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EBay Sellers Seek Management Change
BlueCup writes to tell us that even though some seem willing to let eBay's Chief Executive Meg Whitman slide on recent problems, many eBay sellers are calling for a change. From the article: "'EBay's core (auction) performance is suffering tremendously,' says Steve Grossberg, a longtime videogame seller on eBay. He says he now lists an item four times on average in order to sell it, up from two listings two years ago. Adds Andy Mowery, an eBay seller of home and garden gear: 'It is time for new leadership at eBay.'"
Ebay's management is in serious need of a kick in the pants. More for customer service, support, and the way it deals with fraud (which is all part of the same thing really).
Just because it's more difficult to sell on Ebay does NOT mean the problem is management, it means there's more traffic (buyers and sellers), so you have more competition. It may take twice as long to sell a game as 2 years ago, but I'm willing to bet there's well more than twice as many video games on Ebay now, as there were then.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
it's not our fault that nobody wants to buy your mint copy of Superman 64 that "you found"
They are going to have to get rid of fraudelent auctions. The last time I bought anything off ebay was a year ago, and the only reason I did that is because it was an uncommon item(English-Chinese electronic dictionary) that is hard to find elsewhere. If I search for anything that isn't eclectic, at least half of the items are fraud, if not more. I have to do a lot of slogging through(usually by sorting by highest price first and then trying to find the items I want) just to get to legit auctions. No, I don't want a "free xbox 360, powerbook and more!!!!!!!!!!" which just turns into a bid for "information that is 110% legit on how to find free items online!". I end up having to do a lot of work just to find the item I want. If you can't be bothered to get rid of fraudelent auctions, then I can't be bothered to bid.
Monstar L
The article was pretty scant on detail, especially exactly *what* the merchants are complaining about. Has the system gotten inefficient? Are buyers having a hard time finding items? Basically, what faults do the merchants feel can be fixed by a new CEO? Anyone here at Slashdot have any educated guesses?
These people need to put more effort into selling rather than blame someone else for their shortcomings.
Too lazy to create a sig...
Ebay has been around long enough that everyone knows about it, both buyers and would-be sellers.
Competition is fierce between sellers, especially any twits who bought a 'how to make money on Ebay kit' and are trying to do it full time- and buyers will jump sellers to save a buck or two- there is absolutely no loyalty on ebay.
I'm an occasional seller and very occasional buyer on ebay, and I like to be sure to be able to sell my stuff. Since I'm not trying to turn a profit on new items, just unload stuff I have and don't need for a few bucks I can be pretty cheap.
What do I do?
Put the starting bid waay under the going price (but at a price I'm willing to sell it at), and the buyout slightly under the going rate for an item. Usually it gets bid up close to the buyout/going rate, I sell my item, and everyone is happy.
I cannot imagine trying to run a normal business this way.
That being said, Ebay is soaking their sellers for more fees lately and this cut in profit margins isn't helping them at all.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
E-bay invested in CraigsList? Somewhat worrisome. I never heard about that..Anyone have a link?
Meg Whitman needs to be removed. Not only do I as an eBay sell find that I often have to relist items to sell to a paying buyer, but I also was upset to learn that eBay has been sending out emails trying to convince its users to support the evil that is net neutrality. Communications doesn't need more regulation, eBay does. eBay should be forced to act like a real auction place. Ebay is paradise for creeps (the captcha).
What ebay needs is for people to stop selling stuff on it as if it was their own store. I go to ebay to pick up a bargain not to pay RRP for something I could get from the store for the same price. ebay needs to get back to what it used to be, a place to pick up rare items for a premium or second hand items for cheap.
Try searching for mobile phones on ebay, it's become a joke. There are people trying to sell new phones with plans included. Why bother, there is a shop near by that can do that and not charge me for postage.
Don't even get me started on items that are clearly in the wrong category. I don't want to sift through 18 pages of leather cases for PDA's before I find the cheapest listed actual PDA.
I have the feeling that it's not her the problem, the reason for that is that it was her who scaled eBay from a company of 30 lazy workers to the eBay we know today with its 200 million eBayers. I don't know the problem very well but I'm sure that one could hardly find a replacement for her as she knows and has managed eBay so well so far, and fix the problem at the same time.
You just got troll'd!
I have been selling on ebay for 9 years now, since the beginning. Anyhow, what I see as the problem with ebay is this: eBay created, and then refused to truly govern this glut of "power sellers" who, more often than not, majorily illustrate exactly what is wrong with eBay.
Shoppers are tired of trying to buy, oh say a used or NOS laptop hard drive, only to be bludgeoned with auctions that consist of nothing but shipping overcharges after shipping overcharges after scams and more scams. Just trying to find a working computer or computer part sold by an average honest Joe at a decent price is nearly impossible. It's nothing but NYC camera store-style scam power sellers (now with used items too), if you know what I mean, and ebay turns the other cheek.
In fact, ebay continues to turn the other cheek even though they are losing money in these fee-circumventing, high-shipping auctions. It's strange. I guess they only care about insertion fees, and care little about maintaining happy buyers.
However, the system falls apart without the buyers, so therein lies the problem that I see.
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
The scaling problem which eBay is encountering is not limited to sellers. The core problem here is that a smaller fraction of the auctions are coming to a successful completion. If we assume that the ratio of sellers to buyers has remained fairly constant (an assumption which must be confirmed), then that means that more buyers are bidding on auctions but losing--or not bidding at all, fearing they will lose. In terms of products, there are two different categories: specialties, which are rare and specifically sought after; and commodities, which are common and substitutable. Hence the problem for both buyers and sellers is how to get more buyers to bid on more of the items for sale. The problem for a buyer of specialties is how to find them in the mass of other items for sale on eBay, particularly repeated instances of the same commodity. The problem for a buyer of commodities is which particular instance to bid on. eBay could solve this problem by implementing commodity auctions, where multiple different sellers' auctions are lumped together, and the highest bidder gets his pick of which seller to buy from, on down the line. This is similar to eBay's own half.com, but in a more time-limited auction setting; indeed, there is a continuum between these approaches, and eBay could offer their sellers more controller over the point which they occupy along the continuum. Grouping commodity auctions (even just in the search results, if not in the actual bidding) will also make it easier to find specialty items. There are many details to making this strategy work, but I believe it provides a sold start to a solution for eBay's current dilemma.
I find more and more sellers are phony. They can even have a high "positive" rating and they burn you. There are so many bogus electronic sales its amazing. Laptop auctions come with emails inviting people to make end around offer. A Google search shows email addy on long list of phonies kept by private groups concerned with ebay fraud. You can find lots of interesting items with no bidders even in the last minutes. Why? Because people know they are phony. I got burned twice on ebay for cheap DVD's for sale by sellers with high positive ratings. Then I get notices from ebay warning me about seller. Oh it seems people, can hack/fake accounts. Haha too late for me. Getting burned gets almost no action from ebay, Paypal etc. Ebay went from interesting auction to flea market full of high prices, phony hustlers and junk. A friend bought big collection of all Buffy DVD sets. They were meant to be in excellent condtion. Then big box of broken plastic arrives and seller listing is gone. Lots of people figured out the deal and ebay. Amazon is much better. "How Amazon and Google are taking eBay's Business" http://slashdot.org/articles/05/06/22/2154201.shtm l
One of the popular refrains from eBay's management is that they don't have the resources needed to police auctions on a proactive basis. They can only respond to complaints from users.
From personal experience, it takes eBay anywhere from three to eight hours to kill a series of bogus scripted auction postings created with a phished account. That's more than enough time for the phisher to reel in multiple victims, all the while making the whole eBay marketplace look like a Romanian gypsy fair.
eBay needs to do two things to combat fraud. First, add a prominent, one-click "Report this auction" button to all listings. Right now the report link is buried at the bottom of the page. It leads you through the typical maze of customer-support options before dropping you at a page where you have to click yet another link to bring the auction to eBay's attention.
Second, when a user clicks "Report this auction," the notification message it creates should be transmitted, simultaneously, to several participants in a large network of trusted volunteers. These users would be recruited based on factors such as experience, feedback, and a history of accurate fraud reports. They would not have the ability to terminate auctions unilaterally -- they wouldn't be quite that "trusted" -- but they would have the ability to vet the violation report for legitimacy and forward it via a private channel to eBay, where an employee would be able to terminate the offending user's auctions immediately without a lot of additional reviewing overhead.
