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Griff: I’ve got to get some sort of mouth exercise, that’s what I need.
Lee: You know what I read?
Griff: What?
Lee: That you shouldn’t do that if you have Bell’s, but ask your doctor.
Griff: Oh really?
Lee: Yes, something about overcompensating and then when it goes away you’re still overcompensating.
Griff: Yeah, I’m an overcompensator.
Lee: Yeah. You do great, Griff, don’t worry about it.
Griff: Tell me more.
Lee: You’re wonderful. Oh baby.
Griff: Thank you.
Lee: You’re welcome.
Griff: Let’s get right to the phones. No more about me, it’s all about you, Laura, from Prescott, Arizona. What’s your question?
Caller: Hi Griff. I just attended eBay Live and I was so impressed. I enjoyed it so much.
Griff: Oh good.
Caller: Yeah.
Griff: It was fun.
Caller: Oh it was. And you might not remember me, but remember the gala was just so wonderful and I saw you and I couldn’t help it, I just had to give you a hug.
Griff: Oh. And I got so many hugs, but I remember yours. Yours was a special hug, Laura.
Caller: Oh, of course (laughter). My question was about the best offer feature. I’m really appreciating that feature. I get several listings sold each week with that.
Griff: Yeah, it helps facilitate those and gets them sold quicker.
Caller: Yes it does. My question is do you think there’s anything in the works to open that up so that there can be a negotiation process in categories other than jewelry?
Griff: I believe so. I think the way it’s working like a few features like this is instead of putting it out there in its full blown iteration, we try things like, for example, on eBay Motors, there is a back and forth allowed. And I think that as the system is maturing there are plans, at least I’ve been told, that you’ll be able to negotiate in other categories as well. So stay tuned.
Caller: Oh, that would be wonderful, it would be a big help.
Griff: Yeah, I agree, because I love the best offer feature, both as a seller and a buyer. I have bought things with best offer. I never do ridiculously low offers, but if it’s really something where I’d buy it if it was just a little cheaper, I’ll make the best offer and I never get turned down.
Caller: Yeah. And I don’t know if what I’m doing is legal, but sometimes I’ll get an offer that really is too low and I can’t negotiate with them because once I decline it it’s over. They can’t make another offer. So what I’ve done is emailed them and said, I appreciate your offer and I couldn’t accept it, but I could accept this, and we complete the deal that way. And like I say, I don’t know if that’s legal.
Griff: Well…it’s kind of a gray area. What we need to do is instead of pushing that kind of thing away is actually bringing it in. That’s why I’m pretty sure the negotiation aspect in the Motors category will be coming to more categories.
Caller: That would be great, I would really appreciate it.
Griff: See you in Boston next year?
Caller: You bet. And thank you and eBay for such a wonderful conference.
Griff: Well thank you for coming and making it the special conference that it was.
Caller: Thank you (laughter) bye-bye.
Griff: Bye-bye now. Hey, we forgot to mention the trivia question because no one got the full answer.
Lee: Oh, let’s do it.
Griff: There were two milestones at eBay recently reached. They both involve numbers. One was registered users, which somebody called in the first hour and got right, but they didn’t know the second half. And the second one had to do with eBay Motors. If you know the figures for these recent milestones reached on eBay call us at 877-474-3302. And if you get the right answer you’ll get the eBay Radio eBay Live 2006 pin which I will autograph. Ivy from Oneonta, New York, great old college town.
Caller: Yes.
Griff: How are you, Ivy, and what’s your question?
Caller: Yeah, hi Griff. Thank you. I have a question about PayPal. I know when I get a lot of spoof mails I just forward it on to PayPal, but I’ve been getting mails with my first and last name on it and I check my account and they’re not in my PayPal account. So I’m curious how they’re getting my first and last name.
Griff: Hmm, I don’t know. Are you sure they’re spoof emails?
Caller: Yeah, because PayPal mails me back and says thank you, but this is not from us. So I’m not sure what I can do to protect myself.
Griff: Does your email address have your name in it?
Caller: No.
Griff: Okay. I don’t know how they’re getting it. That’s not a good sign. But just keep forwarding them in. The only danger is if you actually respond to the instructions or the request and then complete the actions that they request, which is usually clicking on a link and then entering your information. Continue to forward them on to spoof@eBay.com. It’s very important that we have accurate tracking of the number of them that are out there. As you know, you don’t get a personal response back because some days there are ten to thirty thousand of these floating around. But it does help, every report helps, so do forward them in.
Caller: So the only place I should check is my PayPal account?
Griff: Yeah, if it’s a PayPal issue I always go and check if it’s something I know is questionable. What I can do though and if you’ve got the right email client you can also do this, most email clients are IMAPI and it means basically you’re looking at an email that has HTML in it so you can hover over the images or over the links. I’ll hover over the link and I can see in the status bar at the bottom of my email client what the link actually is and it almost always is going to lead to some spoof site and you can tell from the first bits of the domain name that it’s not an eBay or PayPal address. Those I report and then delete.
Caller: Okay, well thank you very much.
Griff: My pleasure Ivy. Let’s go to Jason from Chico, California. What’s your question?
Caller: I noticed that they did some changes to the PayPal Mobile site. They pretty much took it off and added the PayPal Mobile feature where you can call and send money to anybody’s mobile phone. The only disadvantage to that is now I can’t go onto the PayPal Mobile site from my cell phone and pull up like the last ten transaction history like I used to be able to. Do you know if they’re working on that?
Griff: This is the first I’ve heard of this, I’m sorry. I know there’s the www.PayPal.com/mobile.
Caller: Yeah, what that does is just gives you a URL saying this site was replaced, go to the site from the computer and find out how the new mobile is working. So it won’t let me access my transaction history.
Griff: That’s unusual.
Caller: It’s kind of inconvenient.
Griff: So tell me the URL again that you’re going to. Is it www.PayPal.com/mobile?
Caller: I believe so.
Griff: Because that’s still available, I’m there now, but you can only get there if it’s https.
Caller: Are you doing it from a cell phone?
Griff: No, is that what you’re trying to do?
Caller: Yeah, try it from a cell phone. You used to be able to pull it up, it was like a WAP site.
Griff: Oh, a WAP site.
Caller: It used to be a mobile site that they had that you could actually access your PayPal account information from your cell phone, which was totally cool.
Griff: Yeah.
Caller: And they took that away when they did the new PayPal Mobile where you can actually text message people money and the only thing you can do with that when you call the 1-800-PayPal is check your account balance.
Griff: Jason, do me a favor, can you email this to me and I’ll forward it on to Jason or somebody at PayPal. Just send it to griff@ebay.com. I have a feeling that the WAP pages are probably gone, but I’ll make sure.
Caller: Yeah. I wish they would bring it back because it was nice, especially now that they have the PayPal debit card, the backup funding where you get the 1.5% cash back with using your PayPal debit card.
Griff: I will certainly ask them if they can put it back, on your behalf.
Caller: Thanks.
Griff: This segment has been brought to you by the Tax Club, helping you keep more of what you earn. While you’re thinking of more stirring questions we’ll take a break. Get ready to spring them on us in our next Open Phones segment. Call 877-474-3302. We’ll be right back with more eBay Radio.
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