The spam problem mentioned last month increased exponentially until it took up to eight minutes simply to check e-mail (thousands of messages were stopped by the filters, though hundreds of them came through anyway).  Our new business e-mail address is suzanne@ephemerala.com.  Please use this one when writing.  I apologize for any messages in the last month or two that went without replies.  If you wrote anything that even remotely resembled an ad in your reply, the message never got to me.  Hopefully within a month we'll be back to normal.

 

As many of you know by now, the United States Post Office is raising their prices yet again.  Last year, when the last hike went into effect, I did not change the shipping costs on our website.  Once again, we are going to TRY to keep the costs as they are, but I don't know how possible this will be.  As before, we'll try the same old costs on a wait-and-see basis.

 

    If you are a buyer on eBay and have recently left feedback for a seller, you will have noticed the new eBay feedback system.  The first change is that after leaving the standard positive/neutral/negative rating and comment, buyers can now rate their sellers with a 5-star system (called a Detailed Seller Rating) in areas of item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping cost (but not packaging, which I find strange, since that's more important than shipping time).  This is similar to the feedback system on amazon.com, with the difference that the star ratings on eBay are anonymous.  (The reason for the anonymity, according to eBay, is so that buyers can "accurately rate a transaction without fear of retaliation."  In other words, buyers can leave a positive rating, then leave low star ratings to damage the seller's reputation without risking getting a negative in return from the seller.)  The other change is that on any buyer's feedback page, each comment now shows the item title in question, its ID number, and its selling price. 

    While I like the idea of a 5-star rating system (even though it means our feedback will start to look less-than-perfect!), I don't like the fact that the star rating is anonymous.  I feel it would be very helpful for a seller to know exactly which transactions were worthy of less-than-perfect ratings, so that we can have the chance to correct our actions in the future.  I don't engage in retaliatory feedback (I rate each transaction honestly), but I guess a lot of buyers are worried about getting a negative if they find something wrong with the sale.

    What I absolutely do NOT like, however, is the item title and price showing on the feedback page itself.  Some people find this to be an invasion of privacy, but I don't think this (after all, the items were always available to view with just a click anyway), but my goodness, does it ever clutter up the feedback page!  Often the item title, number, and price is longer than the actual feedback, so it's hard for the eye to focus on the feedback comments alone.  Check out my eBay feedback page and you'll see what I mean:

    While this isn't a terribly important matter, I am interested to hear what other eBay users think of the new feedback.  Drop me a line and let me know!