eBay 2009 Annual Report Download - page 12

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In addition, eBay Stores enables sellers to exhibit all of their listings in one place on our eBay platform and
to describe their respective businesses through customized pages. eBay Stores provides sellers with tools to
build, manage, promote and track their businesses. In some countries, including the U.S., “Store Inventory
Format” listings allow sellers to list items for a minimum 30-day listing period at a lower listing fee and higher
final value fee than regular auction-style and fixed-price listings. In other countries, including Germany and the
U.K., all fixed price listings are included in the core search results.
Auction-Style Listing Format
Our auction-style format allows a seller to select a minimum price for opening bids, with the option to set a
reserve price for the item, which is the minimum price at which the seller is willing to sell the item.
Key Services for Buyers and Sellers
We have developed a number of features on our platforms in the areas of Trust and Safety (including our
Feedback Forum, Safe Harbor Program and Verified Rights Owner Program), Customer Support and Value-
Added Tools and Services, as well as Loyalty Programs (for both buyers and sellers). These features are designed
to make users more comfortable dealing with unknown trading partners and completing commercial transactions
on the Internet, as well as rewarding our best buyers and sellers for their loyalty.
Feedback Forum: Our Feedback Forum encourages users to provide feedback ratings and comments on
other users with whom they trade. Users’ profiles, which include these feedback ratings and comments, can be
viewed by any of our other users. Every registered user has a feedback profile that may contain compliments,
criticisms and/or other comments by users who have conducted business with that user. The Feedback Forum
requires feedback to be related to specific transactions and provides an easy tool for users to match specific
transactions with the user names of their trading partners. This information is recorded in a profile that includes a
feedback rating for the user, with feedback sorted according to whether the feedback has been provided over the
past month, six months or twelve months. Users who develop positive reputations have color-coded star symbols
displayed next to their user names to indicate the number of positive feedback ratings they have received. In
addition to leaving an overall feedback rating (positive, neutral or negative) for a seller, buyers also can leave
anonymous Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) that cannot be viewed by the seller in four areas: item as described,
communication, shipping time and shipping and handling charges. The Feedback Forum has several automated
features designed to detect and prevent certain forms of abuse, such as a user leaving positive feedback about
himself or herself through multiple accounts. As a customer-focused company, we no longer allow sellers to
leave negative feedback about buyers and supply sellers with tools that give them the ability to enhance the buyer
experience.
SafeHarbor Program: We also offer the SafeHarbor program, which provides guidelines for trading and
user dispute resolution. Our SafeHarbor staff investigates users’ complaints of possible misuse of eBay platforms
and takes appropriate action, including issuing warnings to users, ending and removing listings, or suspending
users from bidding on or listing items for sale.
Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program: Our VeRO Program lets intellectual property rights owners
request the removal of listings that offer items or contain materials that they claim infringe on their rights. This
program helps to protect community members from purchasing items that may be counterfeit or otherwise
unauthorized.
Customer Support: We devote significant resources to providing personalized, accurate and timely support
services to our community of users. Buyers and sellers can contact us through a variety of means, including
email, online text chat and telephone. We continue to focus our resources on improving our accessibility,
increasing our capacity, expanding our category-specific support, extending our online self-help features and
improving our systems and processes to allow us to provide more efficient and effective support. In addition, top
eBay sellers who qualify for our PowerSeller program receive prioritized customer support.
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