eBay shoppers not in holiday spirit this year

Well, it's finally dawning on the financial analysts that what is being said on the "inside" of the ebay discussion forums was not just a bunch of "complaining noise making sellers".
At this point it time, they are eliminating posts, posters, and sellers threads, hiding them in "soapbox" discussion boards, and pushing members out of the discussions entirely, so that the stockholders and investors cannot see what's going on.
Things continue to get more "communist-like" on that site, and the buyers are being chased away, by the inept marketing and poor business decisions of this CEO group.
Which person is at fault, we will never know, but there IS a board of directors responsible for this company, and they should be able to answer for the choices in corporate leadership that THEY elected to run this company.
No..it's NOT the economy. Other little sites are fighting for the sellers who have been leaving "en mass", and their sales, site visitors, and membership numbers are exponentially skyrocketing. Used goods sell. Unique and collectible goods sell! Even in a down-turning market. Antiques will always be an investment as they always have been in the past.
Ebay is drowning, Someone needs to throw them a life raft.

Reply

I have been an eBay buyer for years and I hate being instructed what to do. I am too old for that. The fact that you can only use Pay Pal to pay for goods purchased bothers me no end, simply because previously I was not instructed as to how to pay; and I could choose check, money order, credit card, etc. my decision. Now, it's only Pay Pal. No wonder sales are down.
I would guess that personally my purchases are down 90% or more. I don't want another credit card, I don't want to be directed to pay only one way, your way. Is this a dictatorship or what? Sorry, maybe it is only a monopoly.

Reply

Ebay is going down - slowly - because of its antagonistic attitude towards the very people that helped build the company years ago.
After 10 years, I am slowly migrating to Bonanzle.com - since yesterday only, another 540 users for a total of 15540 as of this minute - and they went online officially in September.
It will take time to build, as did ebay, years ago - but it's a good place with low fees, humane policies, and a can do attitude.

Looking for stuff online - try Bonanzle first. Looking to sell - list for free there and then pay low fees and pass the savings onto your buyers. And be appreciated again!

Reply

Move your store to

BONANZLE.COM

I love it there!

Reply

With all of the changes that are going on at eBay we have decided to partner with Bonanzle.com instead. We now can use as many payment methods as possible without being dictated to. Our personalized line of baby bibs and kids room signs can now be seen by the masses instead of being burried in a sea of products. It has never been our intensions to compete with the big boys and Bonanzle offers us a means to market to our buyers in a better and more efficient manor. Take a look for yourself:
http://bonanzle.com/booths/kaboodlegifts

Reply

E-bay is too expensive and not productive for sales during the best of times. Some people made a lot of money, but many more didn't and E-bay got greedy and charged more for less. In the meantime Craigslist caused us to make sales at no cost to us, while E-bay became impossible to sell and even break even. CRAIGSLIST is the answer to all of us. It's simple, they haven't been greedy and I've sold there when I haven't on E-bay.. so go figure. I'll buy and sell on Craigslist.

Reply

To see more of what ebay users are saying, search the internet for

"Ebay Stockholders and Sellers Calling For Immediate Termination of John Donohoe CEO Petition"


To read what ebay's own employees are saying about the EXTREMELY POOR upper management at ebay, go to the glassdoor site.


ebay is forcing the vast majority of members to use Paypal (owned by ebay), with it's OUTRAGEOUS 21-180 day holds on users funds at Paypal's "sole discretion" per Paypal's amended User Agreement. Their is virtually NO arbitration process available to users and Paypal (ebay Inc.) keeps the interest the money accrues, while denying users access to their own funds. Paypal is NOT federally protected.

Donahoe/ebay's "Sellers MUST LIE" about bad buyers policy and hidden buyer IDs has created a site full of deceptions, abuse and scams.

Donahoe/ebay's INSANE Detailed Sellers Ratings (DSR) system is suspending sellers rated ABOVE AVERAGE, while Donahoe's "Diamond Seller" program is protecting and promoting the worst sellers, by allowing them to negotiate "special deals" on pricing and feedback/DSR manipulations.

