RicRoe

What Will Become of eBay?

eBay's problems are self inflicted. The more eBay has done in the name of bringing business back to their site, the more they have alienated current users that were once infatuated with the market place as both buyers and sellers.

eBay started to seriously slide when John Donahoe as CEO came out in front of changes which gutted the core of the marketplace and referred to any member that spoke out against the changes as 'noise'. His arrogant 'noise' label insulted the very customers he was trying to keep.

Led by an executive team that has barely used the marketplace, eBay is now headed for obscurity because they do not 'get' it anymore.

eBay, unlike Amazon, does not own inventory, and relies on sellers to provide merchandise to the site. This said, it is hard to understand why eBay executives have instituted so many anti seller policies over the past year.

Further proof of how out of sync eBay leadership is, they fail to understand that sellers are buyers as well. Alienating sellers diminishes their interest in purchasing from the site or doing business in any way with a company that is viewed as seller unfriendly.

eBay's increased fees across the board and forcing sellers to accept PayPal to entitle them to an even larger slice of sellers profits, has not improved the company's fortunes, but has motivated sellers to take their business elsewhere.

eBay has become a ship without a rudder, adrift in a marketplace they have lost control of.

eBay execs fail to understand that word of mouth is essential to the success of their marketplace. With sellers having nothing positive to say, buyers are going elsewhere.

Until eBay is led by a team of executives with vision and experience in what makes eBay tick, eBay is destined to become the next Internet bubble to burst.

Buyers and sellers alike have lost trust and confidence in current leadership over the series of poorly implemented policies, feedback changes, imposition of the failed DSR system, constant technical glitches, search that is horrible, forced PayPal etc...

eBay is now beyond reversing failed policy and system changes. eBay now has to replace the entire core of enthusiastic members which they have managed to chase in addition to changing the failed policies and defective systems.

The simplest solution would be for eBay to simply get out of being in the marketplace business since it is obvious they have no clue as to what it takes to make and keep a marketplace relevant and successful.

John Donahoe, Lorrie Norrington and company will go down in history as the executives that managed to screw up a free lunch.

They are not the team that will lead eBay out of the disaster they created, they are the team that turned a marketplace with millions of happy members into a poor imitation of its competition with customers who have nothing good to say about the new experience.

This is unlikely to change until the book smart MBA's are removed, and replaced by a team of executives that know and understand what the eBay marketplace is.

The fix would be for Mr Omidyer to get back to work, and restore the core principles upon which eBay was founded. He had the right ideas and the company became a worldwide multi billion dollar success under those principles.

As eBay has moved further away from those founding principles, the foundation upon which eBay was built has crumbled, to the point that now the entire structure is in danger of collapse.

eBay: Stock Fully Valued at Current Price

Stock analysts are always talking about listing growth at eBay as if it is indicative of something of value.

Analysts have yet to realize that listing volume no longer is indicative of the health of the eBay marketplace.

Since John Donahoe's introduction of "Diamond " level sellers, listing volume increases are meaningless. There are two reasons why listing volume is now a worthless metric.

First, the reduction of listing fees as well as the frequent sales held on listing fees. eBay claims they reacted to seller complaints and lowered the up front fees to place listings. What eBay executives downplayed, and what analysts have ignored is that when the lowered fees were announced, they came with a steep increase in final value fees which caused many small sellers to abandon the marketplace in order to protect their profitability.

Second, Mr Donahoe has introduced Diamond sellers to the core market place. It is these major retailers that have brought the huge numbers of listings which eBay keeps boasting about. The problem here is that these sellers, some with a million or more listings are not charged ANY fees to place those listings on eBay.

Thus analysts need to start ignoring listing volume statistics as a health of the market metric, and instead insist that eBay make public their sell through rates.

Sell through is a much more accurate metric to study in light of the fact that listings alone no longer reflect any revenue growth for eBay since the majority of listing increases seen are the result of free placement by Diamond sellers.

For example, one eBay Diamond seller brings over 1,600,000 listings to eBay, but maintains a sell through rate of 2.3%. The listing volume looks impressive, but when one looks at the actual sales generated by those listings, the volume is very small. If that seller had been paying for placement of listings, they would probably have given up on eBay as a marketplace long ago.

But since Mr Donahoe has given them free listing space, they continue to bring impressive but none the less meaningless statistics to the marketplace.

