Thursday, I put together some first impressions of the results, and Friday I was able to scan most of the analyst reports and of course listened to the conference call.
I wanted to highlight some of the macro financial aspects of the call and then go through what eBay's (EBAY) Q3 results and Q4 outlook mean for sellers as that's what this blog is all about.
Summary of analyst thoughts
In general, the Q3 results were a non-event because they were largely known. Thus the big event was eBay's significant lowering of their Q4 outlook which caused analysts to also drastically cut their 09 views as well. Most analysts I follow took down their 09 revenue significantly $800-$1b and gave EPS a big haircut. The Q4 outlook represents flat Q/Q and essentially down y/y which has everyone freaked out. eBay showed some scary looking charts that show a continued deceleration (ecommerce and eBay metrics) going into Q4 here: (click to zoom in)
First the upper right graph is the comscore ecommerce data (eBay doesn't say if it's ex-travel or not, I assume it is - conveniently there are no labels). Comscore's August number was 6% - down from 10% in July. I've marked that 6% - remember that number, it will come back up in the metrics of interest section. Next, I drew a red line around early August in the eBay data that shows how things really started to decline for eBay. Interestingly, at ChannelAdvisor we didn't see that slowdown, but did see it right around 9/15 when FP30 was released. That bottom right chart has Wall St. freaked out right now because it is down and to the right, meaning the Q got worse so Q4 will start out at that very low data point.
Here's a brief summary of Analyst reactions:
- Brian Pitz@BofA - kept a buy on eBay and speculates that the eBay problems are macro and not eBay specific (he lowered Amzn, GSIC and goog revenues to reflect eBay trend)
- Justin Post@ML - speculates that eBay's problems are Amazon's gains: "
also losing share Given magnitude of eBay's 3Q GMV miss ($14.3bn vs $14.9bn expected) and weaker 4Q guidance, results have a negative read-across for AMZN and GOOG. However, eBay sellers as well as private and public eCommerce companies have indicated more deterioration on eBay than other channels and off-eBay PayPal volumes beat our estimate by $260mn. We are incrementally more cautious on sector, but believe some of eBay's 3Q $640mn GMV miss likely moved to AMZN.
- Scott Devitt@Stifel - heroically kept a buy on eBay, and focused in on the value of the future cash flows which make the stock appear cheap from that perspective. He seems to recommend eBay acquire gmarket.
- Christa Quarles (who is no longer sober - ha!) tied with James Mitchell for the funniest title: "eBay: Lump of coal for the Holidays."
- Imran@JPMorgan who has been bullish and is all about listings finally broke his bullishness: "eBay: Fall of a Franchise" and downgraded to Nuetral. Imran believes margins are going to fall considerably and thus anemic operating income will result. Imran focuses in on the various MP metrics and believes that eBay's user experience is not improved and if anything worsened.
- Meeker/Joseph@MS have an interesting 'sum of the parts' analysis summarized here: "Our sum-of-the-parts analysis values eBay at $26 per share. If we peg the valuation of PayPal at $7.13 per share, Skype at $2.09, Marketing Services at $4.08, and cash at $2.77, eBay share’s current price of $15 would imply the market is not assigning any value to eBay’s core marketplace"
- Ben@UBS points out that this is eBay's first negative growth GMV Q and like Justin@ML highlights increasing competition from AMZN. He's also concerned with some of the slow-down at Paypal.
- Colin@Lazard focused on the macro economic 'rockiness' and took down not only eBay, but Amazon, GSIC and DRIV
- James Mitchell@GS tied Christa when noted that eBay sees: "No Christmas". James believes that the companies problems are largely self-inflicted and while not helped by the macro, certainly the macro is increasingly exposing them.
- Jeetil@DB who was bearish, is vindicated by Q3 and lowered his PT to a paltry $13 from $16. Jeetil feels eBay should sell Skype and use this opp to invest in the eBay core (I concur on this one - let's put 1000 devs on finding - NOW).
