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EBay Deal Irritates Individual Sellers
Dekortage writes "EBay's recent deal with Buy.com appears to be seriously irritating its veteran individual sellers. The deal allows Buy.com and other large fixed-price retailers to list millions of items on eBay without paying listing fees, and appears to be the direction that eBay will follow in the future. Understandably, individual sellers are outraged. 'I've paid eBay many hundreds of thousands in fees over the past several years and believed them when they talked about a level playing field. And they just plain and simple are going back on their word.' This comes after the dire prediction that eBay is losing its popularity."
With no real competition in the online auctions and micropayment system, I don't see things getting better. Craigslist auction anyone?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
and it will never ever ever change
Even though, this being about eBay, having the LAST post is the only one that counts.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Unless it is in a binding contract, with severe penalties, you should never expect a company to "keep its word." This is especially true when keeping said word affects the almighty Bottom Line. Cash is king, peon.
Ebay has name recognition. That's all. Everything else they do can be done by another business following a similar model. It's not like they invented auctions, after all.
but what alternative is there when it comes to actual auctions? I can see the buy-it-now categories being replaced by other online retailers, but there simply is no better website (by better, I mean with as much variety and as many different purchase options) out there at the moment for people to sell each other things on an individual level. So maybe due to things like this buy.com deal, the era of the eBay power seller is over, but a lot of people, including myself, sell at least a handful of things on eBay every year and have since the site debuted. Other than maybe recycler.com and craigslist, both of which are more localized and filled with scammers, I don't see another good option.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Where are these former eBayers going?
Or is it a case of a fad (ooh, I got it from eBay!) settling down and it becomes just one way to get something (I could have gotten it cheaper on eBay, but if I need to return it, it would be a big hassle)?
WTF?! Those numbers are huge! I wouldn't have guessed that 40% of the population has ever bought or sold anything online.
I sure wouldn't cry over mind/market share like that if I were eBay.
I tend to agree that having a sort of long history with ebay, and not a pleasent one at that, why don't they just stop all fanfare and just post a .05 cents per post which when they try to argue that they have to pay for their staff, sorry bub, you offer no real support and you already make more on paypal transactions, so why worry about the auctions as well, it would make this level to everyone and also be competitive to the ones lik craigslist or kijiji etc.
I haven't auctioned on ebay for about 2 years now,
last impression being a bad taste in my mouth (could almost think it was the CEO!)
I just can't stand someone like M$ or Ebay that try to stiff you all the time.
Things like this, creeping fees, attempting to wrangle everybody into using paypal, and their generally horrid customer service is driving ebays userbase away in droves. Even my dad has commented on how the volume of craigslist ads has been increasing lately. Naturally it will take quite a while for such a juggernaut to die out, but my personal suspicion is that the age of ebay has ended.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I know several people who used to do a lot of business on Ebay who are rapidly becoming disgusted with it because of its clear preference for giant sellers over individuals; I'm not at all surprised to hear that this is a general trend.
Why is it that so many executives feel the need to destroy a successful business model? Ebay started as an online auction house where individuals could find a worldwide audience for cool, quirky stuff, and it was wildly successful as such. If its executives want to start a site for selling commercial products with free-floating prices -- which is essentially what they're turning Ebay into -- then fine, but why are they abandoning the business that made them successful in the first place? Ebay was one of the few real success stories to come out of the dot-com boom. It's really sad to see them throwing that away now.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Some people really make me wonder about humanity.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm getting a little more and more irritated about this stuff with ebay, and I would honestly jump ship if there was another decent auction-style competitor that is close to the ebay of the early 2000s.
Ebay is doing some SERIOUS wrong by the small seller (mostly through their fee issues, I don't think the feedback issues are as bad as some sellers try and make them out to be), and despite their platitudes, is turning into Amazon-lite. I have no huge problem with this, but they really need to make a decision on who they want to cater to and either split into two divisions or send the small-time buyers and sellers somewhere else.
I completely understand that businesses need to make money, and the buydotcom route may be one way to do that. However, ebay is WIDELY opening a door for another company to undercut them in the small seller market, and those of us who collect, buy, and sell anything used on a small scale and aren't interested in just shopping online for new stuff that we can get down the street at Wal-mart or wherever.
I no longer use EBay because of the increased risk of dealing with people that don't keep their end of the deal (e.g. sellers that don't deliver the product or don't deliver a product that was described in the auction), and the fact that EBay was taking no steps to effectively deal with the issue.
Since then EBay has begun pushing PayPal harder, and that might also have been a reason for me to not use EBay.
The dilution of the auction space with fixed-price retailers is a big annoyance. Maybe it might also be a reason to quit.
If EBay wants to be in the business of aggregating retailers, then maybe it should register a new domain name and set it up, and provide links between it and the EBay site.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Their anti gun policy made me stop using ebay years ago....
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Anecdotal, I know, but even in the past few months, some of the not-so-mainstream stuff on auction (e.g. computer parts) have seemed to dry up.
My missus used to be able to buy (and occasionally sell) a lot of antique and classic toys on eBay as a hobby. There were literally dozens of pages of auctions for the stuff at any one time for her to pick and choose from. Nowadays, there's only a handful of pages in motion at best, and little is selling (not just on her part, but in most of the auctions concerning antique and classic toys).
Poking around, I see similar patterns for other, similar things.
I don't think it's just recent policies, either (though they certainly don't help) - eBay is (just IMHO) getting one hell of a reputation as a giant fence for stolen goods, a hotbed of scams, and a place where you can't quite get the deals that you used to get.
