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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.
...as to why eBay even implemented these changes. Was there some major drive for it, or what?
If you want crap, Craigslist is available too.
Right now eBay's board is having a few analysts go through this list of "power sellers" and derive some nice little numbers. (A) What percentage of income on listings come from these people? (B) What is the approximate dollar value in having those auctions available to our users (probably pretty small)? (C) What's it going to cost us to retroactively fix these erroneous auctions, restore the forums and send out apologies to every eBay user? (D) What are is the probability that the FCC will act on the user's complaints? (E) What's the maximum fine we could receive from the FCC?
Now here's the math, if A + B > C then eBay will probably send out apologies and make a good effort to please these power sellers. However, if D*E < C then I'll bet there's no chance in hell they're taking action on this.
Now look at it from the other side of the issue, the power sellers on eBay. What dollar (or percent) value do you assign using eBay to your sales (probably pretty high considering the exposure they offer you). There are competitors however small, you could go to them but it's going to hurt your sales. So the question now becomes whether or not you've lost enough on these fake auctions and censored forums. The answer is obviously no. A young idealist might blindly stick it to the man and suffer in the name of ethics and against censorship. But the businessman would not.
So what Taco is interested in is whether or not eBay is going to do the moral and ethically correct thing and take action C regardless of price or if the sellers are going to move to another site out of respect for free speech and standing up against shadey listings. The answer is "no" thanks to the effect of symbiotic profit experienced on both sides.
My work here is dung.
Alternatives exist. I like gunbroker.com (aka forthehunt.com if your workplace filters the word "gun" in a url).
No restrictions on listings, other than legal things (body parts, slavery), no listing fees unless the item is sold, the costs are fair, and NO SNIPING - true actions. If a bid happens in the last 15 minutes of listing time, it automatically extends to 15 minutes.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
If you're unlucky (and that is becoming more and more frequent) to have a buyer "give up" on your auction after winning it, be very, very careful with what you click. If you're a inexperienced seller, you might assume the FVF (final value fee) reversal link, which shows after a dispute is ended, would revert the final fee to you - when in fact it gives the FVF irrevocably to ebay. And they don't care - after all, what alternatives you have in Europe? And now with the end of sellers giving feedback on buyers, this kind of abuse will only increase, the only hope honest buyers and sellers have is that the complains will be so many that ebay will finally be hit where it hurts, on its corporate pocket. Anyone willing to start a worldwide (or even only EC wide) alternative?
Problem: A seller is getting his mate to bid against something you're trying to buy?
Solution: Hide the names of the buyers
Problem: Buyers are giving sellers negative feedback even though the exchange was fair and square?
Solution: Don't allow sellers to give retaliatory negative feedback
Problem: Someone's found out about the fact you're a bunch of crooks and has posted all the evidence in a forum?
Solution: Delete the posts and claim it was a bug
Summation 2
I hope to Christ I'm not the only one who found the concept of "NO SNIPING" at gunbroker.com entertaining.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Sure eBay "gave" you free gallery listings but bumped final auction fees so now your paying even more, but the point that I can't stand and no one seems to ever try to change is the double dipping on fees mandated for using eBay with PayPal. PayPal is the devil. Craigslist is the way to go, unless you have a high ticket, low weight collectable, in which case eBay might be your only option despite all the potential land mines.
You answered your own question in the blurb:
...
"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."
"eBay is so dominant in their field, that there is no real alternative. "
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
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.
I didn't see one - everyone's claiming that there were 10% less items for sale, but for what I was looking at, the numbers seemed normal. I expected things to run a little short near the end, but it didn't happen, other than the nominal "cheap listing day" crap they pull every so often that spams all my searches with a billion identical items.
Which is a problem for eBay. When they make their insertion fees cheap, everyone spams a billion auctions, drowning out the stuff I want with cruft I don't. The problem is, those items can't really be searched away - they are the item being looked for, technically, just not the one you want.
I believe probalby 95% of people on eBay really don't give a damn, it's just a vocal minority spouting. I certainly didn't see any changes. Then again, I use eBay for finding hard to find stuff. Stuff you can buy in a store, is usually less of a hassle buying it from the store (B&M or online) - rather than eBay. eBay's for all those items one either can't find in stores (sold out/not made anymore/rare items), and the ones complaining are those who sell what everyone else can find at an online store. It's not like eBay even has many deals, so bargain hunting isn't an option.
As for the reasoning behind the changes, well, consider "feedback hostage" is rampant on eBay. The seller won't post feedback until you (the buyer) do. If you post negative feedback (say, item was fraudulent), the seller will do the same to you, even though you fulfilled your obligations (i.e., paid seller in a timely fashion, tried to resolve issues with seller, etc). Most good sellers will leave feedback immediately since the buyer's fulfilled their contractual duty to pay. (Part of the changes also involve the buyer not being able to give feedback for 3 days or so, to prevent the buyer from the lesser idiocy of "I paid seller within hour, item didn't arrive 5 minutes later" crap, or the more common "item did not arrive" when buyer hasn't even paid for it!).
There's no real good solution to this - you could do feedback escrow (buyer and seller can't see feedback until both have submitted it), but that won't protect against buyers doing what I mention.
I don't know if the changes are good or bad, but I'm guessing they came out of all the complaints from buyers who left negative feedback because sellers deserved it, while getting retaliatory feedback in return when they did their end of the deal.
In the long term, the feedback changes are really important for the sellers too. I've known lots of people who got ripped off on ebay, buying from sellers who had 98% positive feedback, because they hadn't bothered to go through and actually read all of that feedback---some of "mutually withdrawn"---to recognize that they're dealing with a sometimes dishonest seller who knows how to use feedback threats to keep their ratings high.
If ebay doesn't want people to be turned off, they need to get this under control.