- Mark@Citi cites managements execution as one of the major problems at eBay and worries that the model is just fundamentally broken: "Execution -- fee/rule marketplace changes have been highly disruptive & arguably poorly implemented; & 3) Structural - Decreasingly desirable Auction format & an infrastructure-less business model arguably ill-equipped to match rising consumer requirements."
- Derek Brown@Cantor actually took this opportunity to leave grizzly territory for plain ole bear and has moved eBay to a hold from a 'sell'. He notes this is the first time ever that eBay has had to essentially lower guidance and thinks it's a big step towards recovery. Derek lowered 09 revs by a substantial 1.3b (biggest I saw).
- Marianne@SIG - Likes the stock here as a value play noting that it is at 9x revised EPS. She speculates that eBay could start a dividend (5%) so you should play the stock that way.
- Jim@cowen - Kept a neutral on the stock.
Jeetil had a really good graph I wanted to show everyone as it's relative to the seller impact of the Q:
This graph hones in what eBay has been calling a more important metric than GMV - transaction volumes. What Jeetil notes is that Q3 started a material y/y deceleration that he believes will go negative in Q4 based on backing into the number from the lowered guidance. Of course if transactions go down 7% y/y AND they are lower ASP, then GMV will get amplified down y/y substantially.
What's Macro and what's Execution/eBay?
The really big question coming out of the eBay call and subsequent analysts notes which we'll have some insight from the Goog+Amzn results is: "Is this slowdown specific or worse on eBay, or being felt everywhere in ecommerce/inet?". I have some data to throw in the pot later on this point.
That's part I, part II coming later with an analysis for sellers and some Q4 action items. I also owe some FP30 insights we've learned and I'll do that this weekend as well.
Disclosure: Auhtor is (painfully) long eBay and (thankfully) long Google.
This article has 23 comments:
several 100,000 sellers have been forced off ebay this year or at least have caused them to establish a realistic selling alternative. And, the majority of those sellers are not all flocking to amazon.
Other buy/sell platforms are experience steady growth while ebay's site traffic AND Amazon's traffic has steadily declines month afer month this entire year. Craiglist monthly site traffic is up 1.7 million since Q1, Ioffer monthly traffic is up 500k since Q1, ecrater traffic up 170k, etsy traffic is up 80k, rubylane traffic is up 70k, monthly traffic at goantiques is up 60K, ebid monthly traffic is up 60k just to name a few sites where ebay sellers are moving to....and many of their ebay customers are following them to their new storefronts.
At least 20k small businesses closed their ebay stores this year because of all the radical changes that have perpetually evolved, and a large percentage of them started their own websites rather than subject themselves to Donahoe's nonsense. Or, concentrated locally for sales.
Spend a little time at powersellersunite.com, and you will find the vast majority of companies (both large and smaller) are mainly focusing on website sales NOT Amazon sales. emovieposters is one example of a top 10 ebay seller that jumped ship on ebay and started his own website, and is more profitable now than he ever was on ebay.
Another variable I've yet to see any analyst consider and talk about is the fact that MANY of the manufacturers, wholesalers, mass merchandisers and large retail companies that do a large volume of business on ebay are collectively eroding a ssignificant percentage of mainstream ebay shoppers by heavily promoting their websites immediately after the intial ebay sale. Donahoe favors large volume sellers, but in reality these big guns have managed to erode ebay's mainstream traffic as more and more satisfied customers go directly to their website when they want to make future purchases.
Amazon has better control of those variables...Ebay doesnt and never did. Since J. Donahoe took over as CEO, ebay has heavily favored the largest sellers in their search engines, and for that reason it should be expected that site traffic will continue to slowly deteriorate.
MArketplace MAY have experience 3 percent new user growth, BUT ebay just lost AT LEAST 10-15% of its loyal base of shoppers when they drove off so many sellers most of who were already steady ebay shoppers.
