What is your priority for eBid improvements? POLL

[OldPostcards]

Totally agree too - and now a paid up member of the Baffled Club.

[bykimbo]

Thanks again. Now, to get things back on track...

Anybody who hasn't yet voted and wishes to, please register your preferences using the poll at the top of the thread. Thanks very much!

[PoppyGrove]

I fail to understand how someone can have a rant and thrown their toys out of the pram because someone volunteers her time to set up a poll to figure out what ideas tossed about would benefit ebid and everyone - buyers and sellers.

There is no point in ranting and raving about conditions that they experience in a country that they have chosen to live in on a forum that has no control over governental issues in this country nevermind one half way around the world.

Thanks bykimbo for

a) setting up the poll and giving us all the opportunity to have a vote b) all the help, advise and everything else that you have given me in my ...... (goes off for a quick check) ........ 4 months on ebid. It has been, is still and will be greatly appreciated.

Three cheers for Bykimbo

Hip Hip .....

[Aviation_Nostalgia]

Please explain why you think worldwide buyers are going to be more acceptable than worldwide sellers.

Long experience on many venues has taught me that the majority of scamming (in each respective country, including the UK) is perpetrated by buyers, not by sellers. The difference is that when a buyer is scammed, the media is more likely to pick up on it than if a seller is scammed.

For the record - out of several tens of thousands of sales across multiple IDs on 3rd party venues, I have been scammed by roughly 3 dozen buyers since the start of 2003, and have not, myself, perpetrated a single scam as a seller ... (edit - and hastily adds, nor as a buyer either )

Not quite sure how you work that out considering the vast amount of rogue sellers hawking fake goods on the net.


You misinterpret the meaning of what was intended - I meant only that as long experienced users of eBid, they have an accumulation of experience and knowledge from before the joining dates of many current members - therefore they are aware of certain "histories" that newer members may have no knowledge of. I was alluding to nothing more than that.

Some members may be new to eBid, but not neccessarily new to online selling. Many have probably been selling online far longer than yourself

[ttelyob]

I fail to understand how someone can have a rant and thrown their toys out of the pram because someone volunteers her time to set up a poll to figure out what ideas tossed about would benefit ebid and everyone - buyers and sellers.

There is no point in ranting and raving about conditions that they experience in a country that they have chosen to live in on a forum that has no control over governental issues in this country nevermind one half way around the world.

Thanks bykimbo for

a) setting up the poll and giving us all the opportunity to have a vote b) all the help, advise and everything else that you have given me in my ...... (goes off for a quick check) ........ 4 months on ebid. It has been, is still and will be greatly appreciated.

Three cheers for Bykimbo

Hip Hip .....

HOORAY!!

I think shouting is permitted in this case

[SalusLibrorum]

gazlannathai: I don't understand, if your wife is going to accompany you, with your son, and apply presumably to live with you permanently, why on earth would you have to pay the Bond to ensure she doesn't "overstay" a visa? That bond was meant for visiting relatives on short term visas such as tourist or study visas, not those with a visa where the idea is that after the Leave to Remain expires it will be changed to a permanent resident status.

I can't find anywhere on the Home Office Website that mentions this bond on the pages that apply to spouses.

I can understand that you are under a lot of strain because of your personal situation, but that is no excuse to take it out on someone who is nothing to do with it. As you say, you have been complaining for years that you cannot sell from Thailand, it isn't and has never been on the list of countries eBid will deal with, nothing is different so why do you expect the whole site to be changed to accommodate you?

Perhaps the eBid management, seeing what has happened to the eB*y listings thanks to hundreds of thousands of listings coming out of China and Hong Kong, which, if not outright fakes, are cheap and nasty imitation goods, have decided that they do not wish that to happen here.

It was your decision to live in Thailand, you're just going to have to accept that it does have its limitations on your lifestyle.

[gazlannathai]

clockmad
- I'll try to explain this, but if it comes out garbled, then I'll be happy to clarify further.

Since Christmas week, I've been trying to catch up on what's happening on the site via the forums in addition to trying to get inventory migrated etc, so I've been a bit busy, and in fact Christmas was fully cancelled in our house in order to do anything I could to try and get some extra sales. eBid is only one of many channel;s that I utilise, but I'd made a plan to focus heavily on this site in the 4th quarter of 2008.

One of the things that leapt out at me when reading the forums was that bykimbo came across as though she is actually a member of eBid staff, in many posts. I also know that G&M posted a long time back that they'd recruited from the eBid membership for positions like marketing, newsletter writing etc. Certain tones in quite a few of bykimbo's posts gave the impression that she was one of those staffers, and therefore posting on behalf of eBid (the company) rather than her fellow eBid community members. It made me consider her an "eBid Pink" if you like.

The OP of this thread is no different - consider the "officious" tone used (I've emboldened the relevant bits to make them more obvious) - with the above in mind, the bit in red really does read like a statement from an eBid Community Manager.

Okay, as Gazza has kindly extended the options we now have a twenty question poll. You may vote for all that are important to you. Please note that if everybody just votes for everything, we'll be no further forward, so please try to be selective.

I hope I've included the extras people mentioned, but if not sorry, it has to stay as is now.
The poll will run for 30 days.
There is no "don't care" option - if you don't care, don't vote.

