Welcome to the new incarnation of eBay Watch. Beginning this week, we'll focus more on the weekly happenings in the world of eBay, including new product announcements from third parties, hot forum topics, eBay company news and an Auction of the Week.

eBay — Online King Kong
The biggest news of the week is that eBay trumped the other online giants in sales for the period from Black Friday through Monday, besting Amazon, Target and China's fifth-largest trading partner, WalMart, among many others. According to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg News, more than 27.7 million consumers used the Web for holiday shopping on Monday, Nov. 28 — now referred to as "Cyber Monday" — with reported sales surging 26 percent over 2004 numbers to $485 million.

According to a Reuters report, Nielsen//NetRatings said eBay had 11.7 million unique visitors on Monday, more than doubling Amazon 5.6.

Perhaps shoppers are realizing selection — and more importantly prices — can't be beat and eBay's "It" campaign is also turning heads. The auction site was also apparently the only site rabid shoppers could find the hot new Xbox 360 after limited quantities showed up at other online retailers and malls.

Pay Up
Another development in eBay land this week was the announced change of the company's user agreement and privacy policy, which includes a special notice to deadbeat sellers. Scott Shipman, senior counsel for eBay's Global Privacy Practices posted a notice on the company's announcement board that eBay may collect the overdue balance owed from that seller's PayPal account for accounts that have balances more than 180 days overdue.

"The vast majority of our sellers settle their balances on time or before 180 days. eBay will resort to a PayPal withdrawal only after the balance has been overdue 180 days and our other collection efforts have been unsuccessful. We believe this helps level the playing field for the rest of the sellers who pay their bills," he said.

Oddly enough, there was no mention of collecting from deadbeat bidders, which would seem only fair. Judging from what many sellers are saying on eBay's forums, that seems to be a more pressing issue.

On the Attack
eBay "competitor" AuctionCities.com. declared a "price war" against eBay this week. According to an AuctionCities press release, registration has always been free of charge, as is hosting up to five megabytes of images up. Now, the site's basic listing is free to all users.

Michael Berman, AuctionCities.com CEO, said, "This is an all-out price-war. Why not mention the name of our competition? It's eBay and the other big guys who are so big that they seem to think that can seemingly gouge their habitual customers and neglect the numerous complaints that are easily found on the Web about their customers dissatisfaction with the unpredictable and expensive price structure, arbitrary enforcement of rules and genuine lack of customer service and support."

While we admire AuctionCities' taking on the auction giant, we're not sure how many people are really paying attention. Also, keep in mind all the other sites that have similar pricing structures but haven't exactly given eBay a run for its money.

Objection!
Reuters reported this week that the U.S. Supreme Court would consider an appeal by online auctioneer eBay in its patent battle with MercExchange. This is just the latest in a string of rulings in this case. (See this, this and this.

MercExchange is a vendor of custom software for online auctions, messaging and streamcasting. It first sued eBay in November 2001 for allegedly violating three of its patents. The suit revolves around eBay's "Buy It Now" feature, which lets users pay through PayPal with a credit card or with other PayPal funds.

Observers are carefully scouring Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's past in search of evidence he might be a Power Seller or, even worse, a deadbeat seller.

The Price is Right
gNumber Inc., a provider of real-time e-commerce mobile services, announced this week the availability of the new "buyer-driven" RightPrice feature for its mobile bidding service, UnWired Buyer for eBay.

With the new feature, the company says users can now establish budget limits for watch list items in their UnWired Buyer control panel. If the item surpasses the target price, UnWired Buyer simply does not call the user thus opting out of the auction based on parameters the user establishes.

UnWired Buyer is a free tool for eBay users and enables bidding on eBay listings during the final minutes of the bidding process using any mobile phone. Moments before the close of an auction, the service places a call providing updates on critical listing details, such as the current high bid, and allows you to place new bids using a custom interactive voice response system and touch-tone commands.

Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.