FIRE DONAHOE! Don't let Whitman back in either, since it IS her's and Donahoe's "Disruptive Innovation" SCHEME, which is DESTROYING ebay and is chasing away all of the HONEST users & great items it once had.

The Ongoing Global ebay Boycott Continues!

Reply

Ebay is only out for the customer. When THEY tell me that my already low shipping is too high and want me to even lower it then I know they've lost me. If I want to give my things away I'll do that to the salvation army around here. And not get ebay to take a winning cut out of my losses too. pppfffttt...

I sell on Bonanzle. They have "booth" there. And my name here is what my booths name is there. Thats a great site, with great communications and nobody leaves you hanging and wondering if you are even talking to REAL people.

Bonanzle is a new and very fast upcoming site and it will grow and give every site a run for their money. Heck, I actually MADE money there after paying my fvf's... :) At ebay I would've had to take out a loan for that :(

Reply

I've had sold on ebay but when they told me that my shipping fees were too high I really thought they lost it. Unless the customer comes and picks it up, there IS shipping cost unless you put your item cost up and make it free shipping.

I got tired of them telling me what I should sell my items for because I knew how much I had to spend originally for it for. And after paying their fees and pp fees I had to almost take out a loan just to pay fees!!! pppffftt....not gonna happen!

We all want to make at least a little bit of money and we all want to have good communication in case you need an answer on stuff. At ebay that's lacking cause everyone acts like you're suppose to know this...or they say...well, do a search on the boards...duuuhh...maybe I did and did not find anything, so how about a link at least??

So I found this great site, Bonanzle.....and I have a "booth" there thats called EvesBooth....the fvf is great, there is no ebay hierarchy (sp?) and if you need an answer there is always someone that will either explain it to you or give you the link where you can find your answer. And they will follow up with you. I've been there 3 month now and I'm really happy, there is a great community, the sales are slowly starting...this IS a new site.....and there is a great overall feeling of having a good place to stay. I closed down ALL my sites and am just now on there...with my original booth, started my evesbooth2 and now am working on a specialized store also called ScentsYouAreHere...there is not much in there yet, it's under construction :) but this site is great enough that you can take your time.

So pooohhhh on ebay!!

Reply

I used to sell on eBay, just 10-15 items a month for over 6 years. I stopped selling shortly after they instituted "Best Match" as their default search engine. Instead of making a search engine that is designed to find what buyers are looking for, eBay decided to design it as a punishment and reward system for sellers. It is rigged to favor the larger seller who sells more items and sells more frequently (sales history is most important criterion for their search). As a result, small sellers with the same items and same customer satisfaction ratings are hidden on back pages of the search while big sellers who often pay lower to zero listing fees get to be on page one. I gave up selling there when I realized that most of my listings were getting buried behind pages of duplicate and higher priced items from their mega sellers. I am now so angry with them for favoring the large sellers over the small ones (the same small sellers that made them such a success to begin with) that I refuse to buy there and encourage freinds and family not to buy there either.

Reply

eBay is knowingly facilitating fraud on buyers

Can anyone explain to me why users in Australia, the UK, Ireland and the Philippines, have the absolutely anonymous bidding alias (“Bidder N”) while New Zealand (and the rest of the world) has the effectively bidder-specific alias (“a***b (N)”)?

The material difference between these two forms of anonymous alias is, in the case of the “a***b (N)” alias, at a given point in time when viewed in conjunction with the accompanying feedback count, “(N)”, it is effectively bidder-specific: experienced buyers can still check a seller’s other auctions to watch out for at least any instances of blatant shill bidding; on the other hand, with the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder N”), buyers have got absolutely no chance of detecting even the most blatant of shill bidding by an unscrupulous seller.

And, please, don’t give me any of that nonsense that the new “Bidder History” page enables buyers to spot a shill bidder: that is simply one more blatantly disingenuous eBay claim. Nor does eBay have any “sophisticated” software for the detection of shill bidding: they still rely primarily on user reports: trouble is, users can no longer report because users can no longer detect! And, eBay’s excuse for introducing such anonymous aliases in the first place, supposedly to stop fraudulent second chance offers, is pathetic and undoubtedly (again) disingenuous, and simply reinforces the obvious fact that undetectable shill bidding does not disadvantage eBay in any way.

