Reports are running wild of new directives at the US Postal Service that could result in major delays in mail delivery - the last thing online sellers need, not to mention during a pandemic.

The National Association of Letter Carriers posted images of a multi-page memo on its Facebook page, noting that it did not own the images, but were shared by someone on a Facebook group page.

The post also linked to a post on the Postal Times website, which typed out part of the memo in text. The Postal Times noted, "This was shared online and it is from ... Read More

A letter from a reader yesterday raised some interesting points about eBay Managed Payments and its impact on buyers. It gets back to conventional wisdom that buyers are sellers, and sellers are buyers.

For example, collectors and fashionistas often sell items in order to fund their buying habits or to trade up. Selling on sites like eBay mean they have PayPal "pin money" (or "mad money") they can spend on non-essential items without feeling guilty about the expense.

They may also feel freer to spend money in accounts that have never been viewed by members of their household.

The reader said that ... Read More

eBay is now prohibiting sellers from customizing packing slips or adding a personal note - and because it didn't give sellers advance notice, multiple threads cropped up on the eBay discussion boards asking about the change.

"Some sellers have worked hard to personalize their Packing Slips, and overnite: poof! all their work went up in smoke," wrote a seller during the eBay weekly chat on July 1st. "We've been promised there would be announcements when eBay makes changes that effect people so dramatically, but, once again, NO advance notice. Why on earth was this not announced in advance?"

"This is just one ... Read More

eBay is giving some sellers a $50 - $150 incentive to sign up for Managed Payments ahead of the mid-July deadline. The reward comes in the form of a credit on their invoice.

"I just had to tell you eBay offered me a $50 credit fee if I signed up for managed payments by July 10," a reader told EcommerceBytes. "I have 3 selling accounts and so far only 1 account received the offer. They must be desperate for people to sign up."

Sellers also referenced the offer in comments on a recent EcommerceBytes Blog post. One seller pasted an excerpt of the ... Read More

Over the years, we've heard from sellers wanting to sell their eBay accounts but who were unsure of whether it was allowed. In Germany, eBay is now allowing sellers to do so, according to Mark Steier who writes about ecommerce on his site Wortfilter.

We noticed his recent blog post in which he is working as a broker to sell a third party seller's eBay account ("If a sale is made using Wortfilter, I will receive a commission," he writes).

We reached out to Steier, who told us account transfers have been possible in Germany for a few weeks, ... Read More