Philip Cohen

Does CEO Age Affect Stock Performance?

What a load of nonsense! Age is irrelevant. In “Noise” Donahoe’s case, age certainly is irrelevant; eBay's problem is that Donahoe is a “turkey” and the question that follows is how can this headless fowl possibly survive another Xmas given that he has reduced eBay's staff levels, revenues and profits four quarters in a row? And undoubtedly the December quarter will bring more of the same.

Why is ‘Noise’ Donahoe trying to destroy eBay?
auctionbytes.com/f...

American Express Buys into the Alternative Online Payments Revolution

‘Noise’ Donahoe has even talked about the possibility of offloading PayPal because he is just smart enough to know that PayPal is as ‘clunky’ as the eBay auction system is, that PayPal is a system more suited to a banking operation and that if ‘the banks’ and their credit card company partners ever get off their butts and introduce a like terminal/card-less payments system to supplement their credit card operations (which the major credit card companies would undoubtedly implement professionally), the banks will dispose of PayPal—outside of the ever-shrinking eBay marketplace—in about five minutes flat.

Why then is Donahoe still trying to destroy eBay?
www.auctionbytes.com/f...

Internet ETFs Await 'Cyber Monday' Results

“… and eBay (EBAY), which has seen a sharp increase in usage of its PayPal service (it reported a 20% uptick in payment volumes on Black Friday) …”

How come no mention of any “upticks” on the eBay Marketplace?

Good onya’ John, you’re doing a great parenting job—someone must think, although I cannot imagine why.

How can this turkey possibly survive yet another Xmas?

Why is “Noise” Donahoe trying to destroy eBay?
www.auctionbytes.com/f...

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

"eBay is calculating the cost of a disruption to its auction process on Saturday after a surge in live listings prevented users from finding products on the U.S. and some international eBay sites."

Nice to know that the serial dissemblers at eBay are still hard at work ...

Is eBay Switching Search Network Partners?

eBay can make as many changes as they like but the only one that will make any difference is a change of top management.

Is Apple Going to Compete with PayPal?

Quote: "The only big internet name missing from this list is Microsoft/Yahoo!. With their new marriage and focus on ecommerce, a deeper partnership with Paypal or a competing system seems like an interesting option to pursue."

What about Mastercard and Visa?

“Noise” Donahoe and some market analysts seem to believe that PayPal’s manning of the pumps will keep the steadily sinking ship “eBay” afloat. I certainly would not put my money on the “clunky” PayPal for the long term. Assuming that the parties don’t have some agreement to not compete, I have no doubt that eventually those other well known “loan sharks”, the major credit card companies, will get off their butts and introduce a similar universal card/terminal-less on-line payments system that the participating banks can incorporate into their internet banking systems—and they, at least, will do it properly—and that, my friends, will undoubtedly be the end of PayPal outside of the Donahoe-dwarfed eBay marketplace ...

I recall that Donahoe has been quoted somewhere as saying that the door is slightly ajar for a potential spinoff of his company’s online payments unit. If this is correct it will be the first logical thought that this guy has ever had; he otherwise clearly has no idea of what he is doing at eBay. If that MBA taught him anything then he should be using whatever skills he does possess to negotiate with the banks to take PayPal and integrate it into their online payments system—in exchange for an appropriate interest in the consolidated business, of course. Because, the more successful PayPal is, the more likely it is that the banks will finally get off their butts and introduce a like system; if and when that happens the banks will do the job properly and will exterminate PayPal for being the “irritating insect” that it is.

For eBay “watchers”, a detailed case study of shill bidding and the abuse of eBay’s proxy bidding system—all exacerbated by eBay’s introduction of “hidden bidders”—plus a detailed general criticism of eBay’s “clunky” auction platform and policies, at

<url>www.auctionbytes.com/f...;/url>

Buyers, and honest sellers, should read this case study so that they can be made aware, if they are not already so aware, of just how primitive and open to abuse is the eBay auction system.