Analysts assessing eBay must look for more relevant numbers to utilize in their assessment of eBay, and stop relying on the kool aid distributed by Mr Donahoe and his management team. Analysts need to stop relying on eBay's statistical spoon feeding, and instead, go back on the hunt to get meaningful statistics upon which the true health of the company can be more accurately assessed.

Earnings Preview: eBay

Mr Donahoe will pump up the growth in listings citing a now useless metric as millions of listings are placed for free by his favored Diamond Sellers.

Mr Donahoe will pump up new PayPal accounts which he will claim are a result of his declaration that sellers may no longer announce they accept checks or moeny orders to complete purchases. Truth is that many new accounts can be attributed to the resurrected Micropayments accounts which require users to open second accounts in order to take advantage of a reduced fee structure.

Mr Donahoe will attribute eBay's decline to the faltering economy, and will fail to shoulder the resopnsibility for failed policies and fee increases which have severely damaged the marketplace.

Mr Donahoe will continue to assert that eBay is on the right path for a better future, ignoring the stampede of small sellers his policies and system changes chased from the core markeplace.

In other words, Donahoe will continue to run like a bull through a china shop, changing the business model from one that was the most successful into one which imitates unsuccessfully so many other Internet retail sites.

Mr Donahoe is used to being a consultant, where he simply makes recommendations, collects a check for his time and effort and walking away.

In assuming the reigns at eBay, Mr Donahoe still performs as if he was in a consulting role, imposing changes and policy revisions into a marketplace with which he has virtually no experience in as a buyer or as a seller.

It is this lack of experience that has brought eBay to the tipping point and has the company facing a steady stream of buyers and sellers bolting to other more user friendly venues.

Sellers are unable to profit from selling on eBay as the fee structure under Mr Donahoe has made it impossible for sellers to offer pricing which eBay was famous for while still allowing sellers to receive a reasonable markup on products listed.

Until Mr Donahoe faces the reality that it is his poorly implemented policy and system changes that have brought the site to its current state of poor performance, eBay can be expected to face further declines in market share over the coming year.

At this stage, buyers and sellers have voted with their feet, and moved to newer and more friendly venues that are much more buyer friendly, and which also enable sellers to offer better pricing while still being able to make a reasonable profit.

The true growth will be in a spread of new and smaller sites which are currently realizing unprecedented expansion due to Mr Donahoe's alienation of buyers and sellers from eBay.

Some Advice for Business-Challenged eBay

"....forget about issuing guidance and blame it on macro conditions that make it difficult to predict anything with surety. No one can argue with that."

A statement further from the truth has not been spoken. eBay's executive ethics tool set is severely lacking. Allowing the company to avoid reporting quarterly with an excuse that macro conditions make it difficult does nothing to ease concerns over how eBay is being led.

Mr Donahoe joined eBay after being a management consultant. He is too unsed to making suggestions based on little or no working knowledge of how the business operates, getting paid and then walking away.

In his first stint as a true leader, Mr Donahoe's policy and system changes serve to highlight his lack of real experience as well as a fatally flawed understanding of how the company he leads actually works.

Suggesting that Mr Donahoe be given an excuse to avoid performance reports is foolhearty, ill advised, and puts the entire future of eBay at risk since progress or the lack there of would not be seen until it was too late.

Mr Donahoe has personally taken eBay down a very dark path, his continued leadership is in question in many corners, as the first year of his tenure has brought eBay's value to near record lows.

The heat should be on Mr Donahoe and his chosen team to restore eBay to its position a healthy marketplace. Measuring his performance on a quarterly basis is vital to justify his continued role as CEO and should not be deviated from given the company's poor performance.

Economics alone do not support the weakened position eBay finds itself in. Failed policy and system changes which Mr Donahoe has implemented have damaged eBay's market standing more than any economic factors.

Mr Donahoe must be called upon to reverse the damage brought by his failed policies, and he must prove his ability to restore the marketplace to its former standing as a leader in global internet sales.

Running from quarterly reporting as a measure of that progress would doom the company to certain failure.

eBay Is a Winning Bid - Barron's

eBay has fast become a failure under the "leadership" of its CEO, John Donahoe.

Since joining eBay in 2005 as President of Market Places, eBay has been on a pathe that has seen its core marketplace slide from record highs to record lows.

It was John Donahoe that attacked the auction format, preferring to push fixed price formatted sales in order to assure eBay of higher fee revenues.

