Shoestring Theory

Currently documenting the house that is eating our lives, we will return to regularly scheduled programming in a couple of more months

Shoestring Theory header image 5

Subtle change removes valuable info from PayPal’s Seller Protection Policy?

June 4th, 2010 1 Comment

Update: All of the following information is still correct, but I did do some more digging through the eBay forums and found some other people who have all been having the same problem for the last week. You can read some here. I think one thing that people are still missing is that [...]

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I’m not perfect anymore, and that brings me down

January 21st, 2010 2 Comments

We finally got our first negative feedback on eBay this morning, it’s been highly traumatic. Tens of thousands of eBay transactions, almost 7,000 feedback received and five years of history without a single negative. And I’ve probably earned a few over the years that were never left. We try to treat our [...]

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Prostores and eBay sync/multi-channel inventory features reviewed

November 21st, 2008 No Comments

This is a bit dated, as the ProStore features I’m discussing were released in the spring, but I was late picking up on them. My previous disappointment in some ProStores features hadn’t led me to be a quick adopter on some of their changes. I was also delayed further by activating the two [...]

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eBay coupons, great idea, just wish the implementation was better

October 30th, 2008 1 Comment

Since this spring, I’ve received several coupons from eBay, ranging from $5 off shipping up to 10 percent off one purchase (up to $100 off). I think I’ve received a total of 6 coupons, give or take one. I’ve had problems getting two of them two work, both of them were 10 percent [...]

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Update: More thoughts on Upromise

September 16th, 2008 No Comments

Awhile back, I posted on joining the Upromise program.
To update, I am still very happy with the program and would highly recommend it to anyone who is saving for college or trying to pay down student loans. It’s been about nine months since I joined. In that time, I’ve picked up $204 in [...]

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PayPal, heroin and eBay Australia, oh my!

May 8th, 2008 2 Comments

Among all the changes happening to eBay worldwide, one of the most startling announcements has been that eBay Australia will require that PayPal be used for virtually all transactions in Australia (except for items picked up locally).
eBay Australia is hosting several Q&A meetings with eBay users to discuss the new policy. According [...]

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eBay wants you to look for a new job?

April 22nd, 2008 No Comments

Screen capture of eBay home page.
Today’s 10 cent list fee special is sponsored by Monster. So, apparently eBay is encouraging you to look for a job on Monster. I guess that makes sense if eBay’s news policies are driving you off the site. This seems like a really odd marketing partnership for [...]

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eBay introducing its own affiliate network, dropping ValueClick

March 18th, 2008 1 Comment

The Register is reporting that:
eBay is dropping ValueClick’s Commission Junction as the manager of the affiliate programs for eBay’s auctions and Half.com sites. Monday’s announcement came as the Federal Trade Commission announced ValueClick would pay a record $2.9m to settle charges it engaged deceptive advertising and failed to secure sensitive customer data.
About 100,000 eBay and [...]

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German group demonstrates security flaw in eBay

March 13th, 2008 No Comments

AuctionBytes has an in-depth piece up on a security vulnerability in how eBay handles scripts in auction pages. A German watchdog organization, Falle-Internet.de, demonstrated the exploit this week. The vulnerability allows scammers to capture a wealth of information about an eBay user that visits an auction with the malicious script in it:
By loading [...]

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Updated: eBay search badly broken this morning

March 11th, 2008 No Comments

Click for larger image (where time is visible).
Updated: This afternoon eBay put up a post on the Systems Announcements board that the restructuring of some categories was resulting in not everything being displayed correctly:
Some items affected by last night’s category updates have not been moved to their new categories yet, which is affecting how these [...]

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