arlin

eBay's PayPal X Platform Could Drive an Increase in Transactions

ebay ..........really sucks for small sellers.

eBay: Mapping Where It Went Wrong

eBay's small sellers have been destroyed by the "current management"..........so how does eBay get back on track without them?What do they become this month?

eBay Dangles a Carrot to Pacify Its Sellers

www.rediff.com/money/2...
above is an old story of all the misguided changes Mr Donahoe was to bring to the on line flea market.

eBay Dangles a Carrot to Pacify Its Sellers

www.rediff.com/money/2...
above is an old story of all the misguided changes Mr Donahoe was to bring to the on line flea market.

Amazon vs. eBay: 2 Charts Say It All

Exactly
One would think that shill bidding would be easy enough for eBay to check and resolve.....and punish.
I liked it much better when the buyers could see who they were bidding against.
I am as much a buyer on eBay as a seller.


On Aug 05 01:27 PM Philip Cohen wrote:

> Sellers unhappy? What about the buyers?
>
> For anyone with an interest in watching eBay, 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
> www.auctionbytes.com/f...
>
> 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;
>
>  the lack of any such effectual security effectively “aids and abets”
> unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers to defraud naïve buyers;
>
>  the masking of user IDs with non-unique, absolutely anonymous,
> bidding aliases serves little other purpose than to obscure such
> shill bidding;
>
>  the quarterly changing of even these non-unique, absolutely anonymous,
> bidding aliases serves absolutely no other purpose than to stop experienced
> eBay users from tracking suspicious bidding activity over time;<br/>
>
>  the anonymous, individual bidder Bid History Detail pages, supposedly
> supplied to offset the absolute masking of bidding IDs, can present
> an ambiguous view and are therefore 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 is 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 undoubtedly
> would not now be having this debate; and
>
>  for those buyers (and honest sellers) who 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.

Amazon vs. eBay: 2 Charts Say It All

Attn;All eBay sellers;

Starting on August 31st, eBay is going to institute a new policy where photos you upload to any listing are put into a "catalog" of online images that any eBay user can then use for their own listings. The default setting for this is opt-in, which is a problem if you, like me, consider your photographs your property and want to control how they are used and by whom. A copyright notice is posted with a link to your user profile, but no additional information is given, and the link is quite small.

Amazon vs. eBay: 2 Charts Say It All

Amzn has a much better search engine,and a better buyer experience.
I'm not sure how Amzn treats it's sellers,but I know how eBay treats theirs.
Alot of the sellers I know left eBay over the past few yrs,and are re-building their businesses on other sites.......... this will take some time........but they are loath to come back to eBay.
It's important to note that many of these sellers were the "uniqueness" of eBay.
Many of these sellers are excellent business managers and not the misfits that eBay management would have you believe.....they spent years building their businesses,and had excellent feed back,with thousands of transactions.
Patricia013 says it all.
TonyP is right they are squeezing only these small sellers while they "compete "for the large sku types.
also let;s not forget about Skype,eBay overpaid and hasn't got the rights to use it the way they want to.
At some point eBay will either succeed or fail.
personally I no longer give a damn.

Feedback for eBay: Lousy Seller. Would Not Buy from Again

Totally agree w/leftfield

AT&T: The iPhone's Achilles' Heel

just remember that AT and T and VZ have very "good" people in Washington

Long Dollar, Short Oil, Hold Gold?

good article
Russia is doubling their money supply every 1.64 yrs;India every 3.57 yrs.China every 4.22 yrs,and the US every 4.23 yrs.....with many other countries in the 5 to 6 yr doubling of currencies in circulation.
One would normally think all of this is a perfect environment for gold and inflation,but so far it's been good for gold ,but not necessarily for inflation.........I'm of the belief that the dollar and gold will correct for a short while and then run up together,with the dollar hitting the .95 area and gold finally breaking the 1000 buck neckline and heading for 1300.....as for oil my thoughts are we are headed to 63 then 56 and lower.

Three Reasons to Invest in Yamana Gold

exactly right

On Jun 24 09:49 PM GMiki1 wrote:

> Not all is rosy at Yamana. Jim Puplava, an AUY stockholder, talks
> this week at his Financial Sense Newshour about recent asset sales
> there as being underpriced, which is why analysts have downgraded
> the stock. Check more deeply if you want to invest here.

Amazon and eBay in Satisfaction Survey

The Powers That Be at eBay are complicit in destroying the auction business,and are responsible for the current mess that is eBay.
eBay was never conceived to be another Amazon,another online site that sold the same stuff as all the others.eBay is rapidly loosing their "uniqueness",as well as those sellers who have contributed to it.It must not be forgotten that eBay did this to themselves.
All of the posts above are true and accurate,IMO.

How Investors Can Trade the Dollar

I think the dollar is going to put in a higher low and then move higher to .95.....over the next two years.........with almost everybody bearish on the dollar,and all the news of "other global currencies" trying to come to fruition,I feel this move in the dollar would cause the most pain.also the Chinese are long term players,and In my opinion a stronger dollar would be what they are supporting,while they can divest some of the trillions of their own currency/labor manipulation.(in fact they're buying into hedge funds now,so they can gain some control of all the manipulation)The Euro is also at some strong resistance....(and remember they are in terrible shape as well).I also remember that during the market sell-off when banks and brokers were going under the dollar went higher(less debt/margin)
I think that gold is going to go lower first,and then move higher with the dollar.The huge inverse head and shoulder on gold targets 1300 area.
Ultimately the dollar tanks,but not for a while.

A Big Change for eBay Sellers: Variation Style Listings

What does this do for the seller who wants to sell stuff from his garage or basement,flea mkt type selling where their is one item ea. of many items?
It seems to me this is just more Amazon type selling of large sku's of cheap garbage.
How does this make Ebay a more interesting place to shop,or easier to navagate as a buyer.
They still have not fixed the crappy search engine or cleaned up all the confusing sub-advertising.
Ebay is still a mess.

Will The U.S. Dollar Crash?

The dollar is in a bottoming process now,and I expect it to rally over the next two years or so. The chart patterns suggest $.95 from where it is today.I'm not sure of the impact this will have on gold and commodities at this point,but a strong dollar probably wont help the equities........it's bad in the US but much worse in GB and Europe.
If Americans reject more debt and save,how does this help China's export economy?IMO all this talk about a Chinese currency for the world are nonsense,and Russia's talk of a new world currency are nuts.