Market bidding isn’t going Ebay’s way

FIRE JOHN DONAHOE PETITION!

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?jdonohoe

“Ebay Stockholders and Sellers Calling For Immediate Termination of John Donohoe CEO”

PLEASE! Pass this information on to others!!!

I really have to reiterate:
There are NO BUYERS on the other non-Ebay sites. I hope the other sites start advertising and getting their name out there soon. Until they do, Joe Plumber has never heard of any of them and dont bother to shop there. You can list and sell all you want but until someone BUYS your widget, you are gonna go hungry.

I just wanted to let the world know that I was UNSUSPENDED (4 days shy of completing my 30 day suspension) after being told my appeal was denined. Dont know why. I didnt quite trust it though and waited until the full 30 days were over to avoid permanent banishment in case it was a mistake. I closed my store in a snit but am now auctioning things and have a little money coming in. I want to reopen my store but the onerous rules havent been repealed so I am not comfortable just opening myself back up to the same irrational metrics that got me suspended in the first place. Several other sellers are back on too – we hope that it was the public outcry but it was most likely the lost revenue. I’ll keep ya posted.

I agree with the poster Lucia: The identical thing happened to me by seller imarriedmylawyer** Her feedback is now marked as public. She is certainly a piece of work. She also wrote to me outlining the same words. Bloody this and robbers stealing from her. She told me that one day she got suddenly rich. She is one evil seller. BUT she sells under bebe_for_less now. She does not have any items listed under imarriedmylawyer** because of the same pic background. This is what she does. Under imarriedmylawyer** she takes pics outdoors near her pool. Under bebe_for_less she takes the pics inside one of her many houses she owns. She is so stupid that she had all of her houses that she owned on her page on imarriedmylawyer** stating what was rented and what was vacant. How is it possible that bebe_for_less pics are the same background, right down to the floor, same color walls, trim, carpet and the pool in the far background? bebe_for_less IS imarriedmylawyer**, the registration is registered to her family, undoubtedly, her husband. Who is she trying to fool? Not me. She has listings for bebe jeans for 90.00 roughly. That is theft by deception. You can buy these outdated 2003 style jeans, believe me, on ioffer for about 20 bucks. Sure she’ll tell you to beware of fakes…LOL SHE IS THE FAKE..she destroyed me under daddyisnice, but that was her buyer name. I thought that name sounded deranged. Her and her family and friends have destroyed other good bebe sellers for her own greed to knock them off ebay so that she can make all the money. Love her smoke feedback..her infamous line is REEKS OF SMOKE…that way she’ll get people to say the same and to stop everybody from buying from you.. all her friends and family from especially, Florida, Cali, Texas and Chicago, AZ and WA. Some of the buyers names are actually her and she methodically allows the feedback to hit on the weekend so that when buyers normally buy at the peak time over the weekend, they will see a barrage of negative or neutral lying feedback. Her other names are: i*buy*authentic*items*only*not*fake , deals_for me, nyparislondon**, mel_3090, mels_closet, chanelnversace, old names include chickyboomboom, chickyboombooom, cindycrawford4U, fridakahalo. This seller is evil, vindictive, attempts to threaten you, will call you and harass you, BUT LISTEN TO ME.. DON’T BE AFRAID OF THIS PIECE OF SCUM. I HAVE TURNED HER INTO THE IRS, THE AUTHORITIES AND OTHER AGENCIES. SHE DESERVED THIS FOR WHAT SHE HAS DONE TO INNOCENT SELLERS AND STEALING FROM BUYERS. I WOULD KNOW, I WAS ONE OF HER VICTIMS. Her party is now over. Wait until she gets her IRS form to report all of her sales. That is what she and her husband…WHO IS NOT AN ATTORNEY IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM DESERVE. Don’t let her BS you. Because of her greed, lies and downright vicious attacks on innocent small time bebe sellers, I have now dedicated my free time to expose these convicts. Waiting for the day to testify against them in court. That will be happening, that’s a promise. I cannot sit back and allow her to rob innocent buyers and sellers of the same bebe items, so that she may get more money for her items and other small time bebe sellers cannot move forward. get out of the arena lil, YOU CAN’T WALK THE WALK, YOU JUST TALK THE TALK, SO BEWARE OF BEBE FAKES, HOW IRONIC, SHE IS THE FAKE! With all those fake names, YOU TELL ME LIL, WHO’S THE FAKE.

The problem with Ebay is that it rode a nice wave where the world economy was rising. Unfortunately, when John Donahoe he was completely unaware of three major problems: No one wanted to tell him the truth that may of his disruptive innovative (DI) ideas would not work; DI does not work on what is also a social networking site; nobody likes an elistist.

John made it clear that he “absolutely was confident in the direction” he was taking the company in, and that he would not listen to (“The Noise”) Sadly, the Noise went in 3 phases: JD, JD, DON’T JUMP!!! IT WON’T WORK, YOU’LL JUST MAKE A MESS, We maybe yard sale bumpkins, but OPEN YOUR EYES~! The second phase was: JD, you made a big mistake, please listen to us and fix it–but that fell on deaf ears. And finally JD is reaping what he sowed. The 3rd phase is: WE TOLD YOU SO, DUMMY!

The only way JD can save this disaster is to publically retract his elitist comments, admit he made mistake, give back sellers the ability to leave negative feedback, and open his EARS!

I have never sold on ebay, mostly bought fountain pens, motorcycle parts, and tools in the last 3 years. A light user. Then I noticed many of the sellers only began to accept Paypal and when one purchase went bad because the seller didn’t ship the part, my dispute filed with paypal left me in limbo. The seller didn’t provide any proof of shipping, just claimed he sent billing information to the post office. It took me a month and a protest filed with my credit card company to get my money back, and ebay didn’t seem to do anything to the seller. A previous poster said only the bad sellers are left on ebay, and he’s right.

I was booted with a 99.8% positive feedback after two predatory buyers gave me negatives in the same week. Ebay told me I would have to convince them to takeback their negatives. How could I possibly do this? It would be like asking to be extorted out of the items of some money.

At one time I was making 3-6K in sales and some decent extra pocket change after expenses. All that has ended. I have been blocked permanently from using the service.

NO WAIT!! I have an idea…
I’ll become a perdatory buyer and extort sellers.

hahaha Lori Holloway is commenting on ebay articles? She stole my money on ebay, and then deleted her account.

This is really too bad about eBay, which used to be more fun to browse and easier to find stuff I like.

I’ve never put up anything for sale, but I have bought a couple dozen things over the last several years and for the most part have been satisfied.

If all the claims posted here are true, I don’t understand why sellers who have a long history of sales, would suddenly get suspended for a negative comment or two.

It’s always been a Buyer Beware environment, but half the time the ethical sellers have their own return/refund policy if a buyer is not satisfied. When I decide to bid on something I always look at the feedback rating and prefer the ones that are mostly closer to 100%, but I’m also aware there must be some unreasonable buyers who will mark a negative for spite or something. So if it’s something I want I might take the risk.

I don’t get why eBay would begin “punishing” Sellers, the very members who comprise their business in the first place. Sad.

Things go from bad to worse since John Donahoe has become CEO, no one is happy, sellers or buyers. This is not the first time that a leadership change has caused a company to plummet. The difference is that many of the sellers who pay for e bays market share are households that have relied on eBay for part or all of its income and buyers have relied on the sites past policy to make buying easy and to facilitate sellers to bring unique items to the market place. This 13 year trust has been violated and has failed both sellers and buyers in just a few months of unfair, faulty policy change that has taken a ship this size and turned it so fast that it is out of control and is facing a challenge to bring the ship back to course as it was before. This policy change was over a short aggressive period, but the negative impact will make it difficult to navigate back in position. This will prove a challenge that may take years to repair relationships between sellers and buyers when it has been realized by investors concerned. It has been a 6 month meltdown since new management fumbeld a working system. It has been a nightmare to many businesses as seen on so many messages as the sellers and buyers search for another company who is going to facilitate there demands.

It should be clear, I am a wholesaler and not a writer or a stock expert, but I have a first hand inside look having been a powerseller for over 10 years, 1.7 million per year sales and account for $156,000 paid to e bay per year for seller fees, this is the bases in which e bay shows profit or loss in a great way for there core business, this does not account for paypal fees charged, seller manager pro, e bay stores. It was felt that E bay was a beautiful place before it failed not only its buyers, but its sellers. This, although it would seem, at the moment, can be seen by the stock prices offered currently and the downgrades by large investment firms. This downturn happened during the market crash, but was data compiled before that time it should be noted.

An estimated 70,000 – 80,000 eBay sellers have been suspended due to aggressive, “at there discretion” unfair, flawed policy. These are the large sellers, most pay an excess of $10,000 per month in site fees. This is an estimated loss, on average, of $5000 per month for 70,000 sellers all its managements wisdom has pushed away $350,000,000 per month or 4,200,000,000 per year based on these educated guesses as e bay does not release information about how many or how much it may have damaged itself with these flawed changes. Maybe the current stock price will.

E bay has spoken, treated sellers and buyers with disrespect, no conformity in answers received from e bay or policy’s, put sellers of 10 years who set our business to service the e bay market in a bad financial strain because of an aggressive unfair policy, which e bay keeps it sellers in the dark how to quantitative it, sellers and buyers have listed and regrettably moving on to something else. These are resourceful business people who will do well marketing for another company. They will be hurt financially in the short term, some loosing everything due to this irresponsible policy change. It should be noted that these sellers are also buyers and I personally buy a few thousand on e bay per year, they will not see another dollar from me. Even if I wanted to, it would be unlikely that what is being searched for could ever be found due to policy changes, and is most likely available at buy.com, Ubid.com Goggle stores (formally known a frugel.com) or Amazon.com. These sites are taking notice and are more than willing to facilitate what customers are asking for. Both knowledgeable sellers and buyers are voting with there buying power. The best site I have seen that is like e bay before it became too big for its loyal sellers and buyers is: onlineauction.com, small but growing with the right values for its buyers and sellers alike.

I talked to the owner of onlineauction.com 1-800-900-2828, Rowen Grisham, a previous e bay powerseller who seen improper change coming long before many sellers and buyers realized. Rowen Grishamw says they are about to roll out a goggle search program that will make it more visible. This is just one example of where e bay buyer and seller base is going. This demand that e bay did not supply is believed to be realized by its investors speculated by those who have been long time sellers and buyers of 10+ years. Far back when e bay wanted to supply its sellers and buyers with a fair service, as when the site was born. The size of the company and its inability to maneuver against all the many upstarts is going to prove interesting. Small companies that are hungry and taking advantage of a situation where current management is failing. A matter of supply and demand. When there is a demand and one company will not supply it, be assured another will eventually.

