A Personal Letter to the Community –
2005 Marketplace Policy Improvements and New Enforcement Consequences

 

Matt Halprin

by Matt Halprin
VP, Global Marketplace Policy Management

Last year, I was asked by my boss Rob Chesnut to develop a strategy for global marketplace policy management to address member concerns regarding our policies and enforcement. We know we've had some work to do in this area. Some common member concerns include:

• eBay's policies aren't easy to understand and sometimes it's not clear what eBay allows.
• When members report violations, often it appears that nothing happens.
• A few bad apples are ruining the marketplace for the good members.
• eBay doesn't enforce its own policies – this creates an un-level playing field for the sellers that follow the rules.

In response to these Community concerns, I've formulated a strategy and built a team to improve the situation. During 2005 my team and I are focusing our efforts in the following areas:

1. Policy clarity
2. Education
3. Detection and Enforcement
4. Consequences and Mitigation

1. Policy Clarity
First, we've needed to make sure our policies are understandable. Over time, eBay has developed many policies to deal with specific challenges in the marketplace. Unfortunately, we realize that we haven't always made them easy to understand.

New Policy Pages – In May, we launched an overhaul of all of our 150 policies pages to make them easier to read. Now every policy page conforms to a common template with five sections:

1. A brief statement of policy
2. Consequences of violating the policy
3. Some examples of how the policy works
4. Additional information
5. Why eBay has the policy

Here's an example of how the new template is applied to our Feedback Extortion policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/feedback-extortion.html. You can view the rest by visiting our Policy Hub.

These have already launched in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK and will roll to most other eBay sites during 2005.

2. Education
Next, we're increasing the educational resources we provide members. When it comes to marketplace rules, some policies are just more complex by their nature, so it's our job to give members more education. We need to do a better job helping the Community understand the purpose that each policy serves and how they can comply.

More Tutorials – Earlier this year, we launched our first tutorial for our VeRO (Verified Rights Owner) policy. (If you haven't taken it already, try it now and let us know what you think: VeRO Tutorial.) In August or September, we'll launch more of these tutorials. Each will take 5-10 minutes to complete online, making them an efficient way to get up to speed. New tutorials will cover policy groups:

1. Fee Circumvention
2. Search and Browse Manipulation (e.g. key word spam)
3. Shill Bidding
4. Feedback
5. Overall Marketplace Policy

My team and I encourage members to voluntarily take these tutorials to help them understand how to follow the marketplace rules.

Matt, with VP of North American Customer Support Wendy Jones, at the May 2005 Town Hall

Required Tutorials – One of the important ways we'll be using Tutorials is by requiring them in certain violation situations. Members who violate a policy on a significant number of listings, or do so more than once within 90 days will need to take this 5-10 minute online tutorial before they can list again.

We think of these required tutorials as little “speed bumps” that we hope will slow folks down just enough to learn what they need to learn so they can quickly resume trading in a safe, fair manner.

Improved “cancelled listing” email – This takes us to another important area of education we're working to improve. When we end a seller's listing, the "cancelled listing" email we send will include more specific language explaining why a listing was cancelled. These emails will also link to the relevant tutorial when these tutorials are launched.

Alerts in My Messages – We know that these emails can sometimes get lost or overlooked in an overcrowded email inbox. Now they will also be sent into the "Alerts" section of My Messages in My eBay. Members can be assured they are finding these important account-related messages.

3. Detection and Disposition
Even after our best efforts to clarify policy and educate members, a certain number of violations will persist. Behind the scenes, we've been investing more money in people and systems to proactively detect these violations and will continue to do so.

Our detection systems will never be enough by themselves, however. We will always rely on our Community to be an active partner in helping us to keep the marketplace a safe, fair, fun place to trade.

“Report this Item” Link on View Item – We've heard from our members that it's too hard to report questionable activity, so we're going to make it easier. Later this summer, every View Item page will have a "Report this Item" link at the bottom of the page. If you notice a violation in a listing, you can click on the link and the 10-digit item number will automatically transfer into your report. This feature has been live in Australia since May 2005 and has been received favorably by the Australian Community.

On behalf of my team – and all of eBay – I want to emphasize how much we appreciate the Community's help in this area. With more than 5 million active listings on a given day, eBay simply can't review them all. We need the Community's help in keeping the marketplace safe, so please let us know when you see something that doesn't look right.

4. Consequences and Mitigation
Consequences imposed when a member violates a policy should both encourage the member to become more educated and create an incentive for good behavior, but unfortunately, our guidelines have not advanced with the marketplace. When a member violates a policy, or repeatedly goes against the rules, we've done one of two things: Either we warn the member and cancel their listings, or we suspend the member.

Three New Consequence Guidelines – Later in the summer, we plan to introduce new consequence guidelines that follow some key principles:

• Assume people are basically good but that some members need more education;
• Institute progressively increasing consequences – with the goals being to educate and rehabilitate;
• Accept that some members will not stop violating until the cost of violating exceeds the violation's benefit;
• Address serious violations quickly and apply severe consequences even for a first offense (like fraud, counterfeiting and shill bidding).

With these goals and principles in mind, we will be introducing three new consequences that we can apply, in addition to canceling listings and suspending accounts. Soon, violations will subject the responsible member to:

1. Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
   Members who violate the same policy type twice in 90 days will be subject to this consequence. Losing fees will help deter repeat violations and encourage policy education and compliance.
   
   Please note: Not all policy violations are equal in terms of the detrimental effect they can have on the marketplace, so not all violations will be handled in the same way. Shill bidders, for instance, will forfeit their fees on a first offense. Also, eBay will not withhold fees for certain violations that also violate the law (e.g. Prohibited & Restricted items and VeRO/Infringement).
   
   
2. Loss of PowerSeller status
   It turns out that a very small fraction of PowerSellers generate a majority of PowerSeller violations. Unfortunately, this means we have a few “bad apples” who undermine the credibility of the whole PowerSeller program. This is simply not fair to the vast majority of our terrific PowerSellers, who represent many of eBay's best, most experienced and productive members.
   
   We are going to correct this situation. Beginning later this year 2005, sellers will need to meet a policy compliance threshold in order to become a PowerSeller and maintain their standing in the program. We believe this is the right thing to do for the program's reputation and to maintain a level playing field for the vast majority of our good PowerSellers.
   
   We will be communicating more details about this threshold later this summer.
   
   
3. Limits on account privileges
   As discussed above, eBay may restrict a seller from listing until that member completes a brief, online tutorial. If the seller persists in listing with the same violation, we may then restrict that member's ability to sell for three days.
   
   With these new consequences we can progressively increase the amount of education we require a seller to go through – instead of jumping straight from canceling a listing to suspending the account. We always hope to rehabilitate where possible, and we hope to see more sellers modify their listing behavior sooner.
   
   Still, continuous violation of any policy can, and will, result in account suspension.

We've made a lot of headway, but we still have work to do. The plans I've outlined will take all of 2005 and some of 2006 to implement, and from time to time, I'll be updating the Community with more details about our progress. We aspire to make the marketplace as safe and fair as possible, because all of you – our Community – deserve it.

Thanks,

Matt Halprin
VP, Global Marketplace Policy Management