From 20th February 2008, we'll be changing the policy around how sellers are allowed to treat VAT in their listings.

Currently, we leave it to sellers to decide whether they include VAT in the selling price or add it after the sale at the checkout.

Based on strong feedback from both the buyer and seller community, we're changing the policy so that it will no longer be permissible to add VAT charges to an item after the sale. If you're VAT registered, and therefore must charge VAT on the items you sell, the prices visible to buyers in your listings must be inclusive of VAT.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Based on feedback from our buyers and sellers, we�ve taken the decision to close eBay Express in the UK, and focus our efforts on the main eBay.co.uk site.

Many of the innovations pioneered on eBay Express have been integrated into the main site, helping us to bring in more buyers and to provide them with a better experience, for example in search, checkout and seller standards.

eBay Express sellers have always been required to offer excellent levels of customer service and with the innovations we�re introducing on the main eBay.co.uk site, they should now enjoy benefits with regards to pricing, visibility and traffic.

Are you currently selling on eBay Express? Find out more about the closure plans.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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EU law states that anyone who is trading as a business must clearly indicate this to consumers � something we enable by offering business accounts.

PowerSellers who are not already registered as business sellers on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie are now required to upgrade their account. It�s free and only takes a few moments.

In the coming months we will also help you understand your obligations to customers in terms of the basic information and service levels that you need to provide to them about your business.

eBay.co.uk sellers: Upgrade your account

eBay.ie sellers: Upgrade your account

Find out more about all the changes being announced today (UK sellers / Ireland sellers)

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Hi, I�m Mark Lewis and I lead the team that focuses on eBay�s marketplaces in UK and Ireland. eBay is today delighted to announce a series of substantial new benefits for sellers on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie, including a reduction in Insertion Fees of up to 33% and volume discounts of up to 40% on revised Final Value Fees.

Who benefits? Seller service makes the difference
Ask successful sellers on eBay what drives their success and many will say it comes down to good old-fashioned service � giving buyers what they want, at a great price, and the confidence that any problems they encounter will be sorted.

It�s this service that keeps buyers coming back again and again - over 15 million in November 2007 alone.

Starting today, we�re introducing a series of changes, based on feedback from sellers and buyers, that will provide clear incentives and rewards for sellers to continue offering good service, and give buyers even greater confidence to come back more.

At the same time we�ll be making sure that the minority of sellers who continue to undermine your good reputation by offering poor service find it much harder to compete.

What does this mean for me? Reductions and Rewards
Provide good service and you�ll get better visibility in search results and the opportunity to enjoy volume discounts of up to 40% on our new Final Value Fees.

Service will be measured by Detailed Seller Ratings left anonymously by your buyers over your previous thirty days� trading. These changes go live in February, so please act now to keep your service levels high and qualify for the benefits.

Alongside this, many sellers tell us that the upfront risk of listing an item is too great. In response, eBay is pleased to announce a reduction of up to 33% on your listing fees that will significantly reduce this risk and rebalance fees to better reflect successful sales.

That�s just the start
Please take the time to read through all the Announcement Board posts today and read a summary of all the changes. If you�re an eBay.ie seller, read about the summary of changes on eBay.ie

There will be a series of Q&A; sessions on the Community boards over the coming weeks and as always we look forward to your feedback. Of course, we�ll continue to update you as these changes take effect.

Finally, thank you for your support throughout 2007. By championing and rewarding good service and reducing some of your risks, we hope to make a positive difference to sellers� businesses and buyers� experiences, and we wish you continued success for the year ahead.

Best regards,

Mark

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We wanted to let you know that we have introduced a �Price + P&P; Sort� search option.

We�re doing this as part of our ongoing efforts against excessive postage and packaging (P&P;) charges that some sellers impose in their listings. The feature will help buyers take into account P&P; costs when looking for items in search results.

The two new sort options are: �Price + P&P;: Lowest First� and �Price + P&P;: Highest First�. These are new search options that sort search results according to the total cost of the item, including postage and packaging charges.

We advise sellers to include at least one valid P&P; option in listings to prepare for the feature. Items that don�t specify P&P; information using the options available will be displayed lower in eBay search results.

An example of how this new sort option will work:
If a buyer chooses the �Price + P&P;: Lowest First� sort option, items will appear in the order of lowest total cost (for items where P&P; was properly specified), followed by items for which P&P; was not specified (sorted by price only).

This will help buyers find the overall cost of items more easily.

We appreciate your continuing support in helping to keep eBay a great place to buy and sell.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Tens of thousands of people now earn a primary or secondary living on the eBay.co.uk site � proof of an incredible entrepreneurial spirit and the power of the internet to transform lives. It�s the eBay community that pioneered the e-commerce phenomenon and last year alone, you traded approximately �30billion in goods around the world.

