How Amazon and Google are taking eBay's Business

prostoalex writes "Wall Street Journal says many online sellers who started on eBay are now going solo, being helped out by 'name-your-own-price' Amazon Marketplace and Google's and Yahoo's advertising programs, which allow small businesses to direct their ads to search engine users interested in specific items. The article discusses several companies where online sellers, being disappointed with eBay's falling profit margins, increasing fees, disruptions coming from PayPal account freezes and high fraud rate, are leaving eBay. Many start with setting up their own sites, continuing to do business on eBay, but then switching to solo e-commerce entirely after looking at profit margins."

Comments

eBay will fail unless it...

[Anonymous Coward]

controls keyword spamming and curtails the megasellers

Re:eBay will fail unless it...

[lorelorn]

Shipping to where I am of course.

Sellers routinely advertise what the different shipping rates are. As a registered user my location is known to the site- why can't it just indicate the shipping costs for items I'm looking at, or say if they are not mentioned?

eBay already allows you to view by availability to your locaiton, they just need to take it one step further.

curious..

[PopeAlien]

So people selling things are choosing ways that make them the most profit?

Bizzare.

Maybe eBay will finally start policing it's own

[antifoidulus]

network. I know other outlets aren't immune to frauds, but ebay is fucking rediculous. Whenever I am looking for anything substantial(for instance iBook, xbox etc) I have to sort by highest price first. Why? Because an overwhelming majority of the auctions are for "Information on how to get a free iBook!" or "iBook for 40 dollars". Ebay doesn't have to legally police it's network for those types of fraud, but I think their lax policies are going to harm them.

Not to mention the huge number of grey market items on eBay. I don't want to buy anime off of there because a majority of the DVDs are Chinese bootlegs. I would rather download them than buy the bootlegs....

eBay is a JOKE

[Jesus IS the Devil]

eBay and Paypal rank way up there as the most evil companies on the net. I have a friend who sells via eBay, and from what he's been telling me, eBay has been making it harder and harder to get refunds on failed auctions all the while increasing their fees.

As for Paypal, it's practically a crook's paradise (eBay is too actually). They force you to enter in your checking information if you wish to perform any transactions over a few bucks (forget the exact $). Once you've done this you are completely at their mercy to screw you over however they'd like.

With credit cards, you always have the option of a chargeback. Once you have linked your banking info to Paypal, good luck! Now they get all the say as to when/if they will give you credit back if something goes wrong. If a seller sends you a box of bricks, screw you.

Here's a personal experience I've had with Paypal. A while back I posted an ad to sell some stuff. Someone bought them and paid via a "VERIFIED" Paypal account. The buyer came by my house and picked them up in person. Everything looked legit until Paypal reversed the transaction saying the "verified" account was stolen. I emailed Paypal and all I got was one runaround after another. In fact I started getting the same replies over and over again!

My problem is, either Paypal is an escrow or they are not. If they're not, they have no right to refund the money. If they are, they have an obligation to re-imburse me for my losses. However, they took the coward's way out, refunding the money to the user to avoid being sued and losing in court for failing to protect their user accounts, and screwing me in the process saying that only orders sent by mail are protected under their TOS.

I really hope eBay and Paypal die off in really horrible deaths.

Ebay is gunning for Ebay alone

[Space cowboy]

... and that's the problem. I sold my motorbike on Ebay when I emigrated to the US last year, and was so disgusted with the service, I even wrote a journal entry about it.

Ebay doesn't care if the seller has problems as long as the percentage cut is in Ebay's bank account. They do little-to-nothing to make the seller's life easy, in fact it's a very customer-unfocused setup.

As long as Ebay keep their current modus operandi, I'll not be using them again, and they have to run out of sellers eventually...

Simon

Re:Also...

[hondo77]

Huh? You ship the item, right? Put your promotional material in the package. "Visit our site. 15% off your next order. Same day shipping." Amazon doesn't let you do that?