Joe Janis

eBay Q3: What it Means for Sellers

Who pays fees to list on eBay, the seller. Who is eBay's customer, the seller. Why are the sellers being treated like dirt on eBay?

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

Is Donahoe Trying to Destroy eBay?

He is ruining eBay. As a seller, my sales have tanked since Best match was implemented. I went to look for my stuff and it was buried 20 pages down in the search results.