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eBay Is Conducting a 'Mass Layoff' In the Bay Area (mercurynews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the slice-and-dice dept.

eBay is planning to slash nearly 300 jobs from Bay Area locations by July 20, calling the cuts a "mass layoff." Those being laid off were informed at the end of June, reports The Mercury News. The San Jose-based company estimated that it would eliminate 224 jobs in San Jose, 41 in San Francisco, and five in Brisbane. From the report: "This action is expected to be permanent," eBay stated in the Employment Development Department filing. "No affected employee has any bumping rights." Over the one-year period that ended in March, eBay lost $1.64 billion on revenues of $9.84 billion, according to information posted on the Yahoo Finance site. During the first quarter that ended March 31, eBay earned $407 million on revenues of $2.58 billion. Compared to the year-ago first quarter, profits were down 60.7 percent and revenue rose 12 percent.

5 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. How do you lose money if you're eBay? by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's a scaled up beanie baby store - how do you actually lose money with that market share? If I was CEO I think I would just find 100 of the best and brightest to run it, fire all the deadwood and make bank - hope more layoffs are coming!

    1. Re:How do you lose money if you're eBay? by EvilSS · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They are losing revenue to Amazon and craigslist. Amazon from "professional" sellers moving where the sales are, and craigslist for the guy wanting to sell his one or two whatevers and not deal with ebay, their fees, shipping, and the increasing possibility of getting ripped off by unscrupulous buyers and ebay's overly customer friendly dispute policies.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
  2. Serves you right, laid off eBay scum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I used to do a lot of shopping through eBay. One day PayPal froze my account. No idea why. I lost several hundred dollars in it. They made it so difficult to activate I just gave up and stopped using eBay altogether. I haven't shopped there for years.

    At the time they scum at eBay and PayPal no doubt couldn't give a shit. And they got to keep my money.

    I'm no the only one. There are many stories on the net and man web sites dedicated to people screwed over by eBay and PayPal. Corporate knew about this but they ignored us.

    Well now the chickens come home to roost. To those laid of eBay employees; HA HA! I hope you end up living on the street. This is what happens when you treat your customers like shit. Enjoy your unemployment assholes!

  3. Privacy offender. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you buy anything off their site as a guest they create a dummy profile and start spamming you to sign into their site. You can't unsubscribe from these emails unless you create a full account. When you contact them to delete the account their staff are quite aggressive in tone and don't want to delete your account. You have to be quite firm. They start asking all these questions about your identity, pretending to be verifying it is you, but they don't have this information in the first place from the dummy account. I won't be buying anything off them again.

  4. Re:Forget market share by DrXym · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I should think that fraud is a major part of their income. Seller sells a bunch of counterfeit goods, only a % of buyers open a dispute, eBay seizes the sellers funds and after resolving disputes keeps the rest as well as all the transaction / listing fees. Rinse and repeat.

    I've never thought that any middle man service, be it AliExpress, eBay, Amazon, Kickstarter et al really takes fraud that seriously. They'll pay lip service to combatting it, but at the end of the day they still profit from both ends from it happening.