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UK
The newsletter for buyers and bidders on
April 23, 2004
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This latest issue is now also available online at
http://www.workwinners.com/newsletter/040423.htm
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In This Issue
1. Hints and Tips
2. Another Cautionary Tale
3. A Day in the Life of .
4. Can you Sell a Service on eBay?
5. A New Baby
6. Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently available
7. Finally
8. My Products Catalogue
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Inspirational quote of the day
"So long as there is breath in me, that long I will persist. For
now I know one of the greatest principles on success; if I
persist long enough I will win."
Og Mandino
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Brian McGregor speaking - you receive the UK eBay Auction
Newsletter because you have bought from me or enquired about my
auction items on eBay or QXL.
If you do not want to receive this newsletter, the only one
dedicated to eBay
email to remove@workwinners.com
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1. Hints and Tips
a) Change of eBay policy
If you list an auction in an inappropriate category, eBay
formerly reserved the right to move the auction to a correct
category. Under the new policy, eBay will simply remove the
auction. You can read about it here:
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/listing-categorization.html
b) This isn't the type of "tip" you might expect here, but I
thought you might welcome the laugh. If you're broad minded and
not easily offended, take a look at this piece in eBay's forum on
how not to take a photograph of your auction item:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr401.htm
c) There's been quite a flurry of activity on the forums this
week regarding a member who appears to take delight in wrecking
auctions. A wrecker is a person who bids on auctions without any
intention of fulfilling their obligation to buy. You can read
about one such incident here:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr402.htm
If you're wondering, the bidder's deliberately offensive eBay ID
is niggawog.
The moral of this story is that seller's should monitor their
live auctions to see if any bidders may not be acceptable e.g. a
bidder with zero feedback rating, who's ID is less than 30 days
old and who has also placed silly bids on other auctions. Far
better to have their bid withdrawn, and the ID blocked, whilst
the auction is running - as opposed to at the end of the auction
trying to complete a transaction with someone who has no
intention of doing so.
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2. Another Cautionary Tale
The more time I spend talking to people who use eBay and PayPal,
the more I realise that internet fraud is an unfortunate fact of
life. I know I have covered this before, but I thought you might
like to read the following email I received reproduced here by
permission of the writer.
Hi Brian
This is intended to be a warning to other eBay and PayPal members
as it actually happened to me. I am normally very cautious sort
of person (in fact I was taught to be cautious but that is
another matter).
I have two theories on how this might have happened:
(1) I possible got hacked and infected.....despite having Anti
Virus Protection and a Firewall.
(2) I must have completed these "spoof e-mails" that look so
authentic from eBay and also PayPal where they are updating their
system and to confirm my details again.
I now know that this is not true of either company.
However on the morning of 29 January this year I switched on my
pc as is my usual custom and proceeded to check my e-mails. I was
horrified to see a "thank you for your receipt £2751.00 for the
purchase of 46" from PayPal".
As I had not bought anything recently and certainly of that
amount I began to investigate and then found a telephone number
of the seller.
I rang and eventually got to speak to this person who now wanted
to know why I had not paid for the 46" Plasma TV? You can
imagine my horror so I checked my PayPal account and there it was
£2751.00 agreed contract. I immediately contacted PayPal and
tried to stop this payment but I had to rely on e-mail and they
are not the quickest to reply.
This frightened me as I knew I only had £65 in my PayPal account
so how could I pay £2751 well it is easy......PayPal requested
the balance from my Credit Card company who stated that they
could not stop a transaction once it had been agreed and was in
the process. I even spoke to their fraud department and was
advised to cancel my card and apply for a new card and to check
my statement in approx 3 days time.
By now I am livid so I next approach eBay and again one has to
await their reply ( another loss of time). It transpires that on
28 January a membership was taken out in the name of beejaygee130
using my details but with a different address. NB "0" rating on
feedback........this should have alerted the supplier......as you
always advocate "check records on who is buying from you". I
challenged this point with the seller and they were new to eBay
but decided to withdraw from the auctions for the future (I have
not checked if they advertise on eBay since).
Meanwhile I speak to the seller who gave my a telephone number of
the person calling himself me and a full delivery address ( which
obviously differed from my address). Added to which he had been
on the telephone urging that delivery was important it had to be
next day delivery.
So off I go armed with this information and contacted the police
department in the area of the address I had been given after
explaining all that had happened I had to wait.
Meanwhile PayPal had now thanked me for contacting them and
agreed to reverse the payment....this was a great relief.
Also eBay had confirmed that the details that I supplied them
matched the fraudster.
Immediately I changed all my Passwords etc and took them off my
pc.
Back to the police who thanked me for the additional information
and confirmed that an arrest was imminent as this person (16 year
old male) had committed several offences. I was hoping that the
police could tell me how my information was gathered......as of
yet they don't say.
