In an announcement today, eBay France said that phone support has now been extended to all French Powersellers. Qualifying sellers can find the number through the PS Portal.
With apologies to those Bronze and Silver UK PSs who still don't have phone support if I got you all excited. 'Phone support for all UK PSs' was hinted at by Pinks several times last year, so hopefully this is a step in the direction of expanding it in the UK too.
For me, taking the next step to being a full time eBayer was simply that. Taking that step. Working two full-time jobs, i.e. as an eBayer and as a market research exec was taking its toll on me. 9 to 5 in the office with a three hour round commuting trip five days a week and then working evenings, weekends and lunch hours eBaying was slowly but surely draining me. I got up at 6.30am and went to bed at 1am with a lie in on Sunday (midnight to 7am). The worst of it was that I NEVER had time for the children. As a single parent, that was the criminal aspect of how I was leading my life! Something had to give eventually.
I was a bit of a coward, I ‘downsized’ my off-line job and became a Regional Manager for the same company – looking after interviewers and mystery shoppers in the field, which meant I could work from home. All this meant was that I managed to cut out the three hour daily commute. It brought its own problems though. Working from home in my off-line job meant dealing with interviewer problems etc in the evenings and the weekends as well as during the day. I was also earning less than half of my previous wage. Which was good in a way, because it showed me that my eBaying was actually able to sustain me. My off-line job wage now reverted to becoming my pin money. However, I STILL wasn’t spending time with my children. Not properly, anyway. I was at home – but at my computer the whole time.
Finally, October 2006, my company closed its field department and now outsource that aspect to another company. So I was made redundant. Best thing that could have happened really. I now work from home, eBaying full time, but now with the added ability of being able to schedule eBay and my personal life to really suit me. I can now work harder on it, I can list more because I am now able to cope with more sales, I can spend time on proper customer service, my mistakes are almost non-existant (I was forever sending out the wrong thing to the wrong person, or sending out only one when two were ordered etc). I am able to concentrate on getting a real off-eBay website set up and can now factor in some other retail projects for 2007 properly, i.e. book myself onto a whole lot of Festivals.
All in all I am very VERY glad to have been made redundant. I don’t think I would have had the nerve to do it without that shove – I used my off-line job as a crutch for way too long. I wish had been brave so I could have done it all earlier…and by myself.
The best of it all, of course, is that I now have time for the children. We have a LOT of things planned for 2007 for us as a family and I CAN’T WAIT! They are the reason I worked myself into the ground in the first place and they are the reason I realised that my life had to radically change to fit them into it.
If you are working two jobs and are on the verge of going solo, I would say go for it IF it means you can make MORE of your e-tail business if you do. It might be an idea to downsize first, i.e. take on a part-time job or find a job that you can do from home first. Do your accounts properly, so that you know exactly what you need to do to go solo. You need to be sure that the time you give up being employed will make a real difference to you as a full time e-tailer. You need to be sure that you can live off your earnings as well as keep investing back into the business. You need to also love being on your own, eBaying is a fairly anti-social business – no colleagues to throw paper-clips or to roll your eyes at when the boss is having a go! Finally, your foundations for being able to do so must be your reasons for doing so – they must far outweigh any reasons for not doing so.
Back in 1996, gf-attic registered on eBay, one of the earliest people in the UK to do so. He soon became the UK's first powerseller, and he still trades on the site today. eBay celebrated his achievement with a birthday cake. Here he reflects on his ten years' trading.
Things were pretty tough in the UK antique trade a decade ago. The mainstay of most British dealers, the foreign trade, had stopped coming and it was clear that the nostalgia boom of the 1980s was well and truly over.
I'd already lived on fat for a couple of years and it was almost in desperation that I signed up for eBay's new fangled auction-on-line service.
Ten years later I'm still there.
And it's been an easy ride with my customers.
I reasoned early on that asking a buyer to send money to a foreign country to someone they didn't know for something they hadn't seen wasn't going to work without building some trust. I started taking part in collector groups, especially for sewing related subjects and soon started dedicated forums where I could field questions about sewing machines.
It's worked. In those 10 years I've not had a single negative feedback and, more importantly not a single non-paying buyer. Got my first neutral last week just in time for my 10th anniversary.
This isn't all due to my business practices – a lot is a result of my customers being in that middle age to senior comfort range that insurance companies love so much. But this does mean that are not always too savvy in the ways of e-commerce and a lot of hand holding is required.
Most customers are American and so I list on the US site and in US dollars and am happy to take personal checks. The prospect of paying for international shipping is solved by simply not charging for it. OK, FREE shipping isn't really free, it's built into the reserve/starting price but it's a real attraction to Mr and Mrs Middle America.
And there's nothing ambiguous about my terms and conditions. There can't be — I haven't got any. They pay, I send. It's as simple at that.
BBC Watchdog delays answering PowerSeller concerns
Following on from the Watchdog program on 7th November this year the BBC are still being very coy regarding the content of the program. They have yet to come clean on how they purchased only a handful of goods from PowerSellers and yet 80% of them were counterfeit. I've bought a fair amount in my time and I certainly haven't had a problem. Having said that it's no great secret that eBay isn't as free from fake goods as it could be. There are buyers out there however more than happy to buy copies, so long as they know up front that's what they're getting.
Whilst it's against the law to sell counterfeits and morally wrong if you do not to state up front so the buyer knows what they're getting there is a bigger issue. As Dan Wilson pointed out they portrayed the issue to be a PowerSeller problem. The program was not a balanced and fair portrayal of trading on eBay in general, or with PowerSellers in particular.
