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Jim "Griff" Griffith moderated the Town Hall meeting, which took place at the eBay Live convention in Chicago. It's also being broadcast on eBay Radio.

Lorrie Norrington, Stephanie Tilenius, Todd Lutwak (Seller Development), Jeff King (Finding), Kristina Klausen (Shipping), Monroe Labouisse, Dineshe Lathi, Brian Burke, and David Pride (T&S).

Larry Phillips of IMA asked the first question about feedback. What are you doing to educate buyers that a 4 DSR is a failure. I had to cover my ears the applause was so loud. He also said he was disappointed to hear that there would not be changing to the wording til the end of the year.

David Pride - made changes for collective good, make marketplace healthy and vibrant. But we are heading in the right direction, we will course-direct. We do acknoweldege the feedback :
MFW - we need to come up w/ a better solution - no later than the holidays.
UPI process & Neg feedback  - we'll go back andlook at that
Neutrals - it may have been a surprise th way we did that. We will look a the data and be deliberae about changes if they need to be made. We'll change what we need to do.

Brian Burke - One thing we' re looking at is the entire leave feedback flow. DSRs is one aspect of the entire flow we're looking at and to imrpvoe that flow.

Reason for eBay Live is to get input, we meet every night at 9pm - recognize we're here to make you successful, at a hilgh level is to grow this business.

Tracy, rayfield designs: I have more than 20,000 fb -and I use the eBay Giving Worlks program. But eBay hasn’t' haven't done enough.

Applause.

Question for Dinesh: You sent all announcements to community last night when we were having fun - why didn’t' you tell us first.

Answer: Basically - okay. Thanks.

Joe: Predictability of seller discount - can you put it at beginning and end of month. Can you do it on the same day every month. (applause.

Answer from Todd Lutwak: explained how process works.

Karen: has an eBay store and does auctions. How to marry brick and mortar biz with eBay business.

Griff: is it a T&S issue (shill bidding)

Dinesh: I'd like to understand more about what you're trying to get done. Let's get together. [--break--]

Kim: the netural fb counting against seller is unfair (applause). Why do you only count for the past year, I've been building fb for 5 years (applause). What's the reason for that?

David Pride: we think neutral will go back as buyers are less fearful about leaving negs. We felt 12 months more indicative of performance.

Brian: DSRs are aligned w/ 12 months. But your total score does account for the entire feedback.

Griff: it's a better balance, and you can retire old negs.

Lorrie: most of our sellers benefited from that change due to aged feedback.

Next Question: linking policy - need more info. Can you promote off-ebay site but not link to it? Can you link to your own site on classifieds sites.? Yahoo Sponsored Ads is contradictory to the new policy and takes away from sellers. (Applause)

Stephanie: we recognize that advertising is taking biz off the site. We are experimenting, w/ a longterm goal is for you to buy advertising on the site. So that will benefit you. We got great feedback. How do we morph to allow sellers to still grow their business at the same time, we're trying to limit fraud.

Brian Burke: Announcement may have been made prematurely w/out the details. Wait for those specifics in the coming weeks, and we'll get those out to you. I don't want you to be fearful.

Joanne (The Queen's Treasures): thank you for the conference, I've learned a lot (Applause). We're concerned about customer satisfaction too, we want people to order multiple items. She was concerned about the way eBay was counting feedback.

Brian Burke gave an answer and said it had to do with issues of feedback manipulation.

Ben Flyleaf Electornics: Neutral feedback - buyers impression is that neutrals don't negatively effect sellers. (applause).

Brian: we need to have clearer text. The text is accurate, but it's incomplete, because it doesn't state it impacts the percentage, and we've got to get that text on the site.

Griff: We need to work on educating buyers.

Question: What is your vision of Stores, what kind of searchability, so we can know if we need to replan

Stephane: Stores not going anywhere. (applause) Stores is integral to us.

Followup: Even mom & pop stores?

Griff: Yes, and he reiterated they are important. "You are the heart and soul of eBay," and "we depend on you," and we are sorry if that's the impression we gave you. (clapping).

Lorrie: I'd reitierate what I said the other day, there is no small, there is no large, we want to understand if we are disadvantaging anyone. Want to reate the best seller growth.

Question: I teach folks how to sell houses on eBay. They are smart, but have no eBay knowledge. Anyway we could have an eBay video hosting so they don't have to go to Youtube and grab HTML?

Stephanie: We're looking into video and rich media. We get a lot of requests, particularly in Motors. It's something we think we should do longer term.

