Richard Ambrose Is Leaving eBay. Does It Matter?
1 July 2009
EventHorizon1984
During the irregular perusal of Tamebay we came across the article Richard Ambrose leaves eBay for new challenges.
Not being in the eBay European theatre of operations we (including me) went, “Who??”
For those unfamiliar with Tamebay, it an excellent blog covering eBay from the European point of view. Or for some posters over there, the British interpretation of how best to use eBay.
Getting back to “Who??”, in the article, Chris Dawson of Tamebay wrote:
“With over 1000 feedback (and no negs!) Richard knows eBay inside out. He was a valued and valuable member of the community, spending his own time on boards and forums talking to buyers and sellers and taking their concerns back to eBay’s internal teams.“
The impressive description was followed by multiple posts, including one that stated:
Since he took the reins – incidences of serious fraud
affecting multiple users have become the exception rather than rule
“We” being the curious type decided to ask:
Citation with actual numbers please?
And promptly received multiple responses, none with numbers.
Still leaving the issue of “Who??”. Not to mention the new issue of a rise in hits from eBay related IP addresses, after we made the tiny post.
This interest in Richard Ambrose got our collective interest up. And like the keepers of The Prisoner, “we want information.”
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“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
Sledge Hammer!
Richard Ambrose’s eBay.co.uk ID is medievalist (918).
Richard Ambrose
From article dated, 14 November 2007.
Feedback Profile |
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Positive Feedback (last 12 months): 100%
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Member since: 12-Jan-99 in United Kingdom
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Feedback is excellent, but as wryly noted by many he is an eBay employee.
Speaking of which if you check his complete listings you will find something missing.
eBay Employee Trading and Community Content Policy
The following are the rules that all eBay Inc. company employees must follow to use an eBay company Web site:
- When eBay company employees list an item for sale on eBay, the eBay company employees must identify themselves as eBay employees and include the link to this Web page in their listing.
The above required disclosure remains oddly missing from Richard Ambrose’s listings.
Not to worry though as Richard Ambrose, before leaving eBay, was “UK’s Head of Customer Support and Trust & Safety.”
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“So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”
Douglas Adams (1984)
Here’s his goodbye post on an eBay forum. European style date of “01-07-09″ is equivalent to U.S. format “07-01-09″.
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medievalist (915
 )  View Listings | ReportAfternoon everyone, Thanks for the (mostly! It’s been a great privilege to spend six years at eBay supporting the buyers and sellers on the site. I’ve particularly enjoyed posting on the boards during that time (though I haven’t done it much this year) – it’s the best place there is to take the pulse of the community and understand how the changes we make are really affecting people. I’m pleased to say that James is doing a great job of making sure that all the staff who don’t come here so much see the posts that are made and read the opinions that are aired here. They are more widely read, and have more impact on the decisions that eBay makes, than you might imagine. It’s also been a pleasure getting to know some of you personally. Sorry for those of you who have ever found me direct in the past – I prefer not to mince my words, and I apologise for any times when that may have caused offence. I’ll still lurk from time to time, and wish you all many happy and profitable years to come on eBay. Cheers PS trufflington, many thanks for your post. James now owes me a fiver |
01-07-09 16:31 BST | 39 of 303 | |
) good wishes.
Since this was an informal goodbye, we’ll overlook the violations involved.
- When eBay company employees submit Community content as members, not as employees, they must identify themselves as eBay employees and state that the content reflects their personal views and is not written on behalf of eBay Inc.
- Content posted by eBay employees acting in an official eBay capacity will normally be identified by a different treatment from content published by members; for example, a pink bar highlighting the User name.
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“I hired you because you look good. It’s like having a nice piece of art in the lobby.”