I get discount coupons from many of the large ebay vendors I've purchase from....and the coupons are generally only valid if I shop their website where these companies can avoid ebay's escalating fees/commissions and enable these companies to have more control over their business.
I have to laugh sometimes when I see the constant comparison of Amazon and Ebay. Both companies are vastly different and the composition of the sellers on both sites are vastly different as well. You dont find fake tradmark items at Amazon....Ebay is STILL flooded with Fake tradmark items.....many of which are being sold by the very same manufacturers ebay is favoring on search...may produce revenue in the short term, but in the long term buyers will continue to look elsewhere to shop.
Most comapnies on Amazon are based in U.S. Most BIG volume selers on ebay are Based in Asia. Didnt used to be that way, but it is now...which will further cause a decline in buyer traffic over the long term.
The largest percentage of BUSINESSES leaving ebay this year are not flocking to Amazon like so many analyst assume.
Years ago, I would tend to agree, but not in today worldwide internet marketplace where websites with shopping carts are extremely affordable and there is a substantial number of ways to cost effectively market an online store. Heck, ebay listings used to ALWAYS dominate search engine results on google...NOW ebay listings are nowhere to be found.....AND...folks wonder why site traffic is steadily declining?
Troubled economic times should be a godsend to ebay's marketplace. The hordes of cash strapped casual and first time sellers should be digging deeper into their closets and basements and attics for new listings. The rest of them should be scouring eBay for bargains on used items that they can't afford new on other sites. Clearly this is not happening.
I am amazed by the number of my own personal contacts who have not heard fo my 180 on eBay (former silver power seller), but not surprised that they have contacted me for answers as to why their first time attempts to sell on eBay have failed so dismally.
The answer to why has been repeated over and over again on this and so many other blogs. The longer eBay refuses to listen the less likely they will ever be able to turn things around. Failure will become inevitable if the economy turns around and there is no more need for eBay.
It is not so hard for a once revered brand such a eBay to become tarnished. Once tarnished, however, there is no precedent for going back to the way things were.
As for the PayPal (OWNED by Ebay) and merchant credit card only payments requirement going into effect on 10/20, is there an attorney out there who can verify that this is legal?? It didn't fly in Australia being rejected as unfair practice. What makes it fair or legal here in the U.S.?? I had read on an announcement a while back that Ebay was going to abandon the PayPal and credit card payment only requirement but instead REQUIRE that PayPal MUST be offered as a payment choice (also unfair practice). Now Ebay has decided after all to try to get away with this scam (in my opinion) here in the U.S..
Oh, I'm a 10+ year Ebayer who now only occasionally sells or buys a few items now and then. But I'm looking forward to Ebay's continued and fatal demise.
Eventually the night before billing , again still with no feedback my p&p went up from 5.7 to 6.1 just scraping in. I LOSE money on postage so unless everybody is wicked it is just a load of rubbish. I am in the UK by the way. It's terrible that you've got to hassle and hassle before you get a direct answer. My fees are about £500 a month.
This is NOT a generic statement. It is a Direct Communication to me (nymarts.com) from Chris.
From Chris Fain President, CEO OnlineAuction.com, OLA.com October 18, 2008 :
"Lets roll....Tell everyone to head to OLA.com and become Founding Members this should drive enough traffic our way and build up enough revenue for us to have a substantial advertising budget. For instance if everyone kicks in their $196.00 and we have One Million Founding Members I will spend no less than (90%) $176,400,000 dollars promoting all OLA Members products ! ...Tell everyone on the boards to get over here!!!....Lets do it."
This refers to the All Important TELEVISION Advertising.
Email EVERYONE who Ever Sold on Ebay and is Looking for a Brand Shiny New Home !
Email EVERYONE looking to Turn Back the Clock to the "Good Ole Days" of Auction FUN ! ! !
Remember : THE ACTION FOLLOWS US
LET'S BRING IT !
OLA > No Hassles, No Rediculous Fees, No Big Brother Crap.
