Ebay Embargos Did You Know...

As I understand it, ebay is applying US law. It's not self-appointed - it's the law which is an ass.

Clark,

The slow loading of ads almost certainly is the fault of the ad publishers rather than ebay. The publishers are not just serving up an ad, they are resolving bids of advertisers for the space, and also dropping numerous pixels, each of which requires a URL round trip, to set cookies on your machine and track what you were served or viewed or scrolled to. All these operations can take hundreds of milliseconds and across several ad blocks, cause seconds of delay. Obviously there comes a point where if the user experience is abysmal, ebay ought to be communicating with those publishers to clean up their engineering.

Regarding embargo enforcement, it may be a result of government pressure. We do not know what demand letters the regulatory agencies have sent to ebay in the background. And if they report a violation, government may require eBays involvement to track the parties or transactions. So, to avoid constant government entanglement, they may have set the dials much tighter than needed.

Chris

I think it's just easier for them to ban items wholesale than to police things on a case by case basis. They probably figure what little they may loose in those sales is not worth it.

Here is how I envision the ebay meeting unfolded…

Manager - "Ok, we need some new code to find and filter for prohibited items. Having this in place will meet our minimum legal requirements to prove that ebay prohibits these items."

Developer – "We can do that, no problem."

Manager – "Wait, this new code will have to meet or exceed our performance criteria."

Developer – "Ut oh."

Manger – "Yes remember that this new code will run every time a new listing is submitted and we also want to run it on a schedule across all listings too. So it has to run in less than 0.001 seconds on our servers. If it takes longer, end users will see the impact. This cannot happen."

Developer – "Well, we can do this but you understand it will be half-assed?"


Manager – "Yes"

Don

There is a better way. The Item Specific "Country/Region of Manufacture" can be used instead of text searching the title. While sellers may lie or not fill in the country, the situation is no different than ending up with creatively modifying titles to mislead BOTs. If ebay has any obligation to screen listings, using Items Specifics should be enough. It would be fairly simple for ebay to move listings with incomplete Item Specifics to the bottom of search. In the Stamps category, the "Year of Issue" item specific could also be checked. (Currently, ebay has created a problem by populating year ranges. Such an item specific should be named "Period of Issue".)

I don't know why ebay should focus on enforcing import restrictions when they do almost nothing about misidentified, altered or illegal stamps. Modern counterfeit stamps, labeled "reproductions" are allowed to be sold on ebay as long as a legend like "reproduction" is printed on the gum. These stamps have been, and will continue to be, applied to letters in place of proper postage. Any argument used by ebay to argue that enforcement is not their responsibility contradicts their position on imports. Offering altered or defective stamps on ebay has been an ongoing saga almost from the time the first stamps were sold on ebay.

For a while, ebay made some effort to reign in the deluge of altered stamps, but that effort appears to have dwindled to almost nothing. Making sure that sellers actually have possession of items for sale seems to be more or less working, but handling quality issues is not working. In some categories like books, "Item Condition" has some meaning. It could be used in stamps, but the terms "New" and "Used" are not the answer. Of course the devil is in the details, and ebay lacks enough domain specific knowledge do the job in house. Perhaps the ASDA and the APS could offer to help set up such a list. Finally, sellers should be required to fully describe defects in the Condition Description, no exceptions even if the fault is pictured. Listings without a Condition Description should be dropped to the bottom of search. Also, having a complete description of faults should make adjudication of buyer/seller disputes easier.

Finally, ebay does have to address the buyer experience. Some sellers have been lamenting slow sales. I believe that getting rid of intrusive ads would make a difference, especially ones that delay loading of web pages. Unlike many "free" sites, ebay has no fundamental need to monetize the site by selling ads. Revenue lost by stopping some ads could be more than made up by increased commissions from additional sales.

It is only a matter of time before other stamp sales sites are able to compete more effectively with ebay. Will it be Stanley Gibbons (bidStart), Delcampe or someone else?

Clark

Don,

Regarding the manager-developer exchange: I doubt if the developer actually made the last statement. He or she may have thought it, but didn't say anything figuring that the manager would not know the difference.

Clark

Clark,
As usual, I agree with everything you posted. But you are applying common sense to a corporation whose stockholders are quite satisfied with its current growth and returns. And as far as they are concerned, this is more about stockholders, not buyers or sellers. Stamps makeup a small percentage of its income and a company like SG is not even on its radar screen; I think they are competing with companies like Amazon.

Like you, I feel that at some point other, more specialize, online venues should be able to compete with ebay. But chances are good that they would have to use PayPal (now that it is split off from ebay) as the payment mechanism. The key will be very, very deep pockets to endure the slow start up that is inevitable with building enough buyers/traffic to support such a site. (We all acknowledge that selling on the current alternatives simply does not have the same traffic/sale levels as ebay.) So far, bidStart and Delcampe have not been able to find the success they envisioned.