Many potentially unscrupulous sellers were not bold enough to use eBay’s existing shill bidders’ tool, “User ID kept private”, as its use so clearly indicated that the seller was, more likely than not, unscrupulous; such unscrupulous sellers can now shill bid to their heart’s content, confident that their activity cannot now be detected.

Further, in the US, eBay initially introduced the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder N”) and then retreated therefrom to the effectively bidder-specific alias (“a***b (N)”). I wonder why? Strangely, the opposite happened in the UK where eBay went from “a***b (N)” to “Bidder N”! (Does anyone in this organisation actually know what is going on?)

The application of the absolutely anonymous alias, “Bidder N”, appears to serve only one purpose and that is to obscure any blatant shill bidding, that would otherwise be obvious, so that buyers can’t detect it, can’t then report it, and eBay does not have to waste any of their valuable resources pretending to do anything about it.

Whether intentional or not, eBay’s application of the absolutely anonymous alias (“Bidder N”) is effectively an “aiding and abetting” of fraud on buyers. What then is our governmental consumer affairs regulator(s) doing about this reprehensible behaviour by eBay?

Lengthy, detailed comments on this matter commence at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6499794#6499794

Reply

My fiancee and I both had stores on Ebay for nearly 6 years. We both were power sellers (she had been a silver power seller for since 2002, and I had been a bronze power seller since 2003). It's also worth noting that we both have licensed businesses with local sales channels as well. Between us we had generated over 21,000 ebay sales, both had lifetime buyer satisfaction feedback ratings of 99.9 and both of us had DSR ratings of 4.9, 4.9, 4.9 and 4.8 for both our ebay IDs which is well above the site average.

Our combined yearly gross sales wasn't nearly as much as some of our larger ebay competitors, but we did manage between $100k-$150k in gross sales between the two stores, and paid nearly $25k per year in ebay and paypal fees.

I'd also like to mention that over those 6 years, we made a total of 773 different purchases of all types of new and used merchandise. I would guestimate we spent roughly $45K total shopping on ebay over the 6 years we were active members.

We loved ebay. We loved the unique culture, we loved all the eclectic, unique, one of kind things we'd find that you just cant find in retail stores, and we made many great friendship through the years with other fellow ebayers.

Things were sailing along nicely. We were making respectable secondary income, and we had many favorite sellers we used to shop with regularly.

Then, out of the blue, J. Donahoe took over as ebay's CEO...and since that day the entire ebay experience for us turned into a total nightmare. Our sales rapidly deteriorated after ebay implemented their aweful best match search engine, we contended with a massive rise in nonpaying bidders/buyers after the feedback policy changes, and the cost of doing business steadily rose each month as our sales continued falling.


Every single change Donahoe has made this year has been very destructive as has been eloquently address by some of the other commentors, from the feedback policy, the DSR system, the new search engine, non existent customer support just to mention a few.

Ebay truly sucks now, and we simply have lost all trust in Donahoe's intentions and motives. He's taken many blatant steps to drive off a large percentage of the sellers on the site in his quest to only court large online merchants offering "Big Box" new merchandise.


We closed both our stores down back on September after having 3 dismall months of sales as a result of our listings PURPOSELY getting very little exposure in the new default search engine that heavily favors larger volume sellers, or having our listings not even show up in any of the nondefault search engines.

Customer Serives at ebay has been totally nonexistent, and they make it rather obvious they dont need nor want small bussinesses and casual sellers on their site. If ebay doesnt respect us as sellers merely because we dont do $1 mil worth of business on their site each year...then they certainly wont find us buying on their site ever again.

Ebay and their nonsense put us through hell this year, and we have vowed to do whatever it take to spread the word to as many folks as we can that Ebay is no longer a trustworthy company that values or respects any of its customers.

Ebay's greed will be it downfall!

Reply