Fire Donahoe!
Fire Donahoe !
Fire Donahoe!
Ps. Start paying shareholders a dividend!
Change feedback-unfair!
Bring back all small sellers!
eBay was unique! eBay was the biggest Auction/ Fleamarket/ Garage sale in the world!
Bring back old eBay for Christmas!
About 20% of buyers on ebay refuse to pay with anything but paper payments. Outlawing money orders and checks will drive these 20% to other sites. Even fewer buyers means even less revenue for ebay.
Giving free listings to the big box retailers (as already stated) are just making those previous ebay buyers go directly to those large retailer's sites, bypassing ebay and their apparent desire to be mainly a "portal" site where people stop first before going on to the actual seller. I think they wanted to just sell advertising space, although sometimes it seems that that advertising space IS they are selling mainly now as the proliferation of paid ads directly competing with ebay sellers grow every day.
Ebay must remove paypal from the revenue stream of every seller and stop these ridiculous paypal holds of 3 to 180 months. Google checkout is growing every day and paypal is becoming a hated name just as ebay now is.
I just found a large media seller that has over 150,000 feedbacks, racking up tons of bad "buyer experiences" and has a 12 month DSRs og 4.6, 4.5, 4.2 and 4.0. Seller was stripped of power seller status BUT still gets high visibility in search and has never been restricted or suspended..yet many small businesses are suspended with far better buyer satisfaction ratings.
I've been monitoring a large ebay vendor that is a Pesa member that has had a 4.2 DSR for shipping time for many months now, yet their merchdise still gets high visibilily in best match searches, and never been subjected to the harrassment ebay gives smaller companies with better buyer approval ratings.
I find that many of the large vendors have far worse overall buyer satisfaction ratings than majority of small businesses on ebay that NEVER seem to get CONSISTENT best match exposure yet more often than not are eligible for some type of power seller discount indicating their seller performance is more than acceptable.
In my opinion it should be ilegal what ebay has been doing manipullating searches giving large vendors the bulk of best match exposure while bronze power sellers, casual sellers, auction sellers and even silver power sellers are getting totall shafted getting very little default search engine exposure and literally throwing advertising money down the drain getting no listing exposure on ebay now.
Although I decided to stop doing business on and with ebay after 5 years as a bronze power seller with near perfect buyer satisfaction ratings, I monitor the categories I used to list in frequently. Over 90% of the search exposure is ONly being given to about one tenth of the sellers listing in that category which are are either large online retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers OR sellers offering fixed prices with FREE shipping). Hardly any auctions ever show up in best match even though the same auctions typically had 100% sell thrus prior to these manipulative changes, and if the seller isnt offering free shipping or top volume seller in the category...chance of getting listing visibility in best match search is nearly impossible regardless how good the sellers DSRs and previous sales were.
I think it is truly sicken how ebay suits an Ebay PR folks put such a BS spin on everything. They continue to tell the public some selllers just dont like change, when in reality most of us just want the services we PAID for which is listing visibilty on their site...NOT having our listings buried in nondefault ssearch engines that drastically reduces viewing traffic and sales and ultimately results in wasted advertising dollars and financial losses.
I am so flippin glad my fiancee and I decided to close our two ebay stores and discontinue doing business on and with ebay. After over 21k sales in past 5 years between our two stores coupled with 99.8 feedback ratings and DSR scores of 4.8s and 4.9 only to be continually told we some how need to improve performance to get best match exposure is utterly ludacris. Ebay has turned into a team of ruthless, manipulative liars that simply can not be trusted what-so-ever. They have an agenda, and the agenda that obviously doesnt include small busineses and casual sellers yet they continue to hype up auctions and how they encourage casual sellers to sell on ebay...taking their hard earned money and giving nothing in return.