Yes, I've heard it all, there are jerk buyers as there are sellers, and this will mean some honest sellers absorbing negative feedback they don't deserve. The point to keep in mind, is that this effect will be distributed more or less evenly among sellers, leaving it possible to reliably distinguish the good sellers from the bad. Under the current system, the dishonest sellers benefit the most, because they are the ones willing to use threats and retaliatory feedback to prop up their profile.
I'm still surprised ebay had the foresight to do this.
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.
Are exactly the sellers that should leave ebay or simply be banned outright.
Get rid of the storefronts too.
Ebay is great when it acts as a garage sale, but that is rare since all the professional sellers turned it into a gigantic strip mall.
The FTC will laugh in the faces hopefully.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
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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The problem with eBay is that it has shifted away from being a private auction site used by people trying to sell their own stuff. The modern eBay is home to thousands of somewhat shifty "Power Sellers" who buy stuff at estate sales, thrift stores, and garage sales. They list the stuff with often misleading descriptions and rip people off. Unfortunately, these junk dealers generate huge profit for eBay (I worked out the total fees related to a transaction once, and they came to about 15%, including PayPal, listing and final value costs).
It's time to split eBay into two sites - Pro and Casual Sellers. Let users quickly and easily filter out the "power sellers" and others who sell hundreds of items a year and focus on the amateur sellers offering their well-kept vintage cameras, video game consoles and so on. While they're at it, they also need to fix their feedback approach once and for all. Disabling negative feedback from sellers hamstrings good people and puts them at the mercy of sometimes irrational and mentally unbalanced buyers.
http://xkcd.com/325/
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!
Ebay is a public company, so even if there's some virtuous people running the company, there's still the interest of the shareholders.
Ebay is NOT run by virtuous people; it's run by weasels. To see this, just like at their recent rate increases: they sent out emails to all their members loudly proclaiming their new, lower listing fees (which in reality were only lowered a few percent--BFD), and saying NOTHING about any changes to their final value fees, which make up the bulk of the fees sellers pay. To see that, you had to go to their site and read through all the fine print, to find out the FV fees had increased a whopping 60%.
In addition, Ebay has repeatedly had the gall to claim that their rate increases were somehow GOOD for the sellers! Since when does anyone consider it a benefit to pay more for something?
Ebay is run by evil, lying, despicable people, make no mistake.
The recent moves of eBay puzzle me. The scientology backdoor is one thing, but the action in Poland is entirely different.
eBay.pl is by no means dominant site in Poland. In Poland, THE auction site is allegro.pl, with more than 90% of the market. They charge very little for putting an item on auction, the percentage for a successful sale is low too. The second one is Swistak.pl, which, being much smaller, offers no fee for putting your items on auctions, and restricts all fees to people who sell lots, feature their producte etc. eBay used the same strategy until recently, keeping a firm third place close behind Swistak.pl
But last month or so, they introduced fees for putting items on auction. Result - almost all sellers from Poland vanished. It still lists some 80000 items 'from Poland' but if you check the listings, you see that over 90% of them are "e-book, electronic form, free electronic shipping everywhere world-wide." Currently there's some 8000 non-eBook offers )many of them duplicates from the few remaining desperate powersellers putting the same item in multiple categories) on eBay (vs almost 4 millions on Allegro), and essentially eBay.pl is dead.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Online auctions are a business which tends towards market concentration. The biggest auction is the most valuable, and the auction systems are closed. eBay objects if you write a search engine for eBay auctions, or a system to manage auctions across multiple auction sites.
In contrast, e-mail systems are today open - Hotmail can mail to Gmail, and vice versa. That wasn't always the case. There was a time when MCImail, GEnie and AOL didn't talk to each other; eventually, the open e-mail system of the Internet wiped them all out. Search is open from the consumer side; all search engines can look at all sites. But it's not open from the advertiser side, not since Google bought DoubleClick.
So there's an inherent tendency towards monopoly in the auction area. It's a legitimate subject for antitrust enforcement.
Ebay is closer to an auction engine, it suplies the tool but the SELLER is the one who is the auctioneer, this is odd because usually in auctions there is a threesome going on. Seller, Buyers and Auctioneer. The auctioneer is the middle man and makes sure BOTH sides keep up their side of the bargain.
The whole thing about negative feedback doesn't happen in real auction houses. Rememeber that deal with the vizors of the La Forge not being the real one worn by the actor? Was it the seller OR christies who took the heat for that? Answer,the auction house, they accepted the item and certified it as being real.
If I buy something at an auction I pay the auction house and THEY hand me the item. E-bay is a far cry from this and people forget this.
Auction houses are an ancient invention, there is a REASON they work the way they do so it is only natural that when ebay tries to change this ancient process problems will occur.
If ebay worked like a normal auction house then there wouldn't be any problems other then the typical buyer beware, but that is try anywhere.
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A------------ Would not buy again! http://xkcd.com/325/
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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.
A good place for general online-selling information is http://powersellersunite.com/. They have a nice chart showing the number of listings on various sites (click on Auction Site Count under Free Auction Tools).
The top sites:
I just canceled my eBay account last night. I received a message from eBay that they are changing their policies forcing you to offer PayPal as a payment option, or to obtain a merchant account. Basically, you must offer a credit card payment option period.
I have heard to many horror stories about Paypal that gives me no confidence in them at all. I don't want anything to do with Paypal. I also don't do enough business on eBay to need a merchant account at all.
So since this will affect casual users like me quite severely, I do find it interesting to see what the Power Sellers are going to do in response to the rules that are affecting them. I would also be interested in knowing how much business eBay gets from casual users like me.
There have been a lot of news articles lately about eBay and its policy changes, and I have yet to hear anything resembling a positive response.
* *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