The Member Spotilight Shines on Tootsiegirls

Hi everyone!

I'm here with another installment of our Member Spotlight program. In case you're new to the Chatter, or if you need a refresher about the Member Spotlight, the goal is to highlight members who have unique, interesting, or inspiring eBay stories. 

You can submit your stories directly to chatterblog@ebay.com (team), gianni@ebay.com (me), or on our dedicated discussion board thread. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our RSS Feed, so you can get updates each time a new post goes up.

This week we have a special treat - a video Member Spotlight! Did I mention you can tape your story, host it on sites like Youtube, and send it to us that way too?

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Today's Member Spotlight is focused on tootsiegirls.

Take a minute to watch this video to hear about tootsiegirls' most rewarding sales as an eBay Trading Assistant, and how her trip to San Jose for eBay Live! 2005 literally changed her life. 

"Cast" a Bid for Colbert's...uhh...cast?

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to…

“Take Stephen Colbert, Back To Your House”

For those of you who don’t know, Stephen Colbert is the comedic genius and host of The Colbert Report.  This witty and satirical program which pokes fun at American politics can be seen on cable TV’s Comedy Central. 

Fans and regular Colbert Report viewers, referred to as “The Colbert Nation,” know that several weeks ago Mr. Colbert fractured his left wrist. To ensure that it healed properly, he needed the standard hard cast placed on it. And taking a note from old Americana and deciding that "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade," he turned his misfortune into a fundraising extravaganza for the Yellow Ribbon Fund.

Here's how the plan came together: knowing that although he’d have some slight discomfort while wearing this cast, it wouldn't stop him from interviewing his guests on The Colbert Report.  He saw the opportunity and seized it, playing on the sympathies of his guests (and their fame).

That’s right Nation, in order to turn the cast into a piece of memorabilia, Mr. Colbert convinced people such as New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, the CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and host of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly, to sign the cast and give their well-wishes for his recovery. 

100% of the proceeds raised in the Stephen Colbert: Exclusive Cast auction will be donated to the Yellow Ribbon Fund. The Yellow Ribbon Fund assists injured service members and their families while they recuperate at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center by offering free cab vouchers, hotel rooms, apartments, rental cars, job mentoring, internships and tickets to sporting and cultural events.

The Stephen Colbert: Exclusive Cast auction currently has 109 pre-approved bids, with the high bid amount at $16,900.  Not too shabby, eh Nation?

Nation, this is your chance to help raise money for a great cause - and have an awesome “Stephen Colbert: Exclusive Cast” to wear around should you suffer a similar fate (knocking on wood you don't).  The auction ends this Sunday night at 9:00 PM Pacific.  Rest assured there should be no Greenscreen challenges here!

Lynda Talgo of TNS answers SNP questions

***Update on 2/11/08: We are adjusting the processes noted in this post. Existing restrictions that limit sellers to a percentage of sales will be lifted. For more information about the seller non-performance policy, please read the Frequently Asked Questions.***

Unless you've been on vacation the last two weeks (and if you were, welcome back!), I probably don't need to tell you that SNP is an acronym for eBay's Seller Non-Performance policy, a longstanding policy which has had a lot of new attention since August 13. That was the day Senior Vice President Philipp Justus told the Community about our heightened attention to SNP.

As a part of our efforts to improve the buying experience, eBay is focusing on sellers whose recent non-positive feedback and item not received activity put them in the bottom 1% of all sellers. We are paying close attention to this group because they generate fully 35% of all the bad buyer experiences on the site. 

The reason why these efforts are important is that our research has found that buyers who have a bad experience with an eBay seller tend to buy much less—or even not at all—from other eBay sellers afterward.  By targeting this 1% population, our aim is to make a more active and vibrant marketplace for the other 99% of eBay sellers.

Unsurprisingly, Philipp's letter has triggered a lot of discussion and emails.  Our sense is that Community members agree with our efforts to take action against this group of sellers -- sellers and buyers both benefit from a more trustworthy marketplace.  Since beginning enforcement, many sellers have had questions about enforcement and how they can make sure their buyer satisfaction rates remain in compliance with the SNP policy.

We took some of the Community's most common questions to Lynda Talgo, Senior Director of Global Policy Management in Trust and Safety.  Lynda's been one of the thinkers/implementers behind these targeted SNP enforcement efforts, and she and her team have been working hard to help sellers understand SNP.   Lynda's answers to some of the most common questions we're hearing are below.

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Q: Can a seller get restricted based on only one negative or neutral feedback?

A: No, the intent of our new SNP enforcement is to focus on sellers with a pattern of buyer dissatisfaction, and a seller would never be restricted based on a single negative or neutral feedback.   

Q: What factors do you consider when restricting an account?

A:  We look at negative and neutral feedback activity and Item Not Received rate to determine level of buyer dissatisfaction, and we also use sales volume to determine which restriction to use.  Let’s take a look at each of these in detail.

Feedback:  We look at unique negative and unique neutral feedback activity in proportion to a seller’s total selling feedback. 

Item Not Received:  We look at the rate of INR (Item Not Received) claims in proportion to all selling transactions.

