EBay Deal Irritates Individual Sellers 382
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."
The harder they fall... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ebay on the way out (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Why I quit EBay (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Not just a prediction... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why I quit EBay (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, the discounted items you used to be able to get from private sellers have given way to hyper-volume sellers with more or less fixed prices.
Ebay is not really an auction site anymore. It's really nothing more than a circular where any questionable web merchant can post advertisements.
Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
It's interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Different company (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Anyone take a look at financials?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Google doesn't want the liability (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Natural monopolies (Score:3, Interesting)
REally? I am buying moreand more from Amazon.com than Ebay lately. I've been looking at items and what they sell for on ebay and then snap them up for 5-15% less on amazon. and this is for electronics, cameras, etc.. not just books.
I've noticed recently that ebay has become rather expensive with lots of dumb bidders bidding things up past a sane price (sane being what I can get it for at an online retailer.)
Compare to Google Product Search (Score:3, Interesting)
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?
Ebay is missing some seriously needed features. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Ebay is worthless right now (Score:3, Interesting)
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").
Fraud-friendly (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Google doesn't want the liability (Score:2, Interesting)
It just occurred to me that P2P networks have the same problem as eBay. They just want to be a connection broker...but the law wants to push them into taking greater responsibility.
How best Buy has been scamming on E-bay (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:No competition (Score:2, Interesting)
Their model is to *not* sellout. They are doing quite well at that.
The last entry on the craigslist fact sheet [craigslist.org]
Q: Is there a connection between craigslist and eBay?
A: eBay acquired 25% of the equity in craigslist from a former shareholder in august of 2004.
Re:Google doesn't want the liability (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as another company comes along that offers anything close to eBay I will give them a shot. I doubt that I am alone.
You aren't alone but I think we are both going to be waiting quite a while. EBay for better or worse is going to be very hard to displace.
No, I don't think it is a big assumption at all. I think you underestimate just how pissed off people are, both buyers and sellers alike.
Underestimate? I have over 10,000 feedbacks and sold literally millions of dollars of merchandise through eBay. I no longer sell anything through eBay because eBay policies ended up costing me tens of thousands of dollars.
EBay basically made it impossible to do business with them and choked the life out of a company I worked very hard to build. You think I don't understand how pissed off people are? I understand better than almost anyone you'll ever meet.
eBay is losing both buyers and sellers at a pretty fantastic rate.
Really? You know that for sure? Because there is almost no financial data [yahoo.com] I can find to support that hypothesis.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Placing Your Max Bid Early (Score:3, Interesting)
An argument against that:
People are emotional beings. Let's say we both want to buy an item. You want to spend $200, I want to spend $210 max. In a perfect world, the auction would go to me for $205 (or something like that.)
We both place our bids, you see the $205 amount and think "Hey, I can spend another $10 on that." Bidding war.
Then there are the people who really don't want to lose because only losers lose. It's all very emotional.
Best would be if all the people would just place a secret bid, then afterwards the price is announced, but that will never happen because it keeps prices down.
The proposed 5 minute extension after a bid in the last 5 minutes of an auction is good as well.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Cooperate with Sellers (Score:3, Interesting)
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 [businessweek.com] on their purchase of Skype.
Search by individual sellers (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re:Ebay proxy bidding: a tutorial (Score:5, Interesting)
No, just because you don't understand the complaint doesn't make it invalid. Yes, the people who care more about winning than about getting the merchandise at a decent price are suckers. The reality, however, is that because there are so many of those people, all of whom bid with bots, the odds of anyone -ever- buying -anything- at a reasonable price on eBay rapidly approaches zero, making it a waste of people's time to even bother bidding unless it is at the last second in hopes that your random snipe bot might generate the lucky closing bid and do so at a price that is still under your personal maximum for the item.
Also, searching for items on eBay takes time. If that auction is then snatched by somebody else at the last second for only a dollar more than your high bid, people naturally feel cheated---not because they didn't bid what they felt the item was worth to them, but because the amount of extra money somebody else paid was so small that the value of the time they have to spend searching for another one and bidding for it exceeds the amount of extra money they would have had to pay to win the auction. That's what makes the last-second bidding thing absolutely suck for buyers.
Finally, there's the problem of snipe bidders who then turn around and resell the products on eBay. They calculate the average selling price minus fees and shipping costs and effectively guarantee that no product will ever sell below that price. In effect, this creates an artificial supply shortage and drives up the average selling price of goods for everyone. Of course, eBay doesn't want to stop that because they rake in money from fees every time somebody does it.
And then there's the issue of shill bidding---somebody bidding against you to find out what your maximum bid is and make you pay as much as possible. Of course, they might accidentally go too far on occasion, but odds are somebody will outbid them, and if not, they could always retract the bid (and then rebid as a different user for just a little less than your maximum bid). It's probably safe to assume that such things happen far more than eBay would like us to believe.
I have participated in many auctions on eBay, and with only one or two exceptions, the only ones I have ever "won" were because I bid low initially, then sniped against myself and the other snipers at the end (and even then, success is limited). The system is utterly broken as it stands now, and I have basically stopped buying anything through eBay unless it has either a "buy-it-now" option or an "or-best-offer" option.... Either every bid should require you to key in the text from a CAPTCHA or bidding should be extended by five minutes every time someone bids within the last minute of the auction. Either one would fix the problem. Until the problem is fixed, eBay is, IMHO, an utter waste of my time.
Re:Google doesn't want the liability (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why I quit EBay (Score:3, Interesting)
I find their public paypal statements absolutely fascinating. They claim it offers additional security for you as a buyer yet if you using paypal;
- You don't have the persons name or company name (ala Bank Deposit)
- You don't have a contact point to start investigating from (ala Bank Deposit)
- If they are a fraudster they aren't going to leave the funds in their paypal account which makes paypals buyer protection useless as there a tiny small print item which says if the money isn't in the account even if they find in your favour you get zippo.
- Rubbing salt in your wounds, even if they find in your favour they respect the privacy of the now proven fraudulent seller and won't release their information to you.
It's laughable.
Paypal gives dodgy people protection to defraud you whereas the same people are less likely to do so via the Bank as they lack the chops to defraud a bank and generate false papers to open a fraudulent bank account and won't use their own bank account as you'd get their name. But they can like their own bank account to paypal & paypal will keep them nice and safe from you, the victim.
Re:No competition (Score:3, Interesting)