Allan kraig

eBay: Essential Data

You can put all the pretty pictures & charts up you want but it means nothing .. You forfet the foundation of eBay is built upon it's sellers backs .. eBay has pissed off its core sellers & continues to beat them up over & over .. eBay will not recover until it makes amends with its sellers .. Allan Kraig

eBay's Ticker Might Be 'PYPL' in Three Years

Before you go out looking to buy a lot of PayPal shares you might want to quickly look & see that PayPal is much like a goldfish in a small bowl .. If you move the fish to a bigger bowl or enviroment, it will only grow to the size of the bowl or area allowed by its size .. well picture that eBay is PayPal's bowl & it will only grow proportionately to the size of eBay .. as eBay sales diminish so will PayPal .. It got a great spur when eBay practically made PayPal the only accepted payment form on eBay a few months ago, But that boom has come to an end & now that eBay buyers & sellers become weary of the site because of blundering mis-management, PayPal's popularity will also fall .. I know the arguement is that PayPal is accepted many other places but first off you will not rub shoulders to even get introduced to paypal unless you become an eBay user first .. As Buyers & sellers become more angered at the site, They will not be as willing to reach for their paypal card before they reach for their local bank card first .. It is truly a chicken egg type scenerio .. or hand in hand ... Allan Kraig

What Are Analysts Saying About eBay's Analyst Day?

Look here is a BIG THING that a lot of these so called SHARP investors haven't connected the dots on YET!!! .. JD's main job description a while back before coming to eBay was to break up Great BIG corperations & selling the iddy biddy pieces off or spinning off the pieces to the highest bidders .. (humm?? could this be the reason the big puff job on PreyPal wed?).. Also all the years previously you hardly heard squat about Skype (eBay's red headed step child), but now every other word out of JD's mouth is about SKYPE & its recent progress, so it is being advertised in much the same manor that a snake oil salesman would present himself in the middle of a small town square (step right on up here lad, This elixir cures everything,,, well sept stupidity) .. I honestly think it would be interesting to actually see how much cash the Meg actually got into her pocket from the purchase of this company at its way over bloated purchase price way back in the day .. I think even a fair detective could connect the dots and find that she may have made a bit on both sides of the fence in that acquisition, especially when you relize that skype still isn't worth today of what eBay paid for it when they bought it way back then .. Either the guy who sold it to them is the best snake oil salesman there ever was or there was some self serving reason to pay that much for such a new loosly formed business ..

Anyways, don't be too surprised when you see eBay, Paypal & skype going 3 different directions soon as John Dillenger Donohoe carves it up for sale to sell the pieces off to the highest bidder .. Snippers get your button pushing fingers ready LOL .. Allan Kraig

Three Value Stocks That Appear Ridiculously Cheap

Hey Greg, I got a good one for ya, Try to find the big CASH RESERVES eBay is boosting about!! You can't see it & you can't touch it.. Go to the 3rd qtr report to get a hint where it is .. The cash reserves in the US are run down to a minimum. The other billions are in a non disclosed off shore area, That is why they had to borrow to buy bill me later? Let me know if you find it .. If they truely do set on such reserves why did they lay off 1500+ employees, where many were their best & brightest long term employees including the leader of the eBay voices group? Kind of looks like shooting your self in the foot when you gut the voices program in such a time of need to save pocket change when your setting on billions in reserves .. Allan Kraig

Shares of eBay Hit Seven Year Low

what he said^

Suggestions for eBay 2.0

The real problem is that eBay has killed it's sellers spirit & dreams, I don't know if that kind of hurt can be healed at this point .. It would at least take Pierre coming out & standing up for his baby then challenging JD to a death match to begin rebuilding the sellers trust .. Funny, It's much the same hurt you get when your spouse steps out on you, it hurts you to the bone .. You have put all your love & trust into one thing then you start living your dream ... Then one morning you wake up & find yourself faced with the relization that you were just being used as a step along the way, then cast aside for a newer bigger better deal in the eyes of , well ebay at this point, dumping the loyal faihful users in liew of the diamond junk peddlers ..

