Greetings eBay users!

Ben here. Been a little while since my last blog entry. Let me just say that I have been busy busy busy with my new job at eBay. And I am still loving every minute of it!

Now, on to more important things. I am writing this blog today to kind of get a feel for what the eBay community as a whole thinks about the changes that were just announced that will be taking place throughout the remainder of the year. If you missed the announcements, you can read all about it by visiting this link:

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200808.shtml#2008-08-20070116

On this page, Lorrie Norrington, President, eBay Marketplaces, discusses a lot of exciting changes that will be taking place in an effort to reduce up-front costs (to both eBay & Sellers), make eBay a much more competitive marketplace, and increase buyer confidence on the site.

Changes include a flat rate listing fee for fixed price (only $0.35!) regardless of timeframe, a more integrated checkout system for payments, shipping limits for media items (to reduce instances of overpriced shipping), and increased DSR standards to increase consistency among sellers and promote buyer satisfaction. And perhaps my favorite change, the complete removal of checks and money orders as a payment option.

Granted, some of the other changes may have a bigger impact on the site overall than the removal of checks and money orders, but it happens to be my favorite change because I believe these methods are an open door for potential fraudulent buyers and sellers. As Lorrie states in her announcement, these methods are 80% more likely to result in INRs, and buyers using these methods are 50% more likely to leave negative feedbacks. These are huge numbers!!

By completely eliminating these easy fraud methods, we can expect to hit the fraud community pretty hard. Anything we can do to make it that much more difficult for dishonest people to prey on others is a definite step in the right direction! So I am behind this change 100%!

I am curious for your thoughts. Do you regularly sell items in the fixed price format? If so, how do you feel about the listing fee change? Do you believe it will even affect you at all? What about the increased DSR standards? Anyone out there below those current numbers and worried about losing selling privileges?

I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks!

All the best, and happy eBaying!!

-Ben

I am an eBay employee. The content provided herein reflects my personal views and has not been written on behalf of eBay. For additional information, please refer to the following eBay policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-employee.html

Greetings eBay users!

From the moment the original Soul Calibur (for the Sega Dreamcast) hit store shelves back in September of 1999, I have been a fan. In my humble opinion, the original Soul Calibur was by far the greatest fighting game to be released to that point, and it even stands up to most of the fighters that have been released since. Even when compared to other Soul Calibur games in the series, many will still tell you that the original is the best.

This may explain why a reworked (to include HD settings) version of the original release was added as a new downloadable game via XBox Live Arcade. I almost went crazy with excitement when I heard the news about a month ago that it was coming. Mostly because I wanted to start owning other online gamers at something I was almost always undefeated at back in the day. Unfortunately, however, they failed to include online play over XBox Live once the game actually became available. Bummer.

But still, playing the original Soul Calibur on my XBox 360 is sweet, and it certainly brings back a lot of memories. And playing as my favorite character Seung Mina was a breeze. I'm just as good with her today as I was those many years ago. She had all the moves I remembered and loved.

Which brings me to now. On Tuesday (07-29-08), Soul Calibur IV is scheduled to be released for the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3. I'm extremely excited! In fact, the game is already paid for, and all I will need to do is pick it up that morning. But I am nervous too.

Some online friends and I have been talking about this game for months now, squirming in anticipation. We've all talked our trash, and I've talked myself up into somewhat of a badass at that game (which I am...and modest too!). And I am really looking forward to finally playing Soul Calibur online. But this isn't the original Soul Calibur.

If they had made the XBox Live Arcade version of the original an online capable game, I wouldn't even pick up the 4th installment on Tuesday. Sure,  the new one has many more characters, and hosts of available modes and options, and it looks absolutely breathtaking. But how will it play?

If it plays anything like Soul Calibur III did, expect to see a price drop to below $29.99 within 6 months. They made a lot of changes to the core gameplay and move lists in III that really turned a lot of people (myself included) off to the series. And I had always been a die-hard fan up until that point, so that should say something. Honestly, I probably would have given it a lot more credit if the developers hadn't ruined my favorite character.

