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EBay Is Shutting Down Its On-Demand Delivery Service
An anonymous reader writes: It may come as no surprise but eBay made it official in a statement today; they are ending their on-demand delivery service eBay Now. The company also plans to end a number of mobile applications, including eBay Valet, eBay Fashion and eBay Motors. A company statement reads in part: "...today we are retiring the eBay Now service in the U.S., including the local Brooklyn pilot program. Last year, we retired our eBay Now app and brought the program's delivery capabilities and many participating merchants' inventory into our core mobile apps. This significantly reduced our dependency on a separate standalone service. While we saw encouraging results with the eBay Now service, we always intended it as a pilot, and we are now exploring delivery and pick-up/drop-off programs that are relevant to many more of our 25 million sellers, and that cover a wider variety of inventory that consumers tell us they want. We will continue to pilot scheduled delivery in the UK."
samzenpus combing the web- posting old news
They are not closing down eBay Motors; they are closing down an app for eBay Motors.
No its really the opposite. If you sell something and someone files a complaint you automatically lose. People won the auction but don't feel like paying so they file a complaint and you're on the hook for a refund even if they're wrong.
What eBay needs is competition.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
People still use eBay?
EBay apparently had $17 billion in revenue last year so I'm guessing the answer is yes.
Is this the same eBay that became a scammer's paradise where no matter what you do, you're screwed?
It's not quite that bad but you do need to be careful.
As a buyer you can be screwed easily enough, but as a seller I wouldn't waste my time. The risks so far outweigh the benefits that it's more like legalized gambling with the loser being the highest bidder.
That is why I no longer own the auction company I held about 10 years ago. It was basically impossible to deal with eBay. They would raise fees every 6 months like clockwork. Any buyer could simply invoke the magic words "not as described" and get their money back. You couldn't defend yourself against unjustified bad feedback. Makers of luxury goods (like Louis Vuitton) could simply shut your auction down with a strike against you even if the merchandise was 100% legit. (and yes this happened to us regularly) The amount of labor in running an auction is ludicrous.
Buying on eBay has risks but generally manageable ones. Selling on eBay has risks that are not really manageable if you are doing more than selling some chotchkies.