Who here hasn't been cheated on & then want a VOODOO doll of the one who hurt us so we can return the pain they caused, This explains the feelings expressed through out the comments here ..
Lets just hope Pierre wakes up & grabs back the wheel before JD does finally run eBay completely into the ditch .. BTW you can contact pierre using his first name @ebay.com , maybe if the noise got loud enough?? who knows .. Allan Kraig

Drop in E-Commerce Customer Satisfaction Ends Three-Year Climb

eBay beats their customers in the head, Milks every penny they can from their sellers, Meg cut the budget for customer service to fatten the bottom line for the stock holders & you are surprised they have slipped .. You can spin this till your head falls off and until somebody wakes up & starts driving the bus that Meg left the monkey at the wheel it only going to go lower .. (monkey: ie meg once said a monkey could drive this bus & so she did with JD)

Change after change after change all for window dressing for the stock holders, ebay needs to get real input from their real sellers not these flash in the pan DIAMOND minute wonders that have tanked the site .. eBay & JD base company value only in the stock price with no consideration for customer satisfaction .. they have quickly forgotten that the sellers ARE THEIR CUSTOMERS .. Allan Kraig

eBay Listens to Customers, Retires Old Search Engine

YOU TALKED, WE LISTENED? eBay's most famous words!! the new search is just plain out JUNK .. it just doesn't work well, it was engineered to serve 2% of eBays sellers, The DIAMOND sellers who only have a sell through rate of 1%-3% also using the worst of the best match funtion that killed so many sellers already on eBay .. but this is another issue or feature that eBay is once again cramming down it's poor users throats .. They have stuck many unsuspecting users into their beta program they couldn't opt out of for the new search & then they never let newer users even know that they could opt out of the "NEW & IMPROVED SEARCH" .. So now they call it the official & prefered search .. Given a head to head choice most users run from the new search like rats from a sinking ship .. You would THINK HONESTLY they would slow down all their new & improved features because the "NOISE" over their "NEW & IMPROVED" "MYeBay" is still deafening and is fresh on the minds of so many un-happy users .. I myself have well over 200 searches that turn into junk with the new search :( .

All these "NEW & IMPROVED" features are more for window dressing for the stock holders to give the impression that the CEO & his minions are actually trying to do something over their current down turning finacial situation & loosing market share to Amazon rather than to do something to really ease the pain & help the actual users & sellers on eBay, improve the viability & reduce their frustraition of using the site .. Now known as one of the most complicated sites to use & also now the slowest loading of all the e-commerce site LOL .. They won't ever learn .. its the KISS method they should embrace .. aim at making the site more usable to the greater number of people .. Its something the more successful newspaper learned long ago, Write your articals at a fifth grade reading level so the greater number of people can actually read it .. you'll notice the post & star have a greater circulation than the WSJ .. Craigslist blows ebay's kigigi or what ever its name is, why? its easy to use, no frills and Craigslist ain't trying to impress its stock holders!!

It's funny, eBay has no inventory, has nothing to sell but space and their sellers make up the majority of the cash flow that ebay has but yet!! BUT Yet, eBay treats their sellers like 2nd class citizens rather than a valued commodity .. JD's main interest is to impress the stock holders rather than to aid the sellers that make up the real cash cow of the business .. It's crazy that the CEO bases the value of the company on the stock price & stock holders happyness rather than the value of the satisfaction of the real buyers & sellers on the site .. meg didn't learn it & now JD is following the same route .. they should have looked at when eBay had it's biggest growth!! It grew it's most when people were happy with the site, not when they went public & had stock prices to base success on but look at the charts when Pierre actually developed ebay as a community & it really meant something to be there .. If they concentraited on customer service, Making the sellers happy & returning eBay back to a community then it will grow on its own, Not with trickery & fudging the numbers & game playing it uses now .. eBay now it is just a shell of it's former self with no soul .. Allan kraig

eBay and the CEF

It is my opinion that most the graphic changes on the site are not there to makes sales better or to ease any of the stress on the seller, it is more window dressing for the view and appreciation of the stock holders to give an image of new things HAPPENING at eBay or to give a source of a false sence of security to hold onto their stock holdings rather than dump them and run as they well should ... <p>

Another real serious problems these days is that now eBay has a well earned and deserved reputation of being one of if not the slowest loading site on the web giving it a huge negitive impact to buyers even before you begin to factor all the other issues going on with the site even before you put eBay.com into your browser to complete your sado-masochistic experience ... <p>

