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Quote:***Phone In Your Questions! Town Hall with Bill Cobb on Thursday, November 30*** 

November 28, 2006 | 05:22PM PST/PT

Bill Cobb
Hi everyone...this is Bill Cobb, President of eBay North America. I'd like to invite you to our next Town Hall event on Thursday, November 30, 2006 from 4:00pm to 5:30pm Pacific time. I've asked leaders from Trust & Safety, Customer Support, Shipping, Advanced Solutions (including eBay Stores), eBay Product, and PayPal to join me in answering your questions.

Also, this is our last Town Hall of 2006, and we’re trying something new!

Phone in your question on the air
If you have a question for me or one of the other leaders on our panel, you'll be able to call us at our toll-free number – 877-474-3302 - and ask us your question on the air! We'll be broadcasting LIVE via Internet radio with the help of our friends at wsRadio (the same folks that produce Griff's eBay Radio show). As always, you'll be able to listen in via Windows Media Player or Real Player.

If you’d prefer to type us your question, you can post your question to our new Town Hall forum. We'll be answering some of the questions posted there, as well.

Quote:Some interesting points coming out of the Town Hall Event include:

    * eBay will introduce "Feedback 2.0" (no date was given) in which buyers will be able to rate sellers on shipping & handling.
    * eBay is considering some type of pardon for negative feedback if left a long time ago if the member has shown good behavior since.
    * eBay will introduce "total cost" search capability sometime over the winter months. Total cost includes the price of the item plus the shipping costs.
    * eBay is working with its partner Pitney Bowes, which powers the USPS label printing on PayPal, to introduce scan form for USPS tracking. They are aiming for February. eBay is also working on a large shipping-tracking project to bring back tracking information into My eBay for buyers and sellers (no date was indicated). That would allow buyers to log into their eBay accounts and confirm that the seller shipped their package.
    * Since Yahoo took over serving ads on eBay, there are no concrete plans to replace the discontinued eBay Keyword ad program, though they are looking at ways to offer sellers a way to advertise exclusively on eBay in the future.
    * eBay is planning on investing heavily in search features and in search infrastructure throughout 2007, though they don't feel there is anything wrong with the current system.
    * eBay said buyers don't follow through with payments (unpaid item, or UPI) about 1-2 percent of the time. eBay does not refund fees on optional features sellers have paid for in UPI circumstances.
    * eBay said there is no significance to the new listing item numbers, despite what it called "conspiracy theories" about the numbers. The listing number is a unique number that used to get assigned by category, now it is based on seller account and where that seller's account is stored on the eBay servers.
    * A caller suggested eBay leave Best Offer functionality for a period of time after a listing has ended. Bill Cobb seemed particularly taken with the idea, and said the team would give it serious consideration.

Quote:eBay will introduce "total cost" search capability sometime over the winter months. Total cost includes the price of the item plus the shipping costs.