“Better buyer experience!”—it’s a favorite expression in eBay’s offices these days. Providing good buyer experiences makes good business sense if you think about it.

If buyers have a better experience, they’ll likely buy more, and that means eBay sellers make more money (and so does eBay).

eBay’s most recent initiative to ensure customers have a good shopping experience is the company’s new links policy. eBay has evaluated buyer and seller behavior on its site and has decided that placing e-mail addresses  and shortened URLs (sometimes called tiny URLs ) in listings is not helpful to buyers, and is therefore a bad buyer experience. So eBay has outlawed these.

eBay has had a links policy for a long time, and had been enforcing limits on what links sellers and third party tool developers could place in eBay listings. However, beginning Oct. 1, new listings and relistings will be blocked if they include either of these. eBay is already warning sellers by returning error messages for listings that will violate the new policy.

If you post such a listing using Auctiva, eBay will return an error message that we will display in the Account Notifications area of your Auctiva account. The e-mail restriction affects both clickable and nonclickable addresses and shortened URLs.

“But wait!” you exclaim. “I’ve got e-mail addresses in a bunch of my saved listings! What can I do?”

You can update your saved listings using the Find and Replace button on your Saved Listings page. With this feature you can update most fields in a listing like Buy It Now price, description, quantity, sale type, start price, etc.

Now if you think you might have e-mail addresses or links in some of your profiles like your Seller Details, you should review these as well and update them if needed. Once you update these profiles and save your changes, the information will be adjusted in all the listings that contain these profiles.

You can also use Find & Replace by Auctiva to update hundreds of live eBay listings at once. You can find this app in eBay’s Apps Center, and it won’t cost you a dime. You can even use this app if you’re not an Auctiva customer.

Now that eBay’s fall Seller Update has been announced, I’ve been monitoring various seller boards to see what other merchants are saying about these latest changes. Since I’m lucky enough to work for one of eBay’s Certified Providers, I was privy to these changes ahead of the general public, and have had time to digest the information.

Some of the policies that really caught my eye had to do with return policies. My listings used to state that I do not take returns. Of course, I have always been willing to take returns if a buyer asks. But eBay’s latest changes made me think I should change my policy. Then after hearing a little more on these policies, I decided to stick to my “new returns” policy.

The last few times I’ve had issues with an item, I didn’t even ask the buyer to return the product. I happily refunded their money, no questions asked. Since eBay’s Buyer Protection program stipulates that sellers have to take refunds, I figured I’d just let my existing “no returns” policy stay. If nothing else, it made me feel that telling buyers that I wouldn’t take returns would deter “problem” shoppers, seeking to take advantage of an open-door return policy.

When I heard about the upcoming changes to the return policy (removing the three- and seven-day time frames in which a buyer could return an item to the seller) I thought I’d take a leap of faith, and update my long-standing “no returns” policy on my saved listings. Supposedly, you make more sales when you accept returns. And since I essentially take all returns anyway, I didn’t see the problem with changing this.

But today, after reading some clarifications on the changes to the return policy, I decided to stop updating my returns policy, and will keep my “no returns” stance. Why? Because I read this response from an eBay employee when a seller asked for some clarification about “buyer’s remorse” claims:

The employee wrote, “Yes, if a seller chooses to accept returns, then that means accepting returns for any reason, including buyer’s remorse. This has actually always been the policy, but since there has been a lot of confusion about it we’re clarifying the wording for our sellers and our buyers now.

“If a seller doesn’t want to accept buyer remorse returns, then s/he should choose ‘No returns accepted’ and address any issues with items that are not as described on a case-by-case basis.”

Making buyer’s remorse a reason for a return seems unfair. I’ve had a couple buyers contact me with sob stories. I knew it was really just buyer’s remorse in disguise. But now it’s openly going to be known that any buyer, for any reason, can ask for a refund. I’m not a large department store. If just one buyer asks for a refund in a month, that hurts my bottom line quite a bit since my profit margins are already slim.

I’ll stick to my “no returns” policy, and go about my business as usual. Will saying I don’t take returns—even though I secretly do— hurt my sales? I’m not sure. But I’ll sleep better at night knowing that I might have one less problem buyer to deal with who suddenly has a change of heart.