He is out on Bail and the court case is due in April and my case
is one of 20 offences.
Then I had a battle with the Credit card company to correct my
statement.....they only paid me the amount that had been
transferred to PayPal.
When I tried to explain that it was not mine to start with I had
to get quite firm with them and insist my account was restored as
was before this fraudulent transfer took place.
Just proving a point one has to be very vigilant even on eBay.
I hope that you will find this of interest and use it as a
warning to others.
Thanks for listening if ever you wanted to speak personally in
case you have any queries my home number (ex-directory) xxxxx
xxxxxx
regards BJG
If something like this happens to you, it takes hours of your
time to sort it. Not to mention the emotions of feeling like
you've been personally violated.
In attempting to learn from such events, here are a couple of
points:
1. Change your eBay and PayPal passwords EVERY 30 days.
2. Don't use the same password on eBay and PayPal.
3. NEVER respond to any email appearing to come from eBay or
PayPal that asks you for your sign-in details.
4. PayPal have
a
7307191. Make a note of this now, you never know when you might
need it!
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3. A Day in the Life of .
Ever heard of Lynn Reedy? There's no particular reason why you
should have. But this lady is Senior Vice President for Software
Development at our favourite internet auction company.
I read an article recently about Lynn Reedy, and thought it would
make interesting reading for us minor members of the eBay
community.
Some of us remember eBay when the site was not the most reliable
in the world. It seemed to crash regularly, and information
disappeared into the ether from time to time.
Then, in September 1999, eBay recruited Lynn Reedy to oversee a
software development project which effectively involved rewriting
the whole of eBay's system. And she has managed this task
spectacularly well.
Most of us think of eBay as an online auction house. In fact, the
core of eBay is nothing more or less than one massive piece of
software. They claim it is one of the most complicated computer
applications ever created. Try this for size.
The eBay auction system contains five thousand servers (computers
to you and me) linked together, with dozens of databases spread
across those servers. They supply 720 million page view each day,
and visitor traffic can spike 180% without warning. There are 175
million searches conducted per day, and eBay handles 25 million
emails daily. eBay currently has 95 million members, with 35,000
being every day.
In Ms Reedy's department there are 640 people who maintain and
develop eBay's software application. eBay's service availability
is 99.94%. In other words, eBay's auction site now rarely breaks
down - statistically 6 minutes in any 10,000 minutes. This is
compared to an availability of 97% four years ago - 300 minutes
downtime in any 10,000 minutes.
Reedy's target is to have perfect programming code - but it's
still difficult to achieve. In the 5 million lines of computer
code that is the eBay application, at the last count there were
325 known bugs (errors). This sounds a lot, but it is down from
3,000 bugs two years ago. Bugs that used to take up to two months
to fix, now require only a maximum of five hours because problems
are spotted earlier. The eBay system runs so smoothly that only
one software engineer is on call during off-hours.
I've worked in IT in the past, and I have to say I'm impressed by
all of this. Very impressed.
Now, perhaps we could persuade eBay that what they really need is
customer service department which is telephone based. We could
reduce the number of emails, and increase customer satisfaction
in one fell swoop!
And I know the perfect woman to head up the new operation.
Anyone know Lynn Reedy's email address?
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4. Can you Sell a Service on eBay?
Most people think of eBay as a place where you sell things. They
often start by selling unwanted items from the attic, moving on
to other things in the garage and, if it takes a hold, venturing
into the market of buying items to sell.
Not many associate eBay as a place where you can sell a service.
Let's imagine I want to offer my services as a French language
teacher. Where else do you know that you can advertise for 10
days, reach an audience of millions and only pay a few pounds in
fees?
I create an auction with my language services such as teaching,
proofreading, editing etc. I list my qualifications and any
appropriate memberships I have. I also include a photo of myself
- making it personal.
What I am doing with this auction is selling myself.
I would start the auction at a minimum hourly rate, and probably
have a Buy it Now hourly rate too.
I know of a guy who lives in
services on eBay.de. Within days he received work, ad had to
re-list many times as his Buy it Now rate was being taken up
regularly. He gained commercial and private customers alike.
I also heard of a group of computer programmers who were made
redundant after their jobs went "offshore". Having found it
difficult to find new jobs, they decided to turn to eBay. What
they ideally wanted was to stay together as a team of software
developers, so their auction was to give the winning bidder the
rights to negotiate exclusively for their services. The winning
bid amount would go to a charity.
They started the bidding at $250, and you can see the outcome of
their auction here:
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr403.htm
If you have a skill, expertise and qualification, why not enlist
the power of eBay to sell yourself?
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5. A New Baby
I bet you didn't know I was pregnant!