Anyone considering investing or putting time into future sales may want to take a look at the aggressive policy’s they have put in place, there are little to no direct policy as there has been for the last 10 years, it is now “at there discretion” rather than a written or qualitative policy in many cases. This is making the company policy as un uniform as it has ever been. Even when the rules were written for all to see, there were interpretation issues, however, now it is just up to the person answering the phone or sending the e mail and no room for improvement or debate to better or change. Although communication has always been an issue for E bays customers as well as sellers on message boards complain how hard it is to get in touch with them and when you do no one on the other end seems to be empowered to help or care to do little more than quote out of the corporate handbook offered in form letters and help pages. If you are as lucky as us to have been a powerseller, you can call and sometimes have your call returned within 3-4 business days and hope to be available at the time the call is returned, you can ask the same question to 10 different e bay “officials” and get 10 different answers that do not relate to one another. This is not a speculation, this is based on personal experience as well as discussions with other large sellers. They have turned a blind eye to its sellers and buyers alike. I wouldn’t be leaving if there was any good reason to stay.
E bay bought Bill Me Later, I would have been surprised just 6 months ago, but I am unhappy to report that I am not at this time, the reason is this management has taken down the tread that holds e bay together as can be seen by its buyers and sellers everywhere complaining about the flawed aggressive policies that have taken place over the last few months, maybe you have heard some of them or are one of them. Every comment citing that the previous system was not broken. E bay has had community and trust, this 13 year trust has been violated and has failed both sellers and buyers in just a few months of unfair, faulty policy change that has taken a ship this size and turned it so fast that it is out of control and is facing a challenge to bring the ship back to course as it was before in the core business, although still ignored by management at this time, this is just in the core business, this shows the danger of a lateral move like credit right now. Not even taking into account the bad timing as the world economy will not view this favorably given recent events. This policy change was over a short aggressive period, but the negative impact will make it difficult to navigate back in position, if this venture is not successful, it will be even worse for ebay, its investors, and the management that follows. The core business has taken a great hit world wide, now it is committed to a market that is new. A new market during the time when its core business is in jeopardy due to flawed policy and a slowed economy with unproven new management. This will prove a challenge that may take years to repair relationships between sellers and buyers when it has been realized by investors concerned on top of unpopular credit service. It has only been a 6 month meltdown since new management fumbled a working system and seems callous to its customers concerns or to make effective migration back to the system with effective proven 12-15 record. A proven record built by previous management over 12-15 years, undone in a unprecedented 6 months.

So, e bay wants its investors to trust it in a huge risk buy, when the investors are clearly concerned and most can see that e bay can not run its core business in a way that is satisfying to its customers, causing them to leave, look for other suppliers that will eventually be able to meet demands of the once complacent sellers and buyers. Sorry, it would be hard for anyone with basic knowledge of the problems with recent policy of the core business to buy this, having been a seller and buyer for 10 years, it makes it even harder to buy. I can say, I am happy to report my family, who bought stock when they seen my success on e bay, sold there stock when I explained the new managements flawed, unfair, and aggressive policy handed down. The stock has followed since this and many are betting with there dollars fell it will continue to fall. Maybe Jim Cramer, hyper as he is, has a point when he said he could not get behind the company, and that someone should buy the company “and put them out of their misery.” It is hard to argue with him, stock sold back in march, when these policies were being talked about, (not implemented yet) sold seems to be the smart move. Stock was $30-$32 per share at that time, March 2008, it dropped every since as can be tracked from any stock quote chart. Yes, the economy took the abrupt hit, stock price had already plummeted by 1/3, $19-$22 per share, before it happened that our country was in trouble from bad credit/debt. Many have said they wouldn’t want to touch this a credit market at this time. I would also not want to answer to shareholders when they learn what long time sellers and buyers have seen in the past few months. Good thing for golden parachutes I guess, maybe that will soften the fall?

I think this report on NYtimes has some good in site of the problems facing the company with the current buy:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/ebay-plays-warren-buffett-buys-online-lender/#comment-55807

I sure hope for ebay’s sake that all the “giant” sellers are buyers too…’cause none of us are anymore. I’m on the ABE system…Anywhere But Ebay

My wife had a fine online e-bay business selling childrens clothing. Clothing that was respectable and didn’t look like the clothing of prostitutes, such as found in department stores these days. E-bay changed its rules and destroyed her business. She went from 100% to 98% after a few people that refused to pay within a month after purchasing the items left, bad comments. E-bay is now dictating as to how much postage you can charge. My wife wanted to sell a box of childrens books and e-bay said that the $6.00 postage was too much. Screw e-bay. Hello Craigslist and everyone else.

I too was making good money selling custom items. I never had an issue until i sold a used mill.

The buyer knew how to work the system. Claimed shipping damage/locked up my account and fleeced me out of my mill and 1000 dollars. Paypal and ebay should be separated. Period.

I’m with you Disco! I sell along happily without a hitch for 8 years then the one slow month, I get TWO negatives (one from “buyer” who didnt even PAY!) – out of only 12 items sold in that month – and that according to the “system” makes me a non-performing seller and puts me on suspension for 30 days! I am missing out on the halloween sales (I have many foreign native costumes that make great trick-or-treat wear) and I usually only sold between Labor day and Thanksgiving and again in May and June. I sell to clean out closets, make some spending money WHICH I SPEND ON EBAY, and pay for home renovations/repairs. This is trickle down economics at their finest – I’m not MAKING any money so I’m not SPENDING money; my financial pain is trickling down very well thanks!

I WAS a gold powerseller on eBay. This past month has changed that. Go look at my seller ratings (discohristo) and you will see I am as good as it can get. I have a 99.4% feedback rating. So what’s the problem? The problem is i have been suspended indefinitely from selling on eBay because I have failed in the seller compliance policy. Can someone please tell me how in the world I have failed? If my customers are rating me so well, where is the failure? I am getting screwed by eBay because of this and I am having to look for a new job. I would have never thought that I would never be allowed to sell on eBay again after building such an awesome reputation for 8 years. What I did wrong will remain a mystery to me. My top seller account manager refuses to work with me and even told me she “appreciated”… the fact that i was frustrated with eBay’s decision to suspend me from selling. My account is active on eBay, but I am restricted from selling. They want me to buy. This only makes me want to leave negatives everytime i buy now with 1 star dsr ratings across the board even if my sellers did a good job. Why would I do such a thing? It’s what it’s going to take for eBay to realize that their system is seriously flawed. If all sellers have bad ratings, nobody will want to buy. It’s that simple. And then there will be no sellers. If there is no sellers, there is no eBay, because WE are who brings the buyers there.

A couple of thoughts–I read every comment because I was surprised at the level of dislike. At the same time the number of people who can’t spell and get simple concepts wrong completely undermines your argument. Second, and let me state this unambiguously, eBay is NOT a monopoly. When will the world understand that market power and monopoly are NOT the same thing? I learned of at least six competing sites that offer goods for sale in the auction format.

The bottom line is that the quickest way to effect change is to vote with your pocketbook and go elsewhere. The market will punish eBay and will reward wherever the many sellers here think is the best place to be. So stop whining and start aggregating somewhere new.

Ebay need to get back to the way it was a couple of years ago. All the changes have upset too many buyers and sellers. If its not to our liking we will leave. There is a lot of competition to Ebay and they better wake up to this fact.

Over the last few weeks, I have begun to wonder if Donahoe USES Ebay or even knows how. No one who has ever actually bought or sold things would impose the boneheaded moneylosing ideas that have come to pass during his tenure. I am wishing that Ebay had chosen a CEO who is less ashamed of running a big electronic yard sale. I sense some seriously deep snobbery at play in all this trying to turn us into an Amazon clone (cyber latte, anyone?). My money made selling second hand castoffs was good enough to help BUILD Ebay from nothing and should still be good enough to keep it going now that the economy is nosediving. Too bad Ebay isnt currently GETTING any money from me as I am suspended for having “only” a 99.1% feedback rating. (I went to an Ivy League school with more relaxed standards than their new feedback calculator!)

I have been selling very well on I-Offer, and Craigslist. The word is spreading and sales are increasing. I don’t care how long I have to wait to make a sale…on craigs list it’s free. I’ll sell on ebay when hell freezes over and thaws again.

A poster asked why we dont go to other sites. Many sellers HAVE. Unfortunately, Joe Blow on the street has never HEARD of the other sites – ecrater.com, iOffer.com, bonanzle.com – so they just dont get the buyers. I have been on all three for over a month and gotten NO sales where I was selling 10-25 items a week on Ebay. Amazon usually prefers NEW merchandise (except for DVDs and books) and their rating system (the model for Ebay’s new system) is vulnerable to the whims of buyers who neg for no reason (I got a neg because the buyer didnt like the movie – SERIOUSLY! she responded “this movie is SO STUPID!” like I made it or something and again feedback calculations get you bumped VERY easily. Craigslist (which Ebay wants to buy) has a bad reputation for ripoffs, violent crime, and non-delivery – CL does not intervene in disputes like Ebay/Paypal do.

Ebay is the biggest and BEST game in town – I just wish they would STOP fixing things that arent broke and that NOBODY asked for!!

Hold up! This is NOT a Wall Street issue to be blamed on the economy. I am an Ebay seller and Ebay has cut its own throat by instituting a mostly one-sided feedback system that causes sellers to be suspended for the lamest of buyer whims and even outright scams.

Most people on the street (Main or Wall) dont realize that it is SELLERS who pay the fees from their listings and sales percentages. Fewer sellers able to list and sell, less money made.

I was making good steady money on Ebay as a seller until Ebay’s new rating system and its voodoo math determined that my rating (99.1%) was too low and suspended me. I have counted SEVENTY good long-time sellers who are also currently suspended because the “improvements” to the feedback system have determined that they are substandard and suspended them for 30-90 days – and many of them have ratings BETTER than mine!

Big clue: This started IN SEPTEMBER – same time as the drop in stock and income. Makes ya go hmmmm…but no way will Ebay admit that by trying to eject the small yard sale sellers they killed the goose that laid the golden egg!

I was also suprised to hear that the 1000 folks laid off represent 10% of the workforce. As a seller I NEVER had any contact with ANY Ebay employee. One could easily believe that there were no employees at Ebay to begin with.

I want to continue on Ebay but cant while suspended and if I dont sell, I cant buy either so my pain gets passed on. I always loved the whole electronic yard sale that allowed me to sell off my unwanted items and buy the ones I did want/need. This is NOT the Ebay I know and love. Somebody call me when MY Ebay comes back.

As a follow up to a comment left yesterday, I recently sold a broken moped for $134 on Ebay. Not much money, but at least I found it a good home and hopefully the buyer can fix it and get good use out it. Today, in looking over my fee statement I was shocked to find I was charged $100 in final value fees!!!!!!! This is ridiculous! I had paid $8 or so to list it in the first place and expected another $10 maybe, but $100? In effect, I sold the moped for $26! I could have scrapped it for more than that. I did some research and found that Ebay now charges $100 to sell a moped or motorcycle and $125 to sell a car. It’s not bad if the car sells for $10,000, but why charge so much for selling a junker? I have one reccommendation for anyone trying to sell a car or bike: CRAIG’S LIST. At least it is free, and devoid of all the BS that Ebay is putting us sellers through. Still, Ebay has bought a considerable share of Craig’s List stock and wants to take them down or buy them out. A call to everyone out there, support Craig’s List, don’t let the Ebay drones crush one of the last few sites where we still enjoy freedom.

I use to sell thousands a dollars a week on eBay, but left completely in Jan 08. eBay is too hostile, I eventually had enough. I now sell on my own website and use Google AdWords, sales are fantastic (and no endless rules, hostile competitors, and high fees)

Just like everybody is saying here: Good riddance!

I use to sell thousands a dollars a week on eBay, but stopped completely in Jan 08. eBay is too hostile, and I eventually had enough. I now sell on my own website and use Google AdWords. Sales are fantastic online (and no endless rules, hostile competitors, and high fees)

Just like everybody is saying here: Good riddance!