It has been John Donahoe who has directed fee increases designed to disguise falling volume. His philosophy; who cares if sales are down a little, our bottom line is improving.

It was John Donahoe who eliminated payments by checks and money orders which resulted in driving tens of thousands of buyers that chose not to have PayPal accounts out of the marketplace. Now Donahoe & Co are scratching their heads wondering where all the buyers have gone.

Donahoe also knew that forcing PayPal onto every listing as an option would again assure higher revenue on lesser sales as PayPal takes a significant fee for each transaction they process.

It is Donahoe & Co who have encouraged large sellers to join eBay and even reduced or eliminated listing fees while significantly reducing final value fees for these preferred sellers.

To further favor these Diamond sellers, Donahoe & Co implemented a search method called Best Match. Essentially, Best Match enables eBay to manipulate search results and how they are presented to buyers.

The manipulation allows eBay to favor it's preferred class of sellers over the smaller mom & pop sellers on the site, by utilizing a secret algorithm which makes behind the scenes manipulation simple and easy.

In the meantime, Diamond Sellers which pay zero listing fees and receive discounts on Final Value Fees see their items visibility surreptitiously increased while small sellers that pay to list items and are subject to the outrageously high Final Value Fees see their items disadvantaged, buried if you will, in search results.

Common sense would dictate that since eBay earns significantly higher revenues from sales completed by smaller sellers that it would be these sellers that see their visibility increased. Not so in the world of Donahoe & Co, and another example of how they fail to understand their own marketplace.

Every change implemented by Donahoe & Co was supposed to make eBay a better place for buyers to shop,and were presented to eBay users as well as the Board of Directors with claims they would increase sales.

The results of the Donahoe & Co "improvements" is plain as day and easy for anyone to see.

Listing volume has significantly increased, eBay once averaged between 12 million to as high as 18 million individual listings 2 years ago before the great innovations were implemented.

Today, eBay sees as many as 29 million to 33 million individual listings.

There is one small problem though, despite nearly doubling the number of individual listings, sales have declined for 3 consecutive quarters. Contrary to Donahoe & Co's plan, more listings is not resulting in more sales. Their most recent Quarterly report indicates that business at eBay marketplace declined 29% against the pre3vious year.

It is obvious that Donahoe & Co grossly misunderstood the eBay marketplace from the start. That misunderstanding and miscalculation has not resulted in increased sales across eBay, but rather sales continue to shrink year over year.

Yet the "improvements" continue.

Donahoe & Co have realized they do not have the key to increase eBay sales. The result is an ongoing effort to make it appear they have increased revenues.

This process involves several deceitful practices designed to bamboozle the eBay Board of Directors, shareholders, stock analysts and the public that things are turning around.

Front one was the claim by Donahoe & Co that buyers buy more when shipping is "free". Donahoe & Co have implemented incentives to cajole sellers into rolling the cost of shipping into the selling price of an item.

A $10.00 widget with shipping of $4.75 now shows on eBay's books as a sale of $14.75 when it sells with "free" shipping. eBNay is not selling more widgets, they have however managed to increase the Final Value fee they take on these items as they now collect that fee on shipping too.

This is why Donahoe & Co have placed incentives such as manipulating search results to place "free" shipping items higher in search results.

Every item that sells with "free" shipping helps Donahoe & Co keep their jobs by inflating sales figures and generating higher fees.

With "free" shipping, Donahoe & Co manage to deceive the Board of Directors into believing that Sales are better than they really are.

Measuring the money and not looking at the units sold is deceiving when shipping is rolled into selling price.

This deceit works so well on eBay's board, Donahoe & Co decided to expand it and force sellers roll insurance into the selling price too.

This holiday season, that $10.00 item with "free" Shipping and Insurance rolled into the selling price can become a $16.00 "sale" on Donahoe & Co's books, and of course, eBay collects the higher fees as well.

Another game Donahoe & Co have played is to begin to slowly remove shipping from PayPal and move it into eBay. With this little trick, eBay revenue will increase as commissions once received by PayPal will now be shifted into the eBay side of the balance sheet, making it appear as though eBay revenue is increasing. The honest truth is that he has simply shifted the income from one column at PayPal into another column at eBay.

How much more chicanery, smoke & mirrors will the eBay board accept before they end this madness and let Donahoe & Co take their golden parachutes?

