Live blogging from eBay Live keynote IV

(Lorrie continuing)

Buyer protection

Paypal rocks!  If a buyer pays with paypal for "eligible ebay transactions"**** you are covered!

Summary
Lorrie then summarized the changes she rolled out.

Lorrie then concluded with a story about how she sold some shoes to someone in France.

Then Lorrie had the eBay folks give a round of applause to everyone for what they do.

Then they showed a recycled

Community hall of fame

This was a video about danna who is an eBay educational specialist and all around community person.  She's an ebook seller (didn't they cancel all that?) 9k feedback, 4.9+ DSRs. sells about 50 items/month - GMV is about $1k/m.

(JD back on stage, did a little skit with Lorrie about their height difference)

In addition to the hall of fame award, the ebay foundation makes a $2500 donation to a charity of their choice.

Givingworks - has raised over $150m for charities to date (this is awesome, ChannelAdvisor supports GW).

Community Hall of Fame Awards:

1. danna
2. snowdealsnow - currently not selling anything. 4.6 S+H DSR
3. unclejoeadamson - 4.3 on shipping time - won't qualify to be powerseller
4. kathiesklown1970 - 4.7 S+H DSR
5. shoemetro (ChannelAdvisor customer - congrats David!!) - 4.5 S+H DSR, they are a big Givingworks participant.

Wrapped - more later, heading to my 10:30 'how to scale your biz' talk - should be interesting, I'm hearing that the individual sessions are getting pretty nasty.

Comments

[Uncle Joe Adamson]

Regarding Community Hall of Fame, it's important to note that the award is a recognition of the community contributions made by these members and is unrelated to the hard sales side of the house. For example:

"danna" empowers under-served "Stay At Home Moms" with information and enthusiastic support that literally helps them put bread on the table. She's just finished her first "real" book -- on eBay stuff, naturally, which should be available everywhere in a few weeks. If you get a chance to meet her, bring a grounding cable: her electricity is boundless.

"snowdealsnow" used a 10% charitable giving model that produced over $80,000 for his favorite cause, making him the top individual producer for GivingWorks. That's at least $800,000 GMV last year. He may not be selling anything at the moment - perhaps because he was in Chicago for Live - but when he DOES sell, he gets it done AND saves the world. Cool.

"katiesklown1970" somehow wound up with an interest in Paypal, and good thing, too: her depth of knowledge and ability to piece together labyrinthine procedures and relay them plainly is uncanny. Her joy in helping others sets a gold standard Paypal should be lucky to achieve. She may look like your blonde kid sister, but she's as bright as any wizened lawyer.

The "shoemetro" guys are another walking GivingWorks highlight reel, as you noted. They've listed thousands of items with a charitable component, and are very active in their IRL community as well as the virtual eBay kind. They prove that community involvement is good business.

As for me, like Elwood P. Dowd in "Harvey," I've been oh-so-smart, and I too recommend pleasant. I simply enjoy helping others. There's nothing quite like seeing the lights go on for someone stymied by procedure or lack of skillset or frustrated by some experience. "Uncle Joe" gets to cut through the nonsense and deliver some much-needed straight answers (and a little judicious hand-holding). I try to instill a sense of fun in my "edutainment" to offset the grind of the work and eBay's bizarre inability to communicate with real people. On balance, I spread "pleasant."

Finally, I'll note that my change from a Made-to-Order to a stock-keeping model has pushed my more recent DSRs to be 5 / 5 / 5 / 4.8, so PowerSeller status is only a question of time and volume should I lose it momentarily in July.

Thanks for allowing me to add context to the HoF class of 2008.

[Helen]

Mr. Wingo, Hall of Fame awards are not about feedback, DSRs, selling or buying. They are about COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT. Your blog post is disrespectful to current and former winners of this award.

Hall of Fame Award Nominee Requirements:

* Must be active participant in the eBay Community for a minimum of two years.
* Must have made outstanding positive contributions to the eBay Community.
* Must have made these contributions through active participation in community activity (in addition to buying and selling).
* Must have continued this level of contribution for more than two years.
* Must have consistently endeavored to follow the eBay User Agreement and eBay Policies.

When looking for eligible winners, eBay looks for eBay members who exhibit the eBay Values and make substantial contributions to the eBay Community. These contributions range from helpful About Me pages, answering questions on eBay's Discussion boards and Answer Center, participating in various eBay Input programs, serving as a Mentor or Volunteer, or finally, leading one of eBay's various Groups.

[Larry P]

Interesting side note on Uncle Joe Adamson. He asked a question at the Powerseller Q&A on Saturday. He indicated that due to the new link policy, he will be unable to continue to do the education work that he does that earned him the Community HoF award. He was eloquent in pleading with them to rethink the policy so he can continue providing the service he's providing. They seemed to listen. Hopefully, they'll fix it.

[Kathie]

I don't think its fair to go to each member that won and point out something negative about them like that.

I didn't win a DSR award, I won a HoF award.

I tried many times to contact you (Scot) at Live to discuss your comments and left my email address as well, and I was not contacted.

Kathie

[Steve]

"Paypal rocks! If a buyer pays with paypal for "eligible ebay transactions"**** you are covered!"

Interesting. A guy keeps a pair of shoes for four months, files credit card chargeback four months later, doesn't return the shoes.

The only thing PayPal did for me was drain the money out of my account.

"eligible ebay transactions" = loophole (ebay pays nothing) One must ALWAYS read the fine print.

[Jim]

Wonder how Danna is getting high DSR on shipping speed. She must have a secret way of educating the buyer for that DSR. If you look at her feedback it says "slow shipping" and another "USPS stinks".

I ship within 24 hr or less depending if a weekend or not and I still have buyers dinging me for slow shipping DSR.