EBay sees growing risks to business in coming year

[UpInArms]

Source: Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Online auction leader eBay Inc warned in an annual report on Friday that it faces difficulty getting former customers to return, adding to the normal challenge of attracting new users to its sites.

In its annual shareholder filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, eBay cited a variety of new threats to its business that reflect "changing customers demands."

EBay acknowledged that its main auction business faces slowing growth in each of its top three markets.

<snip>

The San Jose, California-based company also acknowledged that significant changes made in January in fees and policies on its marketplaces have been controversial with many sellers.

"If these changes cause sellers to move their business away from our sites or otherwise fail to improve gross merchandise volume or the number of successful listings, our operating results and profitability will be harmed," eBay said.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2923696420080301?sp=true

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. Try reducing seller fees as an incentive -

Start holding bidders to the same standards that you require of sellers, and stop making unnecessary changes for the sake of making changes.

[CountAllVotes]

2. try stopping the following:

1. harassing and threatening BUYERS
2. shill bidding
3. trumped up seller's fees
4. outrageous shipping charges
5. selling items that are not what they are said to be
6. PayPal loves you. :mad:
7. oh yes, most importantly something called EXTORTION

[Winterblues]

44. You must know that ebay does not sell anything, people do

It is only an auction house. The person that sells an object has control over whether the item is as advertised and what the shipping fees might be. The buyer then submits a response as to how satisfied they were and any future buyers or sellers can read those comments. The fees applied though are ebays and they are quite high IMO.Paypal is not a part of ebay.

[rosetta627]

3. Gee, maybe stop acting like an arrogant monopoly ebay?

In spite of the fact that it's exactly what you are.

[grasswire]

4. it would be amusing if it weren't so sad

They not only ruined the business of many people who depended on the income to support families, but they've harmed shareholders as well.

A pox on the suits.

[Carni]

5. Try not treating your sellers like crap!

Higher fees...no way for sellers to leave anything but positive feedback for buyers even if they stiff you, or leave YOU negative feedback! (and I have a 100% feedback rating but that doesn't mean people don't leave bad feedback just to be snarky because i know people who have had it happen)

Every artist I know who sells on Ebay is livid currently (since most of us aren't exactly making a fortune in the first place!)

I personally am switching to Etsy because obviously Ebay doesn't care about their sellers!

A big SHAME ON YOU to Ebay!

[AndyTiedye]

8. How About a Score for the Feedback an eBay'er LEAVES as Well as One for What (s)he GETS

It should be rare that one has to leave negative feedback.
Those for whom leaving negative feedback is not rare might be best avoided.
Doing business with such people would not be a pleasant or profitable experience.

This tool searches the feedback for negative and neutral feedback reports.
It can search out feedback received by an eBayer or feedback left by an ebayer.
http://toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs

ebay should build that ability into their system, and provide a feedback-left score along with the feedback-received score.

[Psephos]

21. A good observation n/t

[Quantess]

10. I like Etsy.

www.etsy.com

[snappyturtle]

36. You like Etsy for buying? selling? I'm asking because I need to

start supplementing our income a bit. I'm particulary interested in selling.

[Lorien]

39. It's much cheaper to sell on Eysy, but there's also less traffic

and items sold must be handmade. Online Auction ( www.OLA.com ) may be a better alternative to Ebay at this point. eBay's seller fees and new feedback structure will crush the little guy.

[snappyturtle]

40. Thank you so much. I kinda assumed that the traffic is a lot less on

Etsy but then I just found a seller there that makes small decorated pins, for decorative use on pin cushions, low cost, small price but....I sorta averaged her prices and she's easily made $1500.00 in the last few weeks. Now if she has her shipping figured correctly, she's done well. Attractively "packaged" too.

I thank you so much for the other link. I'll take a peek at it too. My work is all handmade so Etsy fits the bill on that.

[ariesgem]

41. Thank you for this link.

I just closed my Ebay account yesterday because of the high fees. I was going to sell off my remaining inventory on Craig's List because I didn't think there was a viable alternative to ebay. I just checked out the site and for the items that I sell (women's clothing) it's perfect! There's plenty of bidding going on.

[Lorien]

24. No kidding. I'm an artist who WAS selling on eBay

I also have a 100% positive eBay rating, but I can't afford to sell there any longer with the new 8.75% value added fee. It's stressful to sell on eBay already, but the changes have made it downright miserable and unprofitable.

[snappyturtle]

37. Have you found another site to list on that you like and have good

response? I have sold our motorhome and trencher, big items, successfully on ebay but now I'm interested in selling my art work...sculpture, miniatures, collectible type stuff. I had a great production art business for years but I eventually burned out! Now, I'm antsy again to produce.

