ebay really going downhill!

[Gurm]

Ok, rant of the week.

So work gave me a nice shiny new Crackberry, I figure I don't want to carry TWO huge phones, so bye-bye Windows Mobile device.

So I go to sell it on ebay.

Well, ebay has COMPLETELY changed their interface in the past month or two.

First thing I'm informed of? That I have a "limited selling history", and that they might put a hold on my transactions at the PayPal level unless I get enough good feedback. Are they KIDDING? I've had my ebay account since they started the site. I have hundreds of items sold. WTF?

So then I try to block idiots from bidding. I routinely block bidders with zero feedback, or brand new accounts. They're 99.99% of the time scammers.

Well, those checkboxes are gone. Instead, there's a "block bidders who might make this transaction more difficult". So I check it.

And the first 10 bids on my phone? Are from zero-feedback, brand new accounts. WTF?

So finally it sold, top three bidders have feedback, and the one that didn't actually responded and offered me their phone #. Awesome, right? No. Top two bidders (winner and runner up) despite having feedback... don't respond to me. Ugh.

Ok, it didn't used to be THIS bad. What gives? It seems all their changes have just driven away the decent people!

[Marshmallowman]

Ebay is forcing all purchases in Australia to be through paypal , an exception being COD.(its a trial for later worldwide changes)
They have asked the ACC for waiver from legal prosecution beacuse they are breaking austrlian consumer law doing this..

They say it for secrutiy. everyone else says they are double dippinfg for profit..ebay fees then paypal.

I expect local auctions sites to do quite well as a reaction to ebays barstardry.

[Nowhere]

As a sort-of side note - eBay tried to enter PL market some time ago, and technically they're still present...but the scene is dominated by local auction site (you can take a look if you want to... http://www.allegro.pl/ in polish only of course)

Now, what's weird in this case is that I typically absolutelly despise local knock-offs/copies of foreign ideas that, dunno, perhaps because of some ill local patriotism remain popular/dominant. IM, webmail, portals (ok, one is passable), social networks (one "good", though unpopular, exception), social news, web storage, photo service, streaming video, blog service (also one unpopular exception) you name it - all at best so-so, often downright horrible.

But Allegro...manages to be better than eBay. Much better. To the point that it expands its reach into other succesfull web services (but still related to core function, not like eBay-Skype deal), and also expands to other countries, where it apparently also does ok...really weird, given how things usually look like here...

BTW, ATM it expands south & east, but who knows, perhaps one day it'll take on eBay in your markets in retaliation for eBay apetite (though that might have been a good thing - I have the impression that Allegro improved significantly around the time of "eBay invasion")

[Dr Mordrid]

Link....

Internet EBay Boycott Fails, Profits Soar

eBay has the last laugh at its sellers expense, throws a bit of sand in boycotters faces with earnings report

Apparently, eBay's policy changes are having desirable effects, despite the massive public outcry the company received. While the company cut its listing fees, it more than made up for it by significantly raising its commissions on successful sales, particularly on low-priced items such as video games and CDs. The higher rates along with the elimination of negative seller feedback to the buyer created outcry among many loyal eBay sellers.

Some sellers tried to boycott eBay. Initial metrics seemed to show the boycott to be working -- listings were decreasing and sales were down, by most official counts, although eBay insisted they weren't.

However eBay soon rebounded and resumed largely business as usual, despite having lost a few loyal sellers. As DailyTech's Shane McGlaun wrote in a blog, sellers really had few choices -- Amazon.com only allows resale of select items such as CDs or books, and Craigslist.com is avoided by many, due to its unseemly reputation as a hotbed for illegal activity. Most sellers were stuck with eBay, whether they loved it or hated it.

On Wednesday, eBay CEO John Donahoe announced a stronger than expected earnings report, with the company reporting $2.19B USD in revenue, a 24 percent increase over Q1 2007. The performance significantly beat analyst expectations. Net income also rose 22 percent to $562M USD.

Despite the boycott, listings jumped 10 percent to 647.4 million, which eBay attributes to the listing fee cuts. However, eBay did admit that its "conversion rate", the percentage of sales ending in success, "declined only slightly", though eBay would not reveal exact figures. The total "gross merchandise volume", a metric measuring the value of goods sold on eBay and associated properties, experienced 10 percent growth to $16M USD

However, while eBay may have a bit of grounds to gloat over the boycotting sellers, the long-term outlook for the company is not quite as peachy. In 2008's first quarter, eBay had 83.9 million active users, up just over one percent from last year, at 82.9 million users. The stagnant growth indicates that eBay may be reaching the market saturation point.

For a company at a market saturation point, customer satisfaction becomes increasingly important. EBay CFO Bob Swan noted, "We've concluded that the best way to grow our active user base is by not losing any of them."

However, while Donahoe may not want to lose his users, his company's policy certainly threatens to send some users packing, or at least slow growth further. Next month, the company will eliminate negative feedback from sellers to buyers, taking away a major tool which sellers could use to safeguard themselves against malicious customers. While Power Sellers will have some new protections, normal sellers will find themselves in a much more dangerous situation, at the mercy of their buyer's reviews.

Donahoe feels that it’s a buyers’ market, and that the changes are necessary, whether sellers like it or not. He states, "We are extremely focused on improving the buyer experience on eBay. This is not to say that sellers are not important to us, but our belief is and has always been that what is good for buyers is ultimately good for sellers."

Swan said that the slowing U.S. economy is catching up to eBay as well. He mentions, "We saw a slowing in buyers' propensity to buy toward the end of the quarter."

This coming month eBay plans to step up its coupon initiatives, to try to lure buyers to buy more and buy more often. The move continues eBay's focus on giving the buyer the best benefits.

Perhaps emboldened by its modest success eBay's management says they will be sticking with their new policies no matter how much sellers complain. Said Donahoe, "As we expected, some of the announcements generated a lot of passion from our community. We stayed the course on the changes that we believe are critical for the overall health of the marketplace and the long-term success of our community of users. We may have some sellers that make some noise, but we're absolutely confident of the direction we're going."

The only minor concession eBay made was to further reduce the listing fees for low price items, helping to lessen the sting of the particularly large commission increase.

[UtwigMU]

Ebay is seriously ****ed up. I wanted to sell two brand new laptop DVD burners I misordered and first I go to local site. There they live off adds and just provide hosting site. You can also check it out: bolha.com.

If you want better positioning, unlimited add run time, ... (you're a business) you can pay but basic 10-day add hosting is free at which point you can renew add. You can add pictures for free, provide contact information... It's up to bidder/buyer (with fixed priced adds) and seller to work out deal. Usually it's either meet in person cash for item or postage with pay after receiving. In all my dealings I ended up calling the person and working out the deal through phone and I had no problems buying or selling items.

Now e-bay wants my ****ing credit card info and they want to charge me 3 euros for the add. Then when I enter bank transfer as payment option (Europe wide bank transfers are normal, cost little and everyone can do it with e-banking) they bitch about my bank not being in Germany. At that moment I stopped and walked away from site.

Also what's with this paypal for everything. I don't want paypal, paypal can at any point decide that they're not giving you your money and there's little you can do. Besides they act like a bank without being regulated by decent banking regulations and central bank audits. For all the items I'd buy from German e-bay, I'd call/email seller, work out a pay on reception or cash bank transaction deal.

[Gurm]

Pretty much from now on I'm going to only use eBay for the things that I just can't sell locally. It's getting crazy.