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.'"

Comments

While I agree, it's for other reasons.

[Pitr]

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.

Re:While I agree, it's for other reasons.

[Pollardito]

it could easily be the case that high-volume sellers have moved onto EBay where it was mostly small inventory sellers before. each high-volume seller offsets lots of new buyers, so even if the number of new buyers was a lot larger than the number of new sellers it might be becoming a tougher market to sell in.

Re:While I agree, it's for other reasons.

[Pharmboy]

the fact that sellers need to list something multiple times now on average is a bloody good signal that there's massive oversupply in that market

or their asking price is simply too high based on simple supply/demand. Capitalism works and is quite simple: If supply rises higher than demand, the price will go down or you won't sell anything.

After all, isn't that why people BUY on ebay, to save money? The sheer volume of people who are trying to sell new goods for the exact same price (or higher) than I can buy on NewEgg or other sites is amazing. Same for used goods, where sellers are reserving the price at 80%-90% of new price. The market is simply catching up and normalizing.

We have been selling on ebay since 1998, and have seen and dealt with all the problems, fixes, etc. in real time, but when it comes right down to it: If you have a widget for sale, don't expect to get more for the widget than the current market value. Management can't do anything about market forces, they can only make sure the site always works, is easy to use, and everyone has a fair shake at displaying their wares.

Getting pissed because a game that sells for $10 at EB will only bring $10 on ebay is rather silly.

If ebay wants me back as a buyer

[antifoidulus]

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.

Re:If ebay wants me back as a buyer

[dfn_deux]

Ebay needs a 'list auctions by seller rating' or some such.

This is a terrible idea. The core seller rating and reputation system of ebay is greatly flawed. Sellers will not give buyers a positive feedback until after they themselves have received one, seems in cases where the purchaser uses paypal to complete the transaction that ebay should automatically positive feedback/reputation points as they have successfully confirmed that the buyers has fulfilled their part of the transaction. Instead sellers hold the positive feedback out as a carrot to buyers whom are forced to leave positive or no feedback in order to protect their own rating. In the end you get sellers with artificially high feedback scores.

Furthermore ebay gives no additional weight to people who complete high dollar transactions with positive feedback; such that a seller can do 1000 transactions for a dollar each and have a crazy high rating for when they decide to run a scam and screw someone out of several grand for a car or a piece of real estate.

A serious revamping of ebay is needed to increase buyer seller relations. My first recommendation would be to introduce a meta-moderation and abitration system whereby in cases of transactions gone bad both sides would have an opportunity to write a short summary of their view of the events (maybe 500 words or so) and then those stories would be available to be viewed side by side by random third parties who could declare fault and/or present an abitration suggestion which could then be presented back to the original parties, if the parties are able to resolve their issues through the arbitration suggestion the suggesting party might be given some additional positive feedback... In this way there is a benefit to all involved parties to act above board and behave responsibly, and even in cases which do not end with positive feedback the damaging effect of wrongly issued negative feedback could be minimized.

any how that's just my .02 I suppose their are others out there with more/better suggestions. In the meantime I'll stick to my mix of Brick & Mortar/Craigslist/Amazon shopping and only veer to ebay for items for which I have historically experienced little drama, such as used car parts with significant value and very low price (read 1972 pinto hatchback hubcaps)...

Re:If ebay wants me back as a buyer

[FireFury03]

seems in cases where the purchaser uses paypal to complete the transaction that ebay should automatically positive feedback/reputation points as they have successfully confirmed that the buyers has fulfilled their part of the transaction.

This is a terrible idea - there are many cases where _after_ the buyer has paid they cause trouble. For example, on one of my auctions I clearly stated that if you paid by cheque I wouldn't dispatch the goods until _after_ the cheque had cleared. The buyer posted me a cheque and then left negative feedback against me just 2 days after the cheque had arrived because they hadn't received the item yet.

I mean I don't know where to start:
1. they ignored the conditions stated in the auction for paying by cheque (they could've used paypal and avoided the problem)
2. they didn't give it enough time for the item to make it through the post even if I'd sent it as soon as I received the cheque
3. they didn't even bother to contact me to discuss the "problem" before dropping negative feedback on my account.

In this case I would've been very annoyed if the system had forced me to leave positive feedback for a buyer who caused nothing but trouble after "fullfilling their part of the transaction".

FWIW, I think feedback should be left by the buyer before the seller - that way by leaving positive feedback the buyer has confirmed that they have received the item with no problems. If there is a problem then it can be resolved before either party has left feedback. Remember that negative feedback should be fairly rare for legitimate sellers and noone should be leaving negative feedback without first trying to resolve the problem. (Maybe it would be worth publishing the communications that occurred between the two parties when leaving negative feedback so people can read the whole story and make their own minds up who was responsible for the bad transaction).

Re:If ebay wants me back as a buyer

[aussersterne]

I am an eBay seller, and I can tell you as someone who used to work at eBay that this would drive sellers off of eBay. There are an awful lot of buyers (maybe 20% of them) that hold THEIR feedback back until sellers give them perks, realizing that a seller who has 2,000 feedbacks that are 100% positive is going to go to great lengths to protect that. They demand free accessories, issue credit card chargebacks after receiving the item, demand that sellers accept a return (after they've swapped half the parts out to fix their own possessions and send you back a non-working item that has clearly been tampered with), claim that the $1,000 digital camera they bought doesn't work and then demand a replacement--while REFUSING to return the original "broken" one... They sue, launch Internet campaigns against specific sellers or against eBay, and all because they didn't get something for nothing.

There are even cases in which after failing to get free item(s) by demanding "no ship replacements" or other perks, such buyers have pulled the seller's contact information and proceeded to stalk them, traveling several states in order to be threatening. If seller's were to lose their ability to even leave a negative about such people once they'd made the initial payment, eBay would lost most of its major sellers who, let's not forget, actually pay eBay's bills.

Fraud is rampant on both sides, and nothing short of government regulation limiting just who is allowed to buy and sell in a society, period, is going to stop it. eBay doesn't do themselves any favors when they screw legitimate buyers or sellers, but to assume that sellers are responsible for all the fraud is to make a very incorrect assumption.

What ebay needs.

[Frogbert]

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.

Re:The biggest problem with eBay is this:

[dbc]

Damn straight. I don't frequent E-Bay anymore. Too hard to find what I want. Way too much fraud. The feedback system is a joke.

E-Bay has had this crazy idea that their customer is the seller. Well, their direct customer is the seller, but the seller's customer is the buyer, so E-Bay needs to start focusing on making buyers happy. If the buyer is not happy, the buyer will not come back. The whole system then colapses in a smoldering heap.

E-Bay keeps trying to police the buyers, and gives the sellers a free pass when ever they can. Thus, they have created the first planet-wide den of theives.

It's pretty damn simple. Follow the money. The buyers are the only ones feeding money into the system. How can E-Bay be so blind to that?

My formula for turning E-Bay around:
1. Stop treating buyers like thieves, treat them like valued customers.
2. Stop treating sellers like customers, treat them like sub-contract employees.

Yes, look at auctions

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Prices!

[Dun Malg]

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.

Yeah, people don't understand ebay. You can usually make more money starting an item off at $1.00 with no reserve. The possibility of a "great deal" sucks people in. They'll end up paying $75 for an item because they're determined to get it, while a similar item starting at $65 won't get a single bid! That and, as you say, charging fair rates on shipping helps a lot. Nothing bugs people like $35 shipping on an item that comes in a $4.85 flat-rate USPS box.