Formalizing the concept of community policing is the only way I can see for eBay to maintain credibility, in light of the undiminished volume of idiots who keep turning their accounts over to phishers on a daily basis. I agree with eBay management when they claim they can't police the site on their own. It's time they harnessed some of the outrage that's out there in the community, and put it to good use.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
She's developed a sophisticated market and has beens are turning into also rans. What do these disguntled ebayers want? New management to market their items for them? Come on guys, it's up to you to grow your own businesses. You have to forecast your own markets for growth and competition. You can't blame your own bad business on ebay's management.
He says he now lists an item four times on average in order to sell it, up from two listings two years ago.
This could have as much to do with the number of sellers going up as it could be about the number of buyers dropping due to being put off by being scammed by either a seller or, more likley, eBay/Paypal.
The number of duplicate items listed for just about anything you care to name is staggering nowadays, so it's rare to get into a bidding situation over anything even slightly common. There were, for example, about 30 Aiptek 12000U graphics tablets on there when I was looking for one (and all of them were more expensive than buying one efrom scan - they work with Linux too fwiw).
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Did anyone else notice that the guy who sells garden gear's last name was mowery?
I'd say Ebay sellers are definitely more a victim of market dynamics than Ebay management problems. (Yes, I do support the market, except when it is taken to a "profits over humanity" extreme.)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace." -Robert H. Goddard
And I for one welcome our new Google overlords. Oh, come on. It's got to happen here eventually.
It's too many sellers, selling too much shit on eBay -- and of course, there are too few buyers, wanting the bull.
-- ess
I should get working on a better eBay.
*opens emacs, orders pizza, and checks caffeine supply*
Lets rock.
And four years before that, it was only once if you had something of actual value to sell. Why the change? Because eBay is constantly flooded with new sellers who are ever willing to undercut the existing sellers - which brings buyers to eBay and keeps them coming back. So long as this supply of new sellers persists, eBay has no reason to change it's policies. (And there are no real policy changes they can make that will force people to buy anyhow.) eBay doesn't owe you a living Mr Grossberg.
A+++++ Good first poster, highly recommended.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
He says the company is taking "aggressive steps," such as a fee increase for store listings to "reinvigorate" the auction marketplace.
Increasing fees to the sellers results in sellers charging more for shipping, on which eBay does not charge fees, in order to recoup the costs. If a seller is charged a couple dollars in listing and selling fees on a low-priced item, why bother lisisting? eBay has lost its reputation as being a place for buyers to find bargain and sellers to get the highest price. Bargains are few and far between these days. No longer is it feesible to buy a book or new keyboard on eBay when the fees charged are so high that buyers are deterred due to the "shipping" fees and sellers are hesitant to list without a near guarantee of a sale.
Lower the fees and the market will have a new breath of life. Better to make $1 in fees on 10 auctions than to make $1.50 on five.
Also, acquiring Paypal hurt eBay in a way. They outright forbid vertain other payment services, such as Google's payment system, and by trying to force payment down a certain channel (for which they make more in fees), eBay is gaining more of a feel of someone standing over us beating us into submission rather than a comfortable play to spend time browsing and breathing easy and having options.
Not to mention both buyers AND sellers are being ripped off left and right these days and eBay seems to lack the inclination to do anything about it. If they're making their fees either way, why not let it continue?
It's a girl!
As an ebay buyer, those people can go somewhere else. I'm happy with things the way they are. Shops are boring - if I want to buy something online I know how to find it. I go to ebay to waste a little time on an auction and get something cheap from someone who doesn't really want it.
I use craigslist now. You don't have to register your fake details and remember useless passwords, you can sell locally and get cash instantly, usually within a day. Unless you're selling obscure shit, it's the way to go. AND IT'S FREE, GODDAMNIT!! Just like the good old days of the Internet. When I was a boy, the internet was a free place and playboy.com had free porn... and the girls had nice titties and they were all respectable looking. But I digress. USE CRAIGSLIST! You'd be surprised how many people want to buy your totally weird shit ... and how many of those nutty people live in your city. Doesn't work well if you live in the middle of nowhere, though, I guess.. :-(
Oh you think I am being tetchy?
If you think about it, stop whining about wanting new management, if all you do is keep adding auctions to sell something, and complain about new management, why should anyone change anything?
If you do sell somewhere else, and they get less wodge, then they may listen.
Vote with your money. Not with your whining.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Obviously seller growth has outpaced buyer growth. I've seen that in some items I sell as well.
Furthermore there are other alternatives to eBay now, especially for video games. When they guy started on eBay I'll bet a lot of people were not picking up used games at the EB, since they didn't stock them as they do today. eBay made that happen.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I second some of the more well thought out community policing ideas brought up here. Ebay cannot employ paid staff to adequately monitor the zillions of auctions that get listed every day, that does not compute as any kind of business plan. But overseeing an army of community volunteers...that's the way to go, as long as abuse can be curtailed. (people falsely reporting their competitors) some of the suggestions above seemed to mitigate that problem.
I've been selling on Ebay since almost the beginning - but I haven't bought anything ordinary in a long time for precisely the reasons people have mentioned here. The one time I tried to buy a piece of electronics, it turned out to be stolen. (A laptop, I returned it to the rightful owners) The lesson I learned was never buy any sort of portable electronics or anything that's easily fenced, because that's where it ends up.
I've had great success as a seller of unique items. The most interesting and high value was a 1963 Corvette Stingray Convertible. We got a far, far higher price than what locals were offering us. Ebay is almost always a better option than anything else.
On Ebay, the entire world of internet connected citizens really IS your marketplace, if you have anything of value to sell. this is the best thing Ebay has going for it right now. Everybody checks ebay by default to see if the thing they want is on there, even if they don't plan on initially buying from there, just price shopping. Many change their mind along the way.
My selling tips are:
* Sell something unique or at least semi-rare
* Be completely honest and up front about everything, and you will have perfect feedback, unless you run into a total nutjob buyer. (I've had some close calls, so now I put more disclaimers on the auctions about things like "customs duties and tariffs are not included" etc.) Include LOTS of documentation for something that could be suspected of being stolen.
* Go way out of your way to make people happy after the auction is complete. A good business transaction is a voluntary transaction between two people who are both satisfied with the outcome. If they get the item and it's damaged, fixed the situation as quickly as possible.
* Start your bidding at $1 (or $100 for high priced items) with no reserve, no matter what the item is. If you don't believe you'll get market value or what you want from the item then you should ask yourself if you should really be putting it on ebay, or if you really want to let go of it just yet. Do your homework and research completed auctions. Low start bids drive large numbers of bidders, which will increase the chances your item will become a 'hot item' and will get people to notice it in general. The Corvette started at $100 no reserve and ended at $27,000.
* make liberal use of the bold/highlight features for any item that costs over $100. it's the cost of advertising / doing business on ebay...no big deal. If your margins are that bad, don't sell on ebay. If you don't like their fees, don't sell on ebay. They are a lot cheaper than running a brick and mortar store or selling on consignment.
* your excellent feedback will increase bidding confidence in your buyers, it works. Work hard to keep it perfect. Don't sell anything you yourself wouldn't buy at the price you are expecting for it. BE HONEST.
* despite accusations to the contrary, Ebay is still a SELLER'S MARKET. The audience you reach by listing your item on there is INSANE. Now that everybody knows that, the competition for commodity items is also INSANE. I see nothing unpredictable about their current situation - the market is finally saturated with sellers to meet the demand of the buyers. Natural forces balancing out. It was very skewed in the beginning, almost comical. Unfortunately now the sellers include all of the scum of the earth, particularly folks who make a steady living scamming people. Buyer beware. Ebay needs to take steps to keep up with this situation, or th
Here you go:
a ture_full.html
http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2005-11-30/news/fe
Although the article itself is a hostile piece that tries to sensationalize CL's impact on paper-pubs that have been impacted by CL's methods, it does confirm the investment etc.
Google Froogle anyone? You can list there for free. As customer I in fact use it quite often.
Sticking exclusively with eBay was guarantied to screw you someday. It seems that day is nearing. And as customer I find it pretty stupid for vendor being eBay-only anyway. Now PayPal have eased most of the problems, but I just feel myself uncomfortable being so much in eBay's land.