What are your thoughts about the change to return policies? Tell us below.

Being the good seller that you are, I’m sure you dealt with your duplicate fixed-price listings back in the fall when eBay began enforcing the Duplicate Listing Policy, am I right?

You might have changed a few of those fixed-priced listings to the auction format with a Buy It Now option to ensure your items got the maximum visibility, while also complying with eBay policy. Or maybe you already had duplicate auction-style listings, and breathed a sigh of relief when you learned that the policy only applied to fixed-price listings. Phew!

Well, be careful not to get too comfortable with your duplicates. eBay will soon begin enforcing a similar policy for auctions. The new Duplicate Auction-Style Listing policy takes effect today, and duplicate auctions may no longer fly—if they’re not selling. The policy states that it’s OK to have duplicate auction-style listings, so long as these auctions have at least a 30-percent sell-through rate over a the course of a seven-day period. I’m not exactly sure how eBay will calculate that rate, since many sellers stagger their auctions to end continually day after day, sometimes having several ending on the same day.

According to reports, the policy will only affect a small group of sellers, which eBay is contacting. And this minimum sell-through rate will improve the shopping experience for visitors, the auction site adds. But some sellers say seven days is just not enough time to really see how an auction is performing.

“Seven days is much too short a period to measure sell through, as there can be a huge variation in the sell-through rate for an item, one week to another,” one seller notes in this forum post. “An item might have a sell-through of 60 percent one week but 0 percent the next. It should be calculated over the last 90, 60, or even 30 days.”

This may or may not be true but, regardless, the policy takes effect today, and eBay says auctions that don’t meet the 30-percent sell-through rate will be removed.

eBay recommends sellers with a lot of duplicate auction-style listings that aren’t selling should end these listings, and not relist them. This would allow the sell-through rate of the duplicate listings that are selling to increase, making it more likely they’ll meet the new minimum requirement to stay live on the site. Of course, you could also revise your listings so they’re no longer duplicates using Auctiva’s Find & Replace feature—if you want to avoid the sell-through requirement all together.

Only time will tell how this policy will play out. In the meantime, if you do maintain duplicate auction-style listings, make sure you optimize them with a good title, description and plenty of images to increase their chances of selling, especially if eBay has contacted you about your listings.

Let us know what you think of this new policy by leaving a comment below. Will it affect your selling strategy? What are you doing to ensure your duplicate auctions comply with the new sell-through requirement?

Now that a few days have passed since eBay announced its first round of policy changes for sellers for 2011, I’ve had some time to digest the information.

And, frankly, I’m tired. I’ve been going through all of my listings, revising them with each new change, calculating the new insertion fees, the new final value fees, considering current market prices, etc.—it’s all very time consuming and tiring. Remember the days when the insertion fees for everyone fit on one chart about five lines long? It used to be so simple! Today it almost seems like you need a degree in mathematics and economics to figure out your best selling option.

The changes in final value fees—which will soon be based on a transaction’s total, i.e., final sale price plus shipping—is causing quite an uproar among sellers. Comments regarding this new policy are flooding the Internet and eBay seller forums.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Profit margins are already paper thin, and seem to get thinner with each new policy change.

When sellers were informed they could no longer outwardly charge buyers for shipping insurance, eBay suggested rolling the cost of insurance into the shipping and handling fees. Now they’re being told to roll the cost of shipping and handling into the asking price. But I’m not sure this is a good idea. It could turn off buyers.

eBay hopes its new take of final value fees will encourage more sellers to offer free shipping, and attract more shoppers at the same time. However, sellers aren’t making much on shipping and handling as it is, even when they charge a small fee. The money goes right back to paying the mail carrier, buying packing supplies and shipping labels, etc. Sure, there are a few sellers who have tried to minimize their final value fees by listing an iPhone for 99 cents and asking $200 for shipping, for example—but these were just a few. Most sellers offer reasonable prices and shipping costs.

Last year I switched most of my items to free shipping and boosted their asking prices enough to cover most of my cost, so I won’t be hurting too much by this new policy. I’ll just have to readjust a few of my listings that do include shipping and handling fees. This will probably mean these items will have to be relisted numerous times before selling, but at least I won’t have to pay the insertion fees.