Hi everyone. Im mostly just a buyer on ebay and I say things are slim pickings anymore. I loved the fact that I could find things that aren’t offered here in Des Moines and do it from my home. Im sorry they have made it so you can’t sell there like you used to. Why don’t you guys get together and start your own auction site? Or, join another one? What about ePier? I don’t know what their charges are but please don’t stop selling all that wonderful stuff. Or, at least go make your own site..get together and stomp out ebay your way!!

In typical ebay fashion…no-class. They lay off 1000+ people before Christmas and in the same breath, spend over a billion on two more acquisitions. Looks like ebay has made another 1000+ enemies who have families and friends…the pyaramid of hate widens.

I buy and sell on FeeBay. I have begun to get very unhappy as I cant make any money anymore. To many fees- listing, final, and paypal and there are too many cheap ass bastards that want a item that has a market value of $40, for 99 cents. I always list for less than market, even half, and still thats not a good enough deal? I get dozens of people watching an item I start for 75 cents and they still are too cheap to bid..

“EBay to lend buyers a hand”
“Auction giant buys high-interest credit shop Bill Me Later.”
Last Updated: October 6, 2008: 2:25 PM ET
” You gotta see what mr. J.J. (greedbay) has to say in this article
http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/06/technology/ebay-bill-me.fortune/index.htm
NEW YORK (Fortune) — EBay took a big plunge into the consumer credit market Monday with the acquisition of Bill Me Later, the No. 2 online payment service.
With its Internet auction business in decline, eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) says it will pay $945 million for Bill Me Later. The purchase adds Bill Me Later to eBay’s PayPal service and brings it to a broader line-up of online retail sites including Wal-Mart (WAL), Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) and Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500).
The move comes as the credit crunch pinches consumer spending and threatens to tip the economy into a recession. These aren’t the most stable times for ventures into consumer lending, but EBay CEO John Donahoe says that is why the company saw an opportunity. “In times like this, stronger companies get stronger,” Donahoe said on a call with analysts Monday.
This is “almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to extend PayPal’s lead,” says Donahoe, who also said that the company has been looking at Bill Me Later for two years.
Strength may be a tenuous definition for eBay these days. The leading auction Web site has seen its market share slip steadily in the past three years. That vulnerability was cited by analysts Thursday who weighed in with downgrades predicting that unfavorable consumer trends would drag down eBay’s business even further.
On Monday eBay also said it will cut 10% of its workforce or about 1,550 jobs. The company also updated its third-quarter forecast calling for slightly higher-than-projected adjusted profit on sales at the low end of its guidance range. Analysts were looking for adjusted earnings of 41 cents a share on sales of $2.16 billion for the quarter ended last month. EBay is expected to report its third-quarter numbers on Oct. 15.
Profits seen later
Bill Me Later, it turns out, won’t contribute to profits until later. EBay says the ongoing costs of Bill Me Later will dilute its bottom line until 2011.
But some analysts say the deal could pay off in other ways.
The deal “makes strategic sense,” writes JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan, in a note Monday. “The business will present a cross-selling opportunity for PayPal, and could help PayPal gain additional momentum,” Khan continues.
PayPal acts as a go-between service, transferring money from the buyer’s account to the seller’s. Bill Me Later is more like a credit card. It runs a credit check to gauge the credit-worthiness of the customer, then uses CIT (CIT, Fortune 500) bank to finance online consumer purchases. Then Bill Me Later buys the loan from CIT and charges the customer 20% interest on the balance of the loan.
In other words, if your credit card is a bit tapped out, you still have some purchasing options.
“We have the opportunity to selectively extend credit where it makes sense, in a tough environment where consumers will have trouble getting credit,” says Donahoe on the conference call.
With the new lending business and a looming recession, the move opens eBay to the added risk that some Bill Me Later customers may be deadbeats. So who is on the hook for the nonpayments? Bill Me Later, and soon eBay. ”
First Published: October 6, 2008: 2:19 PM ET
NEW YORK (Fortune) — EBay took a big plunge into the consumer credit market Monday with the acquisition of Bill Me Later, the No. 2 online payment service.
With its Internet auction business in decline, eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) says it will pay $945 million for Bill Me Later. The purchase adds Bill Me Later to eBay’s PayPal service and brings it to a broader line-up of online retail sites including Wal-Mart (WAL), Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) and Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500).
The move comes as the credit crunch pinches consumer spending and threatens to tip the economy into a recession. These aren’t the most stable times for ventures into consumer lending, but EBay CEO John Donahoe says that is why the company saw an opportunity. “In times like this, stronger companies get stronger,” Donahoe said on a call with analysts Monday.
This is “almost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to extend PayPal’s lead,” says Donahoe, who also said that the company has been looking at Bill Me Later for two years.
Strength may be a tenuous definition for eBay these days. The leading auction Web site has seen its market share slip steadily in the past three years. That vulnerability was cited by analysts Thursday who weighed in with downgrades predicting that unfavorable consumer trends would drag down eBay’s business even further.
On Monday eBay also said it will cut 10% of its workforce or about 1,550 jobs. The company also updated its third-quarter forecast calling for slightly higher-than-projected adjusted profit on sales at the low end of its guidance range. Analysts were looking for adjusted earnings of 41 cents a share on sales of $2.16 billion for the quarter ended last month. EBay is expected to report its third-quarter numbers on Oct. 15.
Profits seen later
Bill Me Later, it turns out, won’t contribute to profits until later. EBay says the ongoing costs of Bill Me Later will dilute its bottom line until 2011.
But some analysts say the deal could pay off in other ways.
The deal “makes strategic sense,” writes JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan, in a note Monday. “The business will present a cross-selling opportunity for PayPal, and could help PayPal gain additional momentum,” Khan continues.
PayPal acts as a go-between service, transferring money from the buyer’s account to the seller’s. Bill Me Later is more like a credit card. It runs a credit check to gauge the credit-worthiness of the customer, then uses CIT (CIT, Fortune 500) bank to finance online consumer purchases. Then Bill Me Later buys the loan from CIT and charges the customer 20% interest on the balance of the loan.
In other words, if your credit card is a bit tapped out, you still have some purchasing options.
“We have the opportunity to selectively extend credit where it makes sense, in a tough environment where consumers will have trouble getting credit,” says Donahoe on the conference call.
With the new lending business and a looming recession, the move opens eBay to the added risk that some Bill Me Later customers may be deadbeats. So who is on the hook for the nonpayments? Bill Me Later, and soon eBay.”

This announcement happens right avter announcing the fieing of over 1500 employees. J.J. (greedbay) obviously don’t care about employees being left without jobs . What a greed mongrel.

i am a power seller on ebay. i was told by my acct. rep. (when i complained about how biased they are against sellers) that “if we don’t have any buyers, we won’t have any sellers” in other words they do side with buyers more than sellers. its a stupid site now; it’s only an advertising vehicle for me now; no deals ever close on ebay anymore. its just a great place to put up a bunch of photos and sell your items locally in your area. ebay screwed itself.

I am shocked by all of the negative comments posted here. I assumed e-bay was a great place to do business….but if you carefully read through the comments posted here, there seems to be more than a little anger present……seems more like “hate” to me. Thank you all for your honesty….I shall never do business with e-bay again.

This is a direct response to JACK LEO of Miami, FL. Please note that without E-bay, We (Sellers) are still everything!!! If you feel that we (sellers) are not important then you should NOT buy anything from any sellers at all. You should consider that you (buyer) and we (sellers) are equally important! I am sure that E-bay understant that! Without Sellers or Buyers, E-bay is NOTHING. I am not saying that all Sellers are Angels but I am sure that not all buyers are Angels either! We (sellers) are upset and frustrated that some BUYERS bid / buy the item but DECIDED NOT TO PAY. How do you feel about this way if you are a seller? Should not seller have the ability to leave a comments such as NEGATIVE FEEDBACK? Should not E-bay penalize this buyer? Moreover, some buyers feel that shipping and handling is always TOO EXPENSIVE but they never complaint about the great deal that they are getting from the sellers! Shipping and handling include postage, packaging, labelling, storage and etc. Not to mention that we take the item to the post office as well. Please go back to school and take economy 101 and learn about demand and supply!

I HAVE SOLD ON EBAY FOR MANY YEARS SINCE 1999 AND DON’T LIKE THE CORRUPT CORPORATION IT HAS BECAME. THEY ARE JUST A BUNCH OF CORPORATE CEO’S AND UPPER MANAGEMENT THAT CONSTANTLY RIP SELLERS OFF. GOOD RIDDANCE TO YOU. ALL OF ITS CEO’S AND UPPER MANAGEMENT NEED TO BE SHIPPED BACK TO THE MIDDLE EAST AND KEPT THERE IN THAT ONE LITTLE COUNTRY THEY CALL IS___AL.

I used to be a platinum level powerseller from the Philippines (makes $25k+ a month) until eBay took me out of the powerseller program and then suspended me for a month because a buyer thinks he knows everything but was wrong and accused me of selling him something not up to snuff (mind him I have handles thousands of vintage watches) while maybe he has held a few dozen? gave me 2 negative feedbacks and had my selling account suspended, so much for almost 9 years of hard work and 3700+ positive feedbacks against 9 negative feedbacks over 9 years? thanks eBay and I long to see the day someone gives you decent competition to knock you off your monopolistic perch, google are you there?

I am an ebay buyer and I LOVE all the changes ebay has made which favor buyers. All the people complaining here are sellers who are used to providing bad service and paying next to nothing to sell their stuff to an entire world. Of course, ebay is increasing what sellers have to pay. They want a bigger cut of the action. Without ebay, sellers are nothing. Learn to live with it. They deserve a bigger cut. I am glad that the lousy sellers who ship poorly packaged items that break during shipping can no longer give me a negative. I am glad I can use PayPal that protects me the seller instead of having to go stand in line a the post office to buy a money order for the sellers benefit. Tough luck if you don’t like the changes. Go back to your flea markets if you don’t like it.

I used to browse eBay on a regular basis several times each week looking for odds and ends. I also used to sell things on occasion (2-3x/mo) until the changes in their fee structure made it so I could not sell anything at a reasonable price anymore. There outrageous fees have driven me away, and now I no longer have anything good to say about them. Their own greed is turning on them and will bring them down. Hopefully they will wise-up and return the fee structure to what it was in their glory days. 15% off the top is too much!

1. Ebay is an online monopoly.
2. Ebay consistently threatened and cut out competitors, in online payment and picture hosting, as well as competitive formats.
3. That’s the ebay business model. Monopolize, then overcharge for essentially worthless services, like picture hosting, and gallery windows, and featured listings.
4. In effect, ebay competes with the seller, in a tantalizing game, constantly pushing the seller’s item farther from the buyer’s view, forcing the seller to spend unrealistic amounts of money to get item’s viewed.
5. This means that costs for showing items skyrocketed over recent years, while actual viewings or clicks on items plummetted. Sales, and profits also plummetted.
6. Recent feedback policies, which are inaccurate, unfair, and undemocratic, in effect abusive, have lowered the customer and seller curtesy on the site, and honesty. Principalled people have left. This has a domino effect, undermining the quality of the market.
7. Does Ebay care?
Answer: Of course not. It’s a corporation dedicated to generating instant profits, run by a revolving door of disinterested executives. The business model relies on overcharging salespeople, by using the monopoly position to blackmail them. This was considered far more reliable than waiting to let sellers, grow profits, and then asking for a deserved percentage.
8. Ebay will eventually fail. That’s how corporations are run today. It is not a business. It was a business, which was taken over by a corporation. The corporation, which run by non-liable officers, is busy leaching out profits from buyers, sellers and those who are betting on the stock market.
9. Ebay is not really a reliable asset. It has no real colateral value.
That’s the truth. No one seems to care about that.