Get real people. eBay provided you with the "shelfs". But it still owns the shelfs and can do pretty much anything with the shelfs. (Just like ordinary public market.) eBay after all has to make money too. With many crackers' attacks, tightened security and audit, eBay I expect has pretty high operational costs. What I'm getting too: you have to pay for better security higher price.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
There are several. (Yeah, that'd be no sympathy) It's ebay's job to make the shareholders rich.
Deleted
I have inside information that Ebay is adding a multi-million dollar location in the upper Sacramento area. Perhaps along with this they may be making some other changes.
if you were me, you'd think the same way
I don't spose people are too upset about google purchase being outlawed either.
Wow, eBay is showing its age. Go figure. And no one saw this coming?
Let's say eBay is a mall. In a traditional mall, the owners redecorate twice a decade, throw out the tennants, do all sorts of things to try and keep the place vital. After a while the mall goes beyond the point of cosmetic or tennant-change repair. When the mall failes to be vital and the owners no longer care, you have the dirt-mall. The dirt-mall is the place where you can get a tatoo and a pair of used sneakers right next to the dollar store and the discount liquor shop. Sounds like eBay to me.
eBay is a real marketplace. It is subject to the exact same pressures as a real marketplace - just like a mall. The question seems to be - is eBay still vital, or is it time to set up shop elswhere?
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
You know you have a problem when you're self-employed and you seek a management change.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I need not say more.
Well, not really ten, but here goes: THE CHINESE WHO ARE SELLING ILLEGAL/BOOTLEG ITEMS SELL FOR FREE. I understand eBay wanted to jump into the burgeoning Chinese market, but they did it at the expense of their sellers. Not only do Chinese sellers get to sell for free, 99.9% of the Chinese sellers sell bootleg/counterfeit items and list a SHIT LOAD of them on ebay. Ebay totally screwed their bread and butter, the paying sellers, both ways. Not only do sellers have their auction listings artificially obscured by fake Chinese crap, the legit sellers can't compete in prices. Why buy a "Scrubs" one season dvd set when you can buy all of the seasons for the same price? Also since the Chinese now make high quality bootlegs of everything, ebay is very hesistant to pull an auction unless the VERO owner complains directly. If somehow the Chinese seller gets suspended, bam, he's back up instantly using one of his other countless HIGH FEEDBACK account. Ebay will NEVER penetrate China. Different culture, different everything. If I were in charge of Ebay right now I would shut off China entirely, except for buyers and USA and other worldwide sellers should sue ebay for unfair competition.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
As a hobby, I sell some selfmade software through my website. On EBay, people are selling my software on compilation CD's (they even advertise it as such) and I have tried contacting EBay on this multiple times, ranging from simple e-mail complaints to registering as a vendor and followinging the official complaint channels explicitely setup by EBay for this very purpose. Not ONCE have I even so much as had a reply, even though I included all kinds of clear evidence and not ONCE did they ever take any action.
As long as EBay keeps willingly and knowingly cooperating with these fraudulent sellers, EBay can count on my "F**k y**!" anytime. If I could help destroy EBay, I would.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
1) Fraudulent auctions. While I've never suffered from them, they are too easy to spot (for us humans) and they make doing business on Ebay risky. I've never seen EBay do anything positive about these (nor take enough care regarding them), which to me is a signal that EBay does not care about "us", just their profit. In that case, I don't care to use EBay any more.
2) EBay shops. Create a new web site or something. Whatever, get rid of them. In the beginning, Ebay was for random people to sell random stuff they no longer wanted, not shops in Hong Kong or some place you've never heard of trying to push their wares. EBay shops are at odds to the original EBay experience.
I'm not sure if the EBay shops or auction fraud causes more "noise" on EBay, these days.
But maybe I've just grown up and realise what I want isn't on EBay any more: goods with a warranty/guarantee that can be easily returned if defective.
It's been years now since I last bought something on EBay and I rarely go back there to look for things to buy now.
So can EBay do it?
Cut down on fraud *and* find a way to seperate EBay shops from people like you and me?
1. Far too much fraud. If you get stung, even if you pay by Paypal, you pretty much lose and eBay really don't much care or want to get involved. I got caught out over a lens (overseas seller, great and huge rating but decided to shut shop) and while I got some money back, eBay's response was 'we got back what was left in his Paypal account so that's all you're getting'. Quite how they get away with abdicating their financial responsability in these days of strict corporate financial controls etc, is a mystery.
2. System encourages loads of duplicates. A tricky one. people tend to only pay attention to the first or second page of results so sellers with duplicates tend to put up new identical ads every 24 hours to ensure they always have something near the top.
3. The changes to shops. Ebay have promoted shops and many people have built their livelyhoods around them. Suddenly the costs go up and the results get stuffed at the bottom of each search. Great way to alienate a huge portion of your userbase overnight.
4. Poor policing of dodgy items. Whether it's pirate software/DVDs or people who sell a CD for 1 buck with ten dollars postage, there needs to be a much slicker and *obvious* way for buyers to report bad items.
5. Just too complicated. I've used eBay for years so know it and can grok new features and why they're there. Pretty much every new user I've introduced has found it hugely complex and overwhelming with features, links and all sorts of options that make no sense to a newbie.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Caveat emptor. eBay is not your mama.
I think a most recent Dilbert pretty much said it all (your research required.)
I've had great luck on eBay and for all the reasons stated.
- 1 pair perfect Magnepan loudspeakers. Delivered as represented by a credible seller, serials verifiable.
- A Crown IC-150 power amp that I needed to spice up a dull system. A rare bird, hard to fake.
- A perfect Bryston 4B amp that's real darned hard to fake and covered by a transferrable, 20 year warranty, no questions asked. Darned hard to find, locally. Serials verifiable. Fairly priced.
- Various unique underground comix that would be hard to misrepresent.
- A "Goofy" backwards-clocking watch. I knew what it hadda look like. Easy to verify.
If the seller seems unclear about the thing they're selling, BEWARE. (Well, it's a Rools-Royce, seems to run good, looks pretty good, found it in granny's 'grage, I dunno, what do you think it's worth...)
Bid on items that are rare and provably unique; worth selling and transporting, uniquely. It takes actual work to represent these items and the bullshitters pop to the surface pretty quickly.
If you're bidding on a sunflower seed when you can get one at the local store, consider.
Cripes.
A seller is given a rating according to both what he sold and what he bought. So, you could have a seller with 99% positive votes, but when you look into the details you see that the rating was actually 99 bought items with positive feedback and only one thing that he sold with a negative rating. This is extreemly misleading. There should really be 2 ratings, a buyer rating and a seller rating.
There is a transaction history available, but it is deleted after a very short time (only 3 months). So if the seller hasn't been very active in the last few months you have now way of knowing what sort of itmes he was selling to get such a rating.
Just go look up any anime series you like. You will be lucky to find an entry that is NOT obviously a pirate copy.
The "factory-sealed import region-free version" with English and Chinese subtitles selling for a quarter of retail? Yeah right.
I can't figure out why anyone would buy this stuff. If you are gonna steal, just download it off torrents.
Isnt that against the rules, and one of the problems Ebay is having with its users anyway?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I prefer reading the negative feedback of sellers on ebay such as:-
// PAYPAL DISPUTE, DISGUSTI :For the fifth time, you are in the USA, it takes around a week for the post
WON AUCTION, SELLER NEVER COMMUNIC> NO ITEM RECIEVED
Reply by
item not received
Reply by: We are funny like that, we dont send things out until they have been paid for
I AM WAITING THIS SCALE 30 DAYS! WHEN I GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reply by: When you pay for it!, WITHOUT FRAUDULENT FUNDS.
wrong lead (got plug to socket & 2m), AND slow delivery (11 days!)
Reply And so you thought you would rather neg than ask for a replacement???????
The Product is awful, shaved one side and it looked the same as non-shaved side!
Reply by : Perhaps you would get better results if you removed the safety cover?
Follow-up by ratboyab: o hilarious! perhaps you'd get better results if youd sell better items!
Paid instantly with PayPal, 9 days later but no goods.
