The eBay UK Bulletin: Issue 226

The eBay UK Bulletin: Issue 226, 15th August 2011

Topics in this issue:

1. eBay news – Returns policy

2. Multi-variation listings

3. PayPal spoof

4. Ask Molly – What is a me?

Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The eBay UK Bulletin

It has been a busy week at HQ, sales are subdued but activity is at fever pitch surrounding ‘multi-variation listings’. More on this later. The Elves have been busy listing ready for the Christmas rush and active listings across all accounts now exceed 800; let’s hope Christmas starts early.

This week sees a warning for sellers about returns and MV listings and how I am coming to love them more with each passing day.

[For details of this newsletter, please scroll down to the end.]

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1. EBAY NEWS – RETURNS POLICY

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Here’s a quick reminder via eBay from the ‘Office of Fair Trading’ regarding returns policy which applies to business sellers.

“Trading Standards have asked us to bring to business sellers’ attention sections 3.41 to 3.44 of the following OFT advice on consumers’ right of return under the Distance Selling Regulations (DSRs). They note that many business sellers use language in their returns policy such as “do not accept returns due to hygiene” and “no returns due to hygiene”.


However, the OFT advice states that while a business may require that a consumer does not break a hygiene seal on an item, and consumers have a duty under the DSRs to take reasonable care of the goods throughout the cancellation period, the definition of “reasonable care” depends on a number of factors: “It may be reasonable for the supplier to stipulate what they consider to be reasonable care, such as not removing hygiene seals on garments or only trying out shoes indoors. But these stipulations cannot restrict a consumer’s reasonable opportunity to inspect and assess the product. Consumers have the right to cancel even if they fail to take reasonable care of the goods; however the DSRs do give suppliers a right of action against consumers for breach of the statutory duty to take reasonable care.”

This will apply to the lady who bought some ‘soft smudge black’ eye pencils from Molly and then wanted to return them saying “I’m sorry I didn’t realise they were black, I can only use brown”.


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2. MULTI-VARIATION LISTINGS

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You may remember from a previous bulletin that I have been looking at the ‘multi-variation’ listing format to see if there is a place for it in my shop. It is ideal for clothes of different colours or shoes of different sizes, but also can be used with toys, DIY and cosmetics!

After a few false starts I have become a big fan and am currently switching many listings into this format. It all started with a desire to save money [Ed - you do surprise us!] but has turned into quite a useful tool.

The basic idea is that if you have several similar items they can be lumped together into one listing and the buyer selects from a ‘pull down’ menu of options. This saves on listing fees and those 10ps all add up!

There are some disadvantages in putting all your eggs into one basket as buyers searching by ‘ending soonest’ won’t necessarily find your single listing whereas one of several might find its way into their search results; the default ‘best match’ should be OK. MV will only allow one postage entry so each item may need re-pricing to absorb any excess postage - ideal for items that weigh the same or are all free postage. The other drawback is that you cannot have the best offer option.

I am now selling similar batches of Knex, Fisher Price figures, Stickle Bricks and even central heating programmers in this way. The way forward for me is to switch items with the same basic title into multi-variation and leave those with specific key words as they are; it seems to be working so far. When the title length is increased to 80 characters in September I should be able to consolidate even further.

I did encounter a few problems along the way such as the limit of eight characters for a variation description when using the ‘Firefox’ browser; Google Chrome overcomes this, but I have no idea why.

Switching existing listings into MV presents a problem with pictures; nobody wants to set them up again. Firefox is the answer this time as it allows you to copy the main eBay picture, it is complicated of course:


Open your item and click on the main picture to enlarge it, right click and select all, then copy. Open your e-mail and create a new message, address it to yourself and paste in the picture, send.

When the e-mail arrives you will be able to ‘save as’ to the desktop and then copy this into your new MV listing. It is convoluted but saves time resetting your pictures.


For most items such as batches of Lego, Duplo picture blocks and so on it is worth listing in MV even with only one lot as you can add a second in the future to the same listing with no listing fee.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect that I have discovered so far is that even with just one item remaining the listing will continue and when more stocks become available all the details and pictures remain. Take my ‘Thomas the Tank Engine train track’ listings: during the winter months I run out of stock and the listings end. In the Spring I get new stocks but have to re-photograph each item – a pain, so much so that I still have not listed half my inventory this year. With MV I’ll just revise and add in the new quantity – result!


Oh and did I mention that I should save around £50 a month in listing fees!


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3. PAYPAL SPOOF

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Here’s a short spoof currently doing the rounds. Many thanks go to ‘Cloversmum’ - http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/cloversmum for sending in this one.

If you see anything like this, just hit the delete key.

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Dear PayPal Customer,

As a security measure, we regularly screen PayPal activity. Recently, we noticed a problem with your account.

We determined that someone may have tried to access your PayPal account without your permission.
For your protection, we have limited your account access. To lift this limitation, click here:

https://www.paypal.com/uk/xxxxxxxxxxcmd=login_actp

Reference Number: [#a07-s5yq7bkmf4#]_[#aa3f71ae23824f3caa2488d235a9ec7c#]

We've limited access to your account temporarily .We'll review the limitation once you respond with the information we've requested.

Thank you for helping to resolve this problem.
Yours sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department


Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response.
For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

The PayPal service is provided by PayPal UK Pty Limited which holds an UK Financial Services Licence, number 304962.

Copyright © 1999-2011 PayPal. All rights reserved.

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I love the reference number in this spoof, it says ‘don’t trust this link’ in Klingon.


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4. ASK MOLLY – WHAT IS A ME?
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“Hi Molly,

Just a quickie!

Why do some people have a blue m and a red e attached to their member profile? What does it mean?”


This is an 'about me' page. It is a free page on eBay that can be used to tell buyers a little about you and why you use eBay. It can also be used as a sales tool promoting your items.

It is a throw-back to the days when eBay had a stronger community spirit; I am not really sure how many people check out these pages now. I did put a counter on mine but it keeps resetting to zero so I don't know how many hits I get.

It is easy to set up - http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/account/about-me.html and as it’s free everybody should have one.

The 'links policy' for a 'me' page is more relaxed so it should be possible to promote other web sites with a few exceptions.

eBay blurb:
"The eBay About Me page may be used to describe the seller's business, and may contain URLs or links to the seller's individual website. It may not specifically promote off eBay sales or sales of items prohibited on eBay, nor may it contain links to commercial web sites where goods from multiple sellers are aggregated by a common search engine."

Just click on a few 'me' links as you surf around the site and see what eBayers have to say about themselves.


If you have a question about eBay or home working in general, please send it to: mollybol@ebaybulletin.co.uk - I will reply personally to every e-mail I receive and remember, there are FREE copies of my book available for the best questions, tips, or stories.

-- END NOTE --

That's all for this week. Check out www.ebaybulletin.co.uk for the latest news from Molly HQ.

A quick word of warning if you use the eBay catalogue when listing. The Elves insisted on a new printer, one that can print in colour, I don’t think these will ever catch on. Anyway Molly decided to sell all the old unused cartridges and used the catalogue to describe them. This was fine for the first one, but tiredness and too little coffee meant that subsequent cartridges had the wrong entry and I awoke the next day to five violations – no more catalogue for me.

Best wishes and happy eBaying

Mollybol

Author of the bestselling title, 'The eBay Business Handbook' - available direct from the publishers: www.harriman-house.com/ebaybusiness