ANightOwl

Suggestions for eBay 2.0

Outstanding Article Scott :-)

If they build It will I come? Perhaps.

It will take a lot more than some changes to the site for me to be able to trust eBay again. Their callous disregard for small sellers over the past year has cut deeply.

I was a happy eBay user for 8 years. The last couple I was a PowerSeller. I left last February and after a few false starts at other "alt" sites I am now happily selling on Bonanzle. Unless and until eBay can bring back whatever it was that made me love them for so many years, I won't be going back. If I do, it won't be all the way. I don't think I could ever trust them fully again. It is very much the betrayal one feels when a partner cheats on them. You may take them back, but it can never be the same. The complete trust is gone forever.

eBay Culling the Herd?

Subject: ebay Culling the Herd (seeking Alpha) v 2


Thank you for the very interesting article.


Yours is the first that I have seen that addresses a possible reason for the Neutral feedback = Negative issue. You said, "There was absolutely no purpose (no foreseeable gain) to eBay in upsetting its sellers - unless you want to "cull" the herd."


Brilliant! Of course, that makes sense finally!


The sellers whose feelings can be hurt by such a move are the smaller, caring sellers, who put their heart and soul as well as time and money in their business. Bigger sellers, or those with tough hides, will not be phased by it.


It's sad. I had a great time on eBay. I spent and made many thousands of dollars in my 8 years there. Now it's time to move on, just like they want me to. I'm not going to stay where I am made to feel like a second class citizen.


The auction culture is not gone. It is moving to other sites. There are DOZENS of other Online Auction sites out there. They are ALL growing. It's pie in the sky to think sales at any of them will match eBay's sales volume for most sellers for a while, but a number of them hold real promise (some of course will not survive, but that's the way of business). Many of us have made the move to sites where the other sellers with heart and soul are. It's like the old days at eBay. Slightly funky sites with new ways to learn, but it's profitable (a little at first, but getting better weekly), and the companies and buyers/sellers are a joy to work with. With the large influx of sellers (and buyers) these other sites have seen since January we smaller sellers that eBay has thinned out should be up to normal selling speed before the year is out (with a much better profit margin).


I am not foolish enough to belive that eBay will die off because of this, but they will, in the end, be diminished. They will be just another fixed price site. The magic of IT has left the building, and eBay has done it on purpose. In 10 years I expect business schools will use them as a prime example of what NOT to do when changing your company business plan. A far smarter thing to do would have to left auctions and auction seller related stores as they were (with listing costs at a reasonable level and feedback pre-DSR) and spun off a stand-alone fixed price venue (Express was already in place) where the huge sellers with hundreds of identical items could have happily listed their wares under the eBay banner with no feedback to buyers, and DSRs for feedback.

They have made some serious errors. They have angered a lot of people. One thing I don't think they took into consideration is their sellers, by their very nature, are tech savvy. Word of mouth travels very fast on the Internet. The eBay brand is getting a lot of bad press out there on all the social networking sites, blogs, forums and tech news sites. Of course the old ways are at work too, the playgrounds, lunchrooms and friends telling friends. They have driven off part of the herd they thought they didn't want, but we've taken a lot of new calves with us that they will never see.

eBay Management and Sellers Need Relationship Advice

Spot on!
Excellent analogy!

The final dissolution of this marriage is inevitable unless eBay makes some serious changes, and can make us trust them again. Just as in a failing marriage, trust, once gone, takes a lot of time and consistent work to get back.

eBay sellers are deciding to leave, even though it means a loss of income and lifestyle, because it's just too painful to stay. Just as in a marriage, there is a tipping point where the pain of leaving is less than the pain of staying. This is IT for some of us. TIP -- Elizabeth