Now one more issue that nobody seems to mention or tries to sweep under the rug, is that to date with the feverish culling of the "SO-BAD" sellers is that eBay is busy hitting in a collateral damage fashion in their sweep or net is sellers with a 4.8 & higher DSR in the item as described category .. These sellers are now being restricted fro selling because one of their other DSR's is below 4.1 .. I have charted several great sellers with 100% feedback, DSR item as described of 4.8-5.0 & are still booted off the site with all the finesse & grace of a rapest from ebay's automated sarah parker loving bots ... No hey what the hell is going on or how can we fix this or what went wrong from eBay, just a get the flock out of here don't let the door hit you e-mail one morning in your mailbox one fine morning :( ... <p>
I have charted several small sellers with this scenario and the damming DSR was a result of the seller using "FREE" shipping and buyer confusion for using the DSR system ?? The other damming DSR problem booting great sellers off with other wise perfect feedback is over seas sales shipping time which is no control of the seller but none the less the axe that ultimately gets them booted from the site .. 5%-10% of all ebay sellers were falling below 4.1 in one or more categories so that means that now that 5%-10% of eBays sellers are NOW restricted from selling.. I guess grandma who was selling off her collectables to pay for medicine will have to find a new way to earn a little extra to pay for her increasing medical cost & get some kibbles helper to cut down on her food cost now she can sell on eBay no longer ... Allan Kraig

The Street Wants More Job Cuts from Microsoft

Has anybody noticed it's the guys who do nothing that always the first to want to fire the guys in the ditches which make the widgets, so the the do nothing guys can get a bigger piece of the pie?? In this enviroment today I applaud those corps who thighten their belts a notch so they can keep as many people employed who were loyal workers during the FAT times ... DOES IT ALWAYS ABOUT THE BOTTOM LINE BUCK!!! Sometimes it should be about the ones who played the music while you did danced to the sweet, sweet music of the GOOD TIMES!! For Gods Sake, Were dealing with People here, not non descript replacable widgets, these are living breathing people with families, homes & responsibilities to feed their children who have paid their dues to be there, they should be the last resort to cutting exspenses, not the first, especially if the corp is still posting a profit .. the guys with the axe, What sweat have they provided into keeping the wheels turning? What is their true value? These parasites would have you eliminate those whose sweat has greased the corperate wheel keeping the wheels turning smoothly, for no other reason than reap a few pennies more .. The stocks will go back up, places like microsoft will rise again strong, but remember it may be one of these soon to be cut employees that may have the answer to re-invent the wheel, and it will be their next employer that reaps the benefit of the education microsoft gave them and now goes directly into competition with them ... Microsoft we all know has a habit of hiring nothing but the best & the brightest, Do you really want to maybe raise the ire of one of these soon to be cut employees & give them motivation to work against microsoft in the future for a few pennies more?? I wouldn't think so ..

Earnings Preview: eBay

Time for JD to man up & take the blame for his own failures & lack of real selling experience before his disruptive innovation theory spins out of control .. He could actually turn this around in minutes if he would just take time to talk to the people who actually use & built eBay to what it is .. JD is trying to run eBay by reading a book with no practical experience is on the same plane as me trying to do brain surgery because I read a book one time & saw a movie (hannible lol) ..

JD trying to blame the economy for the eBay slow down is like a new teen age driver blaming the tree for hitting the car after an accident ... It's the nut holding the wheel that steered the car into the tree that is to blame, a real captain lets the buck stop at himself when there is a mishap .. Its a weak leader that blames everything around him, especially when you see that amazon post its best qtr ever & its a fact of life that venues like eBay florish in hard times not decline ..

You have a guy who never sold anything in his life (except girl scout cookies) and never even actually sell anything on eBay trying to tell others how to do it??

If he was a real man & wanted to turn this around all he would need do is confess he #*#@^-up, sit dowm with some real experienced sellers (not the jaded diamond sellers), get their input, go read the boards & see what the real complaints from the actual eBay user's are, Then sit down on a radio show or some other venue & rally the troops to action ..

