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eBay has begun enforcing its ban on the use of extender tools this week, according to spokesperson Catherine England, but an eBay-certified vendor spoke out against the ban on Thursday. Auction extender tools allow sellers to automatically extend auction-style listings beyond their stipulated duration, making them appear at the top of the search results more often. (eBay auctions can be 1, 3, 5, 7 or 10 days in duration.) England said enforcement on the ban started this week, as the company continues to reach out to third-party partners.

When contacted by AuctionBytes for an interview about the impact of eBay's policy on its extender tool, Vendio issued a statement from EVP of Sales Management Mike Effle:

We have been working with ebay, providing data on the positive effects on seller profitability, transaction velocity, and ebay fees. We thought we were making progress on this issue.

We have recently confirmed, however, that ebay will begin enforcing this policy and will be following up this enforcement with product changes to prevent duration extensions.

While we disagree that this decision is necessarily in the best interests of sellers or the marketplace, we are coordinating with sellers to help them work through this business disruption and transition. We are also working with ebay in the hopes they are reasonable through this disruptive transition, which requires some merchants to make sweeping changes to automated listings that will need to be changed from 1 day to 7. Cancelled listings are good for no one in this case.

We are not hindering the product right now, mostly because we do not want to impact listings in flight that presumed this service would be available, especially on the heels of a discounted listing day.

Seller profitability took anther hit today, and we are sorry our efforts were unsuccessful

Vendio's extender tool, called Reviser, is an eBay "Certified Provider Solution" and is listed in eBay's Solutions directory (http://digbig.com/4rrdy).

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200701291407152.html

Related Story: "eBay Bans Auction Extenders to Improve Buyer Experience"
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m01/i23/s02

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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