Everyone seems to be an eBay expert these days, or at least they like to think they are. The marketing bods at Phoenix have cottoned onto this and have launched eBay Super Seller, which claims to be able to help eBay entrepreneurs keep track of their empires.

Super Seller's claims are both bold and attractive: simplified management of your auction activity, slicker presentation of your auction pages and free images to spice up your presentation all make this sound like a must-have product.

As keen eBay visitors, we were very interested in testing the mettle of this package. If it was able to meet its claims and make your eBaying life easier, then it would certainly be worth the cash, particularly for those people who have lots of auctions on the go at once.

After a relatively painless installation, we started to fill in the information requested. The probing interrogation you get from the set-up is quite off-putting, but you are at least kept informed of what each piece of information is required for.

We weren't completely happy at having to enter our eBay username and password information into a third-party application but Super Seller does have the blessing of eBay so we gave it the benefit of the doubt.

The package promises simple customised eBay listings, without needing an in-depth knowledge of web design and management. However, this feature is the biggest failing of the product - it simply does not deliver.

If you want those free images on your eBay auctions, you need to have your own webspace and a working knowledge of FTP (the means of getting your pictures onto a website). The templates for making smart eBay auction pages all look great, but uploading them to eBay frequently resulted in errors.

When we weren't getting error messages in German, the preview pages showed up without our free pictures in place or the other aspects of the template didn't appear as expected. The free addition of images to your auction pages is something that is potentially useful, but it is spoiled by poor execution.

If none of that puts you off, Super Seller has a potential customer. When it is finally set up, the application does streamline the management of multiple auctions once you've mastered the quirky interface. So if you are a particularly diligent and patient character, it may well be the program for you.

We, however, were left thinking that it was an awful lot of effort to achieve little that couldn't be done with a bit of effort and a methodical approach to managing your 'My Ebay' section on the eBay site itself - something that you can do free of charge.

Contact:
Phoenix Global Software
www.phoenixglobalsoftware.co.uk