They had changed so many of Seung Mina's moves that she was completely unplayable for me anymore. When Soul Calibur II was released, I discovered that she had received 1 or 2 minor adjustments. I wasn't too happy with the changes, but they were livable. I adjusted my play style, and continued. But she was so different in III, and her moves were so terrible, that the only thing that told me she was still Seung Mina was the name posted above the character below the health gauge while fighting.

So while Soul Calibur IV may look like a return to glory for the franchise, it remains to be seen how the actual game will play out. Will the characters have gone through complete overhauls like before III was released? Will they keep their same crappy changes from III? Or did the developers listen to the outcries of the Soul Calibur community and revert the core moves and gameplay back to the good ol' days of Soul Calibur and Soul Calibur II?

I certainly hope so. Because I really want to destroy some people online with Seung Mina the way I used to destroy the locals way back when. I want to show my online friends how a real Calibur player plays. But most importantly, I need to be able to back up all that trash I was talking online. Or I may never hear the end of it.

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes come Tuesday. ;)

All the best, and happy eBaying!!

-Ben

I am an eBay employee. The content provided herein reflects my personal views and has not been written on behalf of eBay. For additional information, please refer to the following eBay policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-employee.html

Greetings eBay users!

It has been a few days since my last blog entry because I have been so busy. But I wanted to discuss an idea with you. This is an idea that has passed through the back of my mind on occasion, although I haven't ever really given it further thought. But its not only an idea I have had. It is an idea I am sure millions of people have had at one time or another. I am referring to the idea of redesigning the eBay website.

Now, before any die-hards jump me in a back alley, I want to clarify. I am not referring to a redesign or change in the core features, services, and/or tools used on the site. Really, I am more referring to a makeover of sorts.

I understand how eBay has come to become the site that it is today. It started out very small as the innovative site AuctionWeb, and that foundation has been built upon and added to for 13 years, without anything ever really being removed. When you build upon the same structure for such a long time with addition after addition, things are bound to end up a little crowded or confused.

So maybe it is time for a redesign. I think eBay would benefit greatly from a streamlining process. A group of eBay's best programmers, designers, and marketers could get together, break apart the site into its thousands of individual parts, sections, and features, sort and reorganize those parts, and then put them all back together into a site that is still very feature rich, yet completely coherent, intuitive and visually pleasing.

As an example given by someone else stated, think about how Google became the dominant search tool for the internet. When they emerged, the search market was covered in like sites such as Lycos, HotBot, AltaVista, WebCrawler, Infoseek, Excite, and Yahoo. In a short period of time, Google overpowered each of them to become the leader in online searching. How did they do this? By providing a set of extremely powerful tools, yet in a compact intuitive manner.

Most of those other search sites were jam-packed with info, menus, categories, buttons, ads, links, and so forth. Kind of like our beloved eBay is today. We certainly have the powerful tools. But how long before an up-and-coming site emerges that offers similarly (or perhaps even less-) powerful tools, but much more streamlined and easy to use?

Less is certainly more, and I believe the time has come for eBay to adopt this mantra in relation to the manner in which the community accesses the site. eBay has been around for 13 years. While that may not be a large amount of time for you and I, for an internet company, that's a long time. And eBay is beginning to show its age, as far as appearances are concerned anyway.

I think it's time for a facelift. I am interested to see what your thoughts are.

All the best, and happy eBaying!!

-Ben

Greetings eBay users!

So begins my 3rd blog post. Having only just begun my journey as an eBay blogger, I find myself surprised by the experience thus far. To begin, I wasn't nearly expecting the rush of responses from my last post. Granted, the actual number of posts was far more than the actual number of individual users, but I was surprised none-the-less.

Then there were the types of responses received. I expected a number of people to shoot me a quick hello and welcome, and even perhaps share some treasure of wisdom that may assist a noob like myself. But I was surprised to see comments resembling those that might be seen in a chat room. Not that I mind at all, just not what I was expecting.