See what I mean? That's a post straight out of the Richard Ambrose School of Forum Pinking. It's a "do as I say - or else" style, that eBay PS's are all too familiar with.

With that background, remember further that I (and 95% of the planet) had been deliberately locked out of the sites by the admins based purely on geography, with no account taken of our trading history on the site - see this link (scroll down to the "webifying" section) and more importantly, this one (scroll down to "Online Channels"). Note the aggressive and dismissive tone in the second quote from an eBid Customer Support email.

Those quotes show "foreign" users being treated like unwanted wotsit on the bottom of someone's shoe by eBid Customer Support - the first quote calls us "unwanted registrations" and the second (but actually earlier) post, simply tells the receiver to confirm they want their account closed because the site had locked them out - not because the user wants to quit, but because of an admin action against the bulk of the planet. Does the term "Constructed Dismissal" sound familiar?

It therefore did not land well to read a poll that proposed allowing the return of international buyers, but not international sellers, apparently posted by an eBid staffer - it stank of hidden agendas, and being led by rings through noses. It also felt too much like a move that eBay would pull.

I did my level best to ignore that connotation - honestly, I did. My first post was merely a registration of protest that only one side of the "overseas" issue had been raised, even though, as I later posted, it made me feel as if the anti-Chinese brigade had migrated from eBay to eBid.

Islandgirl is an eBid and eBay user who hails from one of the Windward Islands and is now resident in the UK - imagine if she were to be told she cannot list or sell to the US and Canadian sites because she's on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

There are also East Asian and South Asian nationals using this site based in the UK - imagine how they feel when they cannot conduct reciprocal trade with business partners and family "back home".

The poll made me ashamed of what eBid appeared to have become. When I first joined, it was a worldwide single site with never any hint of exclusionary actions or language - when I read that poll I thought I was reading one on eBay, not on eBid. It shocked me.

Extreme? Maybe, but if you were in my shoes, maybe you'd think like me too.

It's hard enough making an online business when you're in your own country, try doing it in someone else's, on an entirely different continent that rightly or wrongly is accused of all the crimes ever committed in cyberspace. I wonder how many of you could make a full time business out of it, supporting not only your own family, but also several villages of stateless and displaced persons. Then when you come face to face with exclusionary poll options, in the one place you never expected to find them, I wonder how you'd react?

If the placing of the poll was sanctioned by the management, the management and the poll writer should have been awake to possible (mis)interpretations of intent before the poll was posted, and rewritten it to be more appropriate.

Clockmad, I do hope that's answered your question - this topic has already used up the few hours I intended using to get more listings onto the site. However, I'm willing to make that sacrifice if it makes people more circumspect in thinking about how their postings can be interpreted by others.

Right now, globally, there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of online small and micro businesses looking for a new home. After the treatment they've received from eBay, they are deeply suspicious of most, if not all, online venues. Give them a hint of prejudice, and they'll click the back button on their browser ... and that would be eBid's loss at a time that eBid's user growth should be out-performing all other sites (except maybe the Big River).

Final thought - if eBid is going to become (increasingly) geo-selective, consider how that flies in the face of the Internet's fastest growing channels elsewhere - Bonanzle is THE hot topic amongst analysts and bloggers worldwide, and they're global, and less than six months old. That's just one example.

Nearly a year ago I made a post on eBid about a US-located blog and forum site that wanted eBidders to post adverts for their eBid shops in its special forum board. Only seven people did so - and I was one of the seven. That one forum topic, with just seven posts, gets over 300 UNIQUE hits per day from US, UK, and European visitors ... you can lead a horse (seller) to water (opportunity) but you can't make it drink (use the opportunity).

Gaz

p.s. - once I can see all of this on screen I may return to edit it - the writing window is too small for coherence
p.p.s - wow - only found one typo after posting it (probably means there's loads I missed - LOL)

[JerseyDevil]

Lol. Kimbo being badgered because of her efforts! So absurd....
But I do like the suggestion of a U.S. blog and forum.
I wasn't here a year ago so you would have had 8 votes had I been.
I know the forum is theoretically generic but in reality it is home to a bunch of wonderful and interesting Brits and I enjoy going there still it may put off a lot of new U.S. visitors.
Not all Americans are as worldly or as handsome as I am!

[gazlannathai]

Some members may be new to eBid, but not neccessarily new to online selling. Many have probably been selling online far longer than yourself

Sorry Naturalist - can't let this one pass - no offence intended to you, but ...

I built my first ecommerce website on the "Internet" in 1994
I built my first ecommerce discussion board (pre-Internet) in 1990
I built my first online commerce system in the ArpaNet in 1984 using a Commodore CBM64 home computer.

Prior to that I was working with global wide area networks (build, maintain, and use) as early as 1979 deploying ICL4/72 mainframes and dumb terminals

The only eBid member I know that was programming earlier than me is Madelaine (mfkirke) who has occasionally confessed to having worked with punch card systems - those are before even my time.

(hides from Madelaine now - LOL)

[clockmad]

Thanks I now have eye strain
And also noticed that you have, albeit in a extremely long winded post acknowledged the fact that you jumped in feet first with totally unwarranted assumptions.
I also notice that despite writing what appears to be something akin to a novel, you have failed to apologise to bykimbo.

Sorry but I'm not impressed.