eBay 2003 Annual Report Download - page 10

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Trading Assistants
The eBay Trading Assistants program is a network of experienced eBay sellers who have indicated
their willingness to assist others in the sale of items for a fee. Interested sellers can search the Trading
Assistant Directory to Ñnd someone to sell items on their behalf. The Trading Assistants and their clients
negotiate the terms and conditions of these services.
Other eBay Services
Customer Support
We devote signiÑcant 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, in certain circumstances, telephone. We are focusing our resources on increasing our
accessibility and capacity, expanding our category speciÑc support, extending our online self-help features,
and improving our systems and processes to allow us to provide the most eÇcient and eÅective support
possible.
Value-Added Services
eBay users have access to a variety of ""pre-trade'' and ""post-trade'' services to enhance their user
experience and to make trading faster, easier, and safer for them. ""Pre-trade'' services simplify the listing
process and include photo hosting, authentication and seller productivity software. ""Post-trade'' services,
which make transactions easier and more comfortable to complete, include payment processing, insurance,
vehicle inspections, escrow, shipping and postage. We currently provide these services directly or through
contractual arrangements with third parties.
Trust and Safety Programs
We have developed a number of programs, including our Feedback Forum and SafeHarbor
TM
program, to make eBay users more comfortable dealing with unknown trading partners and completing
commerce transactions on the Internet.
Feedback Forum
eBay's Feedback Forum encourages each user to provide comments on other eBay users with whom
he or she trades and lets every user view other users' proÑles, which include feedback ratings and
comments by other users. Every registered eBay user has a feedback proÑle containing compliments,
criticisms and other comments by users who have conducted business with the person. The Feedback
Forum requires feedback to be related to speciÑc transactions and provides an easy tool for users to match
speciÑc transactions with the user names of their trading partners. This information is recorded in a
feedback proÑle that includes a feedback rating for the person with feedback sorted according to whether
it was given over the past month, six months, or twelve months. Users who develop positive reputations
will have a color-coded star symbols displayed next to their user names to indicate the number of positive
feedback ratings they have received. Before bidding on items listed for sale, eBay users are encouraged to
review a seller's feedback proÑle to check his or her reputation within the eBay community.
The terms of eBay's user agreement prohibit actions that would undermine the integrity of the
Feedback Forum, such as a users' leaving positive feedback about himself or herself through multiple
accounts or leaving multiple negative feedback for others through multiple accounts. The Feedback Forum
has several automated features designed to detect and prevent some forms of abuse. For example, feedback
postings from the same account, positive or negative, cannot aÅect a user's net feedback rating (i.e., the
number of positive postings, less the number of negative postings) by more than one point, no matter how
many comments an individual makes. Also, a user can only leave feedback for completed transactions.
Users who receive a suÇciently negative net feedback rating have their registrations suspended and are
unable to bid on or list items for sale. We believe our Feedback Forum is extremely useful in overcoming
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