catsfly

What Will Become of eBay?

I don't know if it's kosher to link to another article, but some of us need to go tell this guy what's up.
online.wsj.com/article...

What Will Become of eBay?

Anyone who has been a successful enough seller on ebay to make their entire living doing it would be significantly more qualified to run ebay than the people who are currently in control of it.

What they have done to the company is just WRONG, not only in the moral sense which is not even debatable, but in a business sense as well. If the majority of the stockholders actually understood the cause of the plummeting value they would be requesting John Donahoes head on a platter.

His innovative disruption certainly IS innovative in the sense that what he's doing hasn't been done before, and that is.....telling his customers, you know....the ones who pay their salaries, and keep the lights on, and who for years enthusiastically promoted ebay by positive word of mouth, that they're no longer wanted or welcome. The fact that it's disruptive is the understatement of the decade.

The following quote from John Donahoe is one of the most asinine things I've ever had the displeasure of reading:
"We had to create a vision of the future so people could let go of a very successful past."

I'm still unclear what his vision of the future is, but he has definitely succeeded at letting go of a very successful past.

He has cost thousands of stock holders millions of dollars, and thousands of sellers their livelihoods.

You cannot abuse your customer base and expect continued loyalty and success.

I cannot even think of another company who's customers were as in love with it as people were with ebay when it was at it's peak. It was win/win for everyone involved.....the buyers found unique and exciting items for great prices, the sellers could make great money from home, the stockholders weren't getting screwed, and ebay was making money hand over fist. That could still be the case today, but it's the opposite and the reasons why are completely unnecessary.

If you walked into Walmart and instead of hearing "welcome to walmart!" you heard "we don't really want you around anymore, and to show you just how much we mean it, we've raised all the prices, and put obstacle courses down each aisle" how much longer would you continue to shop there? This is what John Donahoe has done to ebays customers, THE SELLERS. I'm not sure what he thinks THE BUYERS are going to buy when the sellers are no longer there.

They've been very busy running off the small seller who offers bargains and unique items, while recruiting big sellers like Buy.com who clearly aren't paying listing fees, they can't be or they'd be losing money.....they have offerings like a roll of Bounty paper towels for $3 with shipping for $7.50......a single ballpoint pen for $1.05, with a shipping price of $7. I don't know anyone who would pay $10 to have a roll of paper towels shipped to their house, do you? I'm assuming buy.coms motivation is free advertising for buy.com, and I KNOW ebays motivation is the thousands of listings they're gaining to replace the listings now missing because of all the sellers who have left.....that way the stockholders can't see the dramatic decrease in listings.

Traffic is down over the past few months, but those numbers would be so much worse if it weren't for ebay and microsoft PAYING people to shop on ebay with their 30% cash back coupons. I'd love to see the numbers if it weren't for that.

The guy has an MBA, he can't be this dumb, it's not possible. We're either dealing with a major ego problem OR a sinister plan.......sort of like chemo therapy....take you to the brink of death to kill of the cancer, then build you back up again. If they can get the stock low enough, which they seem to be doing.....the big wigs can buy a ton of it on the cheap, then reverse these horrible changes, get ebay back on track, and make billions.

I used to make my sole living on ebay, now I won't even log in. I wasn't just a seller, I was a buyer too, as most sellers are. I used to buy my entire christmas on ebay, I don't think I've purchased anything there in a year. That's another one of the things they don't seem to understand, buyers and sellers are BOTH buyers and sellers.....run off the sellers and you're also losing sales.

When I read about all the changes that have been made, it feels like an episode of punk'd. It's so ridiculous that it's hard to believe it's real. In fact, I've told many people of the details and they actually LAUGH, they think I must be mistaken because no company would PURPOSELY self destruct......except ebay apparently.