The New eBay headed in the Wrong Direction?

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  Wm. T.02/22/08 Report as spam
  1

  Renovate, don't innovate

  Remember Marshall McLuen's dictum: the medium is the message, or, in marketing terms, the model is your offer. The message of eBay is ebay; you can't have one, you can't have one, you can't have one without the ooooooottthher.

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  calbyj02/22/08 Report as spam
  2

  RE: The New eBay headed in the Wrong Direction?

  Ebay has lost its appeal.
  Sellers, including power sellers, are lining up toss-offs.
  The tactic of the sellers-to keep an attractive price and keep even with ebay fees has been to Greatly augment shipping charges.
  Buyers cannot leave honest assessments of seller efficiency due to retaliatory power of wellers to leave feedback in-kind; regardless of whether they were paid for the product.
  Once was a fanatic-but gave it up after selling or donating to thrift all the junk received-Good for the USPS however.

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  IMLaughlin02/22/08 Report as spam
  3

  RE: The New eBay headed in the Wrong Direction?

  Article "read my mind" about eBay's changes that move it away from establishing a fair and safe auction arena, and move it toward becoming just another on-line retailer. I've lost interest and haven't made any eBay transactions for several months. It really burns me to get ever increasing spam from eBay marketing retail products and services.

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  RandyU02/22/08 Report as spam
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  AMEN IMLaughlin

  I was also an early eBay seller and buyer. Now I don't even think of going to eBay to buy or sell. So much of eBay has become a junk yard of cheap crap posted by the "power sellers". Raise THEIR fees, and I may come back.
  
  Craigslist - here I come!

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  sbarbor@...02/22/08 Report as spam
  5

  RE: The New eBay headed in the Wrong Direction?

  The power of ebay has always been geared towards the small seller/buyer. I think the problem of late has been the scams and untrust of the larger sellers taking over. This move has just handed the shop over to them. Too bad, ebay was a great idea. I guess this will just push more people to look their local craigslist for items now.

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  petergiza02/22/08 Report as spam
  6

  RE: The New eBay headed in the Wrong Direction?

  I have been an eBay buyer & seller for 10+ years and a member of the Internet tech community since 1987, yeah 1987. For this exercise I am going to compare eBay to The Home Depot (THD) since we are all THD experienced.
  
  In 1994 THD was a good place to shop for home building and improvement stuff - except lumber. What a deal, everything you needed to renovate a house under one roof and all the brand names to boot! The support staff there actually cared about helping you and knew what they were talking about.
  
  Fast forward to today - THD is an abysmal customer experience. Customer support doesn???t really exist and most THD personnel are generally product and trade clueless. And you got to love those automated checkout stations, always open, always broken while the only 2 open out of 20 manned stations have lines to the back of the store ??? of course its a Saturday.
  
  So here starts the comparison. What a deal eBay was in the early days. You can sell your antiques to a myriad of buyers worldwide. No one could offer what you got from eBay at such a bargain. With voracious appetite to be the top dog eBay grew larger and larger - just like THD. eBay wiped out its competition, putting foes like Yahoo auctions embarrassingly to death.
  
  Then reality arrived. Mounting marketing and infrastructure expenses, the dotComBomb and the Street???s requirement to become profitable. Fees were raised, stores were marketed and policies adopted. Somewhere along the journey E, like HD, got lost. It failed to consider the all important component to success - Customer Experience. Today, buyer and seller experience is less than optimal.
  
  Imagine purchasing an item at THD, you take it home and due to poor quality construction it fails. So you hop in your minivan with your purchase and tailgating supplies and head back to THD. When you get to the Customer Support desk, you wait and wait. In fact you wait 5 days or more while enjoying the tailgate party in the parking lot. Finally you request to speak with the all-helpful and all-knowing THD wizard of support is granted. The wizard responds to your complaint; "silly consumer this is just one of 10,000 vendors that sell this item here at THD. We don't get involved in buyer/seller disputes. You will have to take it up with them directly. The seller contact information is clearly printed on the product label. Have a nice day and thank you for shopping at THD." Realizing the wizard has spoken his last words you head home 10 days older, 3 shades grayer and a bit more cynical.
  
  An exaggeration of the facts? For THD maybe, for eBay it is a reality. eBay's idea of providing customer support for either buyer or seller is adroitly spouting chapter and verse eBay policy. Make no mistake, as a buyer you are a "buyer at will". The axiom "Buyer Beware" goes without saying. Fraud is rampant and eBay is as impotent as can be to provide timely or any resolution. The list of buyer woes is too numerous to list.
  
  On the seller side there are many evil pitfalls and you are indeed a ???seller at will???. Now imagine you are an iron door knob merchant. You decide to sign a contract for $10,000 for shelf space for 6 months and advertising at THD. You stock your shelves, you do your marketing and you behave in accord with the "policies" set forth by THD. There are many door knob merchants of many material types; porcelain, brass, steel, wood, stone, etc. So you decide that you want to differentiate your product. Your advertising campaign says something like "High Quality Iron door knobs NOT Brass, Stone, Wood". An innocent differentiation right? You think "I'm not keyword spamming by the use of NOT because I'm not making a brand comparison like 'Ford NOT Chevy, Dodge, Ferrari' which would constitute a violation of keyword spamming."
  