It interesting that ebay doesnt seem to realize that these same large companies Ebay heavily favor in best match searches typically have their own website with shopping cart, and the vast majority of these big vendors immediately begin promoting their websites to their ebay customers immediately after the initial ebay transaction. Is Donahue so fullish he cant see that while the large vendors may be generating more revenue for ebay in the short term, that these same online merchants, manufacturers, whoelsalers and completely eroding mainstream buyer traffic on ebay as more and more buyers are now going directly to these large vendors websites when making future purchases? Ebay and most analyst believe Amazon is biggest competitor when on reality ebay's biggest competitor for ebay shoppers are the same big businesses ebay heavily favors ion their site. Just since Q1 when Donahue took over as CEO and began heavily favoring large vendors in Best match searches, monthly site traffic has declined by roughly 10 million visits. How can so many people not make the connection that big companies that sell on ebay are lirterlally eroding all the buyers.
Donahoes disruptive innovations suck and in both the short term and the long term will be bad for investors as traffic and revenues for marketplace and paypal steadily decline.
Investors better hope and pray stubhub, shopping.com, skype and ebay's new ad businesses grow because marketplace is dying fast, and ultimately will hurt their cash cow paypal businesses. Interesting how googles merchant services are still experience modest growth while paypal monthly traffic has decllined 700k monthly visits since Q1.
If you go to a store and you get bad service. You think twice before shopping there again.
If you go to a dining establishment and the service is bad or the food stinks, you don't go there anymore.
The service from eBay has gotten real bad and guess what, people are leaving.
I have 142 auctions left on eBay I plan on a quick liquidation over the next week, and then I am not going to list them on eBay again. I can donation to someone who cares and get a tax deduction.
I had an eBay store up to last weekend but I closed it and it's gone forever. Say so long, by forever!
I have been selling on eBay since 1999 and now I feel like I am not respected by eBay anymore. Has eBay ever asked me what I think besides a stupid survey they emailed to everyone. No they never have asked my opinion.
I have paid $800 to $1000 per month over the last 4 years and this is what the marketplace has become without any input from the customer who is paying the salary of eBay employees.
All the great ideas from eBay in the last year, Best Match, Sellers cannot give proper feedback, Holding of PayPal payments, New Seller form, things not working on the site to name a view.
The eBay Marketplace isn't the only area with issues, lets talk about PayPal. What a lovely organization they have become. Let me just say, first thing, eBay, PayPal and Prostores are all owned by eBay, but when you talk to them, it's the others fault. More than once this has happened to me. But back to PayPal.
Lat Friday I started to get 10764 errors on international payments and the charges were not posted to my account. Called on Friday with no results. Today called again about the 10764 errors, was told that PayPal did an upgrade and that was why you are receiving the error. The PayPal techie said wait a minute and then came back and said he fixed the problem. After that I was able to process international payments. I lost over $1,000 in orders from Friday to today. Nice job PayPal.
Ok, so your saying, quit complaining, get off of eBay and get your own website. I dod four years ago and got a Prostores website.
Mistake #1, Prostores
They were fine the first couple of years, not many problems. Now I have worked in IT over 20 years and I realize not every change and upgrade always comes out like you have planned. But since version 8.0 with Prostores, every upgrade has been a problem for weeks after the upgrade.
Ok, things happen.....but do they ever email you to let you know about the issues, never, never, never. You might get an apology email weeks after it's done and then you never hear from them again.
So this last week has been trying with prostores. They have a feature called one page checkout which is pretty nice feature. So when you checkout, you process all your info, credit card etc without having to go through several pages to process. Pretty slick for Prostores (Other shopping carts have been doing this for awhile).
So, last week a change happened where when a user selects payment, it defaulted to PayPal automatically.
Bad, choice, my buyers were very confused. I called Prostores and said that they were aware of the problem and it would take to the end of the month to correct so a customer can choose between credit card or PayPal. I inquired why it would take 2 weeks to fix, I got the stock answer that it takes time to fix. I wanted to talk to a supervisor in charge. I was told to call back and talk to Karl, the supervisor with a K.