I have little doubt that there is room for someone to build a much better online philatelic auction site from a technology/usability standpoint. But sellers will want to see sales very quickly, few will have the patience to sit around for months while the site slowly becomes viable. Deep pockets, deep pockets.
Don

PS – Yes, my snarky last statement in the developer/manager exchange is unlikely. But having a career that spanned both positions, I can say that tradeoffs are a reality in this situation. While as end users we often scratch our heads at usability issues, the reality is that this code most work against hundreds of thousands of transaction per minute.

As a seller "item specifics" is a real pain to use - it's very slow to insert all the information through a program like Turbo Lister or any other in which there's pull down menus and the like. Try doing it for 1,000 to 5,000 listings and you'll see that it's a drag. It's a waste of time and repetitive if you have all the same information including condition already typed up in the description field.

In Aussie we are not really into embargo's.

It is more a conscience vote instead of being controlled by the government. Government control at this level sounds very scary.

How much other government intervention takes place in the US?

Do they stop news info? Internet info? etc ?

Does the US government get into giving false info to the masses?

Battlestamps,

I use Excel, but that is a whole separate story. The item specifics are imported into the SixBit ecommerce solution. (I use SQL Server, but direct import of CSV files is possible.) I agree that filling out forms in applications is really painful and error prone. I gave up on TurboLister about ten years ago when a couple of listings disappeared from the database because I hit some obscure control key sequence. That was in the days when they still used Microsoft Access, but they "password" protected the database. I moved to Selling Manager Pro because it had an open database architecture, still in Access in those days. Later SA Pro was replaced with Blackthorne which in time, was modified to use SQL Server. (I think I was the first user to make the transition.) Later, when the developers were shown the exit at ebay, I followed them to SixBit. You can sign up for a trial version of SixBit here: https://www.sixbitsoftware.com/clie....php?aff=018

No one deserves to be stuck using TurboLister.

By the way, the reason Excel works so well is that, like many dealers, maintain a subset of the catalog in a separate spreadsheet, making it unnecessary to reenter catalog information about a stamp or set after the first time. The rest of the item specifics are fairly straight forward including my estimate of centering, format (single, plate block, etc.), gum condition, variety and certificate information if any. The catalog information includes catalog number, denomination, and name of the issue, subject, color plus ebay, bidStart and Store categories. There are some complications, but entering data this way is not only faster, but it is more accurate and likely to be complete.
I don't have a lot of compassion for some dealers who describe nothing and post no item specifics forcing buyers to make guesses about the identity and condition of their stamps. Generally buyers bid less aggressively if the description is incomplete.

Again, if any of the stamp selling venues allow effective access to catalogs, sellers could prepare more accurate and complete listings benefiting potential buyers.

Clark

cfrphoto: I looked into using a spreadsheet program and couldn't get it to work with TurboLister. I also looked at SixBit. However, it didn't do what I wanted it to do. Also since selling is not a constant thing for me especially these days with twin infants I don't see the need to pay a monthly fee. While I do use TurbLister, I actually do not create the descriptions for the listings in TurboLister, but a word processing program and then copy and paste it over into TL. The only thing I have to type into TL is the category number and the file number for the gallery pic link. Both can be done on TL's spreadsheet view so that's easy and quick. Titles can be copied into TL the same way really quick, but the description has to be done via page view which can be a drag. TL slows down after so many copy and pastes so you have to exit back to spreadsheet view and back to page view to speed things up again. It's just one of TL's many flaws. The word processing method works well for me so far since I use another program to auto-generate templates with photo links and country names already added. I also do not work on one item at a time (why I don't like database like programs), but only on one aspect of a cover at a time like date, cancel types, origin/destination, stamp(s), etc. It allows easier use of find and replace and streamlines all the other processes of identification. It's like a little assembly line.

I can see how your system works well and I probably would do something like that if I sold primarily stamps too. However, I sell mainly covers and that makes things a bit more challenging. If you've seen my listings in the past, you know I don't leave no stone unturned when it comes to describing items. Buyers have no issue finding my items via keyword searches. I did look at item specifics and aside from it being I found them too general in many cases especially when you have a cover that can be multiple types - airmail, registered, adverting, censored, etc. all on one cover. I guess you can create your own, but if everything is already in the description it's just redundant. I do understand and seen many sellers sell themselves short by not including any description beyond what's in the title. I feel that some of these sellers just don't understand that keyword searches are vital to have their material seen. They have to do more work than a show dealer who can just slap a price on an item and throw it in a box for potential buyers to root through.

Anywhoo - I just we're way off topic now. New ebay fall seller update out there - nothing about allowing us to sell Cuban stamps and covers yet.

I sold stamps for many years on ebay, but they has several policies against buyer/seller who deal with Cuba stamps. I prefered to left ebay and use others websites, like as:

www.delcampe.net/shops/freeshipping2015

and

www.stamporama.com

You can sell and buy Cuba stamps there without problem.

I wish you good luck with stamp collecting.

Not if you accept PayPal. Still a problem, no matter where you sell.