Skype Voice and Chat Discontinued in eBay Listings
I just received the following email from eBay (looks like eBay is beginning the process of severing the ties between Skype and eBay in anticipation of selling Skype next year):
Skype voice and chat buttons in listings are being discontinued
eBay is discontinuing Skype voice and chat buttons in listings as of June 10, 2009 in an effort to remove features with limited buyer and seller usage.
This change does not require any action on your part. We are just notifying you that as of June 10, you will no longer see the Skype voice and chat options when you list new items, they will not be included on the new item page, and they will no longer appear in your existing listings.
We appreciate your continued commitment to good communications with your customers.
Sincerely,
eBay Seller Team
I thought they had been discontinued years ago. Who would want buyers calling you at three in the morning?
Henrietta of RedINKdiary
May 8, 2009
Henrietta, I used the Skype chat in the beginning especially around the holidays when folks wanted to know if they could have the item in time for Christmas. I could obtain their zip code and check the UPS / FedEx time in transit so that they could determine whether they wanted to buy (they never wanted to pay for expedited shipping) by knowing whether the item would arrive in time if they paid for standard shipping. It worked well for a few months until I began getting 10x more spammers trying to sell me product than I got potential customers.
It was so weird how eBay “adopted” Skype in the beginning. They didn’t really support it because they were concerned people would conduct transactions off eBay.
I’m not surprised that Skype hasn’t been used by more eBay buyers/sellers given eBay’s extreme paranoia that sellers would redirect buyers away from eBay.
thebrewsnews
May 9, 2009
….Ebay’s extreme paranoia that sellers would redirect buyers away from Ebay.
(Chuckle…As opposed to Ebay redirecting sellers away from Ebay with their illogical changes/rules over the past year…..)
lebennington
May 9, 2009
Ah well … June 10th you say?
That’s about 14 days after my Skype credits expire if I don’t use some of them – these are the remnants of the free credits I was given way back when, so I guess I’d best just let them expire and start stripping the code off my websites etc.
Not a problem – it’ll tidy up the margin of my webstore a bit.
(Shame eBay are incapable of realising off-site ads are damaging the site a lot more than a few sellers doing offsite deals via Skype could ever have done. But that’s the nature of Disruptive Innovation I suppose?)
gazouteast
May 9, 2009