As a seller, the change that drove me away was when eBay took a step too far in anonymizing the bidder lists on the auctions.

Now, I understand eBay’s underlying reason for doing so. eBay wanted to curtail off-eBay sales. Getting rid the list of losing bidder IDs as contact points must have seemed like a no-brainer move for them.

Unfortunately, legitimate sellers also used those bidder lists to gauge when to list an item, and to advise the losing bidders that they had a new chance at what they had lost out on. This was a win-win for eBay, its sellers, and its bidders. The sellers brought attention to their item to the most interested bidders, insuring that those bidders would be aware of the auction; bidders most interested in an item immediately knew of a second chance to obtain it (and, in some cases, could gauge that a “rare” item might not be so rare after all); eBay won in generally higher final value fees.

With the eBay bidder anonymizer now making it impossible to contact losing bidders, however, I’ve personally seen a distinct downturn in auction sale results. I had the opportunity to discuss the results of one auction with a fellow board game collector who had sold an item similar to one of mine only a week earlier. He was surprised at how few bidders from his auction had located my item, which was in comparable condition.

Feedback changes, compulsory use of PayPal, higher fees — all of these hurt. But eBay’s draconian steps to conceal the IDs of losing bidders was the fatal change for me, both as a seller and as a buyer.

Paypal is what backed me down from ebay. After hundreds of transactions I had one issue which prompted a call to paypal. No toll free number and then over half an hour on hold. When I needed service it didn’t exist.

I had no idea the myriad of changes going on with the sellers. As a buyer, however, I can attest to bad sellers being the ones remaining. I have been a buyer for several years with 100% favorable comments, but the past few months I have dealt with 2 sellers with un-customer friendly, spiteful attitudes. I have never dealt with that before. PayPal and Ebay did not “find in my favor” when I filed a complaint on an empty item returned for credit. The seller was extremely rude and responded with accusations which were totally false. I provided PayPal with my correspondence which should have cleared it all up, but they chose to allow this “stinky” seller to lose a buyer over a $15 transaction. Yes, I am out the money, the product and the shipping fees both ways. I never had this experience prior to the past few months. I have cancelled my account and will go elsewhere. Hope to see some of my old friendly sellers on some of the other sites.

I recently went to sell an item on eBay. When I finished setting up the auction eBay wanted to charge me a dollar, so I cancelled it. EBay is hurting the core users of eBay by charging. As a consumer, if I can’t sell on EBay without a charge I will be less likely to purchase items from the website.

I have been buying and selling on eBay for over 10 years (10,000’s of transactions) and was a Power Seller for several years. eBay has always been very, very difficult to deal with (EG: absolutely no customer service) but the most recent changes have all but ended my selling there. While there are certainly unethical sellers, in my experience I have ran into far more bad buyers than bad sellers. People who won’t pay, claim they never received items, claimed items weren’t what they expected, etc. The idea I can’t post feedback about how they handle the buying process is absurd. It was the only card a seller had to try and force wishy-washy buyers to perform on their contract to purchase. Ebay has consistently implemented change after change that pushes out the “smaller” sellers that built the company. They are now only interested in large corporate sellers and give them every possible advantage. The problem is eBay is becoming just another bland site with the same old mass merchandise. The uniqueness or flea market atmosphere that made the site interesting and made people surf around for hours on end is quickly fading away. How many of the exact same iPod or DVD do we really need to see? I liked finding quirky little things related to my college, city, field of work, favorite childhood cartoon, etc. Their changes have pushed a lot of my favorite sellers off the site. They can no longer afford to sell things the eBay way and make any money. One can only hope Google gets the courage to start their own auctions site and learns lesson from all of eBay’s missteps.

i agree with all that

It is interesting to note that virtually all of the comments on this forum portray Ebay in a negative light. As an Ebay seller, I would have to agree with my fellow posters that Ebay has gone downhill. Ebay was started as a way to clean up your basement or attic and make a little extra money. I remember one of my first sales every on Ebay was for some printer ribbons. At the time, I sold at local fleamarkets. The ribbons would have brought a dollor or two total. I was delighted when they sold for $51 on Ebay! I was really onto something! Those early days of Ebay were great. I had very few problems, nearly everyone was happy. You can not satisfy everyone all the time, but 99% is pretty good in my book. Fast forward to today. Things have gotten so unnecessarily complicated. There are detailed seller ratings, buyers expect you to reply to emails the same day, your account can be frozen or suspended at any time. What if you run into a rash of bad products that you did not know about? What if your computer crashed and you lost some orders? Eventually the problems will be fixed, but for someone who relies on Ebay as a sole source of income, the results can be traumatic. Nowadays, buyers seem to expect that you carry a computer with you 24/7. In the past, if you did not answer an enmail for a few days, or over the weekend, it was fine, but not anymore. This problem may not be Ebay’s fault, but the fault of our fast paced society. Ebay needs to understand this and not penalize sellers for “bad communication” when we are just out of town for the weekend, or sick for a couple of days. It seems that Ebay has forgotten it’s roots and now only want big companies and corporations selling. Such sellers can afford to have a staff on hand at least during business hours to answer emails and phone calls constantly. This is evidenced by their new “diamond” powerseller catagory. The requirements, among other things, are half a million dollars of sales per month. I know few (actually no) people who have that much to sell. Ebay needs to get back to it’s roots; where they looked out for the little guy. What they are doing now is not working, the stock is at a 5 year low. It is time to take a look at the past and learn an important lesson.

It should be noted that the votes against ebay far outnumber the votes for it. When they deliberately set out to get rid of smaller sellers, they got rid of the bigger buyers, too. Another important point to note is that every person who casts a negative vote against the customer practices of a company is represented by the 20 silent customers who feel the same way and voted with their feet.

I used to be a very loyal ebay customer, as a buyer and as a sometimes seller. At this point I hates them, I really hates them. I will never use their service again. I will speak badly of them to everybody I know. I think that the “noise” is getting more and more deafening. At this point there is not much that can be salvaged from the failed decisions made by the executives of the company.

Those have voted with our feet are still surviving more than adequately. My finances are far better without any involvement with ebay. I’m doing so well I have plenty of time to knock them in my spare time.

I was a medium-sized PowerSeller who did a quarter of a million dollars with ebay one year and feedback of 99+%. I also spent several thousand dollars on ebay. My last auction was listed in February before they made the feedback change and required sellers to use PayScam – I mean PayPal.

Goodbye, eBay – and good riddance to you.

OK. So we all know eBay sucks in how they treat sellers for the last few years but where do you go to get something listed with good enough volume of buyers to look at your product ? Any suggestions ?

The comments below were interesting to read. I feel sorry for everyone affected. Folks, understanding eBay’s policies are simple: The company is based in California, the Liberal den of America. Everyone out there believes that government MUST control your life and everything that you do. Want to enjoy a cigar inside YOUR home? Nope, can’t do it, you might give yourself cancer. Have you always worked hard and are now making decent money? Too bad, it’s not “fair” that you’re doing well while illegal immigrants here are “suffering.” This is the mindset of Barack Obama. Don’t like eBay’s policies now? You’ll NEED eBay when Obama is in office. Maybe the few nickels and dimes you’ll make selling stuff on eBay is the “change” Obama is talking about!

I have been buying unique and unusual items on ebay for over 9 years.

Of late, I see nothing but HORRENDOUS changes on ebay. I can no longer find ANYTHING I am searching for. “Best Match” hijacks my searches and brings up items, which have NOTHING to do with the items I am looking for. What shows up are OVERPRICED, mass produced, bulk items. If I were interested, I can buy such items at my local stores, where I can see, touch and examine the items, pay with nearly any method I wish (NOT FORCED Paypal), have NO WORRIES about shipping damage or time AND receive an immediate warrantee. There is nothing but DISADVANTAGES to buying those items on ebay. IF I was inclined to buy such things online, I would go to the manufacturers or a large retailers website, anyway (for BETTER prices AND BETTER protection).

I am tired of wading through all of the ridiculous listings full of new, cheaply made junk and am weary of wading through the TONS of advertisements, which entice me to leave the ebay site (loads of off-ebay links).

ebay has now made it IMPOSSIBLE for me to do my research on my competitors bidding habits. The hidden bidder IDs have stolen a VERY IMPORTANT tool I have used in the past to make informed decisions with my bidding.

Also, ebay has completely DISGUISED sellers TRUE performance histories by now ONLY using the last 12 months to calculate sellers feedback percentages. This totally destroys any accuracy in trying to determine a sellers previous performance. A seller with an EXTREMELY poor performance history only needs to slow down or stop selling for a period of time in order to ARTIFICIALLY clean-up their percentages, then they can SCAM a whole new group of buyers. Sellers with terrific selling histories can look like horrible sellers, if they haven’t sold a lot in the last year and have received a single negative. Because of ebay’s changes, I have to go through pages and pages of sellers feedback to get the TRUTH about their history. Feedback percentages are now WORTHLESS!

I spent 9 years EARNING my perfect 100% feedback as a buyer, now, ebay has made that WORTHLESS, as well. With ebay’s new policy, which ONLY allows sellers to leave their buyers positive feedback. The worst of the worst buyers feedback looks identical to mine.

I’ve had sellers BEGGING me to leave them 5 star DSR ratings. The DSR ratings tell me that 4.0 means great service and 5.0 means excellent service, BUT sellers are telling me that ebay is suspending sellers for receiving 4.0s. I do NOT like the fact that ebay is LYING to me about the true definition of their rating system!

Soon, ebay will not allow buyers to pay by checks or money orders. This is the LAST staw for me. I will NO LONGER purchase ANYTHING on ebay. I often use money orders to purchase gift items for my spouse. My spouse also uses our checking and chargecard accounts, so using money orders is the only method I can use to purchase surprise gifts. Christmas gifts are ALWAYS paid for by money orders, so ebay can kiss my holiday spending goodbye this year! In FACT, I am COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY DONE with ebay!!!

Until ebay started these damaging practices, I had NEVER purchased anything elsewhere on the web. NOW, ALL of my online purchases are at ebay’s competitors.

Ebay has lost it’s edge. I have been an avid Ebayer since 1998 when I was only 16 years old. I would buy and sell on a regular basis. However, now they force you to sell and use their PayPal service and take about 15% of every order. Ebay is bust and I can only hope another group creates an online auction site that can bring the people in like Ebay once did…I know there’s someone out there!

It is flat against the law for eBay to dictate to users of its site what forms of payment they may receive for their own merchandise.

“Morgan Stanley analyst David Joseph” needs to do more actual research and a little less channeling of EBay corpo-spin! “Buyers’ shifting preference”, my eye.

It’s nothing to do with buyer preference. Read about Ebay’s new leadership and their stated vision for the company, beginning at the end of January, this year.

This is an orchestrated effort from the top down to change the business model, well documented if you care to read about it. You’re allowing your publication to be John Donahue’s megaphone. Your readers deserve better journalism.

I stopped selling on eBay when I realized that they were charging fees for:

1) Listing my item
2) A percentage (HIGH) of the sell price
3) A percentage (HIGH) of the PayPal that they demand everyone use

Good riddance eBay.