A synopsis thereof:

 very little of the auction system security, that eBay claims to offer buyers, exists in fact;

 contrary to their claim, it can be demonstrated that eBay has no “sophisticated” nor “proactive” system in place for the detection of undisclosed vendor (“shill”) bidding and indeed appears to do nothing about such criminal activity except as a reaction to a user’s report of suspicious bidding activity;

 eBay appears to have no effective matter-of-course verification of users; unscrupulous users can apparently have as many user IDs as they may have email addresses;

 many of eBay’s “rules”, concerning the retraction of bids, cancellation of auctions, etc, are nominal only and are no bar to the machinations of the unscrupulous seller;

 as a result, eBay’s “proxy” bidding system is so open to abuse by such unscrupulous sellers that to use it, as eBay intends it to be used, can be an invitation to pay your maximum;

 by the lack of any such effectual security, eBay effectively, and knowingly, “aids and abets” unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers to defraud naïve buyers;

 the masking of bidding IDs with non-unique, absolutely anonymous aliases serves little other purpose than to obscure such shill bidding, and defeat any attempt at comprehensive analysis of individual bidding patterns to expose such activity;

 the quarterly changing of even these non-unique, absolutely anonymous, bidding aliases serves absolutely no other purpose than to stop even experienced eBay users from attempting to track suspicious bidding activity over time;

 the anonymous, individual bidder Bid History Detail pages, supposedly supplied to offset the absolute masking of bidding IDs, although better than nothing, can present an ambiguous view and, in such circumstances, are of dubious value;

 anyone naïve enough to “nibble” bid on a seller-elected “private” auction (ie, “User ID kept private”), on the balance of probability, is going to be defrauded;

 when suspected fraud [i]is[/i] reported, and is found by eBay to be proved to their satisfaction, eBay will conceal that fact from the victim of the fraud; this then is the concealing of a crime after the fact, surely, a crime in itself;

 eBay will never acknowledge to a victim that a fraud has been perpetrated, nor indeed will they acknowledge that such fraud is even a problem on eBay; eBay therefore sees no reason to provide any mechanism to aid in the recovery of any monies so defrauded;

 if eBay did have any truly sophisticated and proactive system in place for the detection and control of shill bidding, we would not now be having this debate; and

 for those buyers (and honest sellers) who do embrace eBay believing that eBay acts as an “honest broker” between buyer and seller, I can only say that there are fairies at the bottom of your garden too.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

eBay has been losing "traction" for some time now; maybe it's about time they let another crew have a go; the present head driver, in particular, seems to be particularly incompetent (pity poor Intel).

eBay: Where Did All the Fun Go?

Hi TonyP,

Did they really put up all those absurd reasons for not simply axing SCOs? I would have thought that to put a stop to SCOs, had that been the decision, it would have been simply a matter of removing the SCO "trigger" from the sellers' dialogue, reinforced by the blocking of access to the underbidders' direct email addresses (done, but for some other reason?), and no more SCOs fake or otherwise!

Not that any of that was actually necessary as the blocking of access to all users’ direct email addresses was going to effectively stop fraudulent SCOs anyway. I am not interested in hearing about fraudulent SCOs being sent by the eBay messaging system. You would have to be a total idiot to be taken in by such a text message, and a user’s mental defect should not be eBay’s problem.

It is all such a shame, all of us could have still been having fun, making money—even the stockholders; but users would then have still been able to track, and report, the shill bidders, and so eBay would probably not have been able to axe so many of that mass of customer support staff that they "pink slipped" back in October 08.

I have no doubt that Captain Donahoe is a very cunning man; what a shame it is then that none of his cunning plans have been able to counteract the loss of all those "noisy" steerage passengers that he so arrogantly dismissed as being of no value to his ship. I’ll bet this arrogant man has since wished he had kept his big mouth shut; but then I guess that’s the difference between a real CEO and a mere backroom “consultant”.

Is that blood that I can see in the water? And are they sharks that are circling?

eBay: Where Did All the Fun Go?

