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eBay Battles Power Sellers
DigitalDame2 writes "eBay power sellers, angered by the recent eBay policy changes, have been hitting back the auction site with listing boycotts and now with accusations of fake listings and forum censorship. EBay admitted that a "bug" in its system had accidentally placed listings from eBay-owned shopping.com onto eBay.com late Friday night. A California-based seller's new eBay listings did not allow users to actually bid on his items. "This guy has over 35,000 items. And there is no button for a 'buy it now' and no button for making a bid." As a result, sellers are threatening to take their complaints to the Federal Trade Commission, but eBay is not backing down." Normally I wouldn't really care, but I think this is interesting because eBay is so dominant in their field, that there is no real alternative. Watching how things like this play out is interesting to me because I want to believe that the internet will require everyone to be more responsible or lose. But the real question for me is at what point does total marketplace dominance trump that.
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Ebay has had a major drop in its stock value over the past few months. I believe that, since the actual number of auctions/bidders has dropped, this was an attempt to get more money from those people still doing decent business... Power Sellers.
Seeing as to how stock is back on the rise, it appears to have worked from that standpoint. At least for the time being...
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You'd think with all of the complaints eBay has from both sellers and buyers that an alternative would have blossomed by now. I've used eBay extensively to buy and sell goods, but I'd love to have an alternative auction-style, online marketplace to delve into. Paypal seems to be eBay's killer app, but you'd think Mastercard and/or Visa could come up with something else to compete and go get those dollars from fees and such.
Why do people make such a big deal about sniping? It matters not to me as a buyer or a seller. If I'm buying, and I find something that I can get a reasonable price, maybe I don't want to get mired in a bidding war. I punch in the max I'm willing to pay, and I'm done. As a seller, I appreciate the last second bump in price for the stuff I sell.
Everybody knows the end date/time and should know how much they're willing to pay. What's unfair or difficult about that?
The last time eBay did a major change to their fee structure, I was a large power seller.
I sold jewelry $15-%50 range. Mainly silver with gemstones, almost no costume. I had a rating of about 9000 and % positive of 99.7. I was netting about 35K a year. My system worked on volume. I would make $0.50 to $1.00 per sale. At that size I ended up sending eBay about $70K a year.
The last time they cahnged their fees they essentially killed my profit margin. Now I could have adjusted at that point and probably survived but at the same time they started using some incredibly poorly written bots. These bots decided I was selling illegale stuff and even though I had exceptional records eBay refused to have a human even look at what the bots were reporting.
After over a year fighting with eBay and holding my last months worth of fees (about 2K) I finally got someone from their collections department to give me some information...I ended up settling the debt for $1600 plus a printout of what the bot was reporting.
To sum up, because eBay did not treat me fairly while at the same time demanding more money from me I have completly left them and they no longer get my $70,000 a year in fees.
While eBay is still huge, Google and other search engines provide independent sellers almost as much visibility so I predict that these sort of heavy handed tactics will only speed eBay's decline from the throne of online reselling services.
Since my feedback just recently went over 1,000, eBay keeps sending me e-mail to jon the PowerSeller program. I told them what they could do with it...
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Because if you go to a real auction house, the auction doesn't end until the bidding ends... so as a seller, if your auction is sniped, then you aren't making as much money as you possibly could. With GB's 15 minute rule, the max value for the item is reached - or rather, an opportunity is given to all buyers to reach the max value.
Although I do agree - when I'm buying, I put in what I'm willing to pay and if I win, I win...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Some Power Sellers have it good. I like to browse the coins->ancient->greek category, and I have to wade through the listings of high volume sellers hawking crap like jewelry (not even all coin related) and reproductions (even though there is a specific category for these). One of the reproduction sellers didn't even bother to list the fact that it was a reproduction in the auction title. I tried reporting them to eBay as being listed in the wrong category, but that was as effective as yelling at the crack in the sidewalk that I tripped on, and a lot harder to do to boot, since I had to wade through several web pages to actually send the message on. Apparently, these dealers had the "terms of service = suggestions" package. I do use other sites than eBay, but unfortunately, they don't have the volume or selection. I guess the most frustrating thing for me is that I can see how much better it could be, if they could only work up the energy to care. They have drifted too far from their garage sale roots, and I don't see any improvement coming. But then again, they are "only the venue", as the keep telling everyone who threatens to sue. With all their marketing, that defense is becoming a bit shaky... -- Tom
OTR rocks!