I am hopeful that the new shopping cart that was announced along with the other changes will attract more buyers, as eBay envisions. What worries me about the ability to buy from multiple sellers in one purchase is, if a shopper has a bad experience with one seller, this could have a negative impact on all the sellers in that buyer’s shopping cart—and their DSRs, too. The shopping cart hasn’t exactly gone off without a hitch on the U.K. site, but many people are saying good things about it, and my fingers are crossed that eBay has worked out most of the bugs for the U.S. site.

We’ll see what happens.

How are Bay’s latest changes going to affect you? Will your profits take a big hit with the new fees? What do you think about the shopping cart feature? Let us know.

Have you de-duped? eBay’s Duplicate Listings Policy has been in effect for two months, but unfortunately there are still quite a few eBayers who still have duplicate listings. Just to clarify, the policy is for fixed-price items, so if you have duplicate listings in the auction format (with or without a Buy It Now price) you’re OK. If not, you need to get busy.

At Auctiva, we give you the tools you need to comply and adjust to new eBay policies. And while, many of our customers have done a great job of de-duping their eBay listings, there are still a few who aren’t utilizing our Multi-Variation Tool or our Parts Compatibility feature for eBay Motors to ensure their listings are dubbed “duplicates.”

We know that some listings are mistakenly identified as such. As an example, this could happen if a seller has two of the same used books for sale, each with the same title but with slightly different descriptions. (One might show more wear than the other). At first glance they may appear to be duplicates, but in reality, they are two different items. Many collectors have commented on various forums about their listings being removed when they weren’t duplicates at all. This can be frustrating, but you can take action to ensure your listings don’t pop up on eBay’s naughty list.

For starters, if you think your listings might catch eBay’s eye, change the title to reflect the differences in similar listings. Use the Item Specifics field to note more details about each item. eBay recommends having at least two fields be “substantially different.”

You might also want to take photos of each item instead of using the same one for each listing. Even if the items look identical and most buyers wouldn’t notice that the same photos were being used, err on the side of caution and show images of each product. This could also help you prove to eBay that the listings are not identical if they do come under review.

Don’t forget that you can have different durations for similar listings, or you can add a reserve price to one of them. Auctiva’s Find & Replace feature will help you make these changes quickly.

So if you need to make changes, now’s the time to do it. Check out this Auctiva EDU article for more tips. And if you have already de-duped all your listings, well done. Keep up the good work! Happy holidays!

Have you ever reported another seller’s eBay listing because of a policy violation? I have to admit I have, but both instances were the result of someone blatantly stealing my images or “creating” a description that was mine, word for word.

There have been other times when I considered reporting violations I saw, but ultimately decided against it. Why? Because I thought that if rules were being broken, it shouldn’t be up to me to be the policy police (unless, of course, I was personally affected). I have more important things to do than turn in other sellers. It should be eBay’s job to enforce all the rules and policies it’s constantly making, right? I think so.

But it seems eBay is sharing that responsibility with us sellers. You may have noticed the “Report Item” link in every listing. Sure, as a community we should all try to ensure we obey the rules and provide the best service we can to our customers. It goes without saying that if you see an ad for body parts you should report it immediately.

But what about those sellers who seem to follow an entirely different set of rules and get away with it? Why should I do eBay’s dirty work and rat out a mega seller who states in their listing that they’re not responsible for the package once it’s mailed—even though this clearly goes against eBay’s selling practices policy?

Does it affect me personally? No. It is a huge violation? Not in my opinion. If I were interested in buying from that seller, I would ask them directly why they stated this before deciding whether to buy. eBay officials made the policy, so let them follow up on it.

With the recent change prohibiting most sellers from having duplicate fixed-price listings, I have to wonder how much eBay will rely on users to report duplicates. As a test, I pulled up one of my listings and clicked on the “Report Item” link. When I selected Listing policy violations as the “reason for report,” there was a new option in the drop-down menu for the Detailed Reason—duplicate listing. So now anyone can report a possible duplicate listing violation, among the dozens of other reasons.