Yes, it's either stupidity or disingenuousness. Can they really be that stupid? The record suggests that that could be possible. But, I still lean towards simple disingenuousness. As I like to regularly remind eBay users:

"eBay users should by now understand that no action taken (or not taken) by eBay has anything to do with benefitting or protecting eBay users (buyers or sellers): eBay’s every action (or lack thereof) is purposed solely towards desperately attempting to improve eBay’s bottom line (undoubtedly more to do with the triggering of executive performance bonuses than with any direct consideration for shareholders), and if at any time there appears to be some benefit to eBay users, that will be purely coincidental."

eBay: Where Did All the Fun Go?

Hi TonyP,

You’ll get no argument from me.

Undoubtedly, a fixed-price marketplace would be less complicated than the auction platform, particularly given that eBay is so clearly unprepared to invest resources to ensure that the auctions are equally fair to both buyer and seller.

Being a collector of mainly early “flat art” items to which it is difficult to put a value, I can only say that I come to eBay for the “auction experience”; if I wanted a fixed-price experience I would go to Amazon.

Donahoe: He seems to suffer from a severe case of “MBA arrogance”, and clearly he has the diplomatic skills of a third world dictator (like me, but then I am not the figure head of a major public corporation).

eBay is what it is because of what it originally was: an auction site. That even an imbecile could think that it could be a good idea to try to alter eBay’s marketplace structure to something radically different, frankly, defies belief.

Why would anyone want to risk killing this “golden goose”? Well, I suppose the modern-day “Captain Queeg” (and, please, no jokes about “steel balls”) has to do something in his desperate attempt to keep growing the shareholders’ ROI by at least 50% every year and so justify his (probably obscene) performance bonus (ie, the bonus that he/they is/are not presently getting).

I just hope that, before it is to late, a modern-day “Mr Roberts” will come along and throw, not only the potted plant, but also this idiot captain overboard; then we collectors can go back to enjoying eBay for what it used to be and what made it great in the first place: the best marketplace in the world for a lot little people to trade “collectable goods”, etc.

Frankly, the thought that Donahoe’s decisions may ultimately bring this once-greater company to its knees irritates me intensely.

eBay: Where Did All the Fun Go?

Patricia, sorry but auctionbytes per se has nothing to do with the matter, the case study of a particularly blatant shill bidder, and the conclusions drawn about eBay therefrom and expressed therein, is all my work, it just happens to be posted on auctionbytes's forum.

eBay: Where Did All the Fun Go?

Regardless of who pays the fees, or who is now abusing the (broken) feedback system, or the DSR fiasco, or eBay’s latest “restraint on competition” attempt: the mandating of the offering of PayPal by sellers and the banning of “paper” payments, or their failed attempt in Australia to mandate the use of PayPal exclusively, or their many other frantic, and sometimes stupid, manipulations of this auction system, the fact is neither eBay nor its sellers can flourish without the confidence of buyers, and the application generally of “hidden bidders”, particularly in the absolutely anonymous form (“Bidder x”) still suffered by users in the UK, Ireland and the Philippines (and in Australia until 3 February 2009), which serves little other purpose than to hide from view all but the most naive and blatant activity of the shill bidders that are undoubtedly now running rampant, is not going to improve that confidence anytime in the future.

Patricia, disregarding for the moment the question of why the UK site still has the totally anonymous bidding mask, “Bidder x”, the more telling question is, why is eBay periodically changing (monthly/quarterly?) even the anonymous mask (“a***b”) currently in use in the rest of the eBay world? Periodically changing this already anonymous mask has got nothing to do with the control of fraudulent SCOs: if ever there was a patently disingenuous excuse, that is it. “Hidden bidders” can be shown to be principally (if not solely) about obscuring shill bidding, which is effectively an aiding and abetting of the defrauding of consumers by unscrupulous sellers (simply so that eBay could get rid of even more of their non-income-producing customer support staff); an unconscionable, if not criminal, action by eBay.