Recently, they've tried to boost things by having $1 listing fees for certain items, and I'm sure they've been doing some offline marketing (but again, not like they used to).
I dunno... these are just personal observations, but I strongly suspect that they are indicative of a larger shift away from eBay... and the Buy.com deal kinda shows me that the company is getting a bit nervous about its long-term prospects.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
That would seem to be the best way to "regulate" them. In a genuine free market, where newcomers could spring up overnight, the effect would be immediate. In the present system of protected monopolies, as demonstrated in the entertainment industry, it's another story.
What?
From vaporware to $7.6B in revenue in 2007(a $2B increase from 2006), basically done within a decade. I think the word I'm searching for is 'quitcherbitchin'. On it's way out? Not likely.
I don't see things getting better. Craigslist auction anyone?
You do know that eBay owns a stake in Craigslist of over 20% of outstanding shares? Craigslist will not get you away from eBay.
It has been a den of thieves for all but the most esoteric items for a while(try searching for xbox or iPhone, I bet you will come up with more scams than normal auctions) and ebay has shown that as long it collects fees it doesn't really give a rats ass about anything else. This is just further icing on the cake. Ebay thinks that people will not go anywhere else, so they don't have to police their network, they don't have to treat their sellers fairly and they can force paypal down our throats and we will just sit there and take it. Its been a looooooooooong time since I bought anything off ebay and I would have to be pretty desperate to find something before I would even consider using it again.
Monstar L
Ebay has name recognition. That's all...
Sadly that is not all eBay has. EBay has network effects working for it which makes it VERY hard to displace them no matter how much money and talent is thrown at the problem. Buyers go where the sellers are and vice versa. Amazon and Yahoo both tried to take market share from eBay and both failed miserably. There are lots of other auction and e-commerce sites out there but none of them are likely to displace eBay anytime soon.
That's not to say eBay won't cut their own throat (they might) but that's pretty much what it will take to make a real dent in eBay's market share. Ebay's business tends towards a natural monopoly as do many marketplaces.
I rarely find anything on EBay cheaper than at a normal etailer, addin the worry of dealing with a shady seller and there is little motivation in buying anything _NEW_ on EBay. EBay needs to focus on what its good for, USED, CLOSEOUT, or RARE items. I have saved thousands of dollars getting great deals on close-out or nearly new items, of course they are hard to find due to all the new item listings.
If you are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees then you have no business being on EBay. You should open your own website, even if your sales significantly decrease you will still make more profit, and your job will be easier with lower volume.
"Instead of focusing on being an auction business, we are looking at what it takes to create the best marketplace out there."
This is what happens when a company gets too big. ebay can't see that it won such wide adoring attention though being an open auction house. Adding buy it now was cool, as sometimes I didn't want to wait 5 days just to get outbid.
Now they are trying to create a marketplace inside a marketplace. They want everyone to be part of *THEIR* marketplace, that they control, they assess the taxes and fees and keep the peace.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
EBay degenerates into an alternative, inconvenient way to buy from major retailers (WHY would they list on eBay instead of their own websites anyway?) and somebody will set up a real auction site where you can buy used stuff from individuals and small companies. You know, like eBay used to be.
why do people insist on calling ebay an auction site?
it's not
Especially when it does a significant chunk of its business through fixed-price listings such as these.
auctions dont end at a certain time.
the end when the bids are no longer increasing.
One big reason that eBay makes money is that auction-style listings of a fixed duration are less regulated than traditional auctions.
How far eBay has strayed from it's original purpose of being the "garage sale of the Internet" to now just essentially being an outlet mall. Perhaps it's just an inevitable result of gaining too much popularity; regardless something tells me there's money to be made in picking up the slack.
There's your entrepreneurial idea for the day kids. I'm sure garagesale.com is already taken (and isn't a Web 2.0 name anyway), but just go read a Klingon dictionary and I'm sure you'll find a good alternative. Your tagline is "What eBay used to be", at least until you pop up on their lawyers radar. Market it as specializing in collectibles, unique trinkets and such, and in your literature equate eBay with Wal-Mart.
Why buy on eBay and go through the auction hassle when you can get the same thing for cheaper from Amazon.com ? And often with free or discounted shipping?
If I was a seller I would seriously be moving to Amazon as fast as my legs could take me. everyone I know has moved from buying on eBay to buying on Amazon. The recent fee hikes only made things worse. eBay really needs to cut its base fees and get back to its roots or else it will become obsolete.
I used to do about 150 ebay auctions/month all in the $5-20 range, but I stopped a couple of years ago. They kept raising prices to the point I was making them more money than me (especially after paypal fees), and even then they were pushing aside the individual seller. They've raised fees since I stopped using them too. Just recently I wanted to sell some computer equipment, and found their fees to be so high I'm better off not wasting my time listing it. They've priced themselves out of the market and alienated their core customer base at the same time. And they're surprised they're losing popularity?
However, the seller policies were modified over the years in ways that benefited the larger sellers. For example, many small sellers left when eBay wholesale surrendered to big business efforts to ignore the legal rights protected by the first-sale doctrine. My smart-card programmer listing was pulled without explanation, which I finally figured out was apparently due to DirectTV claiming that it could be used to "hack" their equipment.
Unfortunately, each time I looked, I found no viable alternative. There are plenty of small auction sites, but none with a fraction of the buyers and/or the buyer and seller protections offered by eBay. Has the Web simply been too commercialized now for someone to make a new eBay that caters to individuals again?