Dr. Gregory House, House
According to Linkedin, like the mythical ‘Elephant Graveyard’ a company where ex-eBay employees end up:
Richard Ambrose
Director, Trust & Safety at eBay Europe
London, United Kingdom
- Director, Trust & Safety
- eBay Europe
- (Internet industry)
- November 2008 — Present (9 months)
- Head of Trust & Safety
- eBay
- (Public Company; ebay; Internet industry)
- October 2007 — October 2008 (1 year 1 month)
- Head of Finding
- eBay
- (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; ebay; Internet industry)
- September 2004 — September 2007 (3 years 1 month)
- Senior Manager, Collectables & Entertainment
- eBay
- (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; ebay; Internet industry)
- September 2003 — September 2004 (1 year 1 month)
- Head of Business Development
- Music Choice Europe
- (Public Company; 51-200 employees; Media Production industry)
- January 2002 — June 2003 (1 year 6 months)
- Commercial Manager
- Talkcast
- (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry)
- January 2000 — September 2000 (9 months)
- Consultant
- Decipher
- (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Management Consulting industry)
- June 1999 — January 2000 (8 months)
- Analyst Mercer Management Consulting
- (Public Company; Internet industry)
- 1996 — 1999 (3 years)
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“The trouble with being infallible is that you have to deal with everyone else making mistakes.”
Emperor Cartagia, Babylon 5
Anyone who’s gone through stacks of resumes might be thinking ‘what’s behind the titles?’.
Glad you asked that. Here’s a small sampler of Richard Ambrose projects.
eBay to make free P&P compulsory for DVDs
Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
- “Richard Ambrose from eBay stated that some of the maximum rates will be below actual cost and for DVDs they will insist sellers offer free post, although upgrade to priority services and overseas postage can still be charged.”
February 22 2008
eBay Hopes to Boost Membership by Removing Seller Feedback
3:22 PM Feb 7, 2008
- Starting Feb. 20, the online auction site will block sellers from leaving negative feedback about buyers.
- “The feedback system has been around for more than ten years, and it remains right at the heart of what makes eBay work,” said Richard Ambrose, of eBay UK.
- “But it needs to evolve a little bit.”
- But eBay says sellers shouldn’t worry.
- “As buyers are more honest about their feedback, good sellers are going to stand out more and more,” stated Ambrose.
- “We’re also going to increase the help we give to sellers when they occasionally encounter a buyer who doesn’t pay. And we’re going to make it much easier for them to report that and get their money back.”
Friday, 20 April 2007, 17:01 GMT 18:01 UK
- “eBay’s Richard Ambrose says the changes make the site ‘fairer’”
- “Until recently, items put up for sale by eBay customers on the UK site automatically appeared in the search results on the bigger American ebay.com site.
- But since February, the most common ’simple search’ on ebay.com only brings up items for sale by US sellers.”
Friday, 2 September 2005, 17:11 GMT 18:11 UK
- EBay spokesman Richard Ambrose confirms that the company intends to make the site more user-friendly for businesses trading in bulk.
- “If you want to sell, say, 50,000 Jiffy bags or 25,000 bricks, you can do it, but it’s not a great experience,” he told the BBC News website. “In the next few years, we will be making it easier to wholesale items on the site.”
- Mr Ambrose says that despite eBay’s dominant market position in many countries, the company is not complacent about the future.
- “We’re in a strong, but not impregnable position,” he says. “We’re under severe pressure from Yahoo! in Asia – we’re in a fierce battle with them in China.”
- EBay stirred up controversy among users by increasing some of its fees earlier this year. Mr Ambrose says this was to ensure that certain popular ways of making sellers’ listings stand out were not devalued through overuse.
- “From the outside, it’s easy for it to seem that we’re trying to flex our muscles. But in the long term, we want people to grow on eBay and maximise their profits. When they grow, so do we.”
The inspector calls on eBay
12:01AM BST 26 Sep 2004
- However, the Government is increasingly concerned that the sheer size of eBay means the Revenue is losing millions of pounds in tax.
- “What has really made the growth explode is the shift which we have seen from being a site that is associated with collectable, quirky, hard-to-find, used, vintage items to one where people buy what we call practicles,” says Richard Ambrose, eBay’s UK category manager.
