eBay City Rollers

by Helen i-lin Hwang

Phyllis Weisman, a retired teacher, positioned herself in the front row, taking copious notes with her right hand. The day before, she broke her left hand gardening daffodils at her Penn Valley home. Undaunted, she drove into the city in her tan sedan to learn how to sell on eBay. She was at the Holiday Inn in Old City on April 26, one of 90-some attendees of the first of four free sessions at eBay Day. The seminar was sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service, which is stepping up efforts to capitalize on e-commerce and hoping people select it over companies like FedEx and UPS for shipping packages.

Throughout the class, Weisman peppered postal service presenters with questions, despite instructions to hold all questions to the end.

Seven hundred people had registered that day, filling the enrollment to maximum capacity (though the half-empty room made it clear that not all who signed up actually showed up for the early-morning session). Philadelphia was the first city in the nation to host an eBay seminar conducted by the Postal Service in a hotel and of this scope, and the proceedings went off with the feel and excitement of a Tony Robbins personal-emporement seminar.

Most of the attendees averaged around retirement age and had never used eBay before, though they had heard enough wondrous stories about turning knick-knacks into bucks.

Each attendee received trinkets, co-branded with the USPS and eBay logos: a ballpoint pen, plastic bag and a folder stuffed with an information packet. In the packet was a free training CD from eBay University Online, "a $19.99 value," said Postal Service spokeswoman Donna Graham-DiLacqua, sounding straight out of a QVC commercial.

The session covered topics including taking a good digital photo, establishing a good "feedback score" and getting free eBay-USPS shipping boxes. Someone in attendance asked, "What if they don't pay you after you ship the item?" The idea of selling something over the Internet to a complete stranger you only knew by an e-mail address was going to require a leap of faith for many in the room.

Also, the USPS talked up their new service of picking up packages at your front door, an attempt to stave off increasing competition.

Prior to the class, Weisman wasn't that clear on the eBay process, but by the end she was primed to sell her books and "lovely serving pieces." Though energized about logging onto eBay, she wasn't sure it would be as easy as the training made it sound. "It's like cooking," she figured. "You can't read a cookbook until you learn how to cook."

As the 90-minute seminar wound down, a raffle for an official Postal Service digital scale was held. (A bathroom scale is not recommended, the postal service presenters repeatedly emphasized.) "Oh my God!" gushed Weisman as she was announced as the raffle winner. "I've never won anything in my life."