Their anti-fraud measures seem inadequate. My account was hacked a year or so ago. I hadn't used to sell in over a year and I hadn't used it to buy anything in almost as long. All of a sudden someone posted several hundred iPods on my account. I'd never sold items on my account in this manner. Just a few, different items here and there, like most individuals. I was surprised that a company like eBay wouldn't have fraud prevention software. Anyway, I canceled my account and I'll never use eBay again.
Ebay will continue to make money, but as a different company. The millions of people (such as myself) who labored long and hard to make eBay a viable marketplace are being brushed aside so that eBay can transform itself into another Amazon.
I stopped selling on eBay earlier this year, and I'm focusing on my own e-commerce site which I've had even before starting with eBay. I've noticed that my "My eBay" stored searches for certain collectibles have been returning fewer and less meaningful results, which is partially the result of eBay's new "intelligent" search engine and the fact that fewer people are listing unique items any more.
But when I need to shop for a commodity item, it's often on eBay (as well as Amazon and other places). eBay is shaking off its unique aspects and spitting in the face of the people that worked to bring them to where they are today.
I know several people who used to do a lot of business on Ebay who are rapidly becoming disgusted with it because of its clear preference for giant sellers over individuals; I'm not at all surprised to hear that this is a general trend.
The only sellers that should be disgusted are ones with their head in the sand. EBay's costs mostly fixed so they grow through volume. You get volume through larger customers who can provide that volume. Economic inevitability.
EVERY non-regulated company I'm aware of besides eBay provides volume discounts in some fashion for larger customers. I was an individual seller as well as a high volume power seller. One of the (many) reasons I no longer sell through eBay is precisely BECAUSE they provided no incentive for me to bring additional business to them. They kept raising rates instead of providing incentives to bring additional volume. Basically they priced me (and lots of others) out of their marketplace. It was too expensive as an individual or a business to continue to sell on eBay.
but why are they abandoning the business that made them successful in the first place?
The short answer is that they decided a long time ago to become a publicly traded company and the growth demands of being public is the deal with the devil you make to get equity funding. That's why companies don't really want to go public unless the owners are either cashing out (private equity) or they have no other choice. Had eBay remained a privately held company they could have chosen to stay their present size.
Businesses out grow their original business model all the time. Some businesses simply do not scale beyond a certain point. Amazon started as an online bookseller that had no warehouses of their own. That only scaled to a point. IBM got out of the personal computer business not long ago. That particular niche of the industry just didn't hold enough growth/profit potential for them anymore and was more of a distraction than an asset. When you are a publicly traded company shareholders demand growth and eBay has hit a wall with being the world's premier online flea market.
About 2 years ago, my wife and I bought used cellphones. Nokia N-series phones that you couldn't buy in the US.
We paid a lot for them.
Her n70 was actually a sales demo. It wasn't supposed to be sold. The seller claimed ignorance all the way to the bank.
My n80 was an asian market phone instead of the eu market phone it was supposed to be. Again, different seller claimed ignorance all the way to the bank.
That's the last time I used ebay. Shortly after that, my paypal account got hacked.
Ebay is a thieves' bazaar. It's a way to push crap or stolen goods with little or no consequences. There are some who have setup mini stripmalls in ebay to push dollar store crap. You just can't trust ebay anymore to protect your interests.
I think ebay is definitely on its way out. I can now buy stuff on amazon that before I could only find on ebay. ebay just isn't necessary anymore.
craigslist can now help you broker private deals.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I don't see EBay so much as dying, as committing a very slow suicide. In an attempt to increase revenue, they're shafting people who use Ebay for what its best at: being a world wide garage sale.
No other site is even close in its ability to connect buyers and sellers of used/rare/collectible items. This is what Ebay is best at, and also the market EBay has been marginalizing.
Adding ump-teen thousand listings from huge online retailers adds no value to customers at the core of the Ebay business. They can find the same crap at any one of dozens of online retailers. All this will do aggravate folks who use EBay to buy/sell in secondary/specialty markets.
And EBays customer service is atrocious. I can almost accept this when the company is viewed as basically a renter of flea market stalls. They don't have a change competing against reputable online retailers like Amazon.
What a stupid, stupid idea. You don't destroy your core business in order to expand your revenue a bit.
Many of the hard-core ebay whiners on its website are practically BEGGING google to open up an auction site, mostly because it will have practically millions as a buyer base overnight.
Google doesn't want the liability. If anything kills eBay it's going to be getting sued by every luxury good maker on the planet. EBay claims they want to ensure authentic goods but is unwilling to take the steps needed to ensure authenticity - namely physical inspection of items and their paper trail. Such physical inspection is completely outside Google's business model so they would be in the same boat eBay is liability-wise.
All that of course assumes Google could take marketshare from eBay where Amazon and Yahoo failed. That's a BIG assumption.
Everyone is talking about the ebay side of this...
While ebay is not what it used to be, what does it say about buy.com?
There would seem to be no need whatsoever to go there, is there?
Ebay is almost the same anyway and this would seem to cement the deal.
I think both had their place but now they are one and the same and don't fit so well with all the fat in either those places anymore :(
I rarely buy 'NEW' stuff on ebay, and now i rarely buy stuff i wasn't already looking for because sorting thru the chaff is too much work for very little (if any) gain.
eBay - my main addiction in life, it will be sad to see it drown in commercial trades.
The one thing I like about online auctions is that they are by and FOR average joes like me, not a bunch of insurance sellers trying to outbid eachother with gibberish.
I find it hard to believe that the average Joe's have a declining interest in eBay, it should be the other way from my own experience. Oversea eBay shopping has NEVER been bigger in eg. Denmark these times.
My experience with new used sales on the net is that it is exactly the average joe sales that make them grow in popularity because you get a real chance to get something that you really want from yesteryears and not some useless gimmick from merchandise companies that compete for the cheapest lanyards...