I wonder how many of those obvious (yet minor) policy infractions result in listings being removed. It seems like each time I’m on eBay’s discussion boards, I see numerous posts about how someone reported a seller for this or that policy violation, and yet the listing doesn’t get removed. So you have to wonder if eBay has the staff needed to review each reported listing. For some violations, it literally only takes a few minutes for eBay to take action (depending on the violation); for others, it may take days.

This brings up a whole other side of this anonymous reporting: maliciously reporting a competitor for the sole purpose of getting their listings removed, so you potentially get more business. It’s a dirty practice, but it happens more often than you might think. I suspect this happened to me several months ago (see my blog post Vindicated).

One of my listings was removed for a supposed VeRO violation within hours of its launch. I checked my Sellathon stats to see who had visited the listing during its four whole hours of visibility on eBay. There had been a total of three visitors: me, a seller of the exact item and eBay. Apparently eBay acts quickly on VeRO complaints!

I was eventually cleared and had the violation removed, but the experience was very frustrating. To think, a fellow seller likely reported me. I know there’s still not 100-percent proof of that—but still, what a crummy, sneaky, low-down thing to do.

So for now, I’m taking the Switzerland stance. Unless someone is in my territory, taking advantage of my work, I choose to stay neutral and let eBay fight its own battles in the war against policy violators. How about you? Am I wrong? Is it a good idea for eBay to use the millions of eyes that browse through listings every day to make sure sellers are abiding by the rules? Do you think we should turn in listings, even if we’re not directly affected?

Detailed Seller Ratings, or DSRs as many of us refer to them, provide a “more complete picture of the member’s performance as a seller,” according to eBay. But I’m not sure how true this is. Recently, someone left me ones in each of the four DSR categories (item description, seller communication, shipping, and shipping and handling charges), but still left me positive feedback. How does that work?

I’ve never understood the true purpose of DSRs. I prefer the days when eBay allowed us to leave honest feedback about buyers. Today, buyers can anonymously rate sellers for things that are out of their control—shipping time, for example. Buyers don’t even seem to need a real reason to leave a low DSR score at all, so why have them?

The two DSR scores I completely disagree with are communication and shipping time. It doesn’t matter that you e-mail your buyer a thank you message when they pay, and again when you have shipped their item and want to give them the delivery confirmation number. This can be rated as “bad communication” if , for some reason, a buyer doesn’t like those two e-mails (which is especially possible since they receive similar messages from eBay and/or PayPal). Perhaps a phone call would suffice? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve purchased something and never heard from the seller once! I thought that was bad, so I try to be better, but perhaps I communicate too much?

As for shipping time, I state in my listings that I ship within one business day of receiving payment. I have kept that promise, and bend over backward to get packages to the post office before it closes. But sometimes, that’s not good enough, and my DSR get dinged for that, too.

What to do, what to do? It appears it’s a no-win situation.

If I want a “more complete picture” of a seller, I’ll look at their feedback rating, read their terms of service, check out their About Me page, etc. I’ll even ask questions if I feel it necessary. That’s the only way to get a complete picture of a seller, in my opinion. What do you think?

After 10 days of frustration, anger and just plain confusion, I finally feel vindicated for a false accusation of violating eBay’s Verified Rights Owner Program.

The organization, which is supposed to protect the intellectual property rights of third parties on eBay, came knocking at my door recently and took down one of my listings without any real explanation. It simply stated that I had somehow violated its policies. I knew there was no violation. I even checked my saved listing on Auctiva and re-read every word. Nada. The wording was mine, the image was mine and I was stumped. Then out of curiosity, I checked my Sellathon stats.

Lo and behold, only three people had viewed my listing before it was ended: me, another eBay seller—who was selling the same product—and eBay, which viewed it immediately before the listing was removed.

Had this other seller simply filed a false report to eBay, hoping to get the listing pulled? According to eBay, “Only the intellectual property rights owner can report potentially infringing items or listings through eBay’s VeRO Program.” But how could the “rights owner” report my listing without clicking and viewing my listing?

Needless to say, I was fuming.

After taking a day to calm down, I contacted eBay for an explanation. I was told to contact Net Enforcers, the company that had requested my listing be pulled. If I didn’t get a response within seven days, I was told, I should contact eBay again. So I e-mailed Net Enforcers, politely asking for an explanation of what VeRO policy I had violated.

