Ebay's Global Community

eBay's Global Community

As I read through some of the discussion threads of eBay sellers, I realized how technology has allowed us to form international community of consumers with established rules and regulations. Doing business through eBay still seems a little risky but the fact that the majority of people still live ethically has allowed e-bay to succeed. Like in every society there are people that still try to circumvent the system and will try to get away with unethical activities. Through the discussion forum, eBay sellers have established an environment in which anyone can communicate the problems they have encountered and ask for advice for handling those situations. Sellers also have the option to offer suggestions on how to make the selling process better. Some of the issues that I found interesting in nature were how e-bay sellers handle non-paying bidders, feedback concerns, and international selling.

The hot topic that I found in many discussion threads was the issue with non-paying bidders. This problem makes it difficult for sellers to continue selling with confidence and it also makes it hard for new sellers to start selling. Non-paying bidders also prevent honest bidders from actually purchasing the item. This also forces the seller to place the item on auction again, incur a re-listing fee, and they may not also get the high bid that they had the first time. It also causes retaliatory negative feedback from the non-buyer to the seller. The sellers have addressed this issue by providing suggestions and answering each other questions. Some of the ways the seller community is handling the issue of non-paying bidders is by filing non-paying bidder alerts and FVFC(Final Value Free Credits). Consensus from the seller community is that filing negative feedback is not sufficient because eBay does not suspend a non-paying bidder until their feedback number reaches about a negative three. However, if the seller files the FVFC, E-bay will suspend the bidder if three sellers have filed on the same bidder.

eBay also addressed this situation by conducting a workshop titled "Reducing Unpaid Items". The workshop was conducted by the eBay staff and was opened to the entire seller community. I think that this type of format is very useful to eBay sellers, because it gives them the chance to voice their concerns directly to eBay and get immediate feedback as to what is being done to address those concerns. Some things that were discussed were some causes of unpaid items and some practices that sellers can adopt to reduce unpaid items. Some causes of unpaid items are international buyers, dead e-mail accounts, and sellers that don't file in fear of negative feedback. Some of the practices that they suggested to sellers were to offer PayPal, utilize eBay checkout, include shipping costs in the shipping details, and use Immediate Payment on BIN(Buy it Now) listings. The eBay staff also provided links with suggestions and updates on what they were currently working on. The response of the seller community was positive and was even taken back to the discussion forum.

Some suggestions to reduce non-paying bidders from sellers are to require buyers to enter their credit card information prior to making a bid. The reason is to verify the customers' identity and to protect the seller as well in case of non-payment. This was suggested to eBay in one of their workshops and their only objection to this suggestion to this was that it would eliminate too many buyers that actually follow through with their bids. One practice that sellers have adopted is continuing to bump the threads regarding this topic so it remains current and new sellers have the chance to read it. I think this is a very good idea because it is one of the most important issues that concerns sellers, experienced or new.

Along with non-paying bidders, the fear of negative feedback is a problem that sellers also encounter. The majority of the time this stems from the non-paying bidders. Some of the concerns by sellers are that buyers are posting negative feedback for reasons that are no fault of the seller.

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