I called Prostores today? True or False? I got to talke to Karl with a K
If you guessed False, you were correct and you can keep selling on eBay.
If your not familiar with Prostores, this problem with it defaulting to PayPal might not seem much, but believe me (would you believe eBay???) its a problem were I have lost a lot of sales.
First question why is this a problem from the techie. I explained my issue from last Friday. Please hold........10 minutes, Karl with a K is in a meeting. Explain again the issue.....Oh we got an email today from the developers that this was fixed!
Customers were never notified! I said it doesn't work. Please hold...........Let me check your store....Oh it doesn't work....but the developers said it did!!!! Oh my God, the developers said it worked!!!
Did anyone test it???????
Please hold......... Karl with a K is screening his calls. The techie comes back, karl tried it and it doesn't work for him either but the programmer's said it was fixed.... Call back in two days, I am sure it will be fixed.
Thanks Karl with a K
Don't even ask me about the disaster when I tried to renew my SSL certificate with Prostores.
Read the financial pages of Yahoo, Google, CNBC. There is alot of negative press about eBay. We the sellers are not the only ones who notice. Cjeck out Seeking Alpha and search for eBay, it's not pretty.
What do you thing about Network Solution Monter Commerce Shopping Cart, Amazon is too high! 7% commission, please.
Just ask for Karl with a K, good luck with trying to connect to a customer Karl....
The customer, I would be out of business if I treated my customers like eBay. Thanks eBay!
Sorry if my writing is the best, I am a programmer, not an English major
What is happening here is a direct result of the ebay boycotts this year. First, the week-long Feb. 18-25, and then the second, and open-ended May 1st & Beyond boycott.
There's only so often a company can tick people off and not face backlash. As shown above, the fees are outrageous. I'm a small seller, at best. Mostly i buy. But, when I do sell, ebay and it's partner in crime, PayPal takes between 30 and 65% of my profits. Not to begrudge the greedy bastards anything, I do want to make it perfectly clear that for that extremely high fee, they offer very little in return. Phone support? ONLY for the exclusive few. Technical issues? Try Live Help. Or, better yet, wait several days for a canned response, and reply, wait several more days, and HOPE they actually answer the question you asked. Complaint? Hang on while they open the trap floor.
On the otherhand, ebay can continue to raise their fees, and shame on you if you try to cut that fee by raising your fees. And now ebay is trying to ask sellers to offer FREE shipping? Imagine what Dumaho would say if we suggested they allow us to list for free, no listing fees no final value fees.
Now ebay is placing competitive ads in the search engines? Ads to OFF-SITE sales! which then take away from sales of legitimate fee paying sellers?
And people have the nerve to ask, "Why is ebay stock down?" Or, have the idea that "Oh, it's just bad economy"? No, it isn't bad economy. It's bad management, and bad strategy, and worse implementation.
Of course, this IS the same company that is giving buy.com a fortune in listing fees (My best guess was $25 MILLION from March 2-May 31st of this year; but, that is based on them paying only 10 cent listing fees. Of course, they had many which qualified for the $4 fee, but, I conservatively counted all at 10 cents, to come up with $25 MILLION! Sales during the same period? Less than $4 million! FVFs would have been about $165,000. So, it's good business to give up $25 MILLION plus to gain $165,000? Only on planet ebay. Or, if you're trying to con investors and anylists into thinking the boycott has had no affect on listings. THEN MAYBE Buy's 40% of all items listed in the Books categories makes sense.
The boycott IS working!
Tim
forums.delphiforums.co...
myspace.com/boycotteba...
You could have saved a lot of time & energy by just stating "Donahoe destroyed eBay." Nothing sums it up better than that, lol.
I suppose the decision making strategies should slow down a bit during the holiday season, but most likely they won't because Mr Donahoe doesn't have a clue about basic management policy execution. He'll end up doing something else that's stupid, that's a "given". I think we are all familiar with his hatred of vintage antiques and collectibles auctions so we all know where the sellers of those things will be going.