[the other one]

6. Its the Economy, Stoopid. And the novelty is gone

Eventually everything jumps the shark. Even Ebay.

I used to sell 200 items per week on ebay. Because prices were great.

I sell about 500 things per year now, and only things that I can't sell anywhere else. The prices are terrible, and the high fees do not help.

[jwirr]

17. Yes, that is why I stopped selling. I think it is interesting that the

pug owner's of Ebay are getting hit by *ss's recession. Learn something Ebay: if you are selling something people have to have the money to buy something.

[xioaping]

42. Its Ebay not the economy

Ebay got too slow. Many customers complained about it so slow we took everything out of our page but it did not help. It was Ebay that made it slow with adverstising and other fat. Dial-up users could not use the site fast.

Then ebay change the format so many times people could not remember.

Then they try to force everyone to use paypal and their shipping and make other option hard.

Ebay became terrible before the economy become slow. Now we just use ebay for advertising and sell just a little on ebay. Before we sell $400 to $800 each day. Now not even that much a month on ebay.

[Quantess]

7. eBay is no longer a great place to sell or buy

I used to sell on eBay. Just small time, one or two auctions now and then. It was fun, and it was personal, and there were A LOT more buyers.
Buying was more fun in the early years, too. It was like shopping at a little antique shop. More small time sellers, more unique items. Friendly transactions.

These days, a small time seller won't make it. There are way too many mass-production sellers who drop ship from China. A lot of the sellers say their items are in the USA, but In fact, the item arrives 3 weeks later with "Hong Kong" stamped on the package. And eBay won't do anything about it.

[Booster]

33. I won't say I've stopped buying on eBay, but I sure have slowed

down a lot, and the reason is about 50% of what I bought was busted by FexEx and UPS before it got to my house. As I tried to explain to the FedEx guy who brought me a broken LCD TV, I know they have insurance and I'll get my money back, but this was an auction where I thought I got a very good deal and I can't repeat that same deal. If eBay and other auction sites would get tough with the shippers they would have more satisfied customers. I've watched them just toss things from my driveway to my front door; they don't come to the door and they don't get a signature - they just don't care.

[Kittycat]

9. Try not raping us over fees.

I had to close down shop there. Between their fees and PP fees, I wasn't even clearing my costs on the smaller orders. I pulled all of my fabric off, and put it on my other website. I didn't care much if it didn't fit my company profile, because I have to sell it - I just didn't want to give it away.

[Thepricebreaker]

11. Soon sellers can't give feedback to buyers... something new they are doing... they are NUTS!

[Quantess]

12. Oh, that should fix everything!

:eyes:

[kimmylavin]

14. Its even worse than that.

Sellers can ONLY leave positive feedback for buyers.
How eBay figured this would be a good thing, I have no idea.

[lpbk2713]

38. Sounds like a rethuglican way of doing things.

Like if you can't say something positive about BushCo we don't want to hear it.

[slampoet]

13. EBAY has Screwed the entire used economy by not allowing users to research what things sold for

in past auctions.



VIVA CRAIG's LIST


They are the better mouse trap.

[NJCher]

19. exactly

Why would anyone go to the trouble of listing on ebay when it's so easy to go to craigslist and put on a FREE ad with a picture and reach people right in one's own geographic area?

Sell to someone who can come and pick it up--eliminate trips to the post office, a place that will eat up time like nothing else.

"Better mousetrap" sums it all up!



Cher

[2Design]

15. when I get scammed by a seller on their site - I want to easily get my money

back and they do not guarantee that - and without sellers being able to give buyer feedback - there are a lot of scammers out there that we can not warn other buyers or sellers without being able to do feedback both ways - they lost me when they gave me a hard time but refunded my $25 one time - I decided it was not worth taking chances - I had almost been scammed twice before but my instincts told me not to pay and I didn't and the person was a fraud

[Miss Chybil]

16. eBay has changed too much.

It used to be just people selling some of their stuff. Now, alot of it is businesses selling a bunch of cheap junk with very expensive shipping charges.

[Heywood J]

20. Exactly.

Instead of finding someone's one-off collectible or prize, it's now the same as walking into Wal-Mart - Chinese junk shipped from a warehouse, only now you don't have the benefit of being able to turn the package over to see where it was made.

At least in a store, I can inspect the product to my satisfaction, instead of a listing where the owner had to skimp out on pictures so that Ebay wouldn't take them to the cleaners for it.