If eBay get filled up with nick-nack offers from commercial companies - organized...then eBay will decline severely in popularity- in fact...I'm willing to bet that it will KILL eBay entirely over 2 years and make it another alibaba outlet because the average joes sales can't be found by the other average joes... ...pretty much like Google today. Back when they didnt censor so much, and back when the commercial companies didnt work on outsmarting the google searches - there where a real chance of finding interesting stuff - fast. Today you need to be a real whiz with knowing how to "filter out" all the annoying "watch-me-buy-me-now" for just about anything you search for.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Ebay isn't especially suited as a micropayment system. At best, they are about average as far as transaction processing goes.
I'd be *very* interested in knowing how many of their transactions are 100% in-network value transfers. For the payment technology ignorant, that means a transaction where the source funds (buyer's payment) is stored in the PayPal system.
My guess is it's *very* low compared to their Visa/MC processing.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Their original market was bringing a community of sellers to a community of buyers and using time based auctions to decide who gets what.
This worked on the "fea market" model, where people could find a buyer for their property they no longer used. What happened to EBay was scammers. People buying things cheap on sale, and seelling them at full price plus "shipping."
Then followed the people who built whole business models on selling on ebay.
The geeks have pretty much stopped going to ebay because there are no more deal to be made. The people who don't know better are just now starting to see it for the scam it is.
Craigslist is the next ebay. Ebay knows this and that's why they tried to sue craigslist.
IF you want to make money, create a site that provides escrow services and dispute resolution to work in conjunction with Craigslist and/or ebay.
The IBM and Amazon examples don't really work here:
You are missing the point. The point is that companies often exit businesses that they were successful in. Even if they keep them they become a much smaller piece of the pie. I can come up with other examples if you like. How about Nintendo which started as a card company? Or 3M which originally sold corundum for grinding wheels? The point is that lots of businesses exit particular marketplaces all the time.
If Amazon stopped selling books entirely, or IBM abandoned their mainframe business, then their shareholders would be up in arms, and rightly so.
Shareholders care about FUTURE free cash flow. If there is a good business case for exiting those businesses then the shareholders will be fine with it. General Electric is looking to sell off their lighting and appliance divisions right now. Why? Those divisions can no longer provide the demanded return on capital.
I sell lightly-used computer hardware (mostly PSUs and cases) on eBay when I'm done using them for a brief period of time. I usually sell things for approximately 25%-40% off of the new price. I have two items which I've listed several times, and neither has sold, even after cutting one down to nearly 40% of its original value. It's not a commodity item, nor is it not in-demand.
eBay just isn't doing it for me any more. I'm going to try Craigslist from now on if I can simply sell things the various forums I peruse.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
But where else where we buy crap that we really don't want just to find out that it's broken when we get it. that of course is after we've paid $0.01 and $23.99 shipping on a $20 item (if you can even find it)
It seems with the new way the rating system 'works', that eBay almost wants their users to file Paypal complaints rather than having eBay deal with the problem directly. This poses a problem when items aren't sent on time and the 45 day limit expires.
It seems now the seller always wins over the buyer when the auction goes poorly.
I love it when people declare things "dead" just because they want them to be. Just like you always see with MS or any other "big name" that's declined from their top spot. Sure, they're not what they used to be, and probably never will be again, but that doesn't mean they're disappearing anytime soon.
I bet that Yahoo's got to be kicking themselves for shutting down their auction site in the past few weeks. Too bad. I liked their system *much* more than the mess that is eBay.
I don't respond to AC's.
Their anti gun policy made me stop using ebay years ago....
That is why I switched to Auctionarms.com for all my gun related auctions.
They even have penny auctions. Just 500,000 pennies for a matching 1911A1 and M1A.
Please note that this is legal since a federal licensed gun dealer is required to ship and do background checks for transactions as required by law for interstate gun purchases.
Google doesn't want the liability. If anything kills eBay it's going to be getting sued by every luxury good maker on the planet. EBay claims they want to ensure authentic goods but is unwilling to take the steps needed to ensure authenticity - namely physical inspection of items and their paper trail. Such physical inspection is completely outside Google's business model so they would be in the same boat eBay is liability-wise.
But what's the difference? Google already offers a fixed-price marketplace called Google Product Search, powered by Google Base and Google Checkout. How does this incur any less liability than giving buyers 7 days to name their own best offer?
Here is a link to Ebay's stock chart.
Coincidentally, it correlates very well to my experiences. From the beginning through 2004-2005ish, I liked Ebay a lot. Since that time, they've done just about everything wrong.
Guns, alcohol, and many others can be a regulated or restricted market. There are age-limits, and various others (permits required, restrictions against owning a firearm, etc) which makes the whole thing rather complicated. When your business is general-auctions, some things are best left to the specialists.
I know, I know, they're powerful and all, but when a company becomes too ignorant and irritates its customers too much (by that I mean the sellers) they inevitably give the competition (even if they're only small start-ups) a huge chance to start taking over. Here in Australia, alternative sites like Oztion have started to become much bigger since ebay started screwing its sellers. It is getting to the point where they are nearly a local alternative for sellers (especially for sellers who don't sell overseas anyway). Especially since evays little paypal experiment many sellers are looking for alternatives. In New Zealand there's Trademe, and it is also becoming bigger and better every day. As ebay becomes more and more reckless, sites like Bidtopia, eBid, OnlineAuctions, WeBidz and uBid will start seeing more and more sellers flock to them as they are getting sick of ebay screwing them around. Serves 'em right...
