This week in eBay news, a third-party feedback tool and new postal rates on tap. Plus, the company's complaint against Craigslist goes public, Canadian court says eBay must hand over Power Seller information, My eBay beta updates coming soon and HammerTap's latest release.

eBuyer-Feedback Lets Sellers Leave Negs for Buyers
eBuyer-Feedback, a free service that allows eBay sellers to leave positive, neutral, or negative feedback for each of their buyers, launches today. This off-eBay service aims to restore a seller's option to leave more than just positive feedback for buyers. As an added bonus, sellers will be given one free spot in the ad rotation for their auctions for each feedback they leave at the site.

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The service claims to use the eBay message system to send feedback details to a special account. Once the message you leave has been processed, the feedback comment is visible to everyone. Sellers may also create an account and use the eBay messaging system to link their seller ID to their eBuyer-Feedback account. The site also states that while it does verify that a sale occurred, it does not verify that the comments are factual.

USPS Rates to Change Soon
USPS will be using new rates for Express Mail, Priority Mail, Parcel Select, Parcel Return Service and International Mail starting May 12. EBay says that the eBay Shipping Calculator will automatically be updated on May 9 around midnight Pacific Time, so listings with calculated shipping that are paid for via Checkout after May 9 will have the new price applied. The new rates will be available in the PayPal Label Printing Solution after 9 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, May 11. Sellers are reminded that through Sunday evening they can print labels at the old prices for shipments to be posted on Monday, May 12.
 

More on eBay Versus Craigslist
Last week (see eBay Watch: Fighting with Craigslist, Shipping News) eBay filed a corporate governance suit against founder Craig Newmark and Chief Officer Jim Buckmaster. When first announced, details were quite sketchy but since then eBay made the file public. It would seem that when eBay went into the classifieds business with the launch of its Kijiji site in the United States, Newmark and Buckmaster determined that it triggered part of an agreement that removed the "lol;right of first refusal" to acquire each other's shares if either party became a competitor to Craigslist. The document states that on Jan. 1, 2008 the company's stock was restructured. This, according to eBay dilutes its stock from 28.04 percent to 24.85 percent, and also means that eBay looses its ability to elect a director, because its ownership stake falls below the agreed upon 25 percent stake.

The Craigslist blog was updated with the following post after eBay's claims were made public.

"We will file our formal response in the next few weeks, and until then will do our best to abide by protocol in not responding to specific assertions made in eBay's complaint. As those who know us best will recognize, every measure we have taken has been for the sake of protecting the long term well-being of the craigslist community. Sadly, we have an uncomfortably conflicted shareholder in our midst, one that is obsessed with dominating online classifieds for the purpose of maximizing its own profits. It's a conflict of interest worth keeping in mind if you decide to give this filing a read."

The full complaint made by eBay is available online, here in PDF format.

eBay Canada faces Federal Court of Appeal Loss
The Canadian Federal Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that orders eBay Canada to give the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) the names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses and gross sales figures of all Canadian eBay PowerSellers. The CRA first launched its investigation in 2006 when trying to determine if Canadian PowerSellers reported their eBay revenue on their 2005 tax returns.

EBay fought the ruling based on the key fact that the information was stored on computers in the United States, controlled by its U.S.-based parent, eBay Inc. and not information physically located in Canada. According to "The Globe and Mail," however, Judge Hughes did not support that opinion in his ruling.

My eBay Beta Update
This week eBay announced several new changes to its My eBay Beta, which was rolled out to some testers last August. Based on their feedback, Renee VonBergen, from eBay's Product Management, posted the following message detailing the upcoming changes that will be implemented:

"Items on overview pages such as Summary and All Buying will be grouped into traditional sections of Watching, Bidding, Won, etc., instead of being lumped together and sorted by Time. Your favorite pages are returning. The Summary page will replace My eBay Today, and the All Selling page makes a comeback. It's easier to scan items. We've made some cosmetic changes to make it easier to quickly scan the status of your items. You can also sort by column if you'd like. More pictures: We're now showing pictures for every item across all sections, including Won and Selling. No more horizontal scrolling. We've changed the setup of the page so that those of you with your monitor resolution at 1024 x 768 won't have to horizontally scroll any longer."

In future testing, a small number of members will use the new My eBay, and, at the same time, another small group of members won't be given access to it. EBay says that by creating these two groups the company can compare what's working well and what isn't between the current version of My eBay and the Beta version.

HammerTap's New Research Tool
HammerTap recently rolled out a new feature that allows eBay sellers to determine their chances of selling an item and its probable profit margin before investing in the product. According to HammerTap, the new reporting tool provides sellers with graphic representations of the chances of selling, distribution of price and competition for a product or category on eBay. This detailed information, they say, enables eBay sellers to discover the hottest products and categories within the eBay marketplace and to make better product-sourcing decisions.  eBay sellers can try the HammerTap software and new research tool with a free, 10-day trial of HammerTap.