Yesterday, eBay announced a number of measures they have taken and options available to sellers with reference to the cyberattack they revealed more than a week ago. In short, plenty of sellers with auctions on the go during this crisis will be due a refund.
You can read details and find a link to that announcement later in the article.
But, critically, it must be said, that these measures are a recognition from eBay that the password measures they took (correctly) and the media backlash that followed the news of a serious information leak in February or March did detrimentally affect buyer behaviour.
So far there has been no indication that other sellers will be compensated as a result of the serious problem or if eBay will be undertaking a much needed campaign to boost buyer confidence in the light of the negative press eBay has suffered.
“We recognise that the password reset may temporarily interrupt the normal bidding process for buyers. We’re taking additional steps to ensure successful transactions:
· All listing and final value fees will be refunded automatically for auction-style listings that ended between 2:00 PM BST on Wednesday, 21 May 2014, and 7:59 AM BST on Thursday, 22 May, 2014. Sellers will see these credits on their June invoice.
· Sellers can end any auction-style listing between 2:00 PM BST on Wednesday 21 May, 2014, and 7:59 AM BST on Sunday, 1 June, 2014 and will receive a credit for all listing fees related to these listings on their June invoice.
· Sellers can also cancel any transactions from auction-style listings that ended in a sale between 2:00 PM BST on Wednesday, 21 May, 2014, and 7:59 AM BST on Sunday, 1 June, 2014 provided the buyer paid with PayPal and we can verify through PayPal that the buyer’s full payment has been refunded.
Final value and listing fees will be credited on sellers’ June invoice and any associated defects or negative buyer feedback removed. These protections will be applied automatically. The transaction must be cancelled within the above timeframe to qualify for the credit and defect/feedback removal.”
It would be interesting to hear your views. Are theses steps adequate?
5 Responses
Extraordinary! eBay being generous? Caring about sellers? Is it April first?
An effort yes, but as always it is poorly thought out.
This is basically open day for any seller to look at the final price and then decide if it was high enough. This especially applys to sellers that scrimped on listing fees by not placing a reserve (as many do) and who was then not happy with the final price. They can now cancel the sale without penalty or consequence and relist for end of month (obviously better than auction ending before pay day).
Some buyers will feel very let down. It would make more sense for this to apply only to auctions that had just a single bid, with others being reviewed at sellers request.
In all honesty the cyber attack has happened and nothing can be done about it now. To be honest I had my passwords changed within 2 minutes of seeing it had happened and it was easy. The more important issue is the google ranking which has been massively hit. Not by the google update but manually by Google it appears. The difference in traffic is unreal. They need to focus 100% on that!
as usual, too little too late. my auctions that finished last Sunday (mostly lower than expected prices) were won, paid for and posted Tuesday before i saw this announcement. Actually i wouldn’t have cancelled the sales anyway as i want my winning bidders to have confidence in my auctions. How many auctions from 21st can still be cancelled where bidders haven’t paid and sellers haven’t shipped? Hollow gesture from ebay. Also where is the offer to shop sellers discounted shop fees for the month? what are we paying the fees for?
Does ‘defect/feedback removal’ mean eBay are going to block buyers with cancelled transactions under their scheme from leaving negative feedback?
What about those of us with fixed price listings? Our sales were down by thousands this week, but despite providing eBay with a regular income, they don’t consider us important.