Never used ebay myself so I don't care what happens to it. I can't be bothered to face the hassle and worry of using it.
A relative bought my daughter a present through ebay. No problems with the seller, but it was weird how the item's price was low (and minimal activity) until she placed a bid. It was almost as though someone noticed her bid then placed their own bids to artificially inflate the price. She "won" the auction but who was she really bidding against?
One thing eBay seriously needs is an individual blacklist. Set it up so that you can mark certain sellers (or buyers) as Bozo's and never see their auctions again. There's certain sellers I've never done business with I would like to blacklist for various reasons. 30 point blinking font in all caps on a contrasting background and excessive use of the word "rare" would be some valid reasons I can think of, along with working in names of completely different items into a description. If I could just eliminate sellers who do this serially one by one it would make searching a lot easier.
A nice addition to this would be a notation field that shows up next to people you have done business with that quickly links you to feedback you left for them in the past so you know who's good or who you may not want to mess with again if you can chose someone else.
More shipping info would be nice. Who the heck does "ground based shipping provider" mean? If it's (certain types of) DHL or USPS that has to go to my PO Box in my case, if it's UPS or FedEX it has to go to my house. The fact these retards don't read notes half the time doesn't help matters.
Instead of preventing sellers from leaving retaliatory feedback, there should be a seller review option. If you get retaliatory unexplained feedback check the retaliatory button, both feedbacks get removed temporarily, after the seller gets 10 or so checks, an actual eBay employee takes time out of their day to investigate. If it turns out the seller (or possibly buyer) is a serial feedback abuser they lose their right to leave bad feedback for a while, maybe even their account.
Identity verification needs to exist. Something to prevent any one person from having more than one account.
Make a few changes to get rid of the common dipshit, or at least filter them out, and eBay may be worth using again.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
There is absolutely no point in bidding before the last 5 seconds of any auction. This makes it really irritating.
I'd really like to see them say "Bidding will continue until at least (some time) plus up to 24 hours (randomly set).
Paying them as much as they want is also kind of silly--craig's list gives you the ability to meet the person you are buying from and examine the product. You can also avoid shipping.
Ever notice how a bunch of stuff on ebay is $0.02 + $5.00 shipping?? Honestly that's got to be a scam--someone is getting a cut of that shipping cost. Another nice policy would be that a buyer always has the option to arrange all shipping himself--(For instance: Just put it in an envelope and drop it in the mailbox, I'll take the responsibility, or "I'll have UPS show up at your door" or "I'll pick it up myself").
I had an item which I was bidding on, but got a bit too pricey for me. About a week later, it popped up again in a second-chance, offer, so I snagged it.
Now, apparently the second-chance offer was a scan wherein somebody hacked the seller's account and was trying to get people to pay with an alternate email address. However, I paid through the proper channels (pay by paypal button) etc and the money went to the *correct* seller's account.
Of course, about an hour or two later the seller's account was temporary closed, and the auction removed. So I called the seller, who indicated that his ebay account had been hacked. I pointed out that I had paid to *his* (not the hacker's) paypal account, which was not hacked, and he offered to refund my money.
2 days later, no refund
So I had to go through hell with a bunch of the morons at paypal (who will thoroughly disclaim that they work with the same company, though ebay owns them now), pointing out that *EBAY* had closed the auction due to the hacked account. They told me that I could only file a 'did not receive' or 'not as expected' claim, but if I filed did not receive and then something arrived (even if it was a load of bricks), I could not later put in a "not-as-expected" claim. I also couldn't put in a "did not receive" claim yet because I had to give the seller time to send the item (which came from a bad listing, go figure).
So time goes by, and finally after days of calling them, they put the damn dispute in. Another several weeks I spent waiting while the seller simply ignored the dispute and didn't respond at all, and then it went in my favor. I got my money back - actually, less than my money back, did you know that on both a purchase and refund Visa will service-charge your ass for changing currencies, that's another story though - and was able to look laptop shopping *outside* of ebay.
The sad thing, that seller's account is still active, and he's happily still selling laptops. I couldn't even leave negative feedback because the auction I had been screwed on had been taken down by ebay.
So maybe the seller's account wasn't hacked, so he didn't commit fraud that way. He sure as hell did by keeping my money though, and forcing me to fight to get it back.
What does that tell me? Ebay, and paypal, support fraud, and they support fraudulent sellers. Screw them.
I don't know about you guys, but nothing makes me feel more warm and fuzzy on the inside then finding an item I'm looking for at a great price on Ebay then seeing that the seller is charging 10x the actual shipping.
Who read this as Ebay Deal Irradiates Individual Sellers?
Frankly, it was more interesting.
I am the technology products seller mentioned in the article. I have a BS in Comp Sci. from the University of Maine, 95', and have been a Software Engineer at several .com's until I wrote the code that is running my website (http://www.teckwave.com/#showMostViewed), eBay Store (http://stores.ebay.com/TECKWAVE), Amazon, and Google Base accounts.
It's written in Java using the Google Web Toolkit for the website and several Web Service API's for integration with the various marketplaces, distributors, and warehouses. It runs on Amazon's EC2 compute cloud and uses S3 for image hosting.
My intention from the start was to create a scalable software platform to make selling online easy, and I think I've about done it. Buy.com coming into eBay and getting their backroom deal has accelerated my plans. No hard feelings though, business is business.
If anyone's interested in helping me scale this platform please email me... tlibby *at* TECKWAVE.com
Think what you wish. I said the same thing about Wang, DEC, Pr1me, and others.
EBay will be dead and buried in less than 5 years, It will be acquired and destroyed by some giant like Microsoft, Google, or possibly even a rebounding Yahoo (long shot).