I’ve done a great deal of business through Ebay, but I have to agree with the overwhelming majority here and say they are running their own company into the ground with poor policy. Their recent, ridiculous, fee increases discouraged me from even attempting to run a profitable business on their site. Sending more profit to Ebay than you are making for yourself defeats the purpose of running your own business. It’s their loss, and we’ll hopefully see another company step up to knock Ebay off its pedestal in the future. I have no doubt that Google or Microsoft could do it if they really wanted to, especially given all of the disgruntled Ebay members that would GLADLY switch to another service. Ebay is doomed to fail if they stay on their current course of greed and mismanagement, and I believe it is a fate they deserve.

While the main article here seems kind of clueless about the real causes of eBay’s continued failure, it is wonderful to see so many folks here out in force commenting on the REAL story. What Meg Whitman and now John Donahoe have done to eBay is a travesty and a tragedy. In the early days, eBay was a fun place to find all manner of esoteric “yard sale” type stuff, often for cheap. The market determined the value of the items. The implementation of PayPal was a boon at first, even though it added some additional fees for sellers, it did speed things up and make impulse purchasing easier for buyers. Then things started going downhill. The Power Seller category morphed into “Stores” and that led eBay to have Delusions of Amazon. Y’know what? i go to Amazon sometimes, mostly to buy DVDs and books. I also buy those things on eBay, as well as a lot of rare collectibles, car parts, and all sorts of other stuff you just wouldn’t find elsewhere. eBay should have concentrated on being the best eBay they could be, not to morph into another traditional e-tailer like Buy or Amazon. I was not aware of the deal they apparently have with Buy.com now. Sounds like another crappy decision. The reason I was not aware of it is because I almost never browse eBay anymore, and I NEVER sell there. I have a 100% positive feedback rating, with nearly 200 comments. To eBay, someone like me might as well be dirt. They openly disparage their “flea market” roots and put on airs of superiority. It is hard for me to read stories like Rich’s, stories that show how eBay built something wonderful and cooperative and then shot it all to hell. Nowadays, the site is all “heavy” with fancy graphic interfaces, listing your item is a convoluted nightmare, and apparently, even if I did manage to list my item, as a “puny” >200 sales in 5 years Seller, my listing would be buried down the page by some new search algorithm. craigslist is good for some things, but comparing it to eBay is apples and oranges. No one is going to list a Muppets Mug or a rare part to a 1974 Ford Torino on craigs, and if they did, to get national exposure they would have to repost on hundreds of different CL sites. A true replacement for late 90’s/early 2000’s eBay needs to arise, believe me, there is a market for such a business. In the same way users of Napster moves to Morpheus and then to Kaza=aa, then BitTorrent, etc., the sellers and buyers should move on to a new auction site. Go to hell, eBay.

EBay Power Seller of some years and we listed lots and lots of items every month. We made some decent money and hired some super staff. But about 6 months ago, another words when the changes started to occur, we notices sales plummeting. What were we doing wrong? What was going on?

Our feedback was 100% positive, and still is. We sold unique items, still do. The infamous DSRs were 4.9 except for one 4.8, and still are. What had we done wrong? Now, thanks to the posts below and other sources of information we know what was wrong.

It wasn’t us but we still had to lay off 30% of our small workforce. A sad day! Some of those axed had real problems with being laid off. One had to quit university where she was studying at night because she could no longer afford it. Another, a single mom, had to move back with parents and could not remain independent any longer. We tried to soften the blows and gave generous severance pay to those leaving but it was not enough.

Hear that eBay? Real people!! Real pain!!! Real tragedy!!!! Not just numbers on your search engine, or lines on your charts and graphs. Real PEOPLE! GET IT?

The finger of blame casts its shadow onto your front door. Shame on you for the incompetent policies which have cost so many so much, and which will cost many more as time goes on. Yes, indeed, we now know that the soul searching we did was for naught. That your corporate malfeasance and out right greed were what hurt our little business.

We agree with all those who spoke before us on this and hope that eBay will go under, and the sooner the better. For like all the bad banks that is what needs to happen so that the slate will once again be clean and buyers will search on other venues where truth and good policies rule the day and when eBay is no more.

RIP eBay. Our listings this past month… 11 in total! Next month, maybe the same, maybe less, as we fight the battle to find good buyers and to sell our good products, and maybe, just maybe, to hire back those folks who lost so much. But you can count on the bad feelings we have stored in our soul to be what drives us from your site to others.

Oh, and lastly… I will not use my real city but rather my summer home. I know, as others alluded to, that to do so is to risk that the palsied, gnarled hand that is eBay will try to punish us for voicing our feelings. Such is the animal we all wish dead.

eBay has also pushed many of it’s sellers to other sites by constantly raising their fees and limiting the seller’s opportunity to participate in changes to the eBay site such as they done last year with the negative ratings and only allowing buyers to post them.
Raise fees non stop for years and limit your seller’s participation by not lessening to them sounds a lot like taxation without representation which I am sure drove many sellers away to other sites besides eBay lowering their revenue.

What you fail to mention is Ebay has driven away many small sellers of unique items amd collectibles, which was once their foundation. They forgot that their purpose was to present sellers not punish them and squeeze revenue. I would look for Ebay to Tank, unless they return to their old image.

I have to laugh at Robert in Nashville. He thinks ebay sellers only sell…sorry to tell you, Robert…sellers are buyers too. Or at least they used to be before they went to other sites where they are more appreciated. You’re obviously a newbie and/or a ebay plant. Nobody could possibly like the current ebay experience — buyer/or seller. Unless you like to be told, with Best Match, what it is you really would like to buy (maybe some people who can’t think for themselves need this option). I guess if you’re simple enough, in the mind, ebay may have some chinese knockoff or stolen item which may bring a smile to your face.

As a side note; the good sellers are leaving in droves, as they have common sense enough to understand when they are being taken to the cleaners. You might also want to ask yourself who you’ll be buying from when all the sellers are gone? Give it some thought. The variety and originality is all but gone now…you may as well go to Walmart and save on shipping.

You’ll see the light one day too. It’s just a little harder to find your way when you’re operating with a dim bulb. Replace the bulb and a whole new world of reality will open up to you. Get out of the dark corner and see ebay for what it is…a money grubbing, greedy, selfcentered, dying monopoly. Egotistical Bullheaded Arrogant Yahoos.

‘The sell through statistics for books show that auction STRs have remained constant throughout this year, but those for BINs have halved, no doubt due to the buy.com effect. (I am sure the same figures apply to other categories with similar listers) So far from buyers having fallen out of love with auctions, they still want the opportunity to grab a bargain, and not just get the commodity items from mega-listers. Until Ebay recognise this and analysts do their homework properly before issuing reports, then the mess that so many have referred to will continue’

Ebay has become a den of thieves that is used to dump bootleg goods on unsuspecting buyers. I had 3 transactions over 4 years turn out bad where the seller shipped Chinese copies of the DVDs I was buying. On top of this, Paypal’s dispute resolution process in these matters is worthless. I had a dispute closed for a bootleg because “Paypal could not confirm that the item was shipped by the seller” – why charge the buyer if the seller never shipped eh?

Thanks for this article. I will go short the stock now.

I have always looked at ebay as a place one sells things one does not want anymore. The idea that large groups of people can make a living at it is sad. Go set up a e Commerce site. Bring in business the right way. You want flee market you get flee market. Don’t complain about profit. eBay is the business, you are not.

I won an iphone for the final bid price of $260, then seller told me it fell on the puddle of mud while packing. Ebay cannot do anything about this “puddle of mud” trick. Happened to me 4 times this year already. Not going back to ebay no more after 10 years of being an ebayer. very frustrating to bid then seller decides to dump you at the end..

Sell your eBay stock before October 20th. That’s when they implement yet another idiotic policy. They have decided to ban checks and money orders because they are not “safe” to use. More nonsense just to force everyone to use their unsafe Paypal payment service. They will lose another 10% of their users when they enact this foolish policy. Run away from eBay stock as fast as you can…

Ebay failed to change with the changing time. Just look at their web site – it is as old as the company itself. Their search, user interface and pretty much everything is antiquated. On top of that they don’t respond to any complaints fast enough. It is surprising that they are still in business for doing such a lousy job.

Oh Robert, your marketplace knowledge is amazing! “Ebay is for buyers, not sellers, so good riddance to all of you.”

Ebay hasn’t done a single thing to weed out the bad sellers. They dumped the job on uneducated buyers that will sink a good seller because the price UPS charges for shipping a 25 pound package is not “reasonable”.

They dumped the job on uneducated buyers that will sink a good seller because the media mail option the buyer choose took “too long”.

They have completely gutted the system of allowing sellers to warn others when a buyer blackmails them with demands of free shipping. They have completely gutted the system of allowing sellers to warn others when a buyer fraudulently does a chargeback with their Credit Card and keeps the item. Ebay seems to be doing their best to chase sellers away.

Many, many, good sellers have been punished by Ebay’s idiocy while the bad sellers remain. Check out marvel_computers and tell us how good of a job Ebay is doing to weed out the bad sellers. To add insult to injury, he gets priority exposure simply because he pays Ebay for the extra bells and whistles.

Check out the seller heavenfinezone. Ebay allowed him to defraud buyers for over 2 weeks and the only thing that shut him down was Ebay’s automatic suspension software when he had a feedback rating of -4.

Ebay has driven off sellers by the bus load and tried to replace the volume by offering free listings to a few mega-sellers. Buy has close to 800 thousand listings with a sell through rate of 2%. Ebay can keep the number of listings up but 2% sell through generates very little revenue for Ebay. They’re trying to cover a ruptured artery with a band-aid.

If Ebay’s still around in a year, come back and let us know if you still say “Good Riddance” when your choices on Ebay are only items from a select few sellers.

I have to laugh out loud at all the ranting about Ebay’s policy changes towards sellers.

The feedback policy is GREAT!!! No more retaliation from sellers (who evidently like to rant a lot, by the look of it) who screw us buyers. Ebay is for buyers, not sellers, so good riddance to all of you.
I have been much more likely to buy from Ebay nowadays, because I trust them more. Weeding out the garbage sellers has been a blessing.

I didn’t see many buyers comment, but admittedly I skimmed the comments. I have been an Ebay user for ten years and primarily as a buyer.

I find Ebay’s changes have also hurt the buyer. Since IDs are no longer shown during bidding shilling has become easier for sellers. If you have a complaint Ebay doesn’t really respond or help.

I guess everyone has lost with the “new” Ebay.

Totally agree with Sam, Akron Ohio . Ebay is so unreliable. There is something seriously wrong with their feedback system. Why does a feedback of 2c item count the same as $1000 one? I had some really bad experience with shops rated very high and the only explanation I had was that their rates are artificially high. They sell well small items and rip you off on the big ones.

Also, in these days manufacturing from China is very low quality. About 50% of the hardware I bought in the past year (ipod, speakers, headphones, etc) needed replacement. Many of the sellers on ebay don’t provide international guarantee or expect you to ship the product back on your expense even when it’s DOA. For an expensive item it’s simply not worth the risk to save a few bucks.

I’m a Powerseller myself,and you can make a living on Ebay.
But even then,I really hope Google will take over,and make the whole Ebay thing fun again.
It’s ridiculous we sellers (who make Ebay,period) are not protected,and get slaughtered financially on any occasion Ebay has or think it can get away with.
The Ebay management is very,very poor,Meg never did anything good,sad enough, she never did understand what Ebay was,and again should be,imho.