I wrote to the BBC to complain, this is my first email and the BBC response:
Dear Sirs Your watchdog programme tonight featured fake items for sale on eBay.
Whilst fakes are touted for sale (just as they are in many venues including high street markets etc), I am very dismayed to see that you specifically reported eBay PowerSellers as the culprits. As a full time eBay PowerSeller who sells legitimate goods on the site portraying PowerSellers as criminals is despicable. Yes there are a few bad apples in the barrel, but seeing as about 70,000 people in the UK make their full time living on eBay your reporting doesn't give a balanced view.
Professional sellers that are registered as small businesses, VAT registered, follow the Distance Selling Regulations and provide excellent customer service both pre and post sales do no deserve to be categorised with the few sellers who do hawk fake or counterfeit items.
I trust in future your program will seek to redress the balance.
Regards Chris Dawson
Thank you for your email.
We are sorry if you felt Watchdog’s eBay investigation tarred all PowerSellers with the same brush, but in fact the programme made clear that most PowerSellers are honest. The ones selling counterfeits are clearly not the norm, but as there are plenty of them it was perfectly legitimate for the programme to question whether eBay is doing enough to stop them.
We can see no reason why traders selling authentic goods would suffer as a result of Watchdog exposing the rogues and in fact the narrative said that eBay was a good place to find a bargain, especially in the run-up to Christmas. However, when it appears to be so easy for unscrupulous traders to cheat the system it's important to look at whether the current safeguards are sufficient - and Watchdog’s evidence suggests they are not.
The programme made it very clear that feedback should be carefully examined for any negative comments about authenticity and demonstrated how to do that, so we are confident that legitimate traders with consistently positive feedback have nothing to fear from the story.
Thank you, once more, for taking the time to contact the BBC. Regards BBC Information
Sadly this is just a boilerplate response sent out to tens if not hundreds of people that took the time to write voicing their concerns. Of course this doesn't answer the questions as to why they portrayed 80% of purchases at random from PowerSellers to be fakes. Yes we know fakes are an issue on eBay - but the BBC has a duty to report in a balanced matter, after all we trust them don't we? Time to write again for clarification
Thank you for your response, however I feel it has not addressed some points:-
1) Were you aware that some 70000 sellers on eBay make their living on eBay and are professional sellers that are registered as small businesses, VAT registered, follow the Distance Selling Regulations and provide excellent customer service both pre and post sales. Why did you not emphasise in your Watchdog program that it is a very small percentage that are fraudulent?
2) It seems less than likely that four out of five items for sale on eBay are counterfeit - did your researchers specifically target products that looked questionable? How were the products purchased selected? Suggesting that 80% of items sold by PowerSellers on eBay are counterfeit is giving a very unbalanced impression which is what your program implied. Why was this allowed to be aired?
3) You correctly advised buyers to check feedback and specifically for negative feedback before purchasing, however you gave no indication as to the feedback of the sellers who supplied the goods that you purchased. Did you select sellers with feedback showing they had previously sold fakes and why did you not give the feedback information and whether previous buyers had indicated counterfeit items being sold or not? Your program suggested you were not expecting fakes but you fail to say if the advice you give to keep safe was followed when making your purchases. This in my opinion gives a very unbalanced program and I would like your thoughts on the matter.
4) Finally why did you not invite a PowerSeller to appear on your program to give their views?
I look forward to hearing from you Chris Dawson
Not too hard a set of questions to answer you'd think, after all someone at Watchdog must know how they selected the products to purchase - they bought them and made the program. It appears though that the BBC is having a difficulty in finding answers, another week has passed and this is the latest from them which arrived today
Dear Mr Dawson
This is an update to let you know that we are dealing with your recent complaint but are waiting to clarify some points with other colleagues in the BBC before we reply more fully to you.
We will of course respond as soon as possible but trust you will understand that the time taken can also depend on the nature and number of the other complaints we are currently investigating. The BBC also issues public responses to issues which prompt large numbers of significant complaints and these can be read on our website at www.bbc.co.uk/complaints.
We would like to reassure you that your complaint has already been logged and circulated in our daily report to BBC managers. We would therefore be grateful if you would not reply to this email and, in the meantime, would like to thank you for contacting the BBC with details of your concerns.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Wheeler BBC Information
I'll post an update as soon as they have managed to " clarify some points with other colleagues" but in the mean time if you missed the program you can watch it here. Decide for yourself if it's fair and balanced reporting or if Watchdog are guilty of sensationalising the story. Also why is it so hard for them to answer four simple questions?
eBay.co.uk celebrates tenth anniversary of first powerseller
Richard from eBay points out that it "helps to put in context how long ago it was if we reflect that the Tories were in power and Diana was alive." That's when gf-attic, the first ever UK PowerSeller signed up to eBay. As far as we can tell the sixteenth member of eBay.co.uk, he is undisputedly the longest serving PowerSeller, a badge he still wears today.
"I liken him to 'patient zero'," Dan Wilson (until recently long-serving Community Manager at eBay) told me. "Maybe not the first to be infected, but definitely the most important in terms of building the epidemic." Typically when a report on PowerSellers is run at eBay HQ, a simple check that it was successful is if gf-attic shows up at the top of the list - he's always there because he was first.
eBay are recognising the occasion by sending some special gifts and momentos to these pioneers. They not only had the vision to sign up to the then new website, but have proved their ability to adapt through the countless changes eBay have made in the interim.
![Happy birthday, Mountie! 34 + VAT today ]:)](http://www.tamebay.com/logo2c.jpg)
