From the Desk of Mr. Robert Musser, CEO of Auction Inn.

We’ve been very busy at Auction Inn over the last month and are excited about a couple of upcoming events. Early in the month we participated in the 14th annual Emerald Groundhog Day investment conference, where we were fortunate to say a few words at lunchtime to the packed house of investment professionals. We also told our story to a room full of investors in the private company portion of the conference and met a lot of great people.

On March 17th we will again join Segro’s Lancaster Hairport in helping to raise money for Childhood Cancer through the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. Segro’s will be shaving the heads of volunteers who will solicit donations event. Normally an off-eBay affair, we are trying to bring both technology, and awareness to this wonderful cause. As we did last year, we will be posting auctions that you can bid on to raise money for the shavees listed. We are really excited about this and the possibility that we can use our eBay expertise to bring added publicity and funds to the Foundation.

If you would like to donate money for the St. Baldrick’s event, please visit www.auctioninn.com, click on the special link on our home page. If you are interested in participating in this year’s head shaving event, please contact Auction Inn directly at 888-TO-THE-INN or you can email us at questions@auctioninn.com

Auction Inn Corp. CEO, Bob Musser

Anneuris Paula, or Manny as we know him, joined the Workable Program in December of 2006. Manny has excelled in packing and shipping, which is the part of the program that Manny says he enjoys the most. Manny has also obtained skills in areas like photography, inventory management, and market evaluation. Within the next few months, Manny will be obtaining his GED and also graduating from the Workable Training Program.

When Manny is not at Auction Inn, he enjoys watching Family Guy and going to concerts. Manny moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 9 years old. Six years ago, he moved to Lancaster from New York. Now that Manny is 18, he looks forward to obtaining a high paying job with the experience he has gained through Auction Inn. We are pleased to have Manny as part of our team and wish him continued success in the future!

Auction Inn ‘s featured Commercial Product line is Keystone Quality Products.

Keystone Quality Products founded in 1990 by Elmer Kauffman. This family owned business was started with one employee and now has grown to 33 employees. Last year Keystone peaked $2.4 million in sales quickly becoming the leader in Amish made furniture in Lancaster, PA. Keystone specializes in Amish handcrafted pine furniture in Traditional Styles and hand painted designs.

Please click HERE to view our complete product line of Keystone Quality Products

At a recent eCommerce Forum, eBay announce to 250 of its top U.S. sellers that it will be releasing an upgraded version of its already popular feedback system. Cleverly titled “Feedback 2.0”, this new reputation system will allow trading partners to better rate each other on individual transactions. This new system is set to be tested in France, Italy, the UK, Australia, Poland and India over the next month, with the biggest unveiling later in the United States and Germany, eBay’s two top sites.

So what is this new “Feedback 2.0”? In a word, innovative. This new system will allow for individuals to rate other traders on more than just a general experience. Traders will be able to gauge their satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) on areas such as item description, communication, shipping time, and shipping & handling charges. For Power Sellers and larger trading companies, this is just what they have been looking for: A system that will allow them to showcase their all around top rated service. For smaller and newly founded businesses however, they may initially find this rating system more of a hindrance than a helping hand. Small companies whose primary focus is superior customer service coupled with quality photographs and listings may come to a stark realization of the areas they need to improve upon. There are two upsides to this small crack in the road. First of all, this type of feedback will put in black and white the areas that small businesses need to work on. They can then use this to their advantage to be more competitive in the eBay community. Also, there will be no need to worry about the “start up blunders” that every business has along the way being the means to failings later on in a company’s life. After 24 months, all feedback will be archived with eBay, so only your current score and the last two years of feedback will be shown to the public.

Finally, eBay announced one more set of regulations they intend to implement in the near future. All members registered on or after January 17, 2007 will be required to adhere to a new policy known as the “Safe Payment Requirement”. This will require that newly registered sellers accept PayPal or a merchant credit card if they plan to list items on the U.S. and Canadian sites. This is partnered with a new policy eBay implemented which limits Buyer Protection to PayPal only transactions. As internet transactions progress, PayPal has come to the forefront as one of the safest ways to send and receive money to date, along with merchant credit cards continually being a source of reputable safety. Requiring new sellers to accept this form of payment will essentially increase safety all around when shopping on eBay.

Rachel Statzell,
Auction Inn Customer Service

Click here to view Bill Cobb's Webcast in video format

Click here to view Bill Cobb's Announcement Board post

eBay is now giving automobile dealers a couple of great new programs for listing their inventory on the site – the addition of the best offer feature is now available on vehicles, and now a flat fee subscription-based service to list their entire used-vehicle inventory to customers within a 100-mile radius of the dealership. eBay Motors Local Market costs $1,000/month, which covers listing fees for an unlimited amount of vehicles, with no individual insertion fee per vehicle.

These new features are a continuation of the trend we have noticed that eBay is providing more local sales features on their platform, providing the ability for people to trade larger items that are prohibitive to ship. This is a great opportunity for eBay to take market share from the other online vehicle listing services like Autobytell and Auto Nation.

eBay has also released a new feature called markdown manager. This allows sellers to both mark down old inventory items as well as run “Sales” for a given length of time. This is another feature that eBay has added to help e-commerce sellers mimic the retail experience in many brick and morter stores. The eBay Express website launched last year was the first step in segregating fixed price listings from the eBay traditional auction format items, and markdown manager gives sellers an additional tool to make fixed price listings more robust.

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