Detailed Seller Ratings:  We are not currently using Detailed Seller Ratings, but we expect to in the future. We will continue to focus our enforcement on a very small subset of the overall selling community.  Please stay tuned...

There are two thresholds we use to determine which restrictions are most appropriate.  Most sellers who fall into a category of SNP enforcement are there due to feedback rates, so I’ll use those in my examples. 

Greater than 5% buyer dissatisfaction rate:  A seller must have more than 5% negative and neutral feedback, as a seller, over the last 90 days to qualify, and must also receive a minimum of two negatives from unique buyers in the past 90 days. 

Greater than 10% buyer dissatisfaction rate:  A seller must have more than 10% negative and neutral feedback, as a seller, over the last 90 days to qualify, and must also receive a minimum of three negatives from unique buyers in the past 90 days. 

There are different restrictions (described below) for buyer dissatisfaction rates of greater than 5%, and greater than 10%, and for low-volume sellers.

Q: Are you now considering a neutral a negative? If so, why continue to have neutral feedback?

A:  No, it’s more accurate to say that we treat neutral feedback as not positive.  For instance, neutral comments alone do not trigger an SNP action.  There is a negative feedback threshold of two which neutral comments do not count towards. 

I understand the concern among some members about counting neutrals in SNP calculations.  Generally speaking, however (and we’ve done a lot of research to prove this), a neutral does reflect an unsatisfactory buyer experience. There are exceptions, of course, but the vast majority of neutral comments indicate an issue.  We felt that leaving neutral comments out of the calculation would mask a significant part of the bad buyer experience problem.

We continue to have neutral feedback because it’s helpful information for buyers to read and review when they are evaluating a seller.  The main purpose of the feedback system is for buyers and sellers to be able to evaluate each other – and neutrals, similar to the Detailed Seller Ratings, provide additional information to buyers and sellers.

eBay Marketplace for Facebook app launches

For those eBay members who are into the latest social networking craze on Facebook (be careful poking each other out there, folks), you may be interested in checking out the eBay Marketplace for Facebook application. It launched last week and popular industry blogs GigaOm and Mashable weighed in and gave their $.02.

With this Facebook plug-in, you can showcase what you've won (or lost!), share your watched items with trusted friends in your Facebook network, and even push items onto their eBay watch lists if you think they might be interested. Browsing your friends' items puts a whole new spin on the eBay experience.

Rolf Skyberg, part of our Platform & Innovation team here at eBay, was involved in launching this application. Rolf also recently blogged about why he thinks embracing social networks is like peanut butter and jelly - read his post, and see if you agree. :-)

-Delyn

Splitting Up Local Delivery and Pickup

If you're like me, you'll occasionally run across some items in your house that you just don't need any more and have good value, but would be a big pain to ship (maybe a dresser, or an older TV). For a lot of people, that type of stuff is easiest to sell locally, and to offer pickup or delivery to your buyers.

However, when you list those things on eBay, you can only choose one option when you get to the Shipping section: "Local Pickup/Delivery." Not being able to split up those two choices causes some sellers to bypass it completely - they understandably don't want their buyers thinking they'll deliver an item when they only want to offer pickup, or vice versa. So we're making a simple change that should make these options much more attractive: we're splitting those two out! Now you'll be able to explicitly say whether you're willing to deliver that dresser, or whether the buyer needs to pick it up.

Amit from our eBay Local team has been leading the charge here, and sat down to talk with us about the change and how it can benefit you. You can also check out the announcement he made today for more info as well.

Updates to the Bid History Page

One of the things I’ve always loved about eBay is that it is one of the few companies I’ve worked for who actively solicits feedback from its members and responds as quickly as possible to constructive criticism.

Many of you have sent both praises and critiques to us via sneakpeek@ebay.com. Of course, we also continue to monitor the discussion boards and solicit feedback through our Voices program. Just as you probably know from your own business experience, we can respond to some things quickly, and some programs can take longer to implement.

Today I thought I’d pop onto this blog to let you know about two of the changes you’ve requested, which you’ll see in the next couple weeks.

As Evan shared, the Bid History page is becoming more informative and functional. We made a change several months ago and showed user IDs as “Bidder 1,” “Bidder 2,” and so on, for members bidding on items that are over $200. This was an important safety measure designed to confound professional fraudsters. We are now going to mask the IDs in a way that still can thwart the bad guys, but I think you’ll agree that it’s much more useful to members trying to determine a bit about their bidding competition. You’ll soon see IDs displayed as a label derived from two random characters from the ID: for example, a**b. That label will remain consistent across all auctions over $200 for which a particular bidder places a bid. You can read more about that here, and make sure to check out Evan's video at the end of this post!

In addition to this helpful transparency on Bid History, you’ll also be able to bid directly from that page. No longer will you have to go back to the View Item (description) page after checking out the current bid history. Instead, just place a bid right there!

Likewise, we’ve heard your comments about the Search testing we are running in Playground. We are developing it in phases so that we can test particular things first. You’ve told us, though, that Completed Items search is very important to you, so we’ll be adding that very soon.

Please keep your feedback coming. We never make changes or add new features without a reason that’s grounded in the needs of our Community. So when we do make changes, we love to hear from you so that we can make refinements if necessary. Your voice counts!