Back to business now…..

Another disenfranchised powerseller- After selling on ebay since it’s inception and maintaining powerseller ratings for 3 years, I too was suspended from ebay shortly after DSR’s went into effect, not because I received negative DSR’s, but because I received too many buyers failing to complete the DSR portion of the feedback process, thus bringing dwn my rating, so, after 25812 transactions and a feedback rating of 99.8%, I was kicked off indefinitely. Fortunately I was able to liquidate my inventory to another seller. The author of this article clearly does not use ebay and has no clue

The truth is unbiased reporting rarely exists today. Everyone is bought out or told what they can and can’t say by the super-rich. The media is not free in any way…it’s no different than airplanes dropping propaganda in the war…only they call it the mainstream news in this country.

We all know what ebay has become. We don’t need some “expert liar” to twist facts and leave out important details.

I see articles about how many more listings ebay has now…gee, I wonder if that has to do with the fact that the listings are running 30 days now. The sad thing is, the seller is not making any money anymore…that is a fact. People talk about the great bargains to be found on ebay…hmmm, wait a minute — doesn’t there have to be profit in a transaction for a seller to remain in business. How long can these bargain basement deals continue before there are no sellers wishing to spend the time and effort for little or no profit? Think about that, and use your head. Don’t listen to the propaganda filled financial sites. They steer people in the wrong direction intentionally to capitalize on your wrongly placed money.

It’s summed up this easy. No money to be made equals nobody selling = migration of sellers to new sites = growing competition = bye bye ebay. Ebay doesn’t have a clue how to compete…they’ve never had to. But, thanks to their “genius” leader…they have created their own worst enemy — competition is a-coming…ebay is a- going.

Ebay may be under the impression selles are going to rush back to their site once they revert back to their old way…I’m sorry, we’re gone for good and we’ll see to it that ebay is too.

The only thing worth selling on ebay these days is their stock. You can list it low, but don’t run it for 30 days because you will only lose money daily.

Now you’ve heard the truth. You certainly won’t get it from ebay…as bad as their message boards slam them, that’s not even the half of it. They delete/censor entire threads and thousands and thousand of people’s opinions (another absolute fact). So, if you want to believe the BS then read any of the first pages in a google search and you’ll get exactly what they want you to read. (ebay is googles largest customer). That is why Google has not started an auction site…ebay has threatened to take away all advertising. Google will probably buy ebay one day, so as not to step on each other’s toes.

F*** E-Bay, Jamie is a Gay, Emerson Corp/Liebert

eBay has been too slow in making buying easy. Despite some of the changes including more fixed priced listings and easier checkout, there are still some buying annoyances. For example, this is the only site I know of that I need to have another account (PayPal) just to use my credit card. Want to use the eBay gift card? Must have a PayPal account. This is bad e-commerce business practice–eBay needs to let people buy easily with a credit card, like every other site.

Yard sales, garage sales and flea markets were the key to this article. Ebay no longer cares to support these types of sellers. All I have seen in 8 years as a buyer and seller is a shift of Ebay’s preferences towards people who think they are a ’store’. Time was when I could find new clothes and shoes on Ebay for my kids at yard and garage sale prices with reasonable shipping and handling and believe me I bought plenty. Not any more. The majority of listings are for single items, at near retail prices, with inflated shipping and handling charges tacked on. Many of these already unreasonable handling charges are in clear violation of Ebay policies. I seldom find the things I need on Ebay any more at sensible prices and when the price is right the seller gloms on an outrageous shipping charge to make up for the low selling price. I walk away. It is obvious that greed has taken over, both on the part of Ebay, and many of it’s sellers. ‘Stores’ get preferential listing rates to continually relist something that does not sell over and over again. Who gets all those listing fees………it’s not the seller folks. I won’t even bother to get into the pathetic change to the feedback system that creates a bias.
If Ebay would return to its roots they might find to their surprise that it is not shifting customer preferences at all but greed that is the problem. I always laugh at articles I read from so called expert analysts about Ebay’s problems. It is more than clear to me that they have never used Ebay and do not even remotely understand it.

SIMPLY AMAZING! EBAY , ARE YOU READING THESE COMMENTS? IF I DIDN’T KNOW BETTER, I WOULD THINK THAT DONAHUE’S GOAL IS TO DESTROY EBAY. WHY ELSE WOULD YOU CONTINUE THIS COURSE OF ACTION. BAYBE HE IS SHORTING THE STOCK?

These comments are right on. the author of the article needs to read the comments, do some research and rewrite the article to reflect the true picture. I have been selling since 97 and find it hard to give the buyers all the power and expect me to pay for everything

It really saddens me to see what eBay has become. I am deeply saddened on the no longer a registered user list of really good people. That list reminds me of the dead that litter the site of what once was ebay.
Why? Why did you feel the best way to go higher was to dork the very heros that got you there? Add me to that famous list. Many of you have touched on most of the pitfalls that have driven many sellers to switch allegiance!
Now my situation is classic and true.
I was being harrased by buyers and notified ebay’s the auction gods but as most of you know it went on deaf ears.
I got into it with a buyer/seller from the UK snail836. Read my last two negs on upup60. God be my witness they are both untrue!!! These buyers lied and ebay knew it. It’s a conspiracy to destroy a honest seller, once one buyer gets away with it, they all start doing it in chronological order, so that your feedback appears as if you, the seller, is really a bad seller. It’s called perfect timing. One buyer will come in with a negative, then the honest buyer comes in with a positive and then, all buyers that you have been set up by, come in one after the other destroying you, or trying to, but it still looks bad. I thank God I am thick skinned and know their games. By the way, the buyers already knew that a dispute would regain their original purchase price. It’s a sick game.
Do you know what happened next? Out of over 709 items listed, eBay went into my auction site and blocked any one from bidding or writing me a message. After we made over $1,951 monthly average in sales The next week. $0.00. When I balked they of course denied it and led me to the relist button so my re list fees would double. Even sent me a message reminding me of the discounted listing fees.
(MR & Mrs ebay I printed all this criminal activity out so Don’t B.S. me)
I blocked payment to pay pal to resolve the issue wanting credit for their criminal deed. What did they tell me. Relist the items at my cost.
They are well aware of what they did and I do believe you call this a CRIMINAL ACT on their part.
Instead of taking the money and do the right thing these mental decrepits chose to deny any wrong doing. They came up with a lie on line stating a glich in the system that caused some items to disappear. Some? 750? I will sell on another site as EBAY is finished.You have screwed many honest sellers AND YOU SHALL PAY FOR YOUR DASTARDLY DEEDS IN FAILURE.
And you Meg Whitman you didn’t do a freaking thing to rocket ebay to the top. We the little guys & gals did with our flea market junk, as you call it. Is this the way you paid us back$ It twists my @#$%^ every time I read that she was the man. LOL John Donahoe go clean toilets for a living you uneducated greedy pig. Thats All your good for. No disrespect for pigs as I respect them whole heartedly.Go ahead and plan your next strategy on what to do next. It won’t work and we will never see the fairytail that what once was. Go ahead with your sad selves.

Starting this month, ebay is CHOOSING YOUR SHIPPING COST FOR YOU! Basically. Like video games, $4 is the most you can charge, a video game SYSTEM the most you can charge is $15. I personally have had a system shipped inside the country for $32. What am I supose to do, eat that because ebay wants to be a dictator and tell me what I HAVE to charge for shipping? Go away ebay, just go away.

I agree, I’m primarily a seller. The new seller fees make it more difficult to turn a profit. I’m not going to pay ebay an insertion fee + final sale % when I can list the stuff on craigslist or the local paper for free. Ebay was fundamentally a terrific idea. Then it seems like corporate tweaked things to skim off the top and make as much $$ as possible. I’m not pleased as a seller.

Ebay is great. Bought something last night.

Craigslist SUCKS to sell on. People want everything for free on that site. They think if your cost to list is free, then you should give the item to them for free.

No wonder Obama is winning, we have an entitlement society.

CRAIGSLIST IS JUST A HUGE WASTE OF TIME.