EBay doesn't add any real business value to the large customers it is currently targeting.
Paypal is a good idea, but FedEx, UPS, or even the USPS could offer shippers and receivers escrow and verification.
With Craigslist existing and growing, EBay doesn't have a viable business model.
If you disagree, please tell me what ebay brings to the table that Craigslist does not also offer? (And no, auctions are dead, people are sick of them.)
volume sellers don't cost them any less per transaction than the average joe.
Why the need for a volume discount?
You have to understand fixed costs versus variable costs. Most of eBay's costs are fixed meaning they do not change for better or worse regardless of the number of transactions. EBay has to (in the short run) pay their staff salaries and the electric bill regardless of how many items are sold on eBay. However this means that eBay's unit cost DECREASES with each additional unit sold.
EBay so far has taken the approach to increase unit prices instead of decreasing unit costs. Both increase contribution margin but you can only increase either one to a point. eBay has raised rates about as far as they can so the only alternative is to increase volume which requires incentives for sellers to sell more. This is where volume discounts come into play. EBay basically trades some of their savings from the reduced unit costs in the form of incentives to sellers to sell more stuff. That's how every large retailer on the planet makes a profit.
Maybe this is actually some sort of devil's bargain to put an end to the scam best buy has been running on e-bay for years. Best buy has this network of 2nd parties like "2ndTurn" and "DealTree", that simply sell-off Bestbuy closeouts. The scam is that they don't disclose they are best buy agents. So when you get to the check-out you suddenly see this whopping charge for local taxes you were not expecting.
2ndTurn lists it's address as Texas on all it's auctions so people outside of texas don't expect to pay tax since there's no @ndTrun brick and mortar stores.
But 2ndTurn is just BestBuy in sheeps clothing. Since they are one and the same they have to charge the brick-and-mortar state taxes. Yet all the complaints and abuse never gets connected to best buy.
It's a screw because people take this into account when they bid and then wind up paying 8 to 10% more than they bargained for. So best buy makes more money.
Moreover 2ndturn is vicious and aggressive about people who refuse to pay after they disclose this.
So maybe this is just
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
EBay started as a means for people to sell things to one another person to person, a virtual and nation/world wide classified add section akin to that found in newspapers. This was a good and truely valuable service. What began it's downfall was the transition from what was basicly a P2P service into B2P service. As it evolved it grew to include an unfortunate collection of scam artists with little to no interference from Ebay. Buyers and Sllers alike were and are @#$%^& over by these people while EBay showed indifference at best. From there it has further evolved into the Internet version of the Home Shopping Channel while still including the scammers it had aquired along the way. Add to this the fact that EBay has continually tried to squeeze more and more blood from the little guys and you can see they wich to be little more then an collection of online storefronts. Given the fact that I would never really consider buying something from THSC even though I could be fairly certain of at least getting the questionable item being advertised, why in the world would I consider ordering one from a place that doesn't even offer that faint reassurance? The answer is ... I wouldn't! In it's present form the chances of me purchasing something via EBay is precisely ZERO.
PS - I have never sold anything via EBay but did purchase a number of items before it went down the tubes so I am not some disgruntled seller. I also avoided being scammed both through due dilligence but I was probably lucky as well as there have been numerous cases where a seller/buyer with a sterling rep was just setting up for a kill.
There is no such thing. Big companies will always get more favorable deals than small ones. First of all, because big contracts have little more over head than small ones but mean a lot more profit. That in turn gives them a lot more leverage. Especially in non-manufacturing fields. Whether I buy 10 or 10,000 licenses is different from buying 10 or 10,000 cars.
The game goes on into every kind of trade, right down to your minimum needs for opening an office. You need power, water, internet, plumbing and so on. With all of those you can negotiate far better deals when you're a big player, using a lot of resources. Hell, if you're big enough your local public transport department might put a stop right in front of your factory (happened here with Siemens).
So please don't believe in that "level play field" theory of a free market. There is no such thing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Pricewatch, Pricegrabber, and Google Product Search are much more effective for comparing and buying fixed price goods than eBay. The exception is that sometimes (not always, but sometimes) eBay is better for small retailers selling unusual goods.
But it sounds like eBay is pushing them out. So, why again, would one use eBay?
The small guys are the ones with the biggest risks of dodgy gear attached. They attract larger sellers, ones who they can foist responsibility for legit goods on, the happier they'll be.
Sure, they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but the way they see it they've got another baby in reserve!
As for competition, if Google allied itself with a physical business with a presence in most communities, then yes. They could do a drop-off system where goods could be checked for legitimacy. The seller can either set up the auction details before dropping it off, or let the drop-off point handle all that for them.
Chances of that ever happening though are minimal.
Isn't that what name recognition is?
Nope. What eBay has is the largest marketplace with the greatest network effects. Don't get me wrong, their brand is very very important to the equation. They aren't completely separable issues but I submit that name recognition is not the underlying driver of their success. You can have great name recognition without being a successful business.
I started lossing intrest in e-bay as soon as they stopped being a place for normal people to sell thier junk and became a place for 'business' to make a killing (driving up the price and complicating the search). I want to buy online for stuff that is cheaper then I can get it for in the store , because buying online requires greater risk ( identity theft, shipping , getting shafted,inability to easily return, etc.). So if I can't get it cheap because it's basically something someone is trying to get rid of or it is something so hard to find I can't get it in my area, why would I buy it on e-bay.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
...is exactly the reason you give, they extend that auction. Considering they are the sellers, themselves, how do I know they aren't running a shill bidding program to try to extract a higher price? All those bidding opponent, they are nameless, nametext on a screen. I can't see their accounts, their histories, contact them, etc. uBid's transparency doesn't give me confidence using their site.
