eBay Main Street

Last week eBay responded to a recent letter sent by Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) which urged his state's two US senators, Olympia Snowe (R) and Susan Collins (R), to support legislation to allow states to tax online purchases.

On March 27 eBay launched a policy roadmap for boosting cross-border trade and supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as one way to help secure sustainable economic growth. The roadmap argues that new technology tools and policy proposals must be combined to power Europe's efforts to overcome the current economic crisis.

This month eBay China participated in the “Building a Trustworthy Online Market” organized by Shenzhen government.

The Online Business Index Shipping Report, launched this week by eBay, Australia Post and PayPal, is based on a survey of 1,015 eBay sellers. Amongst the interesting results was the fact that more than half of Australian eBay sellers cite postage as a major barrier to growth and 68% would like to see more competitive shipping rates.

A few years ago, eBay and PayPal embarked on a mission to make sure our websites and services were accessible to the visually impaired community.  However, during the process of making our site accessible, it came to our attention that about 70 percent of those within the visually impaired community are unemployed or underemployed.

On Monday, March 12th, Congressman Schweikert (AZ-5) and his District Direct, Kevin Knight,  visited our Scottsdale facility.

In his interview with KWLM radio, Dusty Brighton, representing StubHub for eBay Inc.'s Government Relations team, discusses the secondary ticket market.

This month eBay Inc. participated in the 11th round of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement which took place between 1-9 March 2012 in Melbourne. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is a proposed new regional free trade agreement which builds on an existing Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam. The negotiations also include the United States, Australia, Peru, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Over a year ago, a collection of sports and entertainment fans set out to preserve and protect the rights of live-event patrons; they called their project the Fan Freedom Project. eBay and PayPal joined their fight to expose anti-consumer initiatives that prevent you from freely buying, selling and sharing the tickets you purchase and own.

10 million Australians are now shopping online. Listen to Deb Sharkey, from eBay Inc. Government Relations for Australia and New Zealand, as she discusses the growth in ecommerce, consumer convenience and how mobile commerce is blurring the lines between online and brick and mortar stores. She notes that online sales in 2011 hit $27 billion with forecasted growth of 12% in 2012. Even stronger growth was reported by the largest Australian businesses using eBay.com, which grew an amazing 38% in 2011. In her briefing to policy makers, she discussed the importance of multi-channel commerce and broadband access.