Reply by: Its actually 5 working days, and it states 2nd class post in the listing
Paid instantly with PayPal, 9 days later but no goods.
Reply by: 2nd class post takes 2-5 WORKING DAYS, what is wrong with you people?
Video Game cheats, hints a
Some general thoughts on the issue:
1. July-August is the traditional dead-time for many kinds of sales, especially electronics. This year is no exception. Whining about slow sales in August is, well, stupid.
2. Things aren't selling as quickly because they aren't priced to sell quickly. Sellers have started to treat eBay like a storefront rather than an auction house. The starting bid and reserve prices reflect that and the sales pattern does too.
3. There are far too many 97% feedback powersellers. Old hands know better than to buy from such a seller but newbies get screwed. eBay policies should discourage the continued presence of folks who can't maintain a 1% or less complaint rate.
4. eBay is tolerating auctions where the seller does not actually have the product in question, may not be able to get it in a timely manner, and does not say so in the auction. This discourages buyers.
5. There has been a proliferation of "insane" sellers who don't bother to check the competition before posting an item on ebay. Take for example focus_technology. He has a Cisco 2509 listed for $450. 2509's have been selling for around $75. No 2509 has sold for more than $200 this year. Such behavior results in a lot of effectively invalid listings that clutter a potential buyer's view, discouraging them from continuing the search. eBay encourages this behavior by allowing sellers to relist an item cheaply or for free.
6. My personal pet peeve, they've tweaked paypal so that you have to go out through a bunch of "are you sures" if you want to pay by credit card instead of a bank draft. Its anti-customer.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It bugs me no end, they turn up even if you don't select the option.
Deleted
It's time for ebay to end the ludicrous two-way rating of ebay members. Only sellers should receive feedback ratings, not buyers. That buyers can receive bad feedback is why so many sellers have ludicrously good feedback ratings - fear of reprisal. Even when a buyer has a bad experience, they'll often either not provide feedback, or give good feedback anyway, for fear that they'll otherwise receive "payback" from the seller. If a person only buys, this is of little consequence, but most buyers are also sellers and feedback ratings affect this type of user far more than it affects big time ebay sellers because 1 bad feedback rating in 5000 is of no consequence whatsoever, while 1 bad feedback rating in 10 does have a substantial impact. What good does rating a buyer do? A seller isn't going to ship something to someone who doesn't pay up first unless they are a complete fool. Rating of buyers is a ruse.
--- What?
The downturn at ebay has more to do with $3+ gas than ebay policy. People just aren't interested in collectibles/crap when they are shelling out $60 a week to fill the family SUV.
I once heard eBay compared to the typical yard sales that dot the landscapes throughout the land. Where I used to live this one person had a yard sale every week, and sold a lot of money worth of merchandise. But eventually you find yourself running a yard sale the same day as someone else and location can play a roll. If people see 3 yard sales before they find your house, they may have already spent that cash. On Ebay that is basically taken out of the equation, yet the number of competitors are higher. It seems to me that vendors that rely on eBay to make a living are probably not realizing that eBay was likely never intended as a means for little folks to make money.
He says he now lists an item four times on average in order to sell it, up from two listings two years ago.
Well duh, of course it does, there are about 10 times as many listings on eBay as two years ago.
eBay has exploded in popularity, and that means competition. *OF COURSE* it's going to be harder to sell your stuff when there are 10 times as many people selling the same thing today, often cheaper, than 10 years ago. It's called competition in the marketplace, and it's the very concept that makes eBay so popular.
I have a friend who recently shut down his ebay business, he had been doing it exclusively since 2000. I shut down mine around 2 years ago for similar reasons. After having a malicious "customer" (who hadnt actually bought anything, but envoked the DCMA over an item which was perfectly legal.) had his account shut down 3 times in 2 months over the same item (even though it was removed from listing the day he was requested to. He turned around and sued but in the meantime the same person has continued to complain and ebay has twice again suspended the account over the same incident months after it happened. This is a guy with over 20,000 feedback at a 99.9% rating. Whenever he has called to get things resolved they apparently dont leave notes for each other in their call system as it happens over and over again. In the meantime he has gone from over $12,000 a month and hardly ever a negative or even neutral feedback (yes he posts first) to a flood of bid retractions and unwarrented negative feedback from panicked buyers.
The de-emphysis of the E-bay stores they tried so hard to promote was the straw that broke the camels back, now when he lists an item it doesnt even show up in searches unless there are less than a certain number of "auctions" of the same item (or creative descrition that makes it appear to be the same item). Increased listing fees have been pushing the small sellers out the door and increased final value fees combined with the paypal double dipping have margins unreasonable.
The weird thing for me is that that ebay has changed alot like my local flea market what was once mostly yard sale items is now aisle after aisle of vendors selling the same cheap "new" crap like knockoff brand shoes, stereo gear and cheap electronics. Its getting harder and harder to find someone actually selling thier old stuff and Ebay suffers for it. Ebay is broken, excessive fees, rampant fraud and unfriendly business practices have made it very much a buyer beware environment and frankly its just not fun anymore.
Man I tried to sell my Treo 650 on ebay 3 times and gave up. The first time someone bid and won the auction. THen I get an email saying this guy was not authorized or some crap. Well then I try again and someone buys it from outside the US (Said I wouldnt sell outside the US) and I never got an email from him...then a few days later his account was deleted. So I try a third time, someone buys...same thing...never hear from them then there account was deleted. Yeah im done with ebay.
I wish there was a way to force it to where no one could big unless they have allready purchased x amount of items...but i guess everyone would do that and no new people would be able to buy.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
As the story points out, now the guy is listing his auction 4 times instead of 2. The CEO has doubled listing fees! In fact, I bet she has increased just about every profitable area possible. eBay is content with the number of auctions it has, now they're just milking the addicted users for fees. In the world of business, she should be getting an award. What the poster should be complaining about is the lack of auction competition.
you idiot, chinese do not sell items for free unless it's to other chinese, IE THEY CAN ONLY LIST IT ON EBAY CHINA for free, you will never see this listing UNLESS YOU CAN READ FUCKING CHINESE and risk getting screwed because those auctions are china only, you clueless idiot. this is because their domestic competitor also allows free listings. it's all internal and domestic *only*, so don't go getting your panties in a bunch, loser.
a chinese listing on ebay.com or ebay.co.uk pays EXACTLY the same fees you would.
next time get a clue and then post.
Having to list an item 4 times on ebay to sell it is not indicative of a management lapse at ebay, but rather that either the seller has a misguided idea of the value of their product, or the economy is not as good now as it used to be. I vote option B.
What our government is trying to hide from us is that the world economy is in the beginning of a horrific collapse, which will go down in history as being sparked by the depletion of our energy resources and resulting price spike. Our government lied to us all throughout the 1990's about how great the economy was, and the resulting crash left many people penniless. Then, the government "fixed" the problem by creating another artificial boom, this one in housing. For the past 5 years, people have been hyper-extending themselves on adjustable mortgages to buy houses they couldn't really afford. Now that the economy has seen all the benefit it can from the second artificial boom, the housing market has crashed (not in terms of value, but in terms of peoples' monthly payments on their ARM), the government has nowhere to go.
We are about to see an implosion in the housing market that is going to make the dot-bust of the 1990's look like losing a quarter in a slot machine. We are at a point where we can no longer control inflation because we have sent enough money overseas that foreign governments now control the supply of US currency in the world. We BORROWED the money we sent them against the hyper-inflated housing values we created artifically in the early 2000s. Now, all the foreign governments like China and Iran have to do is flood the world with those borrowed US dollars to drive hyper-inflation in the US. Combine that with a crash in the only assets in the US that have real value, and the rest of the world will simply be able to buy us out.
Scary... truly scary... so your ebay problems are a lot bigger than you think...
