian ebay users to only have paypal as the only payment method. To accomplish this ebay submitted a notification to the ACCC so they could go ahead with the proposed conduct. Companies are required to submit a notification if they wish do go ahead with activities and conduct which is against the trade practices act. Once a Notification is submitted to the ACCC then the company is allowed to continue with the illegal activity until the ACCC revokes their immunity..

However in the saga with the ACCC and the recent notification from eBay Australia, then ebay decided to withdraw the notification, meaning that they no longer wanted to force all eBay Australian sellers to only offer paypal. The fact that if they did not withdraw the notifications then the ACCC will have revoked the immunity from eBay Australia as they had already indicated by a draft notice to withdraw the immunity.

eBay Australia like many good negotiators went into the battle with an ambit claim but already had determined what a successful outcome would have consisted of. For ebay Australia a successful outcome was to force all sellers to offer Paypal as a payment option and if eBay Australia got their way then the bonus (Allowing no other payments on eBay Australia) would have been roudly applauded by all share holders of ebay.

eBay Force Buyers to use PAYPAL

Making paypal a mandatory payment method along with other methods of making it next to impossible for inexperienced ebay users to identify other payment methods that the seller was offering meant that eBay Australia have actually achieved the outcome which they wanted. Buyers only paying with Paypal ....... because they cannot identify other payment methods on the payment screen (other payments have been reduced to a 0.5 cm footer in the 3/4 page display for paypal. As an experienced ebay user when confronted with the screen initially I believed that perhaps it was on the next screen, not so..... it was not on the next screen, The eBay Buyer then goes back and looks again..... There in the footer is the text to identify 'other payment methods' the payment methods are not listed until you click on the radio button..
This means that even for pickup, Buyers are putting the item on credit with paypal and then wanting to pickup free of charge.

AS the buyer has now paid by paypal for a pickup item, you have lost close on $20 for a $300 item and it will now take another week before your money will be cleared into your bank account.

Strategy

Transfer Paypal Money to your Bank account

This is a common strategy being used by many eBay sellers, such that the sellers do not post an item, until the money for the items has been transferred and cleared to their bank account, this means buyers now must wait an additional 5-7 business days before the item will be posted to them. Consequently the instant payment of Paypal has meant that Paypal are now delaying customers from receiving their items promptly.. The seller explains to the buyer that they must wait to receive the money as paypal have the money and not them so they must transfer the money before they can post the Item...

Next I will discuss other strategies so that you do not lose money unnecessarily on being FORCED to offer to Paypal ...

written by One on One Training

Specialist in training for Blogging, e commerce and SEO

99 cent Auction Part II

2007-11-13T17:55:00.001+11:00

I hear you say... how about those eBay Powersellers who start their auction at 99cents and have the ebay powerseller status... A Powerseller status indicates the person has a turnover of $2000 per month for at least 3 months and this must be maintained as well as feedback must be maintained over 98%.....Surely if the propaganda by ebay is not correct then these power sellers would not be power sellers ....Right???!!!!!

Well first thing you need to look at is what products are they selling, are they the genuine article or is it simply a fake/ reproduction, does the powerseller have high postage fees to help recover some of their loss in case the bid price does not meet the cost price, or do they simply sell the article and the bulk of their inventory consist of high value items..

There is another possible alternative... That is they use an alternate id to help raise artifically the bidding price of the item, this means that there is one or more ids in the bidding history of an item which belong to the same powerseller... because they know that when you start an auction at 99 cents then sometimes you will get a great price but you only need to get a low price several times before you realise that you are losing money and along with the ebay fees it is becoming a losing business very quickly...

ebay was set to free the housewife and help clear out the garage of all the items.......... and as the stories go on those current affair shows then there is supposedly $3000 in the garage waiting to be sold.... the current affair show then proceeds to show several women who have left their job of are now selling online....

FACT once the garage is clear and you have sold all your items you need to replace these items, next you need to recover the investment you make in the new items and the cost of these items will be fairly considerable..

When you start to sell the items you quickly realise that you need to start at the price you have bought the item at to minimise any loss

The powersellers who do make a living out of selling low priced items know how the system works, they understand how to create multiple id's, they know how ebay track and check if a person is shilling and take measures to prevent ebay from tracking the activity, they know that you need to purchase multiple items from other sellers to diver attention, but most importantly they know that as long as you are not obvious then ebay will not dow anything as they recover their fees and according to the new ebay user agreement (Success with ebay: New eBay User Agreement in Australia ) then you indemnify ebay from any liability arising from you being scammed..

My next article will be on how can ebay prevent the scamming

written by aus ecom connections

SEO Coaching, Training and Full SEO consultancy