Auction site eBay is hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with disgruntled sellers planning a major boycott on 1 May and hints from chief executive John Donahoe that it may look to sell Skype.
Donahoe’s decision to make eBay more online shop than flea-market brought unpopular changes to the way in which the site works, with one in particular causing huge consternation among the army of online sellers.
Negative comments
Previously, sellers have been able to respond to negative comments about their online shops, but the decision to stop this practice, in tandem with a rise in fees, has left the community apoplectic.
There is now a planned worldwide boycott scheduled to make it clear that people are unhappy with the changes.
Skype performance
But it appears that eBay’s focus is rather more on the performance of Skype – with Donahoe admitting to the Financial Times that he was considering selling the service that was bought for $2.2 billion – a fee that fell significantly when performance targets were not met.
"What we’re testing this year are the synergies," said Donahoe."If the synergies are strong, we'll keep [Skype] in our portfolio. If not, we'll reassess it."
Skype is far from a failure in business terms, with its audience growing and revenues beginning to flow, but the voice over IP (VoIP) service has not been the ‘click to call’ revolution that eBay had hoped for.
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philipcohen
June 1st
3. Shill Bidding on eBay: A Case Study
For anyone interested, a detailed case study of a classic, blatant shill bidder on eBay, and a comment on eBay’s attitude thereto, at http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033
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philipcohen
July 4th 2008
2. eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders
In Australia and the UK (at the least) eBay has now obscured auction bidding to the point that genuine bidders have got absolutely no chance of detecting and thereby protecting themselves from “shill” bidding (a criminal offence in most civilised countries) by unethical vendors. Notwithstanding eBay’s statements to the contrary, this application of absolute anonymity by eBay serves no purpose other than to deceive consumers; and the same criticism has always applied to eBay’s other facility, “User ID kept private” (aka “the shill bidders’ stairway to paradise”). Again, notwithstanding eBay’s various pronouncements about shill bidding being banned on eBay, eBay is now knowingly “aiding and abetting” such shill bidders, at the expense of consumers ...
The full detailed version of the above comment (on AuctionBytes.com) at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6498345#6498345
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lje
April 22nd 2008
1. I'm sorry but I can't take this anymore! This is not just about not being able to leave a negative comment once in a great while! I honestly think I've left 3 since 1999 with over 3000 transactions.
This is about:
a fee hike proposed as a fee cut
Totally hidden DSR system that is horribly flawed that determines where your paid listing shows up in the searches. Ebay tells buyers a 4 is good but intend on telling buyers later if you don't have a 5 your a theif, you ship too slow, or you overcharge on shipping directly in your listing and then they plan to promote approved sellers directly in a live listing. This is just wrong! I know people who ship free who have low scores on shipping cost!
Feedback now also determines where your items show up in the listings as well!
Best Match search which is flawed and totally useless. Try it some time... I've seen great small sellers dumped to the bottom of the list and sellers I would never buy from with worse DSR's and horrible feedback pushed to the top. My guess is because they spend alot on fees or "Purchased a category".
Hiding all users in live auctions - perfect! Now ebay can make more money on shill bidding! Since this policy seems to promote it!
DSR and Feedback also determine whether or not Paypal holds your funds for 21 days. How can people ship if they can't access the funds for close to a month?
AND now to cap it off ebay is trolling for buyer complaints! Almost promoting it! I got an email stating I should file my complaint and ebay would send me a coupon since I had not posted feedback fast enough. I was sick! Did ebay even speak to the seller to find out if there was a problem???? I doubt it since the seller involved had no clue ebay contacted me!!!!
Then there was the digital sellers.... no warning they changed the rules and pulled down thousands of listings over a rule that was not even announced or implemented yet. AND they gave each of the sellers a violation on their account.
This is just the tip of the iceberg as to why so many are joining the boycott! There is more coming out every single day!
Good going JD... give it a couple more months and you'll clear out the entire site!
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