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?

I returned from a relaxing extended weekend in Carson City, NV, recently to discover an e-mail from a recent buyer in my inbox. According to him, the item he had purchased from me was missing a vital component—and would not work without it.

I politely offered to send my buyer an identical replacement ASAP, no questions asked. It would eat any profit I had made on the sale of the first item, but I wanted to do my best to make him happy, and to do what I could to prevent negative feedback. Maybe I should have asked him to return the item first, but I didn’t really see the point for this rather inexpensive item.

But part of me wondered if he was just looking for a refund to his PayPal account. Call me untrusting if you want, but after selling online for more than 10 years, I’ve come across a quite a few buyers who are just out to get something for free. 

As I always do when I come across a questionable buyer, I checked his feedback. You know that red flag that goes off in your mind when you sense something isn’t quite right? Well, his feedback for sellers was not good: mostly negatives and neutrals. Great! So this is what I should expect from this buyer.

Just for fun, I called eBay and spoke with a very nice woman (yes, an actual human!) named Louise in eBay’s customer service department. I told her that I wasn’t sure if this buyer had a genuine complaint, or was just looking to shake me down. After viewing his feedback left for sellers, she agreed that he did seem to fit the description of a problem buyer. I asked if she had any suggestions for handling this situation.

She said that if a buyer had a habit of making this type of claim against sellers, he or she could be banned under eBay’s “transaction interference” policy. I’m not sure how often this is done, and she couldn’t tell me if my buyer was under investigation. But she did tell me that if this buyer was banned, the negative feedback he has left other sellers—and could leave me—would also be removed.

I was already aware of this, but hearing it from her made me feel a little bit better until I saw a recent letter to the editor on AuctionBytes.com. After seeing what one buyer had been allowed to get away with on eBay, I was still a little worried about how my situation would play out. Check out this bad buyer who was posted on toolhaus.org. (You may want to add them to your blocked bidder list ASAP). And I thought my buyer was questionable!

However, everything turned out all right for me. My buyer ended up giving positive feedback. (I nearly fell on the floor when I saw that), so maybe my willingness to work with him swayed him. I’m not sure.

Have you ever had a similar experience? How did you handle the situation? Did your problem buyer eventually get banned? Or did it all work out in the end? Let us know.

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?

A few weeks back, I commented on a thread on our forums about how to spot “phishing” or “spoof” e-mails claiming to be from eBay, PayPal, Auctiva, etc.

Then over the weekend, I received a very legitimate-looking e-mail, claiming to be a message from another eBay member. The return address was member@ebay.com—which is the e-mail address you’ll see on legitimate “this member has a question for you” e-mails—and it looked exactly like the typical messages I’m so used to seeing, but right off the bat, I knew this wasn’t a legitimate message.

The title of the item in the subject line was of something I had never, ever sold. The second red flag was the fact that the e-mail was sent to “Rebecca Miller.”

I use an abbreviation of my name on eBay and PayPal, so every legitimate e-mail I receive from these two organizations is addressed to that name, not “Rebecca Miller.” Somehow these phishers knew my full name, and thought they were so smart to use it in the greeting. Sorry to burst your bubble!

Just to be doubly sure the e-mail was indeed a fake, I opened a new browser window and went to my eBay account to make sure it hadn’t been hijacked. It hadn’t been, thank goodness. I also checked the messages section and guess what? No new messages.

I forwarded the e-mail to spoof@ebay.com to do my part to stop such e-mails by reporting this one. Sorry phishers, but you need not waste your time on me. And you don’t want them wasting their time on you, either, so check out this Auctiva EDU article  to read some more tips on spotting phishing e-mails. You don’t want to get ‘phished in’ after all.

A mock funeral was held last week to honor an old friend to many, Internet Explorer 6. First released back in 2001, the browser was once highly regarded, but today users are less than enthusiastic about it. Funeral organizers think the browser should be officially laid to rest, and many Web developers couldn’t agree more. After all, Internet users have several other options for surfing the Web, including two more recent versions of Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8).

But why does it matter what browser you use when you go online? There are several reasons: faster load times, getting pages to display the way they were intended to, and even added security are among the most obvious.

“If Internet users do not update their browsers, they miss out on the great improvements that make their browsing experience smoother and safer,” says Auctiva developer Ervi Bongso. “Browser developers have been improving their products by taking in consumers’ suggestions and comments, through testing and focus groups, etc., so they can provide you with something better. Some people dislike changing because they have to learn something new, but sometimes, changes are good.”

She recommends updating your browser every time your current browser introduces a new version. Typically, your browser provider will notify you when an update is available through a pop-up message when you open a new browser window.

A good rule of thumb for upgrading is, “If a new major release has been out for more than 6 months; it’s time to upgrade,” says Auctiva Senior Developer Joe Mitchell.

“Older browsers are more vulnerable to attacks and security exploits. Aside from security, out of date browsers may have problems displaying certain pages, and generally perform slower than their modern counterparts,” he adds.

For Auctiva users, an outdated browser can mean certain things like image uploading, and the description editor may not work properly, Mitchell reports.

Auctiva’s development team optimizes its work for Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8, as well as the latest versions of Firefox and Safari, Mitchell adds. “As of this writing, these browsers are used by the majority of Internet users, including users of Auctiva,” he says.

So what browser should you choose if you haven’t updated your browser in months? It’s a matter of individual taste, because every browser has a different user interface.

“If you’re most comfortable with Internet Explorer, updating to Internet Explorer 8 is great choice,” Mitchell says. “However, if you’re interested in trying something new, both Firefox and Google Chrome are excellent and available free for PC, Mac and Linux.”

For more information on browsers, read this Auctiva EDU article. It tells you what you’re missing out on with older browser software and provides details on some options should your browser need an update.

Search engines continue to be a top resource for online shoppers. In fact, a recent study by Compete Online Shopper, a Web analytics company, found that 61 percent of online buyers use search engines when shopping around for products. The second most popular tool cited among these shoppers was coupon sites, with 35 percent of buyers saying they visit these. Retailer marketing e-mails came in third, with 29 percent of consumers reading them when deciding what to buy.

Buyer behavior does vary from niche to niche, but there’s no denying one thing: Search engines are very important to online shoppers.

This comes as no surprise to Auctiva Commerce Product Lead Chris Eckland.

“People utilize search engines, and Google Product Search in particular, to find the best deal on an item that they’re planning to buy,” he says. ”Often, this activity may be just to confirm a deal that’s available locally is in line with other offers, but in many cases a quick online search can reveal online stores with better deals or specials not available elsewhere.”

Search engines are consistently one of the largest traffic sources for Auctiva Commerce, and a primary way for buyers find Auctiva Commerce sellers, he adds.

With this in mind, Eckland reminds Auctiva Commerce sellers to map their products to Google by setting up and automating their feeds to Google Merchant Center. This keeps sellers’ inventory current on Google and makes items easier to find online.

“Our users say they’ve experienced increased sales once they mapped their Auctiva Commerce inventory to Google’s product taxonomy,” he continues. “Intuitively, it makes sense that buyers will be more likely to find items if they’re logically categorized.”

Google’s dominance among search engines is undeniable, says Auctiva Vice President Kevin Kinell. And its role in e-commerce, and the importance of feeds to Google Merchant Center (formerly Google Base), isn’t likely to decrease any time soon.

“Probably the most important thing that any seller setting up an e-commerce store can do is to make sure they’re getting their products into Google,” he says. “I don’t see Google’s importance diminishing, I see it increasing.”