[NEOhiodemocrat]

18. Ebay lost my business

I bought an item and the seller raised the shipping cost x4 and when I sent him an email asking about the change in the pricing he said "well, that was too low a price for the tape" Sorry, but I though an auction was you take the winning price if there is not a minimum bid set. Anyway, I sent the money and then complained to ebay and they did nothing about it at all, said it wasn't a big enough transaction to do anything. Then the seller left me negative feedback! That was it, Ebay is out as far as I am concerned. I don't need the aggravation. It used to be fun, like a giant garage sale or something, now prices stink and Ebay doesn't help out the buyer from rogue sellers who don't abide by their advertised charges.

[deacon]

22. Ebay= Machiavellian scumbags. That place is now an unsafe

venue to buy or sell from. It is the most unfriendly and untrustworthy buyer and seller environment on the internet.

Beware.

[deacon]

23. A link to check out..

http://fsbfeatures.blogs.fsb.cnn.com/2008/01/31/ebay-fee-hike-sparks-seller-rebellion/

[Lorien]

26. Thanks for the link. Here's a list of other online auction sites

from it to research as alternatives:

these are sites popping up, spend your time researching, keep busy listing, or looking, we have to avoid e-bay at all costs for as long as it takes.

I put them in alphabetical order,

http://www.auction.com/default.aspx
http://www.auction.overstock.com/
http://www.auctionaddict.net/
http://www.auctionfire.com/
http://www.auctionquests.com/
http://www.auction-usa.com/
http://www.auction-warehouse.com/
http://www.bid-alot.com/
http://www.bidville.com/
http://www.blujay.com/
http://www.buyselltrades.com/
http://www.cqout.com/
http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites.html
http://www.ebay.com (NOT A CHOICE ANYMORE)
http://www.ecrater.com/
http://www.epier.com/
http://www.hibidder.com/
http://www.ioffer.com/
http://www.itsgottago.com/
http://www.onlineauction.com/
http://www.overstock.com
http://www.oztion.com.au/
http://www.plunderhere.com/
http://www.specialistauctions.com/
http://www.tazbar.com/
http://www.ubid.com
http://www.ubidright.com/
http://www.us.ebid.net/
http://www.wagglepop.com/
http://www.webidz.com
http://www.wensy.com/

[bhlaserjet]

34. Here Is My new Auction Site! Please Use it Also as alternative Ebay Site!

MaxBidAuctions.com Online Auction Site! - Buy Sell Trade Online!
Work from home! Sell your suff fast!
Over 28000 Categories to choose from.
MaxbidAuctions.Com
http://maxbidauctions.com
[e-mail]

Please add us to your main list of auction sites.

[LeftyMom]

25. I still buy on ebay, but I'm very cautious about reading listings and looking at feedback

I won't sell anymore, too many buyers who'd bid and then bitch about the listed shipping charges, and I was always very careful to get them as close as possible to my actual cost at the post office. I guess they think they should win a book for two bucks and then I should pay a dollar and a half to ship it? As little as I was making and as much aggravation as it was causing, I'd rather just take my excess stuff to Goodwill.

[michreject]

27. After selling for 8 years

I stopped last year when they changed the firearm accessories policy. A lot of people did.

[UpInArms]

28. here's some more weirdness from eBay

from a friend, I get this information:

Mystery Shopping.com Listings on eBay?
By: Ina Steiner
Sat Mar 1 2008 01:56:54
Mystery listings are appearing on eBay that don't allow shoppers to bid or buy. The listings appear to be feeds from Shopping.com sellers. A look at the User ID sdc_prod_301013_74, for example, shows the seller has 27,076 listings - but the ones we clicked on did not have bid or buy buttons. Users found multiple User IDs with the preface "sdc" - a commonly used nickname for Shopping.com (Shopping Dot Com).

A discussion about the listings began Friday night on eBay's Feedback board. Some posters believe it is a sign that eBay is trying to inflate its listing numbers to mask any effects of the seller boycott. Because of the dearth of data from eBay, Wall Street analysts put a lot of credence on listing numbers to gauge the company's marketplace performance. This month, everyone studied listing numbers to try and measure the impact of the seller boycott. And sellers have been prowling the site looking for any evidence of manipulation.

Others believe the "sdc" mystery is a test eBay is running or may be a glitch.

Update 3/1/08: eBay spokesperson Usher Lieberman responded by email on Saturday, "This was a limited test that has run its course." I appreciate the update on a weekend and, if I learn more next week, will update this post.

http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2008/3/1204379814.html

here's a screenshot of one of the auctions:




and here is a link to the "closed auctions"

http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICommand=ViewListedItems&since=30&userid=sdc_prod_301013_74&include=0&rows=50&sort=3&completed=1

[Robbien]

31. Heh. So that is how they did it.

I wondered why the pundits weren't talking about how EBay was hurt by the strike. EBay was gaming the system.

Count me as not surprised.