Focusing on eBay's management is a nice exercise to vent frustration. But it is wasted. The value of eBay is completely encompassed within the buyers on the site. Far too many sellers gave up their ownership-rights to buyers when they got into bed with eBay. In my experience, most eBay sellers work their tails off finding product, writing great copy, taking wonderful pictures and offering great customer service after the sale. Then, when a listing is sold, they repeat the same thing with another listing. Sounds like a winning strategy, right? Wrong. Notice the seller NEVER takes ownership of the buyer in the transaction. Rather the seller focuses on merchandising and shipping leaving it to eBay to bring the buyer to the sale. Do you not see something wrong with this picture? I know a highly respected seller (tens of thousands of positive feedback) who has complained about a lack of buyers for items he sells on eBay. He complained that he lists items now and gets a significant decrease in selling prices and sell-thru rates. Ok -- all true. When I asked the seller why didn't he try to sell the item to one of the TENS OF THOUSANDS of existing buyers who already made a past purchase from him -- I got a blank reply. It was almost as if he had never thought of his own TENS OF THOUSANDS of past customers as his customers. Instead he seemed to feel that by listing on "eBay," they somehow had the obligation to get "a" buyer -- be it a new buyer or an old buyer. Times have changed. The single greatest asset a seller has is their customer list. There is no intrinsic value in being able to list as many items as you can on eBay. There is no sustainable value in having the lowest cost sourcing, warehousing and shipping operation. Whoever who owns the customer wins. Period. Sellers need to adopt that idea rather than complain that eBay management.
Since eBay owns Paypal, not only does eBay get a % of every transaction, they also get an additional % of any transaction through Paypal. In my opinion, they should give a discounted Seller transaction fee to any successful eBay auction paid via Paypal.
The item search should list the shipping cost and save user search preferences. I always check "Seller in US" and "USD Only". I've seen too many auctions with a $13 or greater shipping cost, many of which are scammy transactions from Korea. Also I have seen Sellers with false addresses such as "Korea, Michigan". They need to (1) take a more active hand in scanning the user data and (2) document their user scanning techniques to pass on to other employees. I used to work for a company that performed fraud checks. The main fraud checker could write a book on checking for fraud, but when his position was moved, the new fraud checker had no idea what he was doing and inherited maybe 10% of the knowledge.
The problems that you describe can in large part be attributed to phishing and resulting stolen eBay accounts. I used to work at eBay and we knew very well that the mob (primarily eastern European) was the major player in phishing. However, there was nothing that we could do. We weren't a law enforcement body and had no jurisdiction or even proof that something was up until the first complaint by a buyer that had actually been scammed by a hacked account. Then we'd immediately pull the auctions and freeze it.
The number of hacked accounts thanks to phishing ran into the tens of thousands PER DAY. I can only imagine the nightmare the banking industry must be suffering as a result of phishing right now. And to add insult to injury, the phishing victims were by and large incapable of understanding what had happened to them, and many turned around and tried to sue eBay because they assumed that eBay had committed the fraud using their identity. ("What do you mean that email was a fake? You're all liars and frauds, that email clearly had an official eBay logo on it and I followed the instructions exactly. eBay is ruining my good name to engage in fraud. I WANT IT STOPPED!")
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I can see your point, but I don't think it makes sense for the buyer to wait on feedback until the end of the auction.
Maybe two-stage feedback for buyers? The first stage could even be automatic if they use paypal-- it's positive the second you've paid. The second stage is for after the whole thing is over, and is mandatory for both sides. (ie, no new buying/selling from your account until you've left it.)
I just don't think it's fair to ask a buyer to wait for feedback when their obligation is completed at payment, and using buyer feedback as "ransom" to ensure positive feedback for sellers completely breaks the intent of the system. Operating like that, everybody gives positive feedback even when undeserved just to make sure they don't get any negatives. It leaves the door open for unscrupulous sellers to use feedback as retaliation.
There are actually Slashdot posters that know what's going on in international economics! Wow.
This guy's got it right, folks.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I used to tolerate the rediculous eBay fees. Then they implemented a policy where if you accept PayPal, you have to accept credit cards. Which means you have to have a Premiere Account (or whatever it is called). If someone sent you a payment requesting to pay with a credit card, you were forced to accept it and upgrade your account or face being in violation of their policy.
If you tried to restrict forms of payment in the auction terms, your auctions got pulled.
I cancelled my account and when asked for a reason, told them that this policy is greedy and heavy handed. Their canned reply was that it "protects the community" (from what?).
You can't make much money from eBay these days due to the insane double dipping of fees and the ever-increasing amount of those fees.
If I want to sell something, I put it on Craigslist and ask for their best offers. Works wonderfully.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
I think the biggest problem with ebay is sniping- it's really almost worthless to bid on things because unless you are there at the VERY last second, someone will overbid you by one dollar and win it. If there were a mechanism whereby by each person bid once, instead of multiple times in just a few seconds, perhaps it would increase the usefullness of the site. I would like to purchase things but I DON'T feel like sitting in front of ebay 24x7 just to win something.
"'EBay's core (auction) performance is suffering tremendously,' says Steve Grossberg, a longtime videogame seller on eBay. He says he now lists an item four times on average in order to sell it, up from two listings two years ago. Adds Andy Mowery, an eBay seller of home and garden gear: 'It is time for new leadership at eBay.'"
The OP of the article is a retard. Did he ever stop to think that more competition within eBay, plus buyers being more fickle, are possibly the cause? Perhaps he set a starting bid too high, or a reserve price (I personally won't bother with a reserve price auction unless the reserve is listed in the auction text, and it's below what I'd bid anyways...). Funny how it's eBay's fault his stuff isn't selling - maybe people are finally wisening up to the $14.95 shipping and handling for that game CD that the OP seller probably had listed....
Just because it's more difficult to sell on Ebay does NOT mean the problem is management, it means there's more traffic (buyers and sellers), so you have more competition. It may take twice as long to sell a game as 2 years ago, but I'm willing to bet there's well more than twice as many video games on Ebay now, as there were then.
Ebay's BLOAT has got out of hand. Pages are enormous now and even when I'm shopping or browsing it is limiting the number of pages I can load on a dial-up line in a give time span. I eventually lose patience with staring at white screens loading and do something else.
As a seller, I can't believe how huge the selling pages have become. I dread listing any more than 10 items at a time, because the bandwidth is so fsking thick. I'm taking a break from selling things because I just can't stand the time necessary to go through it all.
Other issues: I bought something from someone who maintains an online store and a storefront on eBay. They turned out to be out of the item and asked if I wanted a refund while I was waiting for shipping confirmation. Damn. They say eBay doesn't offer decent inventory interfaces for store owners. So clearly there's a problem there as well.
Then I also hate being asked for my password repeatedly when shifting between eBay and PayPal, buying and selling, etc. There are some simple tricks to keeping the last login active, but still. It's a bit Microsoftie the way these groups don't seem to talk to each other.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
eBay has become overrun with power sellers dumping loads of items at prices higher than available elsewhere. Couple that with the high fraud rates and what once was an enjoyable experience picking through lists of interesting and unique items has becomea crawl through a crappy flea market full of pick pockets and con artists.
Don't listen to parent! Parent has bad ratings and doesn't pay for auctions! Seller beware!
Grandparent is A+++++ first poster. Will recommend to all. Will read grandparent's post again
Is there anyone who think eBay's feedback system is truly useful or even fair? I get slammed when people don't pay and think they are funny. People ignore terms of auctions and think I'm unprofessional for not bending over backward. People don't ship my stuff because they found out the postage is way higher than they thought and decide to just keep my money. It's a sin how bad it is.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ebay doesn't care, they won't help with fraud because most of it is from over seas. For example I bought a $100 Engineering text book, that was supposedly a hard cover U.S edition. When It came it was paper back and the text wasn't english at all. Ebay did nothign to help me and when I went to leave negative feedback ti told me the seller was "on vacation" and I couldn't leave feedback. Now I have an expensive chinese paper weight.
Basically, this guy scammed a bunch of people in a short period of time and then marked that he was on vacation so no one could leave feedback. Then once the deadline for leaving feedback passed he was magically back selling again, but I couldn't leave feedback anymore.
I've had other minor experiences like this where "like new" really meant "utterly destroyed", so I have stop using Ebay. They need to help customers with fraud otherwise even the insane book store prices are better than the scams!
Although it's not appropriate for all types of items, I'm really glad that craigslist.org is available as an eBay alternative. Recently I had to sell some large, heavy items and found the craigslist site much easier to use and also free of charge.
Perhaps someone can take a note from the Craigslist playbook and design something to compete with eBay on a worldwide scale. Google base perhaps? Anything less cluttered than eBay, where sellers are not nickel-and-dimed to death for every little thing would be a welcome alternative.