Question: w/ DSRs, why eBay doesn’t feel it's impt for selers to see buyers so we can see which buyers. If communication isn't going well, we could blcok them.

Brian: anonymity around DSRs goes back to when buyers feared retaliation. We didn’t' want to introduce it when people feared. We'll look and see if it makes sense for it to remain anonymous.
Dinesh: We understand how impt DSRs are to your biz. We're looking for more granularity to help you run your biz.

Australian Seller: you're introducing paypal-only marketplace in Aussie, if the ACCC allows it. Are you planning to go PP only in the US?

Monroe: we're not going to make any announcements about doing the same in other countries. Going to PayPal only was a decision that the Australian team made, appropriate for their country. In the US, we'll definitely not go to a PP ony situation. (Applause)

David: PayPal is the safest way to pay online. Listings that don't accept PP are twice as likely to have UPIs. You can put that in your Buyer Requirements.

Question: (SEO company) Is there away to create sub-accounts  And by the way, Lorrie rocks. (laughter)

Dinesh: There's not one right now, but we've heard that consistently. As they scale their business, they need to have administrative rights with multiple employees.

Gary Crawfod (from Montreal, but lives 3 blocks from here): Where's John, I have a Cubs World Seires cap to give him. I was a PowerSeller. What is eBay doing nationally or int'ly to drive traffic to eBay.com? "IT" sucked (referring to the ad campaign from a few years ago).

Stephanie: Thank you for your feedback (laughter). We take it seriously. We are driving buyer demand. First - coupons. By end of june, we'll have add'l loyalty programs. We do Search marketing to drive traffic to your businesses. We continue to improve our marketing engine (?). And we are expanding our phone support to top buyers. New initiatives, and you'll see more.

Followup: what about people new to eBay?

Stephanie: we're focused on top buyers, but also all buyers.

Stephanie: We must create a good buying experience for growth.

Dee: I'm a P/S Everything Under the Sun eBay Store. Good feedback and DSR. (Panel applause). There are always exceptions to rule. Why for a buyer with a UPI, or 3 weeks to pay, why can't I give them bad feedback. (Applause from audience)

Brian: One reason to make decition, when we looked at what happened to buyers who rec'd neg fb, we looked at cream-of-crop buyers - receipt of neg fb was top reason for them to leave the marketplace. We could not allow that to continue.

W/ regard to UPI, we improved that process, we knkow we have more work to do to improve the process, and that the seller isn't negatively impacted. We want buyers to be accountable as much as sellers. (dead silence)

Dwayne: We sell online through our website and through eBay. We have a merchant account and don't want a PayPal account. You have to take PayPal to take advantage of some of eBay's programs. Merchant accounts vet me. Don't forget about people who are real businesses and only want to use their own merchant accounts but want to take advantage of all the upgrades.

Monroe: we do allow sellers to use their own merchant accounts. Integration into checkout isn't full (or complete?). we are looking to integrate them into Checkout. Paying w/ paper (checks and money orders) is not as safe. In the US, a buyer is 80 percent more likely o file a dispute than when they pay with electonic methods, such as a credit card. We don't have plans to go to PayPal only, but we want to use payments to make the marketplace safer. We'll continue to look at payments to make it safer.

Brian: I'm a Half.com seller. After leaving feedback, you are pulling my customer back. It's time to bring customers back to Half.com.

Stephane: Youll see things around the holidays around that.

Haley: Mother of 3 childrens, and I happen to make a living on eBay. I've done the corporate things. I don't have time for all that stuff. You really do want big sellers, mostly new items. That's fine, I've been in that world, and everyone wants to make money.But I want to make money, can you make an ebay One, can you bring back the old eBay. LOUD APPLAUSE. Can you have one and two?

Lorie: There's a need for buyers on the Internet to get allknds of experiences. How do we take this incredible tradition, and make sure it takes care of the good, and how do we bridge that and - thereare a lot of searches werher we don't have inventory.

Bueyrs tell us they want both the unique things, as well as more things they want int heir daily life. There's one big eBay out there. We aren't trying to exclude anybody. One of our biggest challenges/goals s to bring back the best of eBay so we can all continue to grow.

I find the stories inspiring that I can quit my job,and I want it to be like that in 10 years.

There are other alternatives, and we need to play a better game altogether The best of everybody all together.

Griff: End of our time. Gala is free tonight. Thank you for coming, very valuable to us. Enjoy the rest of your time here.

(applause).