And for anyone interested, a detailed refutation of all eBay’s disingenuous spin at www.auctionbytes.com/f...

Option Spreads With Large Upside and Limited Downside

Hey, the intention is not that investors make any money but simply that they keep trading in the hope ...; that way the brokers eventually finish up with it all.

eBay: Where Did All the Fun Go?

You only have to make the comparison between Amazon’s improving bottom line and eBay’s deteriorating bottom line to get an idea of what eBay’s problem is: the policies of John “Noise” Donahoe and the group of apparent “yes” men that he has surrounding him.

I would heartedly agree, Facebook and YouTube, etc, have got nothing to do with eBay’s problems: they are quite obviously self-inflicted.

Yes, I understand that shill bidding has ever been a problem on eBay; that is not the point. As predominantly a buyer, my pet peeve is “hidden bidders”, and it can be demonstrated that Bay’s disingenuous introduction of same serves principally to further obscure all but the most naïve of such shill bidding presumably so that eBay does not have to waste any of their resources pretending to do anything about it. See the case study at www.auctionbytes.com/f...

Disclaimer: No action taken (or not taken) by eBay has anything to do with benefitting or protecting eBay users (buyers or sellers): eBay’s every action (or lack thereof) is currently purposed solely towards desperately attempting to improve eBay’s bottom line (undoubtedly more to do with the triggering of executive performance bonuses than with any direct consideration for shareholders), and if at any time there appears to be some benefit to eBay users, that will be purely coincidental.

eBay: Where Did All the Fun Go?

Hi Patricia013,

I take everything eBay says with a grain of salt. For one, as you say, users can now only contact each other via the eBay messaging system; eBay controls the formatting of those messages so it is no longer possible to produce an effectively formatted scam email, as it was when they could be sent directly. Further, a message by the eBay messaging system can only be sent by a “registered” user, and if, as you suggest, the eBay messaging system is so openly subject to such abuse, that says a lot for eBay’s verifying process; after all they do have all those identifying details on users, don’t they? Frankly, anyone that is scammed by a message received via the plain text body of a message via the eBay messaging system is a fool. Sorry, but I simply don’t believe that “hidden bidders” was devised to stop fake SCOs; it is much more likely that it was devised to do what it is doing: obscure shill bidding; the effect of which is the “aiding and abetting” of the defrauding of their consumers.

I realise that all the activity on eBay is a significant contributor to GNP, but I still do not understand how local consumer affairs regulators allow eBay to get away with such behaviour towards its consumers that is so patently unscrupulous, if not criminal.

Personally, I have never received a fake SCO. Maybe if I change my deodorant. The only two SCOs that I have received were genuine but both resulted from failed attempts by a sellers’ shills to push me higher! If anything eBay should have done away with SCOs, but as you say, that was not in their interest.

I don’t feel bad about sniping; I only ever snipe my maximum bid, it’s the only way to protect oneself from the “nibbling” shill bidder (such as the classic example in my case study of shill bidding at www.auctionbytes.com/f...). But if everybody eventually snipes, that would undoubtedly hurt all sellers and eBay itself.

I wholly agree with your comments on eBay management. The fact is eBay still is the “golden goose” of the on-line auction world (albeit with a little tarnish now), but still with an effective monopoly of this type of business. In the normal course of events it should then have been very difficult for any competitor to make an impression. And, then, along came the new captain, known better in a previous life as a “dismantler” (ie, wrecker) of companies, and he is proceeding apace with his task. Of course, to justify their sometimes seemingly obscene performance bonuses, such executives of public companies apparently are required to grow a business’s revenue by at least 50% every year. Realistically, that is going to be problematic when you are already the household name in your chosen field of activity. Nevertheless Captain John “Noise” Donahoe has attempted to improve eBay’s bottom line by various means. What a shame it is that the sum of most of those means has had just the opposite effect on eBay’s bottom line. The real threat to eBay is undoubtedly eBay itself. Time to go John …

The only question then is, can this “turkey” survive yet another Xmas?