eBay UK Responds to Stores in Search, Outages, International Sellers

[mandy]

Response to recent business seller concerns

It seems that there are a few main concerns being expressed on the long 'PINKS WHERE R U' thread. I wanted to separate them and comment on each of them.

'The new search and listing system'
In mid-February we made Shop listings visible on the main site, below main site listings. (Previously, they'd only appeared if there were very few matching results on the main site.)
Most Shop owners have commented favourably on these changes, which have boosted sales for Shops listings. We've also been monitoring the impact on main site listings, and haven't seen a clear effect yet.
In the US, the proportion of Shops items to main site items was very high, which resulted in a negative effect on 'findability' of items. We haven't seen a clear effect here on findability either; no other countries apart from the US have rolled back Shop listings visibility though.

Site speed/ reliability
April saw more outages/ reliability problems than usual, which might account for some of the observations early in the thread. Things have been fairly stable since then, though.

Overseas, especially Asian, sellers
This is a very emotive issue, so let me start with some facts.

Fact 1: Any item either listed on eBay.co.uk or located in the UK will show up in main site search results. This has been the case for about 18 months.

Fact 2: There has been no recent change that makes international listings more visible. For the last 18 months, any international seller listing that qualifies under the criteria above has been commingled with UK listings. (When there are very low numbers of UK results, we also show listings from international sellers whose items are 'made available worldwide' at the bottom of the page too).

Fact 3: If overseas sellers list directly on the UK site, they pay UK fees.

Fact 4: If overseas sellers don't list directly on the UK site, the only way their listings can appear in main site results is if their items are located in the UK. Some overseas sellers ship from local warehouses and can fairly claim that their items are in the UK. If overseas sellers are misrepresenting their item location, however, they can be reported, and if they persist they can be suspended.

Fact 5: Over the last year, the % of listings on the site with 'misrepresented location' has fallen 80% (i.e. they are only a fifth of the problem they used to be).

And now some opinion too. The perception of overseas sellers has changed over the last year or so; we've made changes like adding the country name in search results, so that overseas listings (good ones and bad ones) are more visible to customers. There are also high concentrations of overseas listings in particular categories (tech accessories and antiques spring to mind as examples).

The common perception is that eBay UK 'is flooded with overseas listings lying about their location'. While perception is important (because it's what people believe), the reality is different - item location misrepresentation is very sharply down, and overseas listings overall haven't mushroomed.

Am I trying to say that all overseas listings are whiter than white? No, of course not. An 80% fall in item location misrepresentation still leaves a lot of 'Beijing, United Kingdom'-type listings on the site, and there are still many overseas listings evading fees by charging exorbitant postage costs. We'll be clamping down on both offences later in the summer (I'd like it to be earlier, but we have to take people off other important topics to do it).

More generally, foreign competition is here to stay. It's our responsibility to keep the playing-field level and to take action against overseas sellers if they violate policies. Beyond that, though, eBay is a global marketplace. Just as you're free to sell to buyers in other countries, so overseas sellers are free to sell to buyers in the UK. We're not planning to impose the eBay equivalent of tariff barriers by blocking out overseas sellers who are specifically trying to sell to the UK.

http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=1100008003&tstart=0

A related thread:
PINKS WHERE R U WHEN WE NEED U?
http://forums.ebay.co.uk/thread.jspa?threadID=200332682&tstart=0

[BellisimaJ.]

Have to give some credit here.

At least the responses of eBay.UK don't seem to be as canned as those on .com.

[amy]

Some of the UK responses do seem to be more truthful than the US responses to the same problem--particularly this statement (since the US, UK, and all international sites share a common platform): "April saw more outages/ reliability problems than usual" .  I believe the US response to users in April was A. silence and B. "What problem? Did you clear your cache and reboot? The problem is either your computer or your ISP"

[BellisimaJ.]

Amy said:

I believe the US response to users in April was A. silence and B. "What problem? Did you clear your cache and reboot? The problem is either your computer or your ISP"

Sooo true, Amy. ;D ;D