Funny the real eBay'ers are a community & are very forgiving if approached with dignanty, give them the respect they deserve & have earned & talk this situation out like a good coach should .. If he would just take advantage of the community spirit that was already built into the site before he attemped to tank the company with his lack of real world experience .. Allan Kraig

Is eBay's Strategy Working?

ebay+++ Before you wish this on the sellers you should know how it works, you should know the sellers are working out of fear no just to be nice anymore .. The DSR system causes a great deal of stress for sellers because a most of the ratings are beyond the control of the seller .. 1 single mother from the midwest got restricted from selling on eBay because she gave free shipping to her customers, so buyers gave what they thought was a neutral rating of 3 so now today, her kids go hungry .. I myself, sell primarilly over seas mostly to the UK & Austrailia .. But 1 package I sent to italy got hung up in customs .. my DSR's went poof that sale and with 4's from my international buyers because according to ebay a 4 is VERY GOOD, a 5 is EXCELLENT .. Well I was restricted from selling for quite a period of time ..

There is no appeal process & some DSR's can take up to a year to roll off so about 5% of eBays sellers fall below the 4.1 margin according to DSR WATCH and are now restricted from selling on ebay .. So the courtesy & love you though you were feeling was really like a gun to the sellers head ..
I can understand the DSR for ITEM AS DESCRIBED being very important so you know your not buying junk, I can somewhat understand the communication one, But i hate the zillion emails you get now with over cautious sellers , but what doesn't register with me is shipping time DSR the way it is legislated .. The seller cannot control the UPS or USPS delivery time .. If you were only rated from the time the order was paid for to the time it was shipped, I can understand, but it isn't & this is the one singular DSR that has tanked over 100 sellers I have charted with 100% feedback & a item as dscribed from 4.8-5.0 .. My feeling is if you have a 100% feedback & a DSR for item satisfaction of 4.8 or high then YOU ARE A GOOD SELLER & SHOULD NOT BE BOOTED FROM SELLING ON EBAY!!
the last non sense DSR is shipping cost .. Yes I know there are several people digging deep on shipping cost on eBay .. If they state a high shipping cost then don't buy from them !!! But to go further, There should be something built into the system that if you use FREE SHIPPING then this DSR shouldn't count !!!! If you use eBay's shipping calculator & ship for that exact cost then this DSR should not count but yet this is the 2nd most reason on the DSR's for sellers being booted from the site!!! .. Allan Kraig

Is eBay's Strategy Working?

Here is something particular for stock holders to ponder, while they are thinking over their buying or selling of eBay stock .. what does eBay really have for assetts? If they were to fold & disperse today what would the stock holders have? eBay may own the buildings they are in, but if you look now at the balance sheet for the USA holdings they must be in some debt with their latest acquisitions .. They brag very vocally that they do have 3.3 BILLION dollars in cash holdings & that about 1/2 or a little less of their income is from the USA sales .. But with the usual fuzzy math & the way eBay manipulates their press releases & fumbles their releases to influence the stock market .. (ie; look at the press releases just before Meg bailed out of her stock shares which put eBay at a peak just before her sell off) while eBay actually only actually has about 400 million in the USA to avoid many things like taxes, the reach of regulators and such ... the below text is directly from the 3qtr report ..

"Robert H. Swan
Thanks, Scott. You know, we end the quarter, you’re right, with $3.3 billion in cash. As you know, the reality of that cash is about $400 million sits here in the U.S. and the rest of it off-shore, so the inherent flexibility we have to use our strong balance sheet and our strong cash flows here domestically has a pretty severe tax rate penalty associated with it. So that’s a constraint that we have to deal with."

So if something did happen catastrophic to eBay, what do you think the chances are that they the stock holders & investors could get a grip on their share of the off shore holdings before it evaporated?

But the reality of eBay is that the sellers on eBay are the holders of the inventory!! All eBay does is to rent internet space? Which they often forget is that nobody holds deeds for areas in cyber space ..They often forget that every dime they buy their luxury jets & fancy cars with while they are double talking the press & stock holders comes directly from the sellers which now are leaving eBay in droves because of the non sense that has now reached a tipping point with most long term sellers..