[shanti]

29. hidden bidder feature

this just rolled out today and now makes ebay a shiller's paradise. i've spent a lot of money on ebay in the past, but with this, i am OUTA HERE! no more bids on flea bay for me!

ebay did it to themselves!

[Mountainman]

30. Personally I don't have a problem with Ebay. I have sold thousands of dollars of model trains there

and bought about as much. I like that things that weren't available before except at once a year swap meets are now available almost weekly.

I think that people who want to use Ebay as a source of income and are small time players are very much like the mom and pop stores competing with Walmart. It just isn't going to be fair.

I don't like the sellers that have so much shit on their sites that I have to wade through it all just to get to the bigger picture of the thing I am interested in. I pass them up. I don't like being hustled. I like the people who, like me, have one or two things to sell and are not trying to make a living off of it. Just trying to get some cash for things they don't need anymore. I wish there were two Ebays. One for the big time sellers and the ones like me.

I pass by the people who have "Ebay stores".

[Dulcinea]

32. Same here.

Most of what I buy & sell is kids' clothing, which is outrageously overpriced anyway. I also avoid the eBay Stores; I might as well go to the mall that shop from them! I prefer the people like me that just want to sell the outgrown stuff. I've had good luck for the most part with that.

[onager]

47. Shout-out from fellow geek...

:hi:

Random nonsense off the top of my alleged head...

My racket is plastic scale models, not trains. But the hobbies are similar. One big difference is that you train guys have been organized for years, sort of like a union. So people don't dare accuse you of being adults playing with toys.

Heh. Just kidding.

I generally agree with your comments. When I started selling on eBay way back in 1999, I thought it was great. No more getting up at 5:00 AM on a Sunday to load the car up with boxes of models, drive to a swap meet, set up the selling table, etc. etc. It was so easy! Just put up the eBay ads and wait for the auctions to end. As much as I love the social/buying aspects of swap meets, they could be a giant pain at times.

And like yourself, I probably bought as much as I sold.

I've been working in Egypt for nearly 3 years now, which made eBay much more of a hassle. After one item I bought never arrived at my U.S. address, I pretty much gave up. I was having my wins shipped to my mother's address, so it could be a couple of weeks before I knew the item arrived and could leave feedback. And selling is just out of the question, of course.

I still enjoy looking at eBay, usually for several hours. But it sounds like their new policies have driven a lot of small sellers away, which is a shame. And I personally hate many of the changes they've made to the site.

I also hate the lowball model-kit sellers in Hong Kong and Taiwan. As a come-on, they list expensive items for a low starting price. But the shipping is like $20 per item or more.

In the U.S. I live in the Los Angeles area, and remember when a local hobby shop started putting things on eBay (including model trains, so you may have dealt with them).

It was a sign of the times when I read their eBay listings and saw common, unwanted model kits listed with a starting price of $25.00.

I told the shop owner--in a nice way--that he was crazy. He was flogging absolute dogs that you could still pick up at Big Lots, deeply discounted, and STARTING them at $25.00? Sometimes the very same kits were on eBay with starting bids of $0.01. WTF?

His answer was: "That's what I have to get out of the item." I think he ended up paying more in Listing Fees etc. than he could have ever made back on the kits.

And he eventually became an eBay Store--another sign of the times. I hated those things from the start, and saw them as the death-knell for the small-time individual eBay seller.

[Vinca]

35. They could try not treating the sellers so badly.nt

[junior college]

43. Ebay sellers need to stop ripping off buyers

Buying on Ebay if fraught with peril. So many sellers are crooks and they give good sellers a bad rep. The new feedback rules are a good start. Come May 2008, sellers will no longer be able to retaliate against buyers who leave them negative feedback.

[JCMach1]

46. Another reason to leave ebay- some buyers are idiots

and the new rules leave no recourse...

[Quantess]

45. I negged a seller today. In 10 years on ebay, it was the 1st time I did not receive my item!

I have over 300 FBs, mostly as a buyer.
I have never HAD TO give a negative feedback to anyone, until I got ripped off for about $20 on silly beads that SHOULD have been drop-shipped from China, then mailed to me, except my silly beads didn't arrive! Not after 4 weeks, not after 6 weeks.

And, when I was bidding on the seller's lies, I was under the impression that the items were located in "Canada", since that was the stated location on the auction. But this is commonplace these days, items drop-shipped from China, yet sellers say on the auction listing that the item is located in Canada. If the shipping takes a long time, the seller blames it on being held up in "customs", without specifying Chinese or Canadian. Well, guess which, when the envelope finally arrives stamped "HONG KONG"?

I would like to add: My other beads I purchased off ebay from other sellers supposedly from "CANADA" eventually arrived, with a HONG KONG stamp.