An important eBay issue???

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Posted By: MW

Earlier today, I received the following e-mail:

<<Hi,

First, I am writing you because you, like me, are a high volume seller on eBay who regularly pays $19.95 for category featuring. In a nutshell, eBay made a change to the way category featured items are listed yesterday. You have one of these ending today. I dare you to find it from the category listing pages. Basically, this is turning an average of 200 hits on the ending day into an average of 3 hits, which is no different from items that are not featured!!!! Some benefit for $19.95.

The official eBay line on this change is the following (from an email I received, and the announcement page) "We feel that this will increase exposure for a single featured item by spreading out the featured auctions within the category listings." This is just not true. The numbers of hits I posted above are based on staying up all last night and working all day today looking at 1000s of featured items, and comparing the final day hits to the number of hits I used to receive on a final day category featured auction.

We must convince eBay to change back to the original system. To this end, I am suggesting an immediate boycott of category featured items. Do not feature any items within category until eBay changes this back. This will help in 2 ways. First, you won't waste the $19.95 as there is currently NO BENEFIT to purchasing this. Second, I am hoping that eBay will get the message that they are hurting their best customers, us, the ones who are paying them most of their auction fees! I know they have been receiving many complaints, but this might push them over the edge to change back.

To make sure eBay knows that we are doing this, I ask that you send an email to 2 locations, the eBay powersellers help, and investor relations. I have provided the email addresses and an email below. Be sure to fill your eBay name into the email. Just copy the powerseller address into the "to" box, and the investor relations address into the cc: box. Make sure the subject box says "CATEGORY FEATURED BOYCOTT" Even if the eBay help people don't care, I sure think the people at investor relations would want to know that their largest customers are irritated. Also, forward this email to any eBay powersellers that you deal with and encourage them to also boycott category featured items and forward the paragraph below to the two email addresses I will give you. Let eBay know that they are putting us out of business and that we will spend our money elsewhere if they don't give us the service we are paying for!

Forward email to:
powerseller@ebay.com

investor_relations@ebay.com

email:

Dear eBay:
I am a high volume seller, my eBay name is ________ and I do not like the change you have made to the way category featured items are listed. To this end, I am boycotting category featured selling since it does not provide me any benefit. Please change back to the old method of listing featured auctions for the whole day first!!!

Sincerely, >>


I have not looked extensively at eBay listings, but according to the recent eBay announcements, this appears to be true.

Comments?

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Posted By: MW

OK. I've checked eBay...I also see this topic was discussed briefly below. I think I might be asking for some refunds. To me, there's not a whole lot of difference between the new "featured" option and the "highlighted" option.

As a buyer, I don't think I like the changes either. I don't relish wading through 10 million commons just to find some of the higher-ticket featured items.

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Posted By: HalleyGator

this pisses me off, and I will be asking for refunds...

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Posted By: leon

Although I am just an itsy bitsy ebayer (relatively speaking) I will send along my displeasure thoughts to them....best regards

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Posted By: Jay Miller

This news has ruined an otherwise perfect day. Drat!

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Posted By: HalleyGator

Hello Hal,

Thank you for writing to let us know that your Category Featured Items
are not appearing at the top of the category. As part of the recent
addition of the "Buy It Now" tab, we changed the way Category Featured
Items are displayed in Listings to match the way they are displayed in
Search results.

Currently, when searching for items, Category Featured Items are
displayed based on the sort order. In other words, if the items are
sorted by "newly listed", the system will display the top 50 results
under newly listed and any Category Featured Items among those 50 items
will be displayed at the top of the page. The next 50 items will
display on the next page, and any Category Featured Items among those 50
will be displayed at the top of the page, and so on.

Until this point, Listings results displayed all Category Featured Items
at the top of the first page, regardless of the sort order and how many
Category Featured Items there were. This often meant that the first
page, or even multiple pages, of Listings consisted only of Featured
Items, making it difficult to gain exposure for a single Featured Item.

With this change, all Listings and Search results will display the same
way. We realize that this change may be confusing to you, and we do
apologize.

However, we do realize that you and many other sellers are not pleased
with these changes. I appreciate that you have taken the time to
express your concerns to us, and I have passed these on to our Product
Development team for their consideration in future changes to the site.
I have taken the following information from our announcements board, so
there may be some new changes soon:

"We are going to evaluate these changes carefully to determine if any
steps are necessary to improve the experience for buyers and to preserve
or enhance the value of the Featured Plus listing to sellers. If the
buyers' or sellers' activity is adversely impacted by these changes, we
will take immediate action."

If we make any changes to this feature again, they will be noted on our
announcement board, which can be found at the following link:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/marketing.shtml

Also, because this change was made right in the middle of your auctions,
I have gone ahead and issued credit for the Category Featured fees on
all your current auctions that are using this option. These credits
should be posted to your account within the next few days.

We appreciate your business. As always, we wish you luck in all of your
future endeavors.

Regards,

Carija I.
eBay PowerSeller Support

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Posted By: Brian C Daniels

I will write them as well.....This is a bad revision with a loss of value!