Yup. I've been buying more stuff from Amazon Marketplace and less from eBay, because prices on eBay are ridiculous once you factor in the usual price gouging on the shipping.
On the other hand, I haven't had any problem selling stuff on eBay, because I pick a reasonable starting price and charge fair shipping rates.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
So, now the new problem will be people scheduling bids through programs and such. Kind of unfair since they are way faster than human bidders.
I personally am an E-bay sniper, it's stupid to bid on somethign that has 5 days left. You just make yourself pay more money.
Have you been on eBay lately? The lack of sales has nothing to do with the management of the company. It is the type and quality of merchindise that is on the auction now that is causing a slow down.
Back in the day you could get deals, now it is mostly stuff selling for retail or more not to mention the countless auctions for total crap.
The sellers need to get a clue like the MPAA, stop selling crap for more then I can go to Wally Mart and people might buy your stuff.
Do you clearly state that in your auctions? I, for one, am tired of paying for an item 5 minutes after the auction closes and leaving feedback as soon as I receive it, but then getting shafted because the seller is too busy to leave me feedback. I've made it a policy to never buy from sellers who do this. After all, I'm the one with the money.
Well, being security minded I will not use the same account for banking that I use for something else. That's why I won't touch Google's e-commerce offerings.
Think about it--would you walk into a store, hand over your wallet at the door and say "Hey, I trust you, take whatever's appropriate"?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Horse hockey.
eBay is simply becoming more efficient, as people become more sophisticated about buying. Up until about a year ago, I found it easy to sell things at a very good return relative to my initial investment. Things would be bid up to irrational levels - sometimes beyond its current retail value, new. It was basically good to be a seller, and often difficult to find a bargain as a buyer.
Now, people are more savvy about shopping - they are better educated as to values of things.
Calling for a management change is silly.
Bill Point (dead dogs don't do tricks) or PayPal (buying it at like 5x the original requested value) or Skype (biggest loss of money in history of big online corporations) bungle would have gotten any other CEO replaced by the board, but it seems as long as eBay has money Meg will find a way to spend it on a dead end venture. Just reading all the highlight articles on any finance site will get you scratching your head...
eBay is the world's garage sale. Maybe no one wants to buy your used crap anymore. Maybe the world is completely saturated with used crap and all the people who wanted to sell used crap to one another have bought and sold all the used crap they plan on. Also I think eBay seems to have convinced itself that used crap is worth more than it is. Maybe the used crap you want to sell really is practically worthless instead of 90% of retail new, like you think.
I'm not sure what eBay can do in the face of Craigslist. I've personally started using CraigsList and I know several others who have as well. I sold equipment on Craigslist far faster than ebay at a better price. I actually went and removed my account from eBay because I was tired of their price increases.
I just don't bother with ebay anymore.
I'd like to propose, too, that eBay take the ratio of sales completed to sales listed into consideration for feedback scores for sellers. This would definitely quickly identify sellers who list items at overinflated prices that do not sell, and those who list "BUY INFO TO GET FREE XBOX360 AND POWERBOOK" auctions, which rarely sell as well.
I'd much rather do my business with someone who's listed auctions in which most of the items have sold.
As a long-time eBayer myself (both buying and selling), I see several glaring flaws, and a few smaller nit-picks. In (basically) an order of importance, I'd say:
1. Fraud is *way* too high! In some categories, it's not really a big issue. But for customers shopping for higher-ticket, more desirable goods, it's a severe problem! If, for example, you're shopping for new Apple products (from iPods to Macbook Pros), you can find obviously fraudulent auctions practically EVERY time you do a search. Worse yet, there are a lot of not-so-obvious frauds out there. EG. I recently tried to buy a used iPod 20GB from a guy that appeared to own a used book-store of some sort. He claimed he had something like 50 used 20GB iPods for sale, as well as 40-something shuffles. By the look of the photos he displayed, it appeared he had used them as loaners for some kind of audio-book rental program his store ran, and these were just being auctioned off since they were older units. I placed a bid, as did many other people. But then the auction got terminated at the last minute, and his account was suspended for fraud.
2. Too costly to sell some items! If you're trying to use eBay for its intended original purpose (sort of a flea market or garage sale to "recycle" your stuff you'd otherwise throw away), the fees usually eat up all your profits. If, say, I want to auction off a broken CD player for spare parts value - I'm only going to realistcally get maybe $5 or so out of it. That would be fine, except if the buyer pays me via PayPal, PayPal (owned by eBay) gets a chunk. eBay charges me both the listing fee and a final value sale fee too. Not to mention, re-listing fees if the thing doesn't sell the first couple times I put it out there. (And on something like this, heck - it probably won't! It's just something you want to relist until you luck into finding that person who happens to need exactly what you've got.) If you make a small mistkae on estimating your shipping costs on top of that, you can easily end up paying someone to win your auction!
3. Too much abuse in the feedback system. I really like the idea someone else posted here, where a positive feedback (with no comment) would get posted by default after X number of days, unless someone made an effort to do otherwise. I'm tired of the people who email, begging for feedback, or getting upset that you're "taking too long" to get around to it. I'm tired of the retaliation stunts people pull, where leaving a legitimate negative feedback guarantees you'll get an undeserved one in return. And I'm tired of feedback comments only being 1 line long. (On a positive, what are they gonna type anyway? May as well make a macro that says "A++++ Would do business again!" It's always something like that.) You don't get enough space to explain the reason you're giving a negative either. It's hard not to just look like a jerk with only 80 chars. or less to explain yourself.
4. eBay stores are a joke. I looked into them once, for a former employer, and they were *so* unattractive an option for us compared to practically anyone else offering e-commerce web sites with shopping carts. They just look too much like the rest of their site. Sure, the items come up in everybody's regular auction searches - but so what? That's sort of like me starting my own line of new cars, and instead of building my own showrooms, I negotiate a deal with Chevy to sell mine in a portion of their showroom space. Yeah, I get a lot of "exposure" that way - but it still makes my business look "second rate" compared to Chevy. eBay stores look like someone just had a bunch of normal auction listings, and paid to get them put under a different "eBay stores" heading. You can't even really customize the presentation of your listings.
"He says he now lists an item four times on average in order to sell it, up from two listings two years ago."
Here's a tip, set the auction price at $0.01 to start, and let people bid it up to what *they* think it's currently worth. You'll sell your items the *first* time.
The feedback system is broken due to people either not leaving it all, or using it in a quid pro quo fashion.
Here's one idea:
* Make feedback mandatory. Either make auctions more expensive to both parties if you don't leave it, or actually reduce feedback scores if none if left after a certain period. I mean, isn't a seller or buyer who takes the time more valuable than one who doesn't?
* Do not post feedback from either party until both parties leave it.
That's it. If you do this, new seller are going to be very anxious to establish good scores, and they'll actually have to be good sellers to do it. Old seller will want to prevent their existing scores from eroding (which will happen quickly if they don't reform their behavior).
Of course, eBay would likely see less money in the short term. But, if they don't do something, they'll enter conventional wisdom as something to avoid, and they'll be done.
jh
I've been the victim of this, got negative feedback for no other reason than because i gave someone neutral feedback, which i thought was fair considering the state i got the goods in. But that was when i was starting out and didn't realise that even putting "everything hunky dory" and positive feedback wasnt good enough, nope, positive feedback is only properly positive if it has 12 As and 18 +s
And so this is just one reason why sellers wait to post feedback.
But in the end, this whole argument is silly - feedback is MUCH more important to sellers than to buyers. Sellers will sell to buyers who have a couple negs, but often more than a few negs is very detrimental to the business of a seller.
This isn't insanity. This is sellers attempting to set the market price for an item. If you have 10 items to sell, you split that into two groups of five. The first five you list above market value with a BuyItNow. The second five you list slightly below market value. You sell the second group, and probably one or two from the first group. Even if you don't sell any from group one you have still flashed five auctions in front of viewers that effectively alters the eBay price of an item.
damaged by dogma
More recently, I've noticed that ebay has started for many auctions to list shipping beside the price in the search/summary page. For the buyer, this is a good idea, as sellers like to pick up some extra coin in shipping (not a bad thing), but some pretty much pull the majority of their revenue from massively overinflated shipping costs. For example, a gamecube game might go for $20-30... but when the shipper is asking $40 to ship the damn thing then it costs more than it would at the store. Some sellers don't list shipping, so you have to be careful to ask ahead of time and hope they answer back before auction close.