While Meg & Donohoe like rubbing the shoulders of the rich & famous & catering to the stock holders while behind their backs keep inceasing the sellers fees (now up to 18% in some categories) to compensate for the sellers sales of those who have left to give these stockholders the illusion that they created a greater profit in any given quarter because they have done such a spiffy job.. They (the execs at the top) have forgotten that the EBAY SELLERS ARE THE REAL BACKBONE OF THIS BUSINESS, NOT THE STOCK HOLDERS!!! I mean how crass is it to cut the ebay seller customer service to bolster the bottom line to give the stockholders a few percentage points more in dividends?
Do they not relize that maybe HAPPY SELLERS may sell & produce more sales rather than to bleed the remaining sellers to death?
Opps, Well, I can go on forever here, but it looks like with the majority of cash holdings being held off shore, a stock that is dropping like a rock & a CEO bracing the stockholders for a big drop in sales in the 4th qtr LONG before the annoucement of the latest finacial crash looks like a corperation that's ready for some big move or calculated splitting act .. (PayPal alone is the crown jewel many are aiming for)
I do believe i read someplace that one of JD's jobs before he got to eBay was to break up big corperations & sell them off in pieces .. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if it walks like a duck & 2+2=4 , then I think it all looks sketchy to me ... Stock holders read the paper today where billions of investors assetts vaporated from one investing firm, What makes you eBay stock holders are special & above that flack?

Is eBay's Strategy Working?

LA101 , You are showing the ignorance that has given way to beat up small sellers on eBay, The ones who built the site to what it is today .. Its not whinning, Its demanding to be equally fair to all who do obey the rules .. I can show you at least 100 small sellers who did all they were suppose to do but got booted anyways by the DSR system that eBay now imposes ..
How can a small seller control how fast the USPS or UPS is going to deliver your package but yet the seller is held accountable for their speed & also if you strickly use the eBay shipping calculator you will get booted for excessive shipping fees or get just 4's which eBay says is GOOD but a straight 4 out of 5 will get your account suspended ..
I can show you 1 seller, a single mom out of the midwest that offered only free shipping that has 100% feedback that got booted for shipping cost?? Now there's a quirk when free shipping can get you booted for excessive shipping cost .. It's because eBay doesn't explain the DSR system to buyers, eBays official word on the matter is that it is up to seller to educate our buyers?? that is from the GURU himself Griff .. So sellers litterally have to beg for feedback & explain how it works .. 5 is for excellent goes beyond what the sellers needs to do, 4 is for very good seller, 3 is for average, 2 is for could have done better & 1 is for POOR service ... But the rub is if you get straight 4's which is VERY GOOD, You will have your account suspended .. it was if you went below 4.3 on any one of the 4 categories you had your accout suspended, When Megs seller account went down to 4.1 they dropped the limit from 4.3 to 4.1 ..
there are so many faults with this system it would take pages to tell them all & in seller central, the feedback board & soap box on the ebay boards there is nearly800 pages of complaints from GOOD sellers done dirty by this system .. Like I have been saying a seller with 100% feedback & a DSR of 4.9-5.0 for item as described can't be all bad ..
so you know how many are now gone, DSR watch says that 5%-10% fall below the 4.1 line so figure safely 5% of 1.3 million sellers have gotten the ax .. Those are mostly small sellers who are or were also buyers on the site that will not return ..
Still yet a single mother that is booted from the site is not a beggar or looking for something extra, she is somebody looking to make an honest living & was following the rules as presented .. eBay hyped itself as a level paying field? now they should live up to the notion!! Allan Kraig

Is eBay's Strategy Working?

Interesting, But what do you tell the single mother who can't feed her kids to nite because she made the mistake of shipping a package or two to austrailia of Italy & now has her shipping DSR slip to 4.0 while she still maintains a 100% feed back with a item as described DSR of 4.9 communication of 4.8 and has been restricted from selling .. What about your neighbors grandparents who now can't afford their much needed medicine because they fell the same fate .. There are 10's of thousands of good sellers that got the axe from this much faulted system, remember while you fancy guys are busy crunching numbers that much of these numbers represent good hard working honest people that are now out their family income no fault of their own ..
I'm not saying that there wasn't some changes needed to get some of the worst sellers off or monitered butthey used an axe where a scalpal & some sort of review system before the cut happened .. as can be seen in the new time magazine artical Meg opted to cut customer service to fatten the bottom line for the stock holders .. HUH?? eBay has no inventory, no inventory control or anything for sale but space!! Perhaps had they ventured down the avenue of making their sellers happy they would have had a better out come with sellers staying for being happy like the old days instead of sellings leaving because they felt so beaten & un appreciated .. In the end ever dollar that passes through John Donahoes hand or Meg Whitmans hand is there from a seller not the stock holders .. AK