Sniping is bad from a seller's perspective.
I bought my house in an auction that allowed sniping. At 11pm I submitted a bid for a property of around $200k. The other party had no chance to resubmit a bid at that time since the auction was closing 15 minutes after that.
The property itself was appraised at $240k.
I knew that the other party would want to revise their bid if they thought they would lose it. They were trying to benefit from the seller needing to sell fast, but didn't expect someone to jump in at the last minute.
So why is that bad for the seller? Since the auction allowed for my bid sniping, the other party never had a chance to put in a counter-offer. I was prepared to go up to $215k, and, judging by their reaction, they probably would have done the same.
The sniping cost the seller nearly $15k because there was no period to re-evaluate the bids.
(Not that I feel bad, I needed the property fast too since my previous home was washed away in a flood. I was just pointing out that the seller lost out on some $ because sniping was allowed)
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Ok first the disclaimer, I do work for eBay though I have no specific or internal knowledge of this particular case.
The part of the article here that caught my eye was "One forum thread from Friday pointed to a California-based seller known as sdc_prod_434012 with no previous eBay transactions whose new listings did not allow users to actually bid on his items."
Like I said I don't have any specific knowledge of this user or case but lets consider the facts and possibilities here. Its a user with 0 feedback, who has apparently never bought or sold a single item on eBay, despite being registered on the site for almost a year now. Then one morning he suddenly wakes up and in a brilliant display of speed and efficiency posts 35000 items for sale at once. Now then, is it more likely that this is:
a) An ambitious new user who was waiting for just the right moment to post his entire inventory for sale.
b) A scammer who is trying to get as many quick fraudulent buy-it-now transactions as he can before being noticed by the security filters.
I'd be willing to bet the correct answer is b, and that the anti-fraud programs correctly detected this user and disabled his items before people were able to bid on them. If this was a legitimate user then its unfortunate and I'm sure that customer service is apologizing profusely, but in 99 out of 100 cases like this its just your garden variety scammer and the fraud detection programs at eBay worked exactly as they were supposed to.
On the other hand, there's a lot less competition between buyers on CL. Things on ebay go for market price because the whole site is, well, a market. Your chances of getting a great deal because the seller just didn't know what it was worth, or just wanted to get rid of the item quick are a lot higher on craigslist.
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OK, so now eBay doesn't allow sellers to leave feedback on buyers--a half-assed approach to the problem. I once got burned by a seller, who decided to leave a lie that borders on libel as feedback. (The seller had no contact with me for 2 weeks after a sale, even though I paid her, so I left a "neutral", then the bitch shot back with a "negative" rating saying not to deal with me as a customer)... So, why hasn't eBay removed all those seller ratings? Seriously, what's the point of keeping them if they're shitty?
A better idea would be that a buyer can't leave feedback for a seller until that seller has left feedback on the buyer... Crappy sellers would be forced to clean up their act while buyers can give true feedback without retribution.
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
And what about non-power sellers who get burned by lying buyers? My rating is less than 300, but it's 100% and I put a lot of effort into my listings to try to keep it that way. For the most part I sell old PC and Sun hardware that I no longer use thanks to upgrading. My auctions go into an enormous amount of detail with respect to an item's condition, how I tested it to make sure that it works, and I list anything that's wrong that I cannot fix, like scratches, dents, missing 5-1/4" bay covers, etc.
I once sold an old PC that had been in my family's possession for years. Some jackass decided to be an asshole buyer and came back with "this is missing, that's not working", apparently assuming that I was some kind of clearing house who moves too much stock to know the details about a particular item. I responded by describing exactly that PCs condition as shipped as well as the statement that my family had owned that PC for years, so I knew every detail about it. I never heard back from the guy once he realized that I called his bluff and that I could have easily slammed him with a negative about trying to scam me.