Greedy ebay has been in a downward spiral of self destruction due to their non compliance with their OWN policies and User Agreements. THEY ARE GUILTY OF ABUSE OF THEIR OWN RULES. Don’t even think of reporting messages that you receive through ebay messages. eBay sends YOU an auto generated reply ACCUSING YOU OF the spam or malicious message YOU received. They turn the whole situation around, then at the bottom, it states, DO NOT REPLY, THIS IS AN AUTO REPLY. HUH? There are no answers by ebay. When you do speak to any live person, they are complete robotic morons. If you dare say the word SUE or this is a LEGAL MATTER, they disconnect you. If I didn’t have any sense, I would thik these people are on some kind of substance that makes them act like the Stepford Wives. Their behavior is outrageous and will make your blood pressure increase, no matter how much self control you have. Trust me. EBAY HAS ALLOWED SO MANY PEOPLE’S LIVES TO FALL APART, it IS A CRIME! They aid and abet criminals, or shall I say, if you have a name ending in z or s..you are allowed to do practically anything. I tested this and it is true. If you speak English and are an American- English ONLY SPEAKING, you better forget about it, you’re not getting anywhere. Ebay are RACISTS. They do not like honest american sellers. They allow non-american buyers, (all american born sellers know who I am referring to) to buy your item, use the heck out of it for 45 days, then they file a complaint as “not significantly not as described.” WHAT? Why buy anything when you can go to ebay and buy whatever you want, wear it, use it and return it to the seller with a negative feedback. The seller must go through the motions of dispute, when they know in the end the buyer wins. What store allows that? NONE!! EBAY YOU MAKE ME SICK! I’ll tell you what, let me sell your wife’s clothes and jewelry on your filthy site, let them wear it, alter it and then you repay the buyer in full. What do you say to that? Here’s a real time situation that happened a few years back. I was a seller on ebay and things were ok, I THOUGHT. Then I decided to start selling what I thought would be a great product and provide my children with a better quality of life, such as SCHOOL, FOOD, tokens for school, etc. Some americans DO NOT GET PUBLIC ASSISTANCE. I didn’t, so I did the next best thing I could think of. I turned to Greed Bay. I borrowed some money, invested into sellable merchandise and began to sell. I dedicated almost all of my time to ebay and paid astronomical listing fees, FVF to GREED BAY, needless to say, Greedy Pay Pal, too. Well, apparently, I had no idea what was about to happen. There was another seller on there using the name Daddyisnice. A strange spanish girl writing thru ebay using words like bloody robbers and weird things, telling me her whole life story. Trying to curry favor with me as to get free shipping, she had a low rating, but I didn’t know at that time she was a seller under others names SELLING THE SAME BRAND AS I WAS. She didn’t get every item for free as she tried in vain to convince me that boxes were free and my shipping was too high. All of which were untrue. She was so greedy that she set out to DESTROY ME. She had so many names and friends, and family, that she went into my store on ebay and bought items immediately. THEN LEFT OVER A DOZEN NEGATIVE FEEDBACKS, MISPELLING THE WORD THIEF. SHE DIDN’T EVEN PAY FOR THE ITEMS. Well, later that year, unaware that this new buyer was a SELLER OF THE SAME BRAND I WAS SELLING, came up in a search. At that time, if you changed your seller name, anyone could see the names you changed from and when. Then BOOM! There she was as a SELLER. All of a sudden daddyisnice changed her name and location from Florida to the state of Washington in seconds. Her new seller name was..get this now…imarriedmylawyer** and was located in Florida, then quickly switched to Irvine, Ca and the surrounding cities in, San Diego, CA., etc. She was suspended and we were all happy that ebay nailed her for her thievery. Then she was reinstated under imarriedmylawyer -different location, once again, FLORIDA. This crazed person lives from coast to coast according to the info. on a daily basis. She contacted ebay and lied as usual in her naive, “oh I’m so innocent no comprende usted tongue and they allowed her to sell again, despite the fact that she ruined so many sellers with all kinds of negative feedback and LIES so that she can sell her BEBE Purses at prices that would rock your socks off. The official bebe site is cheaper, way cheaper than this crazy person. imarriedmylawyer** ’s feedback is now marked PRIVATE. Geez, I wonder WHY? I’ll tell you why! She is selling under bebe_for_less, registered to a man and hitting buyers over the head with shipping fees. Ebay expain this. If you suspend other sellers for DSR’s, then how in the world is bebe_for_less getting away with a 4.1 shipping DSR? She also reports you for stolen goods if she sees that you are selling more than her. TRUE! Paypal will call you and not accuse you, but ask you off the wall questions like where do you get your inventory and will you be selling TV’s? This is just a ploy on Pay Pal’s part to see if the seller is on the level. This is TRUE! A little leg work and some calls, I found this to be a ploy used by her to report you, the seller of the same brand, bebe, to get rid of you. When that fails, she uses every trick in the book to get you. Returns galore. disputes after 45 days, buyers complaining of damages that are not there and of course, her little it smells of smoke feedback so everyone jumps on the bandwagon. All of this after they wore and damaged the items. Meanwhile, her record is unscathed. Why? Because as soon as she gets a negative, she has tons of relatives and friends buy her items and leave the MOST OUTSTANDING FEEDBACK USING ALL !!!! TO OFFSET THE NEGATIVE. She actually transfers money into your pay pal account for you to buy her items fast and bury the negative. Then she relists it under her other seller names. I have all of them. One of her so called friends actually spilled the beans and told me what she was up to. They obviously had a falling out and the buyer told me what was about to happen to my site. Now ChickyBoomBoom her other name, the tables have turned on you, thief, or should I say like you spell it Teef! What really got me is that her site says BEWARE OF BEBE FAKES. LOL! The only fake fraud is that seller. Almost 99 percent of bebe is NOT FAKE because they are purchased at bebe outlets. So she is trying to screw with your brain about fake bebe, when she is robbing youwith prices that are sooooooooo outrageously high and banging you over the head with shipping. How do you think these bebe sellers get so many sales in a short period of time? Because they buy authentic bebe and resell it on ebay. Not to discredit the little bebe sellers, who may own their own bebe wardrobe or buy something on sale, they too are under attack by this thief and her friends and family. Take a look at bebestyle2007, see what recently happened to her for copying another sellers pic and watermark, see they think they are smart, but again, what goes around comes around. Waiting for imarriedmylawyer** to step up..come on daddyisnice..admit what you have been doing to innocent sellers, unleash your site for all to see just how stupid you really are. You have attacked so many sellers just for you to gain. Why are you not selling anymore under your fake lawyer name. Yeah, you married a lawyer, sure you did. Just what a lawyers wife would be doing, selling on ebay. LOL! Now run on way, start new selling names and start robbing other innocent people and try to destroy other sellers that you compete against. What’s wrong? Can’t compete anymore or have you exhausted all of your friends and family for a vendetta that you carried too far. EBAY ALLOWED THIS…BUT NOW IT’S THEIR OWN DEMISE TO ALLOW SELLERS LIKE THIS TO HARASS AND DISRUPT OTHER SELLERS HONEST BIZ. You want more info on this seller, I got it all. People like this have to be stopped and will be when ebay is run right into the ground. Oh did I mention, that when I borrowed the money to sell on ebay, that they were once stockholders. LOL. imarriedmylawyer**, I don’t think you thought of that one or how I gained all the info I have. TRUE STORY IN REAL TIME!

Ebay is pushing out all the small sellers and making it harder and harder to sell. They will also kick you off for any reason and are just not worth it anymore.

I understand the comments about seller wanting to be able to leave feedback for buyers, but there is a problem. Maybe EBAY didn’t handle it correctly, but who knows. I buy far more than I sell on EBAY. In the past, when I was not satisfied with a seller, I would leave a legitmate negative feedback.
The problem with this is seller retalliation. Even though I did nothing wrong, I have gotten bad freedgack from sellers after giving them negative feedback.

Uh…. you guys know that eBay owns part of craigslist?

eBay has been pissing off sellers for years… this isn’t anything new. It is simply not worth the fees and headache to do business on eBay anymore. Sad that incompetent management has ruined such a great company!

I am a powerseller as well and just got my sellings privileges suspended for a month while they determine if I can be reinstated. They say if my ratings don’t improve within the next month that my account will be suspended forever. HOw can I improve my ratings when I can list any items for sale????? Really? This is just genious EBAY. What an awful business model. EBAY is headed on a one way ticket to….

Oh man, this is GREAT. Anyone from FeeBay watching? Do you now see what we all “try” and complain about, but end up on “eternal hold” with your team of support specialists? Listen to the people who helped line your pockets with cold hard cash. You know the ones, the ones who have been around longer than most of your current management? Feebay is now for advertising. I don’t care if I sell another item through them, I use it for advertising my business.

eBay decided to stand alone in the auction market by trying to isolate itself from sharing resonsibility for the buyers it attracts to its site. After its many changes at the beginning of the year we witnessed a solid decine in sales and an increase in costs along with the amount of none earth friendly trash we needed to now product because we could no longer send our product digtally, but instead had to package them to reach the customer much later (2-3 days after payment instead of instantly). We had to raise our fees, charge shipping, and watch as our customers naturally decided to buy from our website where we can send orders immediately, produce zero packaging trash, and enjoy a healthier profit. Thank you eBay!

I couldn’t agree more with what has been said here. I’ve been on ebay for 8 years now and I am disgusted with their treatment of sellers. I’m to the point that I may do some ebay, but it is way better for me to Craigslist my items.
They say that they made changes because buyers are more important to keep happy-that is ridiculous-it takes both.
Contrary to stated in the article I am frustrated that “auction style” formats are disappearing more and more. I prefer this far more than paying top dollar.

I think a good amount of us saw this coming. This has been a bad year for eBay and has sparked many people to jump ship and search for alternatives. I see this as a great opportunity for a big player [Amazon] or a new player [Wigix] to pick up a big slice of the pie.

Adrian, – Is that due to athe start ratings? What a joke, anywheere else I go, a 4 out of 5 means you are above average, on ebay, a 4 means you are bottom rate. The worst part is that they should tell the buyers that a 4 might as well be a negative feedback. What a joke, they have far to much control over to many aspects of a business to put my faith in going big time with Ebay.

I agree with all that say that this article is bogus in that it does not give blame to eBay when in fact it is their fault that soo many sellers are leaving the site, like myself annoyed and fed up with the constant raises in fees and all but non existent customer service. What follows is a response I received after I email eBay’s “trust and safety” department. Having sold on their site for over 4 years and during that time selling many high end and designer products, I was now given a limit as to what and when I could sell certain designer products…

“Dear Eli,

Thank you for writing eBay in regard to the restrictions you’ve recently
experienced on your account. I apologize for the delay in our response
to you as we’ve been experiencing unusually high email volume.

eBay is committed to providing a positive buying experience on our site.
In order to help maintain a safe trading environment, selling limits are
occasionally placed on accounts.

Sellers who have a good track record on our site and are confident in
the authenticity and origin of their items may be eligible to have their
selling limits raised. Our considerations include buyer feedback, time
and activity on site, compliance with eBay policies, and other factors.

We’ve carefully reviewed your account and history with eBay, and we’re
sorry to say that we can’t change your current selling limits. Please
note, however, that the restrictions you’re experiencing are only for
certain categories or items. You should be able to list other items
without encountering these restrictions.

Please contact us in 90 days, and we’ll review your account again. In
the meantime, we encourage you to continue to follow all policies and
build a positive selling history on eBay.

For the latest tips, tools, information, and resources for selling on
eBay, please visit eBay’s Seller Central pages:

http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/index.html

Also, please visit eBay’s Help pages for more information on our listing
policies and guidelines:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-rules-overview.html

At its discretion, eBay may raise the selling limits for members with an
established positive track record and about whom eBay has the highest
confidence. Our considerations include, among other factors, buyer
feedback, time and activity on site, and compliance with eBay policies.

Please visit the eBay’s Help pages for more information on our listing
policies and guidelines:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-rules-overview.html

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Mycroft

eBay Customer Support”

Now I now a good number of people, can’t say I’ve EVER heard the same “Mycroft” ..This generic , computer like response is exactly the reason I despise eBay for what it is now. They have no inventory, no cost related to the products sold, yet they cant afford to have real live reps. available for us sellers who make the company the bulk of their profits. I have close to 600 feedbacks, all but 2 are positive, and I’m proud and at the sad time saddened to say that after eBay’s new change to paperless payments goes into effect 10/10 they will have lost me as a seller and quite possibly a buyer as well.

Kris Eagan – Challenge the payment with your bank or credit card, at that point the seller will have to prove that they shipped it to you, and you got it. Good Luck

The bottom line with Ebay is that a lot of sellers no longer enjoy or profit from selling with them. After doing business with them for 4 years they complained that my performance as a power seller was not up to snuff. They suspended my account for a month and told my company we need to improve customer satisfaction, despite having a 99% feedback rating after approximately 10,000 transactions. Even though they will reinstate our company that was the last straw–if they are treating sellers this way we will NEVER sell with them again.

I am shocked this article makes no mention of the new CE0 , how he has massacred the rate structure, drove off good sellers while keeping the shotty ones, changed feedback policies so buyers can rob sellers, and messed up the site’s SEARCH beyond repair. Most buyers have walked away because they cannot find anything on the site. Put everything back the way it was before him and the $$$ will flow again on ebay

the biggest problem with ebay is that most of the sellers on ebay are the buisness selling stuff instead of a small sellers Because Small sellers sells an item at a much lower price than the buisness owners

Ever since I observed first hand how easy it was for a buyer to scam a seller with just a simple email lie to Ebay and Paypal thereby locking up the seller’s account indefinitely, I have not been able to bring myself to SELL OR BUY anything on EBAY. Zero as in the number 0, is the level of protection EBAY/PayPal affords its honest sellers. The interminable run-around and sophisticated technology EBAY uses to ensure that the seller can NEVER actually talk to a human being to aid in the resolution of an issue is the final nail in the coffin of their business model. EBAY R.I.P.

The people that wrote this article are so stupid! this is just like when someone blamed everything on the economy. Well it’s not entirely true. Ebay has what coming to them. For example, Raising the fees left and right. It not because the economy is slow it because Ebay management is so stupid. The reason GOOGLE is so big so fast is because everything is free and they make they money base on advertising not charging members crazy amount of fees. I will EBAY BURN!!!!!!!!! This is nothing but greed.

ebay shot itself in the foot earlier in the year when they changed their feedback policy. Sellers no longer could leave negative feedback for buyers, but buyers have the freedom to do whatever they want. ebay really screwed up on that decision. The executive managers who made that decision should be fired because it’s obviously hurting the company’s bottom line and now the stock is taking a hit. I suppose because they got so big they developed a GOD complex and thought that any decision they made would be the correct one. Please, go back to basics.