- “By practicles we’re talking clothes, cars, golf clubs, watches. We’re seeing more professional traders and we’re also seeing more private individuals who are just thinking of eBay as a place to sell things that they wouldn’t have in the past.”
- But just how easy is it for tax authorities to investigate traders? After all, this is cyberspace. How can investigators be sure tax dodgers can be tracked back to the real world?
- “When people register with us we do check that their personal details are accurate and that their phone number is accurate,” Ambrose says. “Any seller is obliged to register a credit card with us.”
- And what about the taxman? “Anybody buying or selling on eBay needs to be aware of what their tax responsibilities are,” Ambrose maintains. “But we are not in a position to enforce it . . . although we can and do co-operate with outside bodies.”
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“Even though your wording was within the letter of the policy, it could easily have been interpreted as violating the spirit of it.”
Richard Ambrose, eBay
Coming back to the original question, ‘does it matter that Richard Ambrose is leaving eBay?’.
Based on what we’ve learned over the intervening hours:
Even though Richard Ambrose was working within the letter of the law, his actions could easily have been interpreted as violating the eBay Community spirit.
We find Richard Ambrose leaving eBay to be a non-event.
END RUN
“Gentlemen, I’m simply an honest businessman.”
Harcourt Fenton Mudd, Star Trek
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Back In Time – eBay Would Like Your Input
Posted 7 July 2009 by eventhorizon1984Categories: Commentary, eBay
Tags: eBay, Decipher, Back In Time, eBay Community, eBay survey, eBay would like you input, Huey Lewis and The News, independent marketing research firm, research@ebay.com, survey, Huey Lewis
Back In Time – eBay Would Like Your Input
7 July 2009
EventHorizon1984
eBay sends out surveys to gather data to justify their future plans. And we get a lot of them.
We received yesterday (7/6/2009) the survey email below (personal information edited out). And it told us a great deal about how organized eBay is today.
The email is dated “From eBay Research Wed Jun 17 21:24:51 2009 “
“Tell me Doctor, where are we going this time? Is this the 50’s or 1999?”
Huey Lewis and The News
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4hwY061yQ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgyvMp5YWcI
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Dear *****,
We would like to invite you to participate in a survey about your experiences on eBay. Your input will help eBay to improve its communications and ability to meet customer needs. Your feedback is highly valued!
eBay has partnered with Decipher, an independent marketing research firm, to conduct this survey. This survey is for research purposes only. All the information you provide will be treated as strictly confidential and will be used only for bona fide market research purposes. Survey results are viewed in aggregate. Individual responses are not identified.
We hope that you will take the time to complete this 12-minute survey, as it is an effective and easy way to share your feedback with eBay.
To take the survey: Please click here
Thanks for being a part of the eBay community, and we hope to see you on eBay again soon.
Kind Regards,
eBay Research Department
This email was sent to you (*****) because your Notification Preferences indicate that you want to receive eBay product surveys. These surveys will ask you for your opinion on various topics; you will never be asked for personal information such as your password or credit card/bank numbers. If you do not wish to receive further communications, please sign into “My eBay” by clicking on the “My eBay” link found at the top of the eBay home page, and change your Notification Preferences. Please note that this change may take up to 10 days to process.
Decipher, Inc., an independent market research firm, is conducting this online survey for eBay. For questions about its validity, you may email us at research@ebay.com. To stop receiving e-mails from Decipher, Inc., please click here.
Have safety concerns? Learn how to protect yourself from spoof (fake) emails at:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/reporting-spoof.html
For questions about eBay’s communication policies, please visit our privacy policy at
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/privacy-policy.html and our User Agreement at
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/user-agreement.html
Copyright © 2009 eBay, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
eBay and the eBay logo are registered trademarks of eBay Inc.
Other trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners.
eBay is located at 2145 Hamilton Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125.
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Perhaps we can return to 2005, 2003, 2001 or even 1999! And have a happier, healthier and more successful buying and selling environment.
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