Fruit Helmet Cat

How Would an eBay Layoff Impact Sellers?

Well Ebay has already outsourced part of their T&S to the international countries. They did that 2 months ago. It'll affect buyers & sellers because you cant report a german or thailand registered seller that is displayed on the US ebay.com site and get any follow through. Because of the outsourcing/mgmt responsibilities of T&S, your confirmation comes back in German language. lol.

And their customer service contact form now has nothing relevant to the questions.

Whatever ebay does impacts sellers. besides, they're moving towards a type of PPC / adwords/ comparison shopping model it seems anyways. Soon they wont need all those bodies. They'll just focus solely on relationship management

EBay Faces a Tough Road in China

Hi Shaun

I agree wholeheartedly with Jack Ma's views towards eBay and what they should of tackled. Ebay looks at itself as the worlds largest marketplace, they compare themselves against a company like Walmart or their size as far as a country.

The perception of their self-importance is a bit hard to take seriously. Doing business with Asia is hugely different as to how you do it stateside. I would have hoped, with the Japan failure, that eBay would of brought in key executives who could execute this strategy in China.

The impersonal relationship eBay has with it's members is what will hurt them in the end. The inability to get a response just goes to show where their priorities are. It's as though they already have their hands deep in the pockets of Americans that they can abandon them & use that secret sauce to somehow conquer Asia. That once you create the dependency, you are a success. I hope that eBay realizes, that you do not conquer China. You give them the platform & you offer products & services that allow for individuals to choose, not dictate.

I don't believe ebay will see this, to get past their megalomania. All Jack Ma has to do is open up shop in the US and Ebay will implode. Only paypal will survive. Consumers are individuals and the majority of merchants are small businesses, mom & pops. They'll relate to Jack Ma and his frankness, than Meg Whitman and her marketing speeches. While ebay is already eyeing Korea, they would do better remembering their social responsibility to the Americans they've ostricized. Ebay made China their number 1 priority and in the process they abandoned their core consumer base. Ebay better deliver on China, their leadership credibility is at stake.

eBay's Results in its Own Words

Thanks David for posting this. If the market sees this quarter as being a success, then I suppose they will never question whether Ebay could of executed more effectively to make the marketplace thrive.

eBay Q3 2006 Earnings Call Transcript

That's unfortunate hearing Meg Whitman talk about how successful the rebalancing is. I find it even more disheartening hearing her optimistic about the holiday season. The existing user base of ebayers hardly understand the differences between the ebay site and the Ebay Express site. When you toggle between both sites, you get a large warning sign as though you did something wrong. Same as half.com

Maybe if ebay starts to communicate site wide changes more effectively, then Ebayers would not be so upset with what they are doing with the search. There have been 2 major search changes that happened this past quarter and another one was anounced as an enhancement. It's getting pretty difficult to troubleshoot what is causing all these glitches ebay writes off as just nothing to worry about. Ebay would do far better with their execution by communicating with the community. Instead of spinning the numbers by giving some of the other countries special promotion incentives to list. The site was full of poorly priced identical products. That directly came from the every other week promos that India was given. Like the list 2000 items and the rest are free gallery. How many cheap bracelets do you think flooded the jewelry and collectibles category this quarter?

Sellers are not going to continue to lose their shirts in auction. Why would they continue that? They'll save the good stuff for elsewhere and list junk instead. Ask any ebayer what their #1 concern is. It's fraud and shill bidding only happens on the core. What does ebay do? They do nothing. A company that profits from fraud, will not do anything to upset the cash cow