What they need now, from a buyer's viewpoint, is a better sorting system (a way to sort on cost incl shipping), a way to opt out of viewing those damn bulk-list auctions, and of course a better way to deal with fraud. People come to ebay because they're looking for a deal, when sellers are getting tricky with shipping, insurance, and other silly little things it isn't a deal anymore, and it's not worth saving $4 on a $50 item when you have to wait weeks for delivery.
You typically have to conduct the transaction face to face, rather than using paypal and mail.... and some categories are swamped by posts and your listing gets buried because the search system sucks.
Man, you really need that seminar!
It's also about visibility. While ebay has modified their search+listing system to show the shipping costs, for many of the auctions I see this is still blank, and the little box at the bottom says "see item decription" wherein the shipping cost is hidden within a mass of tables, coloured text, and pictures.
The first thing that the buyer sees is "item X" at a low cost. It's enough at least to get that first viewing, and sometimes enough to snag an unwary bidder who doesn't notice the immense shipping cost. Sure, I wouldn't mind paying $0.50 more in shipping costs, but the fact is that sometimes the shipping is 100% the cost of the actual item, which is far beyond covering the ebay 'expenses'
There are still deadbeat buyers out there. People who throw out fake money orders, claim items weren't delivered that were, etc etc. They're the dirty counterparts to sellers who don't ship items, ship the wrong thing on purpose, or ship broken stuff.
What they need is a feedback system wherein neither person sees the other's feedback until their own is posted. That way it would eliminate the issue of posting nasty response-feedback.
Perhaps if the submitter Misspelled their listings they would sell better.
...18...19...20 Submit
Not your credit card, your wallet, including your cash and your ATM card and its PIN.
Remember, PayPal is not a bank, and for many people PayPal is linked to a real bank account that can be drained.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Or
Feedback by irrationalBuyer: ITEM OKAY...BUT SLOW SHIPING
Reply by haplessSeller: Auction ended 8-17, paid 8-24, shipped 8-24
Follow-up by irrationalBuyer: YEAH, BUT IT STIL TOOK OVER 1 WK--SLOW SHIPING!!!!!!
The reason things are turning over slowly on eBay is because of the sellers.
A friend is going to get an imported GSM phone. He is cruising various sellers and eBay. He was jazzed on eBay because he had the perception of getting a great deal. Like maybe that phone will slip out for 2/3rds value.
But another friend said "when was the last time you got a great deal on eBay"?
And that's the problem. These people do this for a living, and everyone knows it now. When eBay was people selling junk in their garage, it went cheap and fast. Then it didn't go so cheap, but it still went fast.
Now the buyers know better than to thing everything on eBay is a steal. So they are more careful about buying.
And now, since eBay is really just like a virtual (consignment) store not a virtual auction house and everyone knows it, stuff sits on the virtual shelves longer. That's how stores work.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I would buy more from eBay if the shipping fees on many of the auctions wern't twice the price I can get the item for in the store. It seems many sellers use the shipping fees to pad their pockets a bot more. $29.95 to ship a pencil. come on! If the item plus shipping is within $10 or so then I will go to the store and buy it. I pay slightly more but I get the joy of instant gratification rather than waiting around three weeks for my item to arrive. - "Just realize that 99.9% of the world doesn't give a crap about anything you do, and all that paranoia just slips away. That's what I did."
Recently, I went to buy a camcorder on Ebay and found what I thought to be a reputable dealer. I examined the merchandise, knew that there was some padding in the price for unneeded options, but overall it was a price I was willing to pay. I checked the feedback and they are a powerseller with an over 10000 positive rating. I purchased the equipment using Buy It Now, the seller still had at least one more item available in this multi-unit auction. I paid immediately since I had to have it quickly. Two days after I paid, Ebay mails me and tells me that the auction was taken down for infringement issues. I call the company and they assure me it is because of a dispute over the picture of the equipment shown in the auction. When I received the equipment, I have an issue with some of the equipment I received and try to deal with company. Company will not budge. So I go to leave feedback on the transaction on Ebay. I found out that this auction was cancelled and I had no ability to leave any kind of comments. So there was no way to post my negative experience. I was finally able to use resellerratings to get my point across, which resulted in a call from a manager at the company and a quick resolution to the problem. Until that point, they were unwilling to help. So in this case, I could have been taken advantage of by the seller and never would have the chance to post my experience. The answer I got from Ebay was that there was nothing they could do since it was a cancelled auction, even though I paid the seller previously. I also find that there is a traffic in $.01 listings, whose only real function is to bolster their ratings. After 90 days, all details of the auction are dropped except the auction number, so there is no way to tell if the person bought a $.01 item or $5000.00 item. You ahev to really know what you are doing when you examine personal feedback. -kevin
Bad business model.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I have been selling on ebay for years and I know one thing for certain, ebay is killing itself. It is a nasty cycle that has started. Remember when a seller could list for under 30 cents and there was no such thing as a gallery picture????????? Over the past few years ebay has been increasing the selling fees dramatically. I am a small business/artist, and it is killing me. This is my thought, it is a nasty domino affect. Ebay raises the prices to list and sell to try to control the opening bid (and to make more money for themselves)......sellers have to raise their prices to compensate for the increases in selling. Ebay started the stores option, which allowed sellers to list in their store for less and only get hit hard for the final value fee. Ebay decided that the balance was uneven and increased the prices to sellers for the stores....... So, I work 16 hours a day, every day, no such thing as a weekend around here, to give ebay/paypal 20%. If you want to see ebay prosper it needs to go back to where it all started. One post comes to mind, that a seller had to relist 4 times. Each time that item is relisted the seller pays for it. So now a video game that should have sold for $10 has to sell for $15. The more it sells for the more ebay takes, the more paypal takes. It is a hard gamble to take to list an item at a price that makes you lose money. Personally, I am trapped with ebay. I need an income to survive. No other site comes close to offering me the volume of buyers that ebay has. Ebay knows it. My saving grace is I love the art I make...so sadly, with ebay I remain.
eBay knows that it is the sellers who pay the bills so they set things up to favor them. This has the effect of chasing away buyers. Almost everyonr I know agrees that ebay is a good place to sell because you can take advantage of dumb buyers who will over pay just so they can "win" But no one I knwo would buy anything there. So what you have is an army of sellers all chasing a limimited number buyers
Me and I'm sure most people concider eBay a "high risk" market place. You have a good chance of fraud or otherwise getting ripped off. If you do find something being sold by a "real person" not some shoe string reseller then some other buyer will over bid. Good for the buyer but a pointless waste of time for me. The other total waste of time is "reserve price" Why don't they say what the minum price is? Total waste of my time
The bottom line is that thee are few good deals on eBay I figure half the sellers are people unloading crap out of their pawn shops while posing ast private party sellers
If the sellers want to sell on eBay they will have to figure out how to attact a more buyers. Here is how: (1) Make it easy for buyers to REALLY find out who they are buying from. Require EVERY seller to have a VERIFIED Name, street address and phone number. That is the only way to get rid of fraud. (2) Eliminate secret reserve prices. A minimum bid is OK. (3) spot check a higher percentage of the item descriptions (4) Base fees on the total transaction amount
I admit it, eBay created the situation with their fee structure. But that doesn't mean a buyer has to like it. It also doesn't mean he's stupid. There is some risk in doing a transaction on eBay, and smart people look for warning signs of higher risk.
I am not a crackpot.
You didn't pay for feedback, you paid for your item. There's no obligation on eBay for buyers and sellers to leave each other feedback. eBay is not in the personal validation business.
You can decline to buy from sellers who aren't forthcoming with feedback, but really you're only denying yourself the opportunity of some good deals.
its all about word of mouth.. when ebay fucks off, the sellers and buyers alike spread the word like wildfire.. they tell their friends how much ebay has been pissing them off, and it really shows in the sales reports.. i've been selling Historical Documents on ebay for 5 years now, and business has always been up and down.. but it really sucks when business is down, and the rates increase.. it hurts us rather than helps us.. what the fuck is ebay doing with our money?? I haven't gotten any new help nor seen any benefit from these rate increases.. If the rate increases are supposedly "good for the company and good for sellers" how come its not paying off?? Its like taxes.. They can potentially be a great thing, but the people collecting the fucking money are just putting it right in their pockets...