Whats the next Donahoe flim-flam? Maybe he will elect to announce a reduction in PayPal fees while simultaneously increasing fees at eBay to make it appear he has done the job he was hired to do?

The problem for Donahoe & Co is that they have started to run out of ways to artificially inflate sales figures to make it appear volume is better than it really is.

If the 09' holiday season shows lower sales than last year - with shipping and insurance rolled into selling prices, it will be impossible for Donahoe & Co to obscure the fact that their 2 year assault on sellers has truly killed the marketplace.

Under Donahoe & Co's leadership:
* Unique visitors to eBay have steadily declined; Amazon has increased.
* Page views on eBay have steadily declined; Amazon has increased
* Sales at eBay have steadily declined; Amazon has increased.
* eBay is alienating small sellers; Amazon is opening it's doors to more small sellers.
* Buyers looking for a safe and trustworthy transaction are flocking to Amazon, not eBay.

Remind me again, which company employs John Donahoe?

The remaining question is, will eBay's Board of Directors take action to save what little is left of their marketplace, or will they continue to allow Donahoe & Co to decimate the ranks of buyers and sellers finish the job of killing eBay once and for all?

Why Isn't Paypal More Successful?

PayPal is a reflection of it's parent company, eBay, and as such, administration is horrible. Generally speaking, the PayPal attitude is that the customer is always wrong.

The company puts profits ahead of customer service. Fees are onerous.

System errors are frequent, and when they occur, no estimate of duration is offered.

Customer service is virtually non existent. Choose between spending an hour on the phone with uninformed agents that offer little or no help or email communication which takes a day or more to respond with replies that are often off topic and of no help whatsoever, requiring multiple contacts that take days to resolve. Phone calls often need to be rerouted and disconnects are commonplace.

Of course people are reluctant to allow a company this poorly run to have access to their bank accounts and credit card information.

Global Outage at eBay: Seller Confidence Shaken as Holidays Approach

eBay managements "listing surge" excuse simply does not hold water.

At best the explanation is simply the tip of the iceberg. Look below the surface and the root cause of the system wide outage becomes apparent.

If the 'listing surge' had anything to do with bringing eBay down, it was not because of the volume of listings, it was because eBay had been tinkering with search for the previous two weeks.

eBay had been tinkering with Best Match as well as changing code to take eBay stores back out of search. Additionally, eBay added code to display similar items on sellers listing pages, making yet another major change out of cycle. These code tweaks likely caused the search function to become unstable, so when listing volume grew, the system collapsed.

Thus, the cause was not a surge in listings, the cause of the collapse was incompetent management forcing system changes to be implemented on the fly without regard for the havoc those changes would have on the stability of the system.

Incompetent management at eBay promised not to make major changes during the holiday season, and promised to limit system and policy changes to twice a year. This was done for obvious reasons which were well illustrated by the system wide outage that brought eBay sales to a virtual halt right before the holiday season. If only eBay management had kept their word regarding no changes during the holiday season, than a system wide outage could have been averted.

If this disaster does not illustrate why sellers have been screaming about incompetent management at eBay and motivate the Board of Directors to change the management team, then nothing will.

When management is this dishonest with the public over a system wide failure, then it is no wonder that buyers and sellers have lost confidence is eBay as a marketplace.

eBay sales have been in steady decline for the past year. The cause of this decline is - and continues to be - the failure of eBay management to make improvements that actually benefits buyers and sellers.

If John Donahoes' destructive innovation was benefiting buyers and sellers in any way, sales - not listings - would be growing.

Sales are obviously not growing as evidenced by eBay's performance over the last 12 months.

Having lots of inventory on the shelves does not drive sales.

Sales are driven by happy customers. eBay's management team has never understood who their most active customers are, instead they choose to treat them as if they were a disposable and replaceable commodity.

Management blatant disregard for eBay's most active customers is the reason eBay continues to fail. Unless and until there is a management change at eBay, this trend will not turn around, only customers will.

eBay Is a Winning Bid - Barron's

@vansak...

Why not put your valuable time to good use as well...

Instead of making comments about how people choose to spend their time and making hollow remarks in an attempt to support eBay and their practices, why not dispute facts as others have presented them.

If eBay was not so busy running sellers off and emptying their marketplace, most of us would have been spending our time with our businesses.

As there is little activity on eBay due to the horrible mismanagement by John Donahoe and his team, some of us choose to take the time which we would have used to process orders, create new listings, and purchase inventory in an effort to continue to dispute the untruths and half truths placed by the eBay PR department in media outlets such as this.