But now I no longer have that protection, thanks to this f**king moronic decision on eBay's part. So what's to protect me from asshole buyers like the idiot who tried to scam me? Ban him from future auctions? Oh, golly gee, that will certainly stop other fraudulent buyers, oh boy oh boy. And if you think that eBay will seriously consider removing genuinely incorrect feedback, you need to stop smoking whatever it is you're smoking.
This new policy of theirs is going to do one thing: make eBay a haven for scamming buyers who now know that they have nothing to fear when lying about sellers.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
I snipe every auction. I assume everyone else does too. If anyone is using Ebay and isn't sniping at this point, they're a newbie or an idiot.
It's not a lottery, because I put in my max bid and so does the other sniper. Guess who wins? The guys that snipes with the highest max bid. Whether my bid comes in at 6 seconds or 5 seconds or 9 seconds doesn't make much difference unless we both put in the exact same bid.
Sniping is GOOD. It prevents stupid bidding wars with idiots that can't value an item by letting me hide my max bid until the very end. No Ebay fever. It's good for them too since it reduced "Buyer's Remorse" where they figure out after the auction that oops, they paid too much because they got "caught up" in the action.
All that does is force everyone to put in their max bid like they should have done in the first place.
I do put in low bids sometimes to signal my presence to friends. Also it keeps the seller from materially changing the auction details, which is a positive especially if a seller has misspelled anything.
-- John.
Compelling argument, but I'm not sure I agree with it.
With most eBay auctions, a potential buyer is trying to judge more than just the "top price he/she is willing to pay" for an item in a given listing. 9 times out of 10, you can find numerous listings for a specific item desired. Nobody wants to feel like they paid too much for something, and you develop that overall sense of value largely by searching recently completed or auctions still in progress, for the same item you're bidding on. If, say, you want to buy an nVidia 8800GT video card, and you're personally willing to pay up to $250 for it - should you place a $250 max. bid on the first one you find? Probably so, if it's the only one you see listed. But more likely, a search would return 15 or 20 of them, at least, all with various high bids placed on them. So you might, wisely, modify your strategy then - thinking "Well, an awful lot of them only have high bids in the low $100 range right now. I'd hate to win one for $250, only to see 10 more end tomorrow at under $200 -- so I think I'll just place a $180 or so high bid right now."
Sniping, in this scenario, causes problems because when it becomes "the norm" for the "way to win an auction", all the other bid prices no longer help accurately assess what the market, overall, is willing to pay for an item. As a buyer trying to do the research, you're getting flawed numbers - because most things are woefully underbid until the last 20 seconds or so. Furthermore, since eBay auctions are computerized, sniping has gone computerized too - meaning people buying "auction sniping" software packages and using their automation features will have better results than anyone else. Seems like if eBay is going to allow sniping as "ok" - they should at least provide sniping tools as standard-issue on their web site, to level the playing field.
If they would bid higher, they should have bid higher.
I agree to a point, that the kind of tools who nickel and dime and ratchet the price up should be allowed to fool around if it amuses them to do so. But the rest of us want to get along with things.
I go to a LOT of real-life auctions, so I know quite a bit about the dynamics of auctions. eBay is a proxy bidding system. An 'extend by 15 minutes' rule sounds like an incredible opportunity for a lot of 'gaming' that is far worse than things the way they are. Hell, nickel and dimers could keep an auction going for hours with such an arrangement. A real-life auctioneer would put a stop to that kind of bs immediately, an automatic extension just changes the rules of the 'gaming' it does not 'fix' anything.
* *some* buyers are scammers (it never arrived!)
* *some* buyers are hyper-critical (it's not new (duh, it said that in the listing))
* *some* buyers abuse the system (I've changed my mind, don't want it any more)
* *some* buyers apparently don't know how to use email to see if the seller can satisfy them
But a seller's ability to leave negative feedback stops NONE of that.
Dishonest buyers don't care about negative feedback. If they get it, they just ditch that account and create a new one. So the ability of the sellers to leave negative feedback serves NO LEGITIMATE PURPOSE other than to intimidate honest buyers who have a legitimate gripe with the seller.
Some buyers suck. That's true in any marketplace. Part of being a seller in any market place is dealing with buyers.
When was the last time you walked into Wendy's, and they wouldn't sell you a burger because you got negative feedback the last time you bought something at McD's?
paintball