I believe that betting the maximum you are truly willing pay, early, is the best approach.
I would love to see some discussion on this topic, but I'm relatively confident that most alternate scenario's break down to one of
* I don't want to pay as much as I'm willing to pay (what?)
* I don't know how much I'm willing to pay (what?)
Cube On! (http://stores.ebay.com/PuzzleProz)
All you did in that post was rant about eBay and state your unsupported opinion about what is currently happening at eBay.
If you have some sources that support your claims, I'd love to see them. Nothing would make me happier than eBay losing money. Until then, you're just blowing smoke, and somehow getting modded to +5.
The mod system is broken.
As I've already said, you did nothing but fire off unsupported, unsourced opinions with not one single shred of evidence making your case.
"businessmen, like politicians, very frequently do really dumb things,"
Well, in case YOU failed to notice, that was not your point. Your point was that you THINK what eBay has done is influencing their bottom line negatively, but again, provided not one single shred of evidence to demonstrate that you are doing anything more than talking out of your ass.
Some people here eat that up, but some of us see right your commentary as the empty useless ranting that it is.
And it doesn't matter to the mods that he's making shit up, so no mater how many times you and I and others like us insist on requesting real evidence in place of a strongly worded opinion masquerading as evidence, we'll be ignored.
I, however, have no intention of letting these people get away with making shit up.
You seem to be confused about how eBay's proxy bidding system works. That's OK, you're not alone. Based on the prevalence of "sniping" programs and people complaining about losing auctions due to "sniping", it seems nobody understands proxy bidding.
Here's how it works: You bid what you are willing to pay. No more, no less. eBay then bids ONLY AS MUCH AS NECESSARY to make you the winning bidder. Competitors DO NOT get to see your maximum bid. The seller DOES NOT get to see your maximum bid. The only person who knows is you, and maybe some admin at eBay.
Example: You are bidding on an auction. You decide that you are willing to pay exactly $21 for the item (you want to beat people willing to pay the nice round figure of $20, but $22 is just plain outside of your budget). Let's say the current high bid stands at $17. If you bid $21, you will be the winning bidder at $18. Even if you bid $10,000,000 your visible bid will only be $18 (until someone else bids higher than $18, that is).
I have participated in many auctions on eBay, and the only ones I have ever "lost" were due to the simple fact that someone else was willing to pay more than I was for the item in question. Sometimes they do it in the last 4 seconds of the auction (which is admittedly annoying), but they still have to be willing to pay more than I am.
It seems that a lot of people care more about winning the auction (like it's some kind of contest) than they do about getting the merchandise for an acceptable price. To me, THEY are the suckers.
Knowledge != Intelligence
So the news here is that bigger companies can negotiate better deals and offer lower prices?
That is the end-stage evolution of any free market - businesses get bigger, consolidate, sell for cheaper because of efficiency gains, and eventually the small sellers can't compete.
Did these same sellers complain when Borders forced their local bookstore out of business? I suspect most just enjoyed the lower prices.
Whether this is a good thing or not is irrelevant to the discussion- whenever there's a completely free market, it will happen.
Ebay's growth doesn't have to be by squeezing the sellers.
Exactly my point. EBay would do a lot better in the long run if they treated their sellers like genuine partners instead of cows to be milked. They cannot and should not try to please everyone but their solution to increasing profits so far has just been to raise prices on sellers and frankly they're just about at the point they cannot do that much more.
For example, they bought Skype and they could do something with it to grow their company.
Skype to my mind is the most retarded thing eBay has done to date. It has zero fit with their current business model or with their skill set. It's probably the clearest signal that the eBay management is seriously lacking in talent or discipline. Of course that's why they had a $1.4 billion write down on their purchase of Skype.
One feature alone would instantly pull me from eBay to whatever competitor there is: search and filter by "used item" vs "new item" and also "individual seller" vs. "large retail outlet".
When I go to online auctions, I'm looking for a deal on something used. I'm tired of living in a society where paying full priced new is the only option: it means individuals who'd be happy with a used widget have to spend more and our landfills fill up with still-useful widgets.
When I search eBay now for (tools/computers/whatever), I get 90% listings from large businesses selling new, usually crappy knock-off, items. I don't want a cheap chinese $20 wood router that barely functions. I want a used porter-cable router from some hobbyist who is downsizing his garage or upgrading to a newer tool. But the floods of cheap chinese crap are all I can find on eBay!
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
We really need to do something about the moderation system to avoid situations like this: the punch line is currently at +4, but all the build up lines are at 0, so we get to see the punchline first and then have to click to reveal the other lines. Which comedy school did the Slashdot programmers go to? This is like reading Abbot and Costello, but with Abbot modded to oblivion.
eBay is in a death spiral. They have been for a while now, and each step they take to try and ensure their survival, they alienate more of the people who made them the powerhouse they once (and still, for now) are.
Eventually, they will hit the ground, but they are doing their best to stay aloft and profitable.
As for the "millions" of users "overnight" for any good competing auction house (or even Google), let's be a bit more rational. Yes, there are a good number of people who are pretty upset with eBay as of late, but let's not be hasty to state that what could simply be a loud minority are "millions."
I could be completely mistaken, as I haven't paid much attention to eBay in a long while, but I have seen far too often when people have said that a vocal minority are the majority, simply because they are the most heard.
After all, if you have 100 apples, 99 of which are red and 1 of which is yellow, one generally notices the 1 yellow much more easily.