Sentiment Positive Ahead of eBay Earnings

Donahoe & Co have failed miserably when it comes to increasing sales, and the pressure of this failure is leading them to find ways to increase revenue despite slumping sales.

Many sellers refuse to fall into the fee trap by rolling shipping costs into selling price and offering ''free shipping''. I say trap, because eBay has pushed "free shipping" in an effort to collect higher Final Value Fees on the cost of shipping.

Donahoe & Co are now so desperate to raise revenue they plan to force sellers to roll insurance into selling price, thus assuring the company a fee hit on those proceeds as well.

The move to have sellers process shipping through eBay is another slick Donahoe diversion.

PayPal revenue is growing due to off eBay sales. As Donahoe has failed to increase revenue by increasing sales he will increase revenue for eBay by moving the shipping feature to eBay from PayPal. This does not generate any additional revenue for the company as a whole. All it does is use the smoke and mirrors of revenue shifting to give the Board of Directors the mistaken idea that business at eBay is improving.

Increasing eBay fee revenue is the reason for the fee increase that lurks behind the bogus but essentially mandatory 5 ''free'' auction listings. This is the slick fee increase devised by Donahoe & Co where they force most sellers to pay increased Final Value Fees of 8.75% on their first 5 auction listings every month. The return is that eBay waves the small up front listing fee. Bottom line, fee increase for eBay.

Increasing revenue is why promotions such as offer ''free shipping'' and get the subtitle free are offered as again eBay profits.

How much more chicanery, smoke & mirrors will the eBay board accept before they end this madness and let Donahoe & Co take their golden parachutes?

What will the next Donahoe flim-flam be?

Perhaps another diversion...maybe he will elect to announce a reduction in PayPal fees for eBay transactions, while simultaneously increasing fees at eBay to make it appear he has done the job he was hired to do?

Under Donahoe & Co's leadership:

* Unique visitors to eBay have steadily declined; Amazon has increased.
* Page views on eBay have steadily declined; Amazon has increased
* Sales at eBay have steadily declined; Amazon has increased.
* eBay is alienating small sellers; Amazon is opening it's doors to more small sellers.
* Buyers looking for a safe and trustworthy transaction are flocking to Amazon, not eBay.

Remind me again, which company does John Donahoe work for?

His office is in San Jose, but the success of his efforts seem to benefit the competition in every meaningful way more than they benefit the company that pays his salary.

eBay's Donahoe Has Crow for Thanksgiving

Everyone is quick to point to the current economy when discussing recent declines in Internet Sales Volume, especially the dramatic decline at eBay.

eBay however, has no excuse to hide behind the economy declining curtain, except for the fact the CEO is unwilling to admit he had led the marketplace down the wrong path.

Draconian policies and failing infrastructure combined with search that returns irrelevant results, and the worlds worst customer service has been slowly bringing eBay down for years.

Enter Mr Donahoe and his "new coke - green ketchup - disruptive innovation' plan for eBay, and the skids of failure received a new layer of grease.

Ebay has historically out performed the brick and mortar retail segment as well as the stock market during past recessions.

When times got tough, buyers used to flock to eBay in search of incredible deals on unique items as well as scoop up second hand goods to help stretch their dollar.

Then came John Donahoe, the killer of small sellers, the eBay suicide king, leader of the gang that could not shoot straight.

Under Mr Donahoe's leadership, eBay is being converted into a high priced shopping mall at the very time that retailers of new merchandise are filing for bankruptcy in numbers never seen before.

Mr Donahoe's choice to eviscerate the core of eBay by purging small sellers could not have come at a worse time.

eBay's quarterly reports are dismal and it's stock price which has seen its value drop by 2/3 since Donahoe assumed control, sinks to a new low almost every week.

This decline at eBay started to set in long before the economy displayed signs of recession, and runs completely contrary to eBay's historical success during tough economic times.

Ebay has always offered the worlds worst customer service, recent staffing cuts have served to exacerbate this problem.

Ebay has alienated buyers with forced search methods that do not return what buyers want to see.

The failed Best Match does not allow buyers to search, but instead shows buyers what eBay has determined they want buyers to see.