Next week we�ll announce a series of exciting changes, helping to create an even more vibrant and safer marketplace, with new opportunities for sellers and buyers.

There are also some changes within eBay. Meg Whitman has led eBay globally for ten years, during which time the community has grown to hundreds of millions of people. On 31st March she�ll be retiring from that role and John Donahoe will become the new President of the eBay Inc group of companies.

And after six years of focusing on the UK marketplace, Doug McCallum is moving to a role leading Europe-wide. He is being succeeded by Mark Lewis. Mark�s been working with eBay in the UK since 2004, leading teams that look after buyer and seller experience, customer and PowerSeller support, and eBay for Charity. He�s a passionate eBayer, selling old music, forgotten toys and regretted purchases.

We look forward to telling you more about the new changes and to introducing Mark. There�ll be a Q&A; session on the Community boards in the coming week, where we hope to hear your thoughts on what we can do to keep eBay as your favourite place to buy and sell on the internet.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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The ability to pay with Switch/Solo debit cards on PayPal is now available. We apologise for any inconvenience.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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	***Original: Issues with PayPal and Switch/Solo payments***
	25 January, 2008 | 02:10PM GMT The ability to pay with Switch/Solo debit cards on PayPal is currently unavailable. The PayPal team is working quickly to resolve this issue and we will update you as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience. Regards, The eBay Team
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We wanted to let you know that eBay sellers now have two additional postage options for use on their eBay listings: �Other 24 Hour Courier� and �Other 48 Hour Courier�.

The new options give buyers a better idea of the postal services sellers are offering and should enable more sellers who use alternative couriers to Royal Mail and Parcelforce to participate in promotions such as Get It Fast.

We are doing this as part of our ongoing efforts to help sellers offer improved customer service by giving them additional postage options to offer to buyers. The feature will help sellers and buyers take advantage of alternative courier options.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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This Thursday, 24th January, when you list an item in an eligible category on eBay.co.uk using the Auction-style format you will pay a half-price Insertion Fee on every item you list.

Terms and conditions apply. Full details.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Royal Mail has announced the following price changes, effective from 7th April, 2008:

Prices for other weights and sizes have also changed; full details can be found at the Royal Mail website.

Also worth noting:

Please see the Royal Mail website for more details on discounts and new prices.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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We wanted to update you on the testing we're performing to enable relevant UK items meeting certain criteria to appear on eBay.com. (See the announcement from October 2007 for more details.)

From 9th January we're expanding the list of categories that qualify to include the following:

This is in addition to the categories that already qualify:

Apart from that, the same criteria apply as before, so an item will automatically be visible on eBay.com if:

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Following on from our announcement on August 21, 2007, and in response to your feedback about the e-Parcel card, eBay.ie and An Post are delighted to extend the reduced postage rates to apply to packages up to 2Kg, in addition to parcels up to 5Kg.

We love getting your feedback, so please let us know if there are other ways we can improve this service. eBay sellers resident in the Republic of Ireland with a feedback score of 90 or above, with at least 98% positive, are eligible to apply for the e-Parcel card.

Read all about the e-Parcel card.

We appreciate your continuing support in helping to keep eBay.ie a great place to buy and sell.

Regards,

The eBay Team

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Last year saw many changes to eBay.co.uk designed to make it simpler, safer and more fun, resulting in more buyers coming to the site than ever before - 15.2m in November 2007 alone (unique visitors, Nielsen / Netratings).

The majority of buyers are able to buy what they want, at a great price, from a trusted seller with great service, and this helps keep them coming back again and again.

However, a small but unacceptable number of buyers continue to have bad experiences when they make purchases, and end up buying less or leaving the site altogether. Although these bad experiences come from a minority of sellers, the impact is unfairly felt by everyone.

As a result, this year we will be introducing exciting changes that will reward and support sellers who provide buyers with a good service, giving them better access to those buyers.

Similarly, the minority of sellers who give bad service will be disadvantaged, with less access to buyers and lower visibility. On eBay.co.uk, we have already reduced the visibility of sellers who offer unfair postage and packaging charges. See previous announcement.

Using Detailed Seller Ratings

We�ll increasingly use Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) as the mechanism to recognise sellers who offer good service, and will be launching a new way for sellers to monitor and act on their ratings. In the meantime we encourage all sellers to review their DSRs on a regular basis. We�ll also continue to educate buyers on DSRs and how best to leave these ratings.

We look forward to explaining these changes in more detail in the coming months. Ultimately, the more good experiences that buyers have from good sellers, the more they�ll return to shop again, and the more successful sellers will be.

Best wishes for 2008.

The eBay Team

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