Shoestring Theory

E-meter image from Salimfadhley on Wikimedia Commons. According to realitybasedcommunity.net, the Church of Scientology is directly pulling auctions for church related items by abusing the VeRO (Verified Rights Owner) program. This includes physical property purchased by former Scientologists, such as e-meters (a device used in CoS rituals), that should not be covered under any copyright […]

Paranoid people flood the boards with dire warnings – world ends, nothing changes

More stats from PowerSellers Unite. We’ve got today’s updated auction statistics from PowerSellers Unite You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day at their site anytime. So, total listings have dropped about 400,000 more, or a 2.78 percent decline from yesterday. A two day trend downward, […]

Listing stats from PowerSellers Unite. PowerSellers Unite tracks listings volume across a bunch of different sites. You can visit them to see the current volume versus the same time on the previous day. Normally that page is embedded in the site, but is currently a standalone page due to the high volume. As of right […]

Experimental listing design, click picture for full size image. Current listing design, click picture for full size image. eBay periodically tests new designs and options throughout the site, sometimes in their sandbox and other times live. A user in the forums found a radically different listing design while surfing today. Above is a shrunk down […]

Mr. Fluffy Toes avoids the temptation to cross the picket line. Pic by fweez on flickr (CC license) The plan for members to strike/boycott eBay has been floating around since the day eBay announced the new changes to the site. I hadn’t posted about it as: a) I don’t think it will accomplish anything and […]

The Huffington Post’s FundRace 2008 tool taps into the public records of campaign finance to let anyone find out who contributes to presidential candidates. You can search by name, location, occupation or employer. A company as large as eBay is bound to have employees with a variety of political opinions, so I wouldn’t take the […]

Apparently, lots of people reported that PayPal massively under-delivered January’s money market dividend payment. The correct dividends started to be deposited in the last few days. I had missed this until I saw it mentioned in passing in a CNN story last night. Full disclosure, I do have a PayPal money market account. But, I […]

The two glitches I reported on last week have been resolved, according to the Systems Announcement page at eBay. It’s disturbing that no mass message was sent out to eBay users (or if it was, no one I know received it). This glitch could cost sellers customers, sales and money because of the appearance of […]

eBay announced today that they will cut listing fees further in several media categories, which will include books, music, movies and video game software. $0.01 – 0.99 (auction-style only) Original Categories Insertion Fee: $ .20 [Previously announced fee: $0.15 -ed] New Media fee: $ .10 $1.00 – 9.99 (auction-style and fixed price) Original Categories Insertion […]