But perhaps the most interesting comments of all were those refering to the nature of other bloggers. I received several comments/messages from numerous people regarding the negativity they experience on the blogs. Of those, the general complaint was that there are those users within the blogging community that seem to dominate the posts with negativity.

This was very surprising to me. Not so much that there are those that may be abusive to other users. This is not uncommon online. But that it is such an issue that I was immediately made aware by several people.

So I want to let everyone who sent me a message know that I am going to do my best to monitor when and where I can. Although I may not be able to respond to individual situations or concerns, I will definitely do my part to report or escalate any inappropriate behavior or content I am personally witness to within the community areas of the site.

eBay was designed to be a friendly and honest environment where everyone can communicate and participate in commerce on an even playing field. And the same idea applies to the community areas. I believe in this whole-heartedly, as I am sure most of you do as well. So let's each do our individual parts to support that belief.

All the best, and happy eBaying!!

-Ben

I am an eBay employee. The content provided herein reflects my personal views and has not been written on behalf of eBay. For additional information, please refer to the following eBay policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-employee.html

Greetings eBay users!

Ben here. And I've been thinking. I know, I know. Dangerous business, that. But I am extremely curious to see how my next listing plays out on the site. You see, I have recently become an employee of eBay. I haven't been working for the company long, but I already love it! So far eBay has proven to be an awesome employer. The people have all been great, and I am being surprised and wowed every day I work there by learning exciting new things about the company, my job, and the benefits therein.

But this is not the purpose of my post. I have yet to buy or sell anything on the site since becoming an eBay employee. And although the process of buying and selling is almost completely identical to that which a non-employee would abide by, there is one major difference. I must identify myself as an eBay employee in the listing, as well and through e-mail to any potential buyers/sellers.

I'm not making this up. eBay has a specific policy in place titled "eBay Employee Trading and Community Content." You can read the policy at this address: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-employee.html. In a nutshell, it says that any employee of eBay must state they are an employee in any listings or community posts, as well as provide the above link. They (we) are also required to send an e-mail to anyone bidding that identifies the seller as an employee. Similarly, an e-mail must be sent to the seller in the event that an item is bid on by an employee.

Now, I don't mind this at all. In fact, I think it is a good thing. I think it is important for buyers and sellers to know if and when they might be dealing with an eBay employee. Given that eBay is such a transparent company built on honest commerce, it only makes sense. However, I find myself wondering how, if at all, it might affect any auctions I may create.

Part of me believes that it would be a benefit. I mean, if I were looking at an item to bid on and I saw that the seller was an eBay employee, I think I would be less concerned with any issues of being ripped off. I would also think that the seller would be very easy to work with since they should know all of the ins and outs of how things work, and they should definitely be easy to reach and communicate with. So, I guess I am hoping that people will look at me as a seller in this manner, and be more willing to bid on any items I am offering.

However, a part of me also believes that this could possibly hinder future auctions. I mean, how often has anyone ever come across an eBay employee listing? I know I never have, and I had never met anyone who had, prior to working for eBay myself anyway. So how many people are going to read the disclaimer, see my limited trading history, and believe that I have made it up? With all of the scammers out there, including all of the spoof e-mails around claiming to be from eBay or PayPal, I can imagine there may be quite a few people who would be skeptical. Hell, I'm one of them.

So, really, I can see it going both ways. Now, it's not something that keeps me up at night, but I found it an interesting thing to think about. But I shal have an answer soon enough. Or at least a better idea.

I have an item I will be placing for sale very soon. In fact, I have already created the listing and saved it as a draft. I recently moved and have some stuff in storage, including my digital camera. As soon as I can get it out and take some pictures of the item it will be ready to post. Then we can see if being an employee of this awesome company helps me or hurts me when it comes to selling online. Either way, it should be interesting.

I will definitely post the results of my little experiment on this blog. So if you are at all curious, stay tuned!

All the best, and happy eBaying!!

-Ben

I am an eBay employee. The content provided herein reflects my personal views and has not been written on behalf of eBay. For additional information, please refer to the following eBay policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/everyone-employee.html