It appears that Etsy is booming in site visits and time spent by visitors on that site. What a genius thing to make a whole section devoted just to antiques, vintage, and collectibles! That sure makes it much easier for ebayers to get set up again where they left off when they were run off of the ebay site.
Check out the compete site siteanalytics.compete....
The problem involves a bug or software issue, within PayPal, on echeck payments to sellers accounts, and I first became aware of it on Sunday 10/26/08. Premier Account holders were incorrectly sent emails that should have been reserved for Business Account holders, which told them that they would have to claim echeck payment funds before these same funds could be credited to their account. My first such email came directly from PayPal on Sunday 10/26, and I thought it strange, so forwarded the email to PayPal Spoof to see if it was genuine. I also called PayPal, and both the email response, and the verbal communication in the phone call, told me that the email was a spoof, and that I should dis-regard it. However, that related echeck transaction in my paypal account, showed (incorrectly) that the funds were still 'unclaimed'.
To make a long story short, it is now 8 days later, and 5 more phone calls later, and I still have not received credit for those funds. I was told to go ahead and ship the item (2nd or 3rd phone call) because this was a PayPal bug; I did that, and my customer now has the merchandise, but I still do not have the funds in my account. PayPal continues to apolgize, but still no funds. Most of the PP agents I have spoken to have been very courteous, and they always apologize, but I still do not have the funds. I have been told twice that I would be granted a provisional credit to my account, and on the most recent call just this morning (call #5, 11/2), I was told that my credit was be prioritized, whatever that means. PayPal is holding millions of dollars of sellers funds, and charging us fees for these transactions, and in the process, earning huge amounts in interest off our funds.
The PayPal agents all seem to be out of this country, and it is quite obvious that this customer service function has been outsourced, likely to somewhere in India. The problem is not one of lack of courtesy, but one of no action on a very serious problem.
How would you grade Ebay on this situation, were you an eBay seller? This is how eBay deals with sellers in this current enviornment, and it is clearly why eBay is losing sellers at such a fast rate. As an investor, you need to be more aware of situations like this, as it will ultimately affect your holdings. Taking over a week to solve such a problem, is just not acceptable, when a credit could have been granted with one phone call. This is not an isolated problem, and the eBay power sellers boards are full of complaints on this issue. Clearly, millions of dollars are being held by PayPal, currently, due to this issue, and all we have to show for the problem is courtesy and apologies. At some point, that just is not enough.
The newest policy concerning paperless payments for example puts me out of business. As an Antiques and Collectibles seller, at least a third of my customers refuse to utilize electronic payment methods. This is true, I believe, of most collectible dealers on eBay. Those folks are aging boomers who have either been burned by online scams, are uncomfortable with putting their info into cyberspace or simply don't understand how to use the services and find it easier to pay the way they have always paid for things: By Check or Money order via the USPS. EBay has pretty much sealed their fate with this and the other ridiculous recent policy changes aimed at sellers. Their official line on this paperless payment policy is that it will make the transaction more secure. That may be true to a certain extent, but if you aren't making any sales because people don't want to use their ready made money machine, (PayPal), it doesn't matter a tinkers d*%n how safe the transaction is!
Not only does the paperless policy hurt the core seller, it is an enormous slap in the face to independent business people in general, to dictate to them what payment methods they will or will not take in their own business! When eBay was a “venue”, things were, on average ok. In my opinion, they stepped over the line and sealed their fate, when they started dictating business operating procedures for private businesses and lost sight of the fact that they are an AUCTION business…not a big box retailer. The current management has taken a good company and run it straight into the ground. It has been my living for the past ten years. I am now on the hunt for a full-time job, because it simply is not worth the effort to put up items and not make any money.
It is sad really. I would give eBay, possibly another year, maybe two at the outside before they are out of business. The current stock prices are just the tip of the iceberg.