eBay's Live Announcements
eBay Live Announcements - Skype integration, blogs and a Crackdown on Excessive Shipping Fees
This week eBay made some important announcements regarding new additions to the site, Skype integration and Trust & Safety. For the most part, these announcements are not earthshattering. Adding a wiki and a blog is not exactly revolutionary, but it should help make eBay a little stickier and improve their presence in the search engines.
The Skype integration was certainly predictable. Of course, you have to wonder how many sellers are going to want dozens or hundreds of people calling them and expecting immediate answers. Sellers have already complained that tending to their buyer questions via email takes too much of their time. I can't imagine adding a Skype Me button will make this better. eBay will have to quickly demonstrate that average selling prices go up significantly when the Skype Me button is present on a listing. It's the only way this service will take off.
The most interesting announcement, from gumshoo's perspective, was the verbal commitment to crack down on eBay sellers charging excessive shipping fees. This is an issue that has been well documented for years. It's why gumshoo includes an excessive shipping and handling fee alert in all auction scans.
So will the promised crackdown on excessive shipping fees prove effective? We'll have to wait and see. In order for eBay to implement this crackdown without significantly impacting their bottom line, they will need to have a pretty liberal definition of "excessive". One that you can bet will favor the seller. Gumshoo will continue to scan for excessive shipping and handling fees unless and until it becomes abundantly clear that eBay has elimintated the problem.
This week eBay made some important announcements regarding new additions to the site, Skype integration and Trust & Safety. For the most part, these announcements are not earthshattering. Adding a wiki and a blog is not exactly revolutionary, but it should help make eBay a little stickier and improve their presence in the search engines.
The Skype integration was certainly predictable. Of course, you have to wonder how many sellers are going to want dozens or hundreds of people calling them and expecting immediate answers. Sellers have already complained that tending to their buyer questions via email takes too much of their time. I can't imagine adding a Skype Me button will make this better. eBay will have to quickly demonstrate that average selling prices go up significantly when the Skype Me button is present on a listing. It's the only way this service will take off.
The most interesting announcement, from gumshoo's perspective, was the verbal commitment to crack down on eBay sellers charging excessive shipping fees. This is an issue that has been well documented for years. It's why gumshoo includes an excessive shipping and handling fee alert in all auction scans.
So will the promised crackdown on excessive shipping fees prove effective? We'll have to wait and see. In order for eBay to implement this crackdown without significantly impacting their bottom line, they will need to have a pretty liberal definition of "excessive". One that you can bet will favor the seller. Gumshoo will continue to scan for excessive shipping and handling fees unless and until it becomes abundantly clear that eBay has elimintated the problem.
posted by Craig at 2:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home