Well, that's what it feels like at the moment, because I'm just
about to give birth.
For months, a new service to help eBay sellers has been growing
in me. Now, the head is almost ready to pop out.
My new service will become a reality very soon - and I'm a wee
bit excited about it.
The service is called Keyword Pro.
In common with every new baby I have, I'll be giving you, my
newsletter reader, the first chance to learn all about it.
So, if you receive an email from me with Keyword Pro in the
subject, you'll know what it is. I'll just be announcing the
birth of my new baby!
I hope the baby isn't upset at being given the christian name of
Keyword. I dread to think what the other kids in the playground
will do with that name!
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6. Someone's auctioning what? Unusual items currently available
Nothing surprises me when it comes to internet auctions. Amuse
yourself with some of these beauties ...
If you're copying and pasting the links, just make sure you get
the whole address into your browser.
I've often fallen down one - but never thought about buying or
selling one. http://www.workwinners.com/nlr404.htm
Here's a clever title. I'm not sure about Trades Description
though! http://www.workwinners.com/nlr405.htm
Great idea from which we could all benefit. Can you spot the 10
spelling and other errors in the 4 lines of description?
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr406.htm
This is a bit of a knock to the old self esteem. No bids, and it
started at 1p. http://www.workwinners.com/nlr407.htm
Coming from Geordieland, I just had to follow this one up. I'll
let you know what happens next.
http://www.workwinners.com/nlr408.htm
Disclaimer - I have no association with any of the sellers of the
above items.
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7. Finally
If you are changing email addresses soon please put a note on
your calendar to send a blank email to:
newsletter@workwinners.com
after you get your new email address.
I don't want to lose touch with you!
If a friend sent you this newsletter, you need to send a blank
email to:
newsletter@workwinners.com
That way you can get your own copy next time!
Increasingly, email filters are preventing genuine email
communications such as this newsletter from reaching subscribers.
If you use any method of checking on your email, and you wish to
continue receiving the newsletter you may need to include my
email address in your safe list, whitelist or address book.
Thank you for continuing to take my newsletter - I hope it gives
you as much enjoyment to read, as it does me to write.
Regards Brian McGregor Editor - "
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7. My Products Catalogue
All the following are original products, services and
opportunities written and created by myself.
"The eBay Formula" How to sell successfully on
after time, after time.
http://www.workwinners.com/ebf/nloffer.htm
NB Save £5 with this
Special Offer price for Newsletter readers.
"UK Dropshipping
Sources" Twelve genuine
http://www.workwinners.com/UK_Dropshipping.htm
"Sourcing DVDs, CDs and Videos at Trade Prices" Where and how to
buy DVDs, CDs and Videos at trade prices, and how to sell for
profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/DVD_CD_Video_at_Trade_Prices.htm
"Sourcing and Selling Electrical Products for Big Profits" Where
and how to buy Widescreen TVs, DVD players and VCR players at
trade prices, and how to sell for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/Electrical_wholesale.htm
"Sourcing Maternity Clothing and Baby Needs at Trade Prices"
Where and how to buy at trade prices.
http://www.workwinners.com/Maternity_baby_nursery_at_Trade_Prices.htm
"Sourcing and Selling Jewellery for Big Profits" Where and how to
buy jewellery at trade prices, and how to sell for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/Jewellery_wholesale.htm
"Sourcing Mobile Phone Accessories at Trade Prices" Where and how
to buy mobile phone accessories at trade prices, and how to sell
for profit.
http://www.workwinners.com/Mobile_Phone_Accessories_wholesale.htm
"The Streetwise Buyer's Guide to Radar Detectors" Don't buy a
Radar Detector system until you read this.
http://www.workwinners.com/Streetwise_Radar_Detectors.htm
Oil Painting Marketing Business Become my partner in this
pleasant money-making venture.
http://www.workwinners.com/oil_paintings.htm
Reseller Programme - Limited number of places available. Join my
Reseller scheme and sell my eBooks and Special Reports for
profit. http://www.workwinners.com/rs15.htm
See the whole catalogue here: http://www.workwinners.com
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"
In each issue you'll get ideas on how to make the most of buying
and selling on eBay sites from a
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Finally, be assured that your email address will never be shared
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Copyright Information
Copyright © 2006 Brian McGregor. All rights reserved. No part of
this newsletter may be copied or published without prior
permission, but do please forward it to your friends and
colleagues as long as you keep it in its entirety. Brian
McGregor, as publisher, disclaims any liability for the use of
any information contained herein. We further claim no
responsibility for the legality or accuracy of any advertisements
or articles. It is the reader's responsibility to practice due
diligence in any product or service acquired based on information
contained in this newsletter.
To unsubscribe, send a blank email to remove@workwinners.com
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