  So you flight your ad campaign at THD. At some point you receive a notice from the THD policy wizard that, and without warning, all of your product has been removed from the store and all advertising destroyed. The wizard cites the THD policy that you have violated chapter and verse. The wizard gives as an example the ???Ford NOT Chevy, Dodge, Ferrari??? abuse of the word ???NOT??? in your campaign as basis for giving you the boot. You explain to the wizard this is not a "brand" spamming violation. The wizard waves his hand and responds with a "Thank you for contacting us..." and proceeds to cite you the same information again, again and again. All of this over the course of 5-10 days while you enjoy the parking lot food. At the end of it all the wizard refuses to listen, you are told that since you violated policy and forfeit space investment and advertising dollars. You protest and say you were never given the chance to remedy the so-called violation. The wizard responds with ???we are too busy to be contacting our merchants when they make a mistake. So we have to act to protect our buyers from potential fraud.??? You respond ???but surely those persons who bought my iron door knobs knew what they were buying.??? The wizard retorts ???How dare you question the wisdom of the all-knowing and invincible?????? You walk away in disbelief and disgust knowing that they are the only game in town and you???ll do it again because you have to. The worst thing is THD wizard knows this too.
  
  This is an all-to-often true-to-life scenario happening hundreds if not thousands of times each day at eBay. Admittedly some of the violations are nefarious and there is intent to defraud. However, eBay's support mechanism which takes days upon days upon days is at best an egregious failure. To call it ???support??? is to paint a block of lead yellow and call it gold ??? it is a fraud in itself.

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  philliphaney@...02/22/08 Report as spam
  7

  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over.

  What's up with buyers no longer being able to leave negative feedback?
  
  I found something I really, REALLY, wanted but the seller had a feedback rating of -1 so I hung my head and said no.
  
  I've never left negative feedback, but if you can't even if you want to, the feedback rating system becomes worthless.

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  moshuptrail02/24/08 Report as spam
  8

  W-T-F

  It's the other way around. The buyer can neg the seller, but the seller can't retaliate.

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  addicted2speed02/22/08 Report as spam
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  It's the Economy, Stupid!

  eBay is losing market revenues and such because of a slowing economy - not because it's "broken". It provides safety where sites like Craigslist simply post a "Buyer Beware" sign and are done.
  
  Ultimately eBay is still directly dependent on the American Consumer for its revenues, and people simply don't have that much money to spend anymore.
  
  Increasing fees may create a temporary increase in sales, but until consumer confidence rebounds, it will be pretty difficult to turn the revenues around, and eBay may lose some customers along the way.

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  addicted2speed02/22/08 Report as spam
  10

  "Stupid" is not directed at any reader. It's a reference to K.I.S.S.

  I just read the title and I think it may be mis-interpreted.

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  moshuptrail02/24/08 Report as spam
  11

  RE: The New eBay headed in the Wrong Direction?

  the buyer rating thing is not a bad idea.
  1. As a seller you don't have a lot of control over who is your buyer. You can prohibit those with 0 feedback but not those with 100 feedbacks and 10% negative. So buyer feedback rating doesn't help a lot. If you are a small seller you might have time to check it and find out what you already know-a jerk bought your stuff and is giving you a hard time. Too late.
  2. As a buyer. It's nice to know your rating wont be affected by a retaliatory neg from a seller who has just screwed you. The result will be more realistic seller ratings. As a small seller your overall rating including your buyer rating can actually affect your selling prices.

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  tampa_torch02/25/08 Report as spam
  12

  RE: The New eBay headed in the Wrong Direction?

  I was a victim of seller retaliation on my rating - the only "negative" rating in the 9 years I've been on Ebay. The seller put the BS on me because I complained that he sold me defective software, did not answer repeated emails for a replacement or a refund and I put a negative rating on him. I see now he does it to everyone who leaves negative feedback on him. I applaud this move.

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  LWeller209/09/08 Report as spam
  13

  A matter of competition

  One issue that isn't is that ebay started as a sort of garage-sale online site, plus products that sellers found at discount and resold. There is a limit to that and that limit was reached. Then other resellers started using ebay as a quick and easily-found web site front.
  
  Now the issue seems to be that ebay sellers have looked high and low for products to sell. Many sought to make a living at it so needed to charge high enough prices. The result is that they're now competing with small non-ebay retailers. And the linked issues are that shoppers are better at searching for the best priced products, and there is now competition from Amazon and other similar sites.
  
  And the result of all that is that there is no benefit to shopping on ebay.
  
  Somehow, ebay has to appeal to those non-ebay retailers to get them onboard. I'd suggest turning ebay into a retailer search engine extraordinnaire.