Enjoy your weekend!

Renee

Can't Hit Like David Ortiz? You Can At Least Drive Like Him

It's been awhile since you've had to look at my smiling mug on here. I've been away on vacation, and just got back this week - and returned to a completely empty desk. My devious colleagues had squirreled away all the toys and various knickknacks I have on my desk (read: stuff my wife won't let me keep at home) and moved it another desk in the very corner of the floor, under the guise that I had been moved while I was away. My revenge will be swift and terrible, although I guess I'm glad I didn't get the dreaded styrofoam cube treatment.

Anyway, they tried to make me feel better by showing me this: slugger David "Big Papi" Ortiz from the Boston Red Sox is selling his Mercedes on eBay Motors. The car is exceptionally cool in its own right, but there's an added bonus: Ortiz will personally deliver the car and title to you at legendary Fenway Park! It's a pretty neat one-two to be able to meet one of the best players in baseball, and then to drive away with his car (legally). Just don't ask him why he's wearing a Dallas Mavericks jersey in the picture instead of a Boston Celtics one.

Having just traded for Ortiz on my fantasy team my teammates knew I'm a big fan of his at the moment, so it was their rendition of a peace offering. Now if only they'll just give me a loan as well. (And if one of our readers ends up winning the car, PLEASE send me a picture so I can live vicariously through you.)

A Chance To Be A Princess

Hey everyone, you better hurry because someone has only one more day remaining to become a Princess. 

That's right, the chance to purchase one of the beautiful gowns worn by Princess Diana will be ending on Wednesday, August 22. Listed by WEtv, this gorgeous Catherine Walker evening gown was worn by Princess Diana to the Cannes Film Festival in 1987 and to the opening of Miss Saigon in 1989. And hold on to your hats, the auction has an opening bid of $125,000 for which you'll have to get pre-qualified if you want to bid. 

The "People's Princess" as Diana is commonly referred to, was admired and loved by so many around the world.  It's appropriate now as the 10th anniversary of the tragic car accident in Paris that ended her life early approaches, that one of the stunning evening gowns she wore is put on auction for others to enjoy.   

100% of proceeds of your purchase went to Colin Powell's America’s Promise Alliance, the nation’s largest alliance of corporations, nonprofit organizations, foundations, policymakers, advocacy and faith groups committed to ensuring that children receive the fundamental resources—the Five Promises—they need to lead successful, healthy lives.

So be sure to set your eBay wireless to notify you this Wednesday, August 22 when the listing ends so maybe you or someone you love can have a chance to be a princess. Good luck!

Check it out -- PayPal has a new blog

Wondering when PayPal is going to have a blog of their own?  Wonder no more.  On August 10, PayPal President Rajiv Dutta christened the new PayPal blog with a letter to future readers:

"I’ll be making posts from time to time, and you’ll see regular contributions from PayPal staff on a variety of topics. We hope this will help you to get to know our employees, the initiatives within our company, and provide a forum for discussion on e-commerce and payments...Most importantly, we want your feedback. If you like our point of view, let us know. And if you don’t, please tell us why."

We live in a fast-changing world, and more communication is always good.  I've added their feed to my list of daily must-reads, and I commend my friends at PayPal for taking the plunge. 

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Speaking of blogs -- the eBay Chatter celebrated its one-year anniversary as a blog a few months ago, and it's time to hear what you think.  When we started our blog, we thought this should feel like a place you can go to

1. learn something new about buying and selling,
2. meet a staff member who deepens your understanding about a new change or product,
3. read about an interesting eBay member with an inspiring story to tell, or
4. get an occasional chuckle.   

Thoughts on how we're doing so far?  Let us know at chatterblog@ebay.com .

The world's rarest beer... on eBay!

Ah, it's a warm summer Friday afternoon and, as the weekend beckons, a (not-so-)young man's fancy turns lightly to thoughts of beer. I'm sure many of us are going to enjoy a brewski or two in the company of friends and family this weekend -- nothing like a couple of cold ones on a hot summer day. Well, they don't come colder than this bottle of Allsopp's Arctic Ale, which went on an Arctic expedition led by Sir Edward Belcher. (What a magnificent name for a beer drinker!).

And they don't come any older than this bottle either. Back when Sir Ted was sinking pints (and no doubt living up to his name soon afterwards), the year was 1852. That makes this the oldest, rarest bottle of beer in the world. I have that on authority from the Brookston Beer Bulletin, a rigorous, scientific, peer-reviewed (and beer-reviewed) publication whose focus seems to be coverage of beer-related news around the world. (And a nobler occupation would be hard to find.)

Naturally, the world's rarest bottle of beer was sold on eBay, home to the world's most avid collectors, whether it's beer or any of our other many Collectibles categories. The winning bid -- and I can only hope it wasn't the bidding equivalent of drunk-dialing -- was a whopping $503,300!

It's an amount many of us may ponder on as we stagger out of beer-dispensing establishments late on Saturday night with the urgent desire to eat pizza with lots of cheese, hug the nearest lamp-post, or look on complete strangers as our best friends.