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
I think you are onto something in your analysis. If fees come down, I would assume their revenues would go higher.
Not to mention the Paypal fees that go on top of this.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
>One simple solution would be to REQUIRE sellers to leave feedback to get their Paypal money. Once they've gotten paid I've held up my end of the bargain.
Screw that. I never leave feedback unless it's negative. I don't give kudos to people for doing proper business. I once got hounded half a dozen times from some seller to leave feedback for them. Screw that. It's a business transaction. You got my money, I got my product, now shut up and leave me alone.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I know multiple people that stopped selling. These are ebay's customers, they pay hefty fees.
If the sellers are not selling as well, they stop.
The market has gone down, but eBay responds (and to the demands of its stockholders to make more money) by ratcheting up their own fees. They have done this countless times.
My seller friends complain that they are there, not to make money for themselves as their own margins have been squeezed extremely thin, but to make eBay money. The greed eBay has shown the last few years has lost them much loyalty and many good sellers. A lot of them started selling locally again and have done better that way.
Meanwhile, Meg Whitman (the CEO) has pocketed 3 billion (yes you read correctly) for becoming CEO (no, she did not found the company nor was on the startup team) when it was already a done deal and in the top dog position.
Something is out of whack in this situation.
Perhaps a refinement, with semi-volunteers. Offer buyers meeting certain criteria (say, 95%+ positive feedback, 25 net minimum, at least one item bought in each of the last three quarters, et cetera) the option to hunt and nominate auctions as bogus. The hunter specifies why from a few common problems ("Banned item", "information-only auction outside information-only category", etc), and "other", where they fill in a field with the reason. Hunters may not nominate auctions from any seller they have offered a bid to in the last 30 days. Auctions are suspended immediately on nomination.
Employees make the final decisions. If the hunter was in error, it's a demerit on his hunting record, and the item can be relisted (with the same description) internally flagged as ineligible for "hunting". Perhaps even offer a partial rebate of the original listing fee.
In addition to employees, have an intermediate reviewer category, based on good performance as hunters; like Slashdot meta-mods, they get presented a list of nominees to agree with or not (or say "not sure). Reviewers are only shown items they were eligible to hunt. Items get forwarded for final action when at least five have voted, stopping when 2/3 or more agree on the disposition, or after 10 have seen it. Employees can thus triage, sorting through those where reviewers vote mostly bogus (bad auction) or mostly legit (bad hunter) first, getting through the "no-brainer" stuff first. Reviewers or hunters who are consistently too far out of line with final actions loose eligibility for those functions.
This is much like the original proposal. What's the refinement? Money.
Except for things under "other" reasons, auctions yanked this way charge a $0.50 fee to the attempted seller, first incident waived. Multiple incidents may cause the seller account to be frozen (say, 30 days), and require an amount be escrowed to cover the risk of future fees. A bounty (say, ten cents) of the fee goes to the hunter who first finds the bad auction, a penny (or some fraction) to each reviewer. The rest covers the costs of an appeals process. If a new type of bad auction begins to clutter up the process, increase the bounty.
Hunters and reviewers will have an incentive: a little money while they browse Ebay. If they deviate too much from the expected end result, they're no longer doing the job, so the number of re-listings should be kept low. And the employees can get through the no-brainer bad auctions a lot faster. The review feed can be adjusted based on the number of reviews needed to be done, or to offer more accurate reviewers more frequent chances to review.
I've probably missed something. What way can bad guys scam this?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
It's the fault of all those sellers trying to 'optimize' their listings. The more people 'optimize', the harder it is for buyers to find what they really want.
The sellers have tried to trick people into buying their products all sorts of ways. Sky-high shipping on cheap items, misleading listings, high reserves... and now they complain because nobody buys? It's not Ebay that's the problem, it's the sellers.
eBay is slumping because because its average sale is not attractive to buyers.
It doesn't take a genius to see that $9 for outdated flash memory + $22.15 shipping & handling is not a good deal (apparently your tiny flash memory card will be delivered by an academy award-winning actor).
The quality of eBay is directly proportional to the quality of the average seller, which has been consistently poor since around 2001.
What would happen if the IRS audited all "power sellers" to make sure they're reporting their eBay sales revenue (item prices + inflated shipping and handling)?
sounds like you dont quite get the concept of a marketplace.
sellers should be able to list items for sale for whatever price they want.
buyers should be able to decide whether they want to pay that price or not.
Speaking as a soon-to-be first-time home buyer, I hope the housing market crashes as soon as possible in my county. House pricing is way out of whack where I live compared to the income of the residents. We have a lot of people who earned their fortunes in other states and come here to buy a house and "live the good life." Problem is, it is killing the market for those of us who work here! Gentrification sucks.
The last few years consumer spending was wild due to huge home equity gains. These gains were extracted at a record pace to buy all sorts of [junk] on Ebay among other things. Now that the ATM is out of order, these sellers are feeling the pain. Gotta keep the roof over your head instead of video games in the Playstation. I won't even get started on the Adjustable Rate Mortgages that will reset in 2008, further destroying consumer spending. Its no coincidence EBAY's stock is near its 52 week low, you think its cheap now, wait a year or two.
I don't recall having said that they shouldn't be allowed to list whatever prices that they want. Taking this into account in the feedback system, as I mentioned, will not only allow buyers to avoid (say, during search by specifying certain criteria) those obnoxious sellers who flood eBay with hundreds of "FREE XBOX AND IPOD!!!" ads that make it difficult to actually find XBoxes and iPods on eBay, but will as well help identify poor sellers, i.e. sellers who do not seem to know how to successfully price their items to sell. Not selling what you have listed is an indication of failure: if you are a seller, your intent should be to sell. As the rating system is supposed to provide a measure of quality of the seller, I think it's perfectly reasonable to consider this factor.
As many have pointed out, the current feedback system is loaded with shortcomings; I was simply proposing one factor that might be worth considering in a reimplementation. *shrugs* You're free to disagree if you like.
Ebay in its early days was a wonderful experience. It ushered in an unprecedented, powerful, and exciting service: The 24/7 world-wide electronic garage sale. Suddenly, that unusual antique lampshade or rare DVD box set was just a bid away. That's how I viewed Ebay, an internet bazaar of bargains from the closet and hard to find items.
Then the power sellers set up shop, and now the results of your search for a 1950's era toaster were suddenly clutterred with 240 identical auctions for "high speed DSL". Ebay has a long way to go to restore sanity to its marketplace and improve buyer confidence. Here's two suggestions:
1) Allow buyers to filter out power sellers. For example, "Click here to limit your search to sellers with less than five items currently up for auction on Ebay."
2) Require all auctions to include shipping costs and other hidden charges in the current bidding price (like http://pricewatch.com/) . You pay exactly what you bid. No surprise exorbitant shipping fees.
Sweet!! It could work like Slashdot moderation.
;-)
A++++ Post. +5 MOD ME UP
I think I found my new sig.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
Auto extend auctions with bids in the last few minutes.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
eBay's sell-through rate (percent of listings that end in a sale) for auction listings hasn't changed noticeably since 2003. The rate for BIN (Buy It Now) listings has dropped from approx. 70% to 50-55%.
http://www.medved.net/cgi-bin/cal.exe?SIND
It seems that fewer buyers are inclined to pay what sellers think they can ask.
Freecycle for the win. It's free everything from paving slabs, laptops, cars, you name it someone is giving it away.
Depending on what you're bidding on, some sellers do indeed care about a buyer's feedback. I've encountered auctions where the seller won't accept bids from a bidder who has low feedback, whether positive or negative. I've also seen bidders denied because their feedback suggested, to the seller, that this bidder might cause problems. Finally, and most sensibly, I've seen sellers reject bids from customers with whom they had problems in the past. Makes sense to me. It's like the really pushy guy who got thrown out of the convenience store down the street: the store owner eventually got tired of hearing his complaints and insinuating questions, and said, "You know what? The $5 in your hand isn't worth this hassle. Leave the store. Shop somewhere else. I don't want your business."
An eBay seller is not obliged to accept your bid.