Vice versa, if one has 100 apples, 99 of which are yellow and 1 of which is red, one will usually notice the single red much more easily.
That being said, giving a site such as Buy.com the ability to list stuff without listing fees does seem to be, well, damning.
We'll see how this plays out over time, I suppose.
Calling a sword by a pretty name is no more than adding perfume to poison.
Yeah, that would help keep down the escalating prices, but it would also ruin any chance for a deal. That's the whole point of an auction, right? Finding a low price?
Why would ANYONE ever go to ebay if they knew all the stuff they bought would be the same as paying retail or, at best, online prices? The reason for the sniping at the last second is to get the LOWEST high bid in before someone can outbid you.
Your plan is stupid and is probably why you don't run a multi-billion dollar company like eBay.
IANAL, but I play one on
Yes, that is one way you can walk away "happy." Another way is to realize you don't necessarily need that exact item this exact moment and try your hardest to get it for as cheap as possible.
If you don't follow your current line of thinking, you can wait for the next auction and possibly spend less. Keep your set maximum of $123, but try your hardest not to spend that much. With 30 sec left, only bid $80... if that fails, up it to $90 or $100.
There are different personality types in the world, and you are of the type that are satisfied with doing very little and getting what you want at a reasonable cost. There are others that would rather put in some time to get what they want for less money.
It is also financial. Is your time worth more than your money? Most of the snipers on eBay are housewives and college kids with no income and free time.
IANAL, but I play one on
www.taobao.com
China's Ebay!
You know, the swap meet/ flea market used to be fun. You could go thru peoples junk (from their own garage) and find cool stuff and great deals.. Then during the late 80's, it all started turning to Chineese junk and dealers of it. The last time I went to a swap meet, there were like 30 rows of "import" crap and only one row of garage sellers. Ebay is headed that way. RIP
Here found you a couple of links:
http://denver.craigslist.org/mcy/753141131.html
http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/mcy/752039912.html
.
I can't complain that I didn't expect this to happen. Things tend towards monopoly. One definition of a monopoly is rates can be raised unilaterally and the company will not suffer ill effects. eBay just did this, did they suffer ill effects for this? The big sellers will crowd out the small sellers, this is capitalism. Anyone who isn't expecting this or thinks it is unfair - go to your local evangelical church and hook up with some Amway/Quixtar MLM nonsense about being your own boss. I work, at night I work on my degree, and I do this side business as a lark. I have had a positive partnership relationship with some people, and have some tricks up my sleeve in things I have been doing with the one edge I have - my computer (programming/system) skills.
This doesn't mean I don't think unfair things are happening - rich people, many of whom inherited and didn't earn a dime of their money, are screwing over everyone else in a multitude of ways. But I have to laugh at people who whine about how big companies competing with them or not wanting to deal with them are killing their dream of running their own business and being independent, or even more laughably, rich. You sound as deluded as those people at evangelical churches who go in for that MLM "be your own boss" nonsense. You will become a servant to capital sooner or later, in one way or another, whether it's at a W-2 job, or you begging banks or suppliers to give you a credit line, or begging for angel, VC and IPO money. Otherwise you might as well pick up a red flag and go around like Che Guevara. Serviam or non serviam.
A few stories over, the news is in: Ebay won their suit vs. Tiffany in a manner that is being reported as fairly strong precedent.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
We DO need to do something. It's called making an account and clicking on Preferences, then choosing a threshold of 0 or lower.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
Am I the only buyer that is annoyed by it too? When looking for certain items, I'm now getting a lot of "noise" overpriced items from "Buy's internet superstore" and no easy way to filter them out.
I am amazed by the number of people bitching about the shipping costs. To the buyer it's a "scam". To the sellers it's simply a way to keep profits out of eBay's hands. eBay has gotten so damned greedy with their fees that the sellers are seeing reduced profits. Since there are a gazillion people selling the same sorts of goods, they have to be able to sell low to stay "competitive". Thus the bump in shipping charges which avoids the eBay fees.
Have you noticed the "Make Money on Ebay" infomercials? Better yet the "Learn to Make Money on Ebay" tutorial CD? It is turning into a house of scammers and one big pyramid scam. Here is how it's supposed to work. You find ultra good deals on items on Ebay. Then, before you even pay for them you repost them for auction with a reserve. You hold off on paying the original seller until your resale is done and then have the original seller ship directly to your customer. They even recommend that you jack up the S&H charge for an added bonus.
How long is it going to be before the legitimate sellers rebel against that and jump ship?
Had a similar issue with paypal where my complaint was put in on day 45 (item arrived very late, but also turned out to be crap... advertised as silver but actually a rusted POS).
Paypal was happy to inform me that while *they* will only refund within 45 days, Visa will do so within - I believe it was - 128 days, and a Visa chargeback goes right to the seller, with some extra bad points added by Paypal :-)
Buy.com burned me years ago - after I was a loyal customer too... They nearly imploded, went private again, got rid of all their phone lines, and I practically had to sue them to get them to refund the $$$ on a package which they shipped, that never arrived!
I vowed never to buy from them ever again... I turned to Ebay for a lot of purchases - I've had pretty good luck (no worse than in meatspace), but now that they're in the picture, I'll do whatever I can to NOT buy from those schmucks...
eBay is cutting their own throat
Who's modded to oblivion?
Haida Manga
ive always hated ebay ever since they perm banned me for listing "too many" of the same item. Not sure why that is against the rules, but hey, if they wanna lose the business it's not my problem. and then their little (not so little anymore) paypal fiasco. I wonder when paypal will get shut down? They have the worst support and policies.