Paypal: For Secure and Safe Online Transaction

I love lot of attributes of paypal.

1. With paypal registration and verification are fast and easy. No documentation is required, only a few details and credit card details.
2. Before starting paypal I was quite apprehensive about online transaction, but paypal has changed my experience. It’s really genuine and safe.
3. Your personal and financial details are not exposed to any body else, only email id is required to share which is not possible with offline transactions where you end up sharing bank details and other confidential financial details.
4. Most of the convertible currencies can be transacted through paypal

Apart from currency convertibility charges and time taken to process the payment paypal is my favorite.

From May, those selling on eBay will not be able to leave unfavourable or neutral messages about buyers.

The move, which will affect users worldwide, has angered many sellers.

Sellers say it will leave them unprotected.

‘Open forum’

The feedback forum was introduced by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar in February 1996.

In a message then, he said: “By creating an open market that encourages honest dealings, I hope to make it easier to conduct business with strangers over the net.

“Now, we have an open forum. Use it. Make your complaints in the open.

“Better yet, give your praise in the open. Let everyone know what a joy it was to deal with someone. Above all, conduct yourself in a professional manner.”

Tricky customers

Critics of the changes argue that by taking away a seller’s right to complain about a problem buyer they will have very little recourse for action when a sale goes wrong.

And they complain that by still allowing buyers to leave dissenting comments about sellers, eBay has skewed the whole trading process.

When both sides have equal access and rights to leave negative comments about each other it is a well balanced trading process, they say. However, eBay counters that problem buyers can still be dealt with.

“If a buyer doesn’t pay, the seller can easily contact eBay, we will review any complaint and maybe remove the buyer,” a spokesman said.

The changes aim to “improve the overall customer experience”, eBay said.

It added that many buyers would not leave negative comments for fear that sellers would retaliate.

As a result, buyers and sellers may not get a fair picture of what is actually happening between trading parties.

It maintains that the majority of transactions go “swimmingly”.

EBay says that only a minority of sellers leave negative feedback for buyers.

Source : BBC News

The next step is to proof it well.  Submit the press release with a link to your Powerseller’s store.  You should notice a significant increase in eBay traffic doing this.

Now while this doesn’t sound like a lot to some, Ebay store owners know differently and a huge percent are not happy about and many want to hold a protest week which will include selling nothing for that entire week because they feel that Ebay does not listen to them and that only by hurting their bottom line will the auction giant finally glance in their direction.

A quick check of Ebay’s message boards and you will see everything from Greedbay to Feebay being tossed about as sellers express their anger. This is to be expected considering that fees are raised every January and the last fee hike took away massive profits from lots of sellers and also the fees were for every seller that time.

Some wonder if these fees are to cover the new Ebay Express which many don’t even understand. Express is supposed to be a sort of Ebay spin-off retail version. Most if not all of the items are new and you purchase as you would from an online store. No bidding or waiting for an auction to end.

Considering that this is precisely what the Ebay stores are supposed to do you have to agree with the sellers and wonder what is the point of Ebay Express? Lots of sellers say that they have removed their listings from EE due to the fact they are not selling much if at all their and do better with their stores.

I don’t see this fee increase breaking Ebay even though some hope that it will because those who get mad and run to other sites quickly realize that no one was kidding when they said Ebay is the ONLY game in town. So far in 10 years nothing has come to compete with Ebay. Sure Yahoo, Amazon, Overstock and many others have auction sites but none have had the success that Ebay has had.

However Ebay seems to have lost site of both buyers and sellers and many are feeling like cash cows as it seems that no problems are being addressed but Bill Cobb is just raising fees and this is causing major anger across the board.

Small though it may seem the fee hike is more than 200% more than sellers were paying. If someone listed 400 items at $0.02 in one week in the past it would cost $8. Now if someone did that same thing with products over $100 it will cost them $0.10 each coming to a total of $40 for that one week. Under a $100 and it would cost $0.05 which is still too much for some.

This adds to the $15.95-$499.95 that store owners are already paying monthly to have a store. Then of course they also have to pay final value fees (FVF) which were also raised. Final value fees is the percentage that Ebay charges you when your item sells. So if your item doesn’t sell Ebay still makes their money from you listing the products. If the item sells they make their money from you listing the products AND you pay them more money because the item sold.

The fees are getting out of control and it is getting to the point where honest sellers are not even making a profit on their items. A lot of store owners are deciding to just open up their own online store because the monthly fees are cheaper and they don’t pay fees to list each item and they keep 100% of what they sell. Less fees.

In what seems to be a bit of a confusing letter, Bill Cobb blamed the fee hikes on Stores overtaking auctions and that this fee hike is to make people sell less items in their stores and I guess put more up in auction?? Well if fixed listings are a problem what is the point of EE (Ebay Express)??

