TekGems Blog

USPS To Close Six District Offices: "The U.S. Postal Service, which has been searching for cost-cutting measures since its $2.8 billion loss in fiscal 2008, announced March 20 plans to close six of its 80 district offices. In addition, other positions will be eliminated nationwide and many more will be offered early retirement, resulting in annualized savings of more than $100 million."

Believe it or not, this is very good news. USPS generates less income than expenses. The post office has gotten too redundant in their locations and I am glad to see consolidation of centers. Other businesses do this when it makes financial sense. Hopefully, these are the right changes to make the USPS profitable. They have been unprofitable for far too long. I'd also like to see a better process for firing incompetent or apathetic employees, but I think I might be asking too much considering they have a union to protect certain undeserving employees.

eBay's new feedback policy: no real feedback - Ars Technica: "Last week, eBay announced the first significant changes to its feedback policy since the site launched over a decade ago. In order to clamp down on the practice of tit-for-tat feedback, eBay will begin preventing sellers from leaving negative feedback on buyers. The change is scheduled to take place in May, and, as you might expect, sellers are not happy."

Most effective way to have customers leave you feedback is to ask for it. With eBay Blackthorne Pro, you also get SM PRO (Selling Manager Pro) which has a Feedback Reminder feature. In the e-mail, there is customized feedback link so it makes it very easy for buyers to leave you feedback. We leave positive feedback after payment is made. This makes the buyer happy and it reduces e-mails asking for feedback from buyers later. Part of good customer service is anticipating the needs of buyers. Its really no different from a butler in many ways, except with a business angle. In the past, some sellers would only reciprocate positive feedback, but with the feedback change in Feb 2008 by eBay, there is no good reason to withhold feedback from paying customers.

Labels: Blackthorne, eBay, eBay feedback, reciprocating feedback, SMPRO

eBay Removes Seller-Exposure Restriction on Search Results: "eBay said it would be posting an announcement at 9 am Pacific time today letting sellers know it was removing a restriction on Best Match search exposure. eBay currently limits the number of listings from a single seller to ten per page in Best Match search results (unless the only available listings that remained were from the same seller). Later this week, it will remove that limitation. (This is similar to, but is not, the de-dupe policy.)"

1) Keyword research in title & description will become even more important. Small sellers won't be able to compete on volume, so SEO will be a key component in competition. I'm not advocating keyword spamming (although eBay has no clue in terms of what is and is not during enforcement), but you have to outsmart your competition. Volume sellers aren't going to bother editing titles and description. They'll just take what the distributor gives them and compete on price only.

2) The Recent Sales Best Match algorithm only means a volume seller only has two sell 1 more than you. Then they can dominate multiple listings in a search. This change will definitely favor the Buy.com on eBay versus the small sellers.

Did anyone notice the announcement of Google Voice came immediately after the end of eBay's Analyst Day? This is corporate war fare at its best! Google Voice will be gunning for SKYPE hard! In many ways, I see a lot of paralells between Paypal <-> Google Checkout, and Skype <-> Google Voice. All of Google's service take existing technology and make it better. eBay's properties (Paypal & Skype) are conducting business in unknown territory.



In terms of VOIP, I think Google Voice is positioned much better than SKYPE. The reason is that the call quality with Google Voice is so much better. I've been a GrandCentral user for over two years and I rarely have voice call issues. With SKYPE, you utilize existing public networks which causes Quality of Service issues. My guess is that Google Voice will utilize private networks to guarantee quality and only use the public network for the "last mile". This ensure a better experience, which will translate into millions of new users and many converts from Skype.

Google Voice Speaks of World Domination | Epicenter from Wired.com: "Google Voice is a free service that offers 'one number for life,' so that one incoming call to that number gets forwarded to all your other numbers — work, mobile, home or hotel room. Users get free calls across the United States and international rates cheaper than Skype. Landlines, computers and cellphones can all access its services."