Sellers that pay to place listings see those paid listings deliberately disadvantaged in placement in favor of a class of sellers that pay nothing to list items. These Diamond sellers flood the core and drown the small sellers that pay to list.

eBay has further alienated sellers with a draconian DSR policy which is not the tool promised to sellers. Instead, it turns out that DSR's are really a weapon pointed at sellers heads that only delivers suspensions not information to foster improvement.

Sellers are frustrated by eBay's failure to address the increasing frequency of non paying bidders. NPB activity has increased since implementation of the one way feedback policy. The issue continues to be ignored as eBay profits from re listing of unpaid merchandise.

EBay further alienates both buyers and sellers with a crumbling IT infrastructure that is subject to rolling 'glitches' on an almost daily basis. Glitches that effect payments, shipping, searching, access to funds, correct payment information, delayed revenue transfers and others cause buyers and sellers alike to give up on the company that suddenly can't get anything right anymore.

As eBay continues to deteriorate, they have become less of a venue as they now want to dictate every facet of a sellers business from retail pricing and fixed shipping costs to what kind of feedback sellers are permitted to leave buyers. They cannot get anything right, yet they dictate what sellers must do. So much for the claim of being a venue.

Mr Donahoe and the rest of his executive leadership team keep their heads buried firmly in the sand. They only pull them out for the occasional press release to parrot Donahoe's claims that "all is well" and "everything is proceeding according to plan", while ignoring the roof that is obviously falling in around them.

Add the fact that as the marketplace crumbles, eBay continues to steadily increase fees and it is no wonder why so many sellers have opted to migrate to other marketplaces and open their own web sites.

This company is failing on every level. Emperor Donahoe continues to fiddle as eBay burns.

Will shareholders step in and call for the removal of eBay's current leadership or is John Donahoe the next poster child for failed CEO's?

We have a ringside seat, so time will tell.

Suggestions for eBay 2.0

Incredibly well thought out series of articles. Your plan addresses every weakness which eBay has brought down upon their own head.

eBay's Board of Directors should print out the plan, hand it to Mr Donahoe and his team with a choice to either flawlessly execute and implement the plan in 6 months, or clean out your desk today.

There is one issue however, that even this plan may not be able to overcome.

eBay once had ' all the eyes', but is no longer the case.

eBay has engineered its own path toward been there done that status, and has alienated so many users that a return to previous levels of popularity may no longer be possible.

The mere mention of "eBay" is now met with so much contempt, that even a complete makeover in the style of your 2.0 plan may not be enough to bring disenfranchised users back to the site.

eBay management has squandered what little remaining goodwill caiptal they had. Between the combination of the past year's anti small seller tactics and the continued insistence they continue to be on the right path, when eBay speaks now all small sellers hear is blah, blah, blah.

Even if they were able to implement this 2.0 plan overnight, they may not be able to sell it to the masses they succeeded in driving away because so many have stopped listening when eBay speaks.

Changes to eBay’s Pricing Plan Could Whack Shares by 20%

eBay seems intent on committing suicide.

Zero listing fees will be the headline eBay will tout. What they will fail to mention is an increase on Final Value Fees, possibly to be asessed not only on the sale price but also on shipping and handling as well.

eBay is also looking to force PayPal only for all transactions. This means that eBay will now collect double fees as they own PayPal which already takes a cut on the full transaction amount.

eBay has been salivating at the opportunity to double dip on full transaction value once through eBay and again on PayPal.

Casual sellers have already been leaving in droves. Sellers have been closing stores, and Power Seller listings have been shrinking across the board.

One look at sellerdome.com and the toll on the top 100 powersellers now inactive reveals that 11 of the top 100 worldwide sellers on eBay are now either No Longer Registered Users, or have not listed any items recently. Those numbers are about the same when looking at US top 100 sellers.

Double dipping on full transactions by eBay and PayPal will encourage many more to run toward the exits.

It is no wonder almost every other Internet site is seeing significant listing activity increases.

Best Match Search does not return accurate results.
Many claim eBay manipulates the secretive DSR ratings.
eBay buries seller listings based on manipulated DSR ratings.
Feedback is skewed one way against sellers.
Non paying bidders are increasing.
Buyer fraud is increasing.
New listing pages will display other items for sale.
Commercial display advertising of outside sites is increasing.
eBay changes policies sometimes without notice.
System glitches means systems are unstable.

This company under new CEO John Donahoe is headed for an epic collapse, free listings will just be another item on a long list on eBays pending death certificate.