Seven days passed with no response. On the eighth day, I contacted eBay and asked it to contact Net Enforcers, or at least get someone from the company to respond to my e-mail. That’s the least I deserved, right?

A few days later I checked my e-mail, and there in my inbox was a message from Net Enforcers (after some prodding from eBay, no doubt). There was no explanation, only this terse statement: “We are retracting the notification we sent to eBay, thank you.”

A separate e-mail from eBay read, “We have restored your listing…We’re sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you.” Still no explanation, but hey, I’ll take the apology (and the credit for the listing fees I had paid, by the way).

I learned something from this experience and that is: You shouldn’t just sit back and say nothing when one of your listings gets taken down if you know you’ve done nothing wrong. Ask questions. Get an explanation. Don’t just let it eat away at you. If you believe you did nothing wrong, fight back. It worked for me, and I hope it will work for you if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

Has VeRO ever come knocking on your door? How did you handle the situation?

Now that you’ve had the chance to digest the upcoming changes on eBay, do you know how they will affect your bottom line? Have you decided how/if you need to change your selling habits?

There are, after all, several factors to consider. So how do you go about deciding how to adjust to get the maximum value out of your listings while not breaking the budget on fees? Glad you asked. While I know there are lots of variables to take into consideration, I’ve come up with a few tips to help you in your quest.

I know each seller is different, but let’s take a look at one example to see how the new fee structure could impact your selling costs.

Let’s say a seller lists 300 books each month with 250 of those being auction style. The auctions have a starting price of 99 cents and sell for $5 on average. The other 50 listings are fixed-priced and sell for $25. Let’s also assume this seller doesn’t have a store.

This particular seller would pay about $35 more with eBay’s new fee structure than they do currently.

However, this total does not take into account any discounts this seller may be eligible for, or other changes the seller might make to reduce his or her fees. For example, the seller could change listing formats, listing duration times, etc.

Now, if this seller does have an eBay Store, almost everything changes. Does the fact that listings will now be in the core search results offset the cost of the store subscription? If a seller opts for a Basic store, how will paying the 20-cent insertion fee for fixed-priced listings affect their bottom line compared to paying the current 3-cent fee per listing?

These are just a few of the details you’ll need to consider as you decide which format and/or store subscription is right for you. Like I said, all sellers are different. Some merchants only sell high-end clothing and accessories. Some sell thousands of collectibles. Others may sell hundreds of valuable baseball cards. Some sell exclusively fixed-price items while others prefer auctions. And, of course, some of merchants are Top-rated Sellers and qualify for fee discounts. And all of these factors will affect your eBay fees come March 30.

My advice, as you decide which route to go, is to look back at the fees you’ve paid in the last couple of months. Compare the insertion fees and final value fees you paid. Note any upgrades or other fees you paid (store subscription fee, listing subtitle, etc.).

And when calculating what your fees will look like under the new fee system, be sure to consider these variables:

•Category(ies) you list in
•Starting price
•Listing format
•Final selling price
•Store subscription
•Top-Rated Seller status

Finding the right path will require some serious number crunching, but if you keep these factors in mind, you’ll have a more solid understanding of your costs, whatever your choice. But this will only be an estimate as selling on eBay is a dynamic process. Be sure to continue the evaluation process even after these changes go into effect to make sure your strategy couldn’t benefit from some additional tweaking.

Best of luck!

Are you unsure if you added a return policy and/or handling time to your Good ‘Til Cancelled listings on eBay?

If so, you might want to check out eBay’s Oct. 12 announcement. eBay has begun ending GTC listings that do not specify the required return policy and/or handling time noted.

To help sellers determine if they have listings that still need to be updated, eBay has created a site to find listings that are not in compliance with the new requirement. You can find that site here.

You can even download a spreadsheet of your listings to make the process easier.

Auctiva recently added its Bulk Live-Listing Revision Tool, which allows you to edit your active listings and add the required return policy and handling time without leaving your Auctiva account. You can also edit your listings directly on eBay.

Don’t wait until your listings are abruptly ended for non-compliance. Check them today!