eBay is surveying sellers about its eBay Stores offering, and some of the changes under consideration are radically different than its current offerings. In addition, the new approach may put pressure on third-party inventory-management services.

Currently, eBay offers five packages ranging from a Starter eBay Store ($4.95/month for an annual subscription) to an Enterprise eBay Store ($2.999.95/month).

One change would be moving toward a build-your-own-store package, as we described in today's Newsflash article.

The survey also presented 30 different Store packages with each showing different features and costs.

The survey itself, and some of the features described, were complicated. 

Given the challenges sellers already face in analyzing ... Read More

Four out of seven former eBay employees charged with two felonies in a cyberstalking scandal will appear before a Federal Judge next month to enter a plea. Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Popp, Stephanie Stockwell, and Veronica Zea were charged by Information on May 22nd.

Bloomberg confirmed the four will plead guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses (via msn.com).

According to the court docket entry filed today, the hearing will be conducted by video conference on October 8th. The four will waive Indictment and plea to Information before Judge William ... Read More

Days after a scandal hit Amazon in which consultants were charged with bribing two former Amazon support staff based in India, another ecommerce platform revealed two of its employees allegedly stole merchant data.

Shopify said it was working with the FBI and other international agencies in their investigation of criminal acts. (Reuters said that includes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police - Shopify is based in Canada.)

"Our investigation determined that two rogue members of our support team were engaged in a scheme to obtain customer transactional records of certain merchants," Shopify wrote. "We immediately terminated these individuals' access to our Shopify network and ... Read More

The eBay System Announcement Board is showing a problem with "Billing & Payout." Unfortunately the dashboard provides no details about the type of issue.

We've scoured eBay discussion boards and social media sites looking for people reporting technical issues but came up empty.

That's not to say there aren't numerous reports of buyers having problems paying and with sellers having problems receiving payouts through managed payments - but those are chronic reports.

We checked Down Detector, Twitter, Facebook, eBay boards (Buying, Selling, Payments, Technical Issues,...) and found problems, but none seemingly related to the System Board announcement. 

If you're having issues with billing and payments today, let ... Read More

eBay is conducting an in-depth survey asking sellers about the resources they use to get news, information, and support. While the survey is ostensibly about eBay's Community resources, it also queried respondents about their selling behavior, such as the following two questions:

I have sold only on eBay

Amazon

Craigslist

Etsy

Facebook Marketplace

Letgo

Mercari

OfferUp

Poshmark

Rakuten

Walmart

Wish

Other (please specify):

- Merchant (purchases stock from manufacturers or distributors, has multiple of the same item for sale)

- Reseller (sources from various stores, websites, inventory ... Read More