It's been a relatively quiet week for eBay, unless you count Wall Street analysts downgrade of the auction giant's stock causing it to cough a bit.

No Payment, No Rating
Brian Burke, senior manager of marketplace policy for eBay, announced that the company will begin removing feedback ratings left by buyers who don't respond to the Unpaid Item claim process on eBay - a policy that was formally announced in November.This policy was one of many initiatives originally announced at eBay Live! in June designed to address the concerns many sellers had regarding the feedback system. Sellers have been complaining about negative feedback left by new members and deadbeat buyers. Power sellers, especially, rely on their feedback rating to build trust with new customers and grow the seller's business. One or two negative feedbacks impact those ratings and can lead to a decline in business for a power seller.

"This means the rating (whether positive, neutral or negative) will no longer affect the recipient's feedback score, although the feedback comment itself will remain. An administrative note from eBay will be added to the comment, indicating that the feedback rating was removed because the member did not participate in the Unpaid Item process on eBay. This is a global change and will affect all eBay sites," Burke said in a posting on eBay's announcement board yesterday.

All I Want for Xmas...
The holiday season has brought out yet another wave of hysteria online and on eBay. The cause? The hard-to-find Xbox 360 from our friends at Microsoft. Thanks to an intentionally slow rollout, video game fans around the world have gone through great lengths to get their hands on the system as quickly as possible. Inevitably, most people turned to eBay, where sellers lined up to sell their Xboxes for hefty premiums.

Of course, scammers also lined up to take advantage of gullible buyers. According to a report in The Register that one poor sucker paid 470 British Pounds for a picture of an Xbox 360.

Two other people bid on and won Xbox Hotmail e-mail addresses (which are free) thinking they were also bidding on the gaming system.

Another hot item? According to the Capital Times in Wisconsin, the Marisol doll is on little girls' Christmas lists this year. Unfortunately, people are now paying up to twice the retail price for Marisol dolls and accessories on eBay.

Really, people. Is it worth it? Stop the insanity.

Won't Get Fooled Again?
eBay has gone through tremendous lengths to protect its users from fraud. But, according to a PC World report this week, eBay's fraud team isn't infallible — they were fooled by a phish sent to them by a suspicious customer.

Here's a snippet from that article:

In late November, Richi Jennings received a fraudulent e-mail message containing the subject line "Christmas is Coming on ebay.co.uk." Offering him "great tips for successful Christmas selling," the message directed him to the Web site ebaychristmas.net, which then asked Jennings to enter his eBay user name and password, as well as the name and password for his e-mail account.

Jennings reported the site to eBay on November 25, and four days later he got a note back from the company's investigations team claiming that the e-mail message was, in fact, "an official e-mail message sent to you on behalf of eBay."

Jennings was dumfounded. He immediately wrote back to eBay pointing out that the Web site being used was clearly fraudulent, but his e-mail went unanswered.

Fortunately, this looks like an isolated incident. But if it happens again, you can be assured eBay members and critics will begin to question the company's fraud detection department.

All the News That's Fit to Print
In case you missed it, ECommerceGuide published a feature interview with eBay Director of Developer Programs, Greg Isaacs, this week. Isaacs touched on areas like removing cost barriers for developers and affiliates alike, sellers using third-party eBay developer programs to run their businesses and even what he thinks about Amazon's developer programs. Be sure to check it out.

We also reviewed eBay's new e-commerce hosting program, ProStores. eBay purchased one of its partners, Kurant, earlier this year. The result of the marriage is a solid e-commerce hosting platform that small business owners can do a lot with, whether they're just starting out or have an established business.

Finally, Ecommerce-Guide contributor jumped into the international selling fray with his column this week that walks eBayers through the process of selling overseas. Selling to Germany or Japan might not be as complicated as you might think.

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