Of course dissatisfied store owners feel that this is just Ebay’s way to make an extra buck off of them and it doesn’t look good for them that they have been a little disappointing in the stock market.

This is something new – I’ve never heard of the term “e-tailers”. Instead of retailers, which are your standard walk-in-and-buy-something stores, the phrase e-tailers has been coined for your standard shop-online stores.

Of course one of the world’s leading e-tailers is eBay. The day after Thanksgiving is a huge shopping day for many folks who head to the malls to get the after-holiday specials on holiday gifts. But this year, “Cyber Monday” was one of the biggest holiday shopping days.

Nielsen/NetRatings, an Internet research firm, reported that 27.7 million customers — both from home and work — clicked onto online shopping sites Monday, a 15 percent increase compared to Friday, the official start of the holiday season for store owners.

Here’s a list of the biggest e-tailers so far:

1. eBay, with 11.7 million shoppers
2. Amazon.com, 5.6 million shoppers
3. Walmart.com, 3.09 million shoppers

E-tailers are also enticing folks to shop at home by offering free shipping, free shipping with no minimum purchase or buy-one-get one free promotions.

Jupiter Research is projecting online sales to increase 18 percent to $26 billion in November and December, compared to last year’s 22 percent. Forrester Research says online sales will grow 25 percent, compared to last year’s 30 percent, to $18 billion. Forrester’s results cover the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That’s a whole lot of clickin’ going on.

When Rick and Elise Wetzel opened their eBay dropoff store, iSold It, they had no idea they would be overwhelmed with hundreds of phone calls every week of people asking them if they could open an iSold It franchise. They sold and opened one franchise, but desperately needed help to sort the influx of interest in their company.

The Wetzels got some assistance from Ken Sully, a former VP of development for Mail Boxes, Etc. Sully soon became the first CEO of iSold It. Together the Wretzels and Sully created an online system to collect information from all of the people interested in becoming franchisees. After conference calls with potential franchise owners, Sully would tour the proposed sites and decide whether or not to sell a franchise store.

To keep pace with the desired store openings, Mr. Sully struck a deal with Total Resource Group of Chicago. Together they designed a “store-in-a-box” concept. TRG manufactures the store components — counters, fixtures, shelving — which can be installed quickly in existing strip-mall space after a lease is signed. “Once the truck arrives,” says Mr. Sully, “we can open within 48 hours.”

iSold it went from four employees to 36 and the company has sold the rights to over 600 franchises. By the end of 2006 iSold It expects to have 400 franchise stores open across the US.

Rick and Elise Wetzel are also the owners of the pretzel chain Wetzels Pretzels. And yes, they sell Wetzel’s Pretzels franchises, too.

QuikDrop International announced today that total eBay sales surpassed $5.1 million for the month of October at its eBay drop-off retail stores. Driven by strong sales in realestate and eBay Motors as well as over 13,000 completed auctions for consumer items, it represents the first time in eBay’s history that any eBay drop-off store or chain of drop-off stores have surpassed $5 million in completed eBay auctions in a single month.

“Our customers know that we can get them more money for their items on eBay than if they tried to sell it themselves on eBay,” says Michael Banks, President of QuikDrop. “We will continue to refine and improve our eBay related services to bring even more value to our customers.”

QuikDrop is the premier eBay drop-off store franchise. Since founding the first franchised eBay drop-off store in August 2003, QuikDrop has grown to 80 store locations in 25 states and has locations in Australia, Canada and China. For up-to-the-minute statistics on QuikDrop’s successfully completed eBay auctions, visit the eBay drop-off industry’s first real-time reporting website at quikdrop.com.

GETitSELLit.com, a new free classifieds website designed to fill the gap between eBay.com and craigslist.org has been launched.

“We’ve created an option for online classifieds,” says founder, Mike Janzen. “The new online marketplace empowers buyers and sellers without fees.”A free membership, available to anyone with a valid email address, includes the ability to post an unlimited number of ads, feedback email alerts, page view traffic reporting and an easy-to-use inventory management system. Currently there are no free classifieds websites that offer this much functionality at no cost.

For $4.85 per month, one can upgrade to a Power Membership that includes highlighted posts an online store and inventory bulk file upload that allows Power Members to post hundreds of ads a one time.

Janzen, who has worked for Wells Fargo Bank for the past five years as part of the bank’s commercial services web portal, manages the front-end web production team focused on the wholesale bank’s intranet web applications and portal.

GETitSeLLit.com is a grass root dotcom located in California. It is an independent website and is not affiliated with Wells Fargo, eBay or craigslist.