I’ve lost a lot of money on ebay, due to the crooks who sell items and never ship it, plus paypal fails to press charges against them or refund me my money. They won’t even give me their address to track the criminals down. I am still waiting for my new $500 PS3 to arrive with the shipping confirmation number that says item not shipped yet. Poor protection for honest buyers and sellers makes me nervous doing business on ebay these days. I am sure I am not alone and that’s one reason Ebay is going down. I now use craig’s lists for buying and selling local…and no seller fees!

I agree with all of the ebay bashing below and wish to add to it. The latest brilliant idea of ebay management is to force sellers to adhear to a specific shipping cost. Which as we all know forces the seller to increase their opening bid price to compensate. So you ask, “what does increasing your opening bid price do?” well, in some cases your opening bid price increase forces you into a higher ebay fee bracket. Sounds like the Ebay management team and the morons that created the mortgage back securities are reading from the same “how to ruin the economy book”.

E-bay does not understand a simple logic – they were in the business because of sellers who used to sell less than retail rates.

Their policies are COMPLETELY against the sellers, including banning the sellers, not allowing feedback against the buyers.

E-BAY – your time is now over. Your stupid policies will sink your ship.

EBAY needs to take their 3.7 billion and go away before we have to bail them out. Sellers pay all the fees and no control. This leaves sellers in the cold GO AWAY EBAY. I WILL SELL ELSEWHERE

You’re all nailing it, they are killing the sellers, I’m a long time low level seller. I was doing a ROI on a new potential item, and there new fee structure including paypal, is now approaching 15% on some items, I’m having more and more trouble sourcing items at a price that can be profitable for me, Ebay seems to feel that I have no other overhead besides there fees.

The other biggie pointed out, I rarely, maybe not more than once had a non-paying bidder in 8 years, enter no more negative feedback for sellers.. I have had 3 in 4 months, and a bank reversal. I get my final value fee back, but not my listing fees, or time.

My wife is a large seller on Ebay of athletic shoes and other athletic apparel. She has contined to grow her business thanks to Ebay. While it is not perfect and higher fess stink, they provide a marketplace with exposure that is unmatched. Everyone acts like only large companies sell on Ebay anymore. That is just not the case. The bulk of sales are generated by small business people like her who offer good service and products well below the normal retail price. Ebay is still the place to catch a deal and with the economy slowing, more consumers will turn to Ebay in an attempt to save money.

I wish GOOGLE would open up an auction site to go along with their Google Checkout and make it how eBay USED to be. eBay would be out of business or seriously hurt in no time at all.

Few words to summarize E-bay business: GREEDY, PATHETIC SERVICE.

They have come up with all sorts of crappy policies, banning sellers due to poor buyers and on top of all have the CRAPPIEST “So called” security team.

Sellers – if you reply too much on E-bay and Paypal, you will be in for a shock one day. TAKE MY WORDS.

The writer of this article is clueless as to why ebay has gone down hill.

Look at all of the horrible moves after horrible moves that eBay has done over the past few months.

Sellers can no longer leave honest feedback about buyers.

Raise in fees.

“Best Match” feature.

DSR Ratings – If you drop below a 4.3 rating you get suspended for a month. I made monthly purchases from someone that had about 150,000 POSITIVE feedback ( http://myworld.ebay.com/discountgames/ ) Who is now suspended from selling on ebay (He had about 15,000+ items for sale at any given time) because little Jimmy had to wait a week before the game arrived at his door, so he dinged his shipping DSR star and made it drop below a 4.3 rating on a 5 point scale, so the big seller is now suspended.

With the new system and the new head honcho John Donahoe, ebay is going down hill, and it will continue to go down hill until he is out of that position. He has made horrid statements towards its users and their “flea market garbage” that everyone sells on ebay. They are trying to get rid of the little guys and their “garbage” that they sell, and are favoring more larger companies such as BUY.COM which they now have an agreement with that has over a million items for sale alone on feebay.

NOW, if you sell on feeBay you MUST accept PAYPAL and PAYPAL ONLY! No checks, no money orders, PAYPAL! So now, eBay is taking a piece of a sellers pie with their ever skyrocketing fees, NOW a seller is FORCED to use PayPal (an eBay owned company) and then they take another piece of the pie with the high paypal fees.

eBay has turned from a great place to buy things and a cheap decent price with a great community, to what John Donahoe has made it, a place with higher fees, less items, higher priced items (due to no competition from alot of sellers that have quit ebay for any combination of the reasons above) rude place to do business.

Also now that a seller can no longer leave nothing but positive feedback, there is alot of “Buyer Strongarming”. Buyers buying things, then emailing the seller and threatening them with negative feedback if they dont lower their shipping prices etc.

JD Claims that the reason sellers can no longer leave negative feedback is because it drives buyers off when they get a negative, in all reality, all they do is just make a new account and go buy again. Why would a buyer care if he has bad feedback? Think about it. The SELLER is the one that doesnt want the negative feedback because it hurts is sales, but how does it hurt a buyer when all they have to do is just make a new account?

There are many other dumb rules and policies that have went into effect since Donahoe has taken over, and its just going to continue to get worse guys.

I used to sell a lot of stuff on ebay but now, I only sell there when I absolutely have to. They charge you listing fees, final value fee, and then paypal fees. And the final value fee can be as high as 10%+ . After all of that you are supposed to make the price with shipping competetive with places like amazon and other online store. Following their model, you have to find merchandise that is 30% discounted or so to make profit. I hate you eBay!

Things go from bad to worse since John Donahoe has become CEO, no one is happy, sellers or buyers. This is not the first time that a leadership change has caused a company to plummet. The difference is that many of the sellers who pay for e bays market share are households that have relied on eBay for part or all of its income and buyers have relied on the sites past policy to make buying easy and to facilitate sellers to bring unique items to the market place. This 13 year trust has been violated and has failed both sellers and buyers in just a few months of unfair, faulty policy change that has taken a ship this size and turned it so fast that it is out of control and is facing a challenge to bring the ship back to course as it was before. This policy change was over a short aggressive period, but the negative impact will make it difficult to navigate back in position. This will prove a challenge that may take years to repair relationships between sellers and buyers when it has been realized by investors concerned.

It should be clear, I am a wholesaler and not a writer or a stock expert, but I have a first hand inside look having been a powerseller for over 10 years, 1.7 million per year sales and account for $156,000 paid to e bay per year for seller fees, this is the bases in which e bay shows profit or loss in a great way, this does not account for paypal fees charged, seller manager pro, e bay stores. It was felt that E bay was a beautiful place before it has crashed and failed not only its buyers, but its sellers. This, although it would seem, at the moment, can be seen by the stock prices offered currently and the downgrades by large investment firms. An estimated 70,000 – 80,000 eBay sellers have been suspended due to aggressive, “at there discretion” unfair, flawed policy. These are the large sellers, most pay an excess of $10,000 per month in site fees. This is an estimated loss, on average, of $5000 per month for 70,000 sellers all its managements wisdom has pushed away $350,000,000 per month or 4,200,000,000 per year based on these educated guesses as e bay does not release information about how many or how much it may have damaged itself with these flawed changes. Maybe the current stock price will.

E bay has spoken, treated sellers and buyers with disrespect, no conformity in answers received from e bay or policy’s, put sellers of 10 years who set our business to service the e bay market in a bad financial strain because of an aggressive unfair policy, which e bay keeps it sellers in the dark how to quantitative it, sellers and buyers have listed and regrettably moving on to something else. These are resourceful business people who will do well marketing for another company. They will be hurt financially in the short term, some loosing everything due to this irresponsible policy change. It should be noted that these sellers are also buyers and I personally buy a few thousand on e bay per year, they will not see another dollar from me. Even if I wanted to, it would be unlikely that what is being searched for could ever be found due to policy changes, and is most likely available at buy.com, Ubid.com Goggle stores (formally known a frugel.com) or Amazon.com or wigix.com. These sites are taking notice and are more than willing to facilitate what customers are asking for. Both knowledgeable sellers and buyers are voting with there buying power.

Anyone considering investing or putting time into future sales may want to take a look at the aggressive policy’s they have put in place, there are little to no direct policy as there has been for the last 10 years, it is now “at there discretion” rather than a written or qualitative policy in many cases. This is making the company policy as un uniform as it has ever been. Even when the rules were written for all to see, there were interpretation issues, however, now it is just up to the person answering the phone or sending the e mail and no room for improvement or debate to better or change. Although communication has always been an issue for E bays customers as well as sellers on message boards complain how hard it is to get in touch with them and when you do no one on the other end seems to be empowered to help or care to do little more than quote out of the corporate handbook offered in form letters and help pages. If you are as lucky as us to have been a powerseller, you can call and sometimes have your call returned within 3-4 business days and hope to be available at the time the call is returned, you can ask the same question to 10 different e bay “officials” and get 10 different answers that do not relate to one another. This is not a speculation, this is based on personal experience as well as discussions with other large sellers. They have turned a blind eye to its sellers and buyers alike. I wouldn’t be leaving if there was any good reason to stay.

I admit, service needed to be better, customer service is something that all should be striving to improve, there is a way to do that without destroying the e bay fabric that has worked so well in the past. I have a business to run, so there is not enough time to go into all details of in site, there are many dissatisfied sellers (who drive e bays profit) and dissatisfied buyers (who drive the sellers profit) and it does not take a MBA to fugure out the future.

E bay has done a poor job or emplaning the new changes to its buyers, sellers only after a few months of effect, some loosing there e bay business because of improper, unmonitored data, is still learning and it seems no one knows the answers even at the top account managers level. Its buyers do not realize that the DSR DETAILED SELLER RATING, the 5 stars under the feedback rating is not based on a 100 point scale like every other system in the free world. For example, from 1 to 5, 1 is poor, 3 is average and 5 is excellent. With e bay, 4,5 is average and 5 is good, I am glad they didn’t have my math teachers in Collage. So many times buyers rate a 3 when they don’t realize they are giving the seller a unacceptable rating that could potentially suspend his/her account from e bay as so many has been suspended in the last 3 months because of improper data that has been now used as the bible of e bay to rate seller performance. It should also be noted that a flaw in the data of the 5 star DSR is that if a customer is happy, they fell that leaving positive feedback served its purpose and they have caused a positive vote to the seller, e bay has not educated the buyer, so they do not leave a star rating at all, and are not required to and a large % do not, but leave a positive feedback as it is not required. But the buyer who is mad and is leaving hasty feedback will be more than motivated to leave a 1 or 2 for all stars. For this reason, good sellers offering great service and products are being suspended from e bay by record numbers, this cuts the life cord of the seller as well as e bay.

Ebay has ruined their market flair for both buyers and sellers. Too many restricting rule changes, increased charges, paypal demands, seller ratings. This has ultimately destroyed their bottom line.
I was talking to another large seller, he said something that is funny but true, he said “e bay is the only company I know to date that has actually implemented the policy of THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORAL HAS IMPROVED”
Don’t think eBay and its payment system engage in unfair, at the very least unethical or even illegal business practices? Retailers are asking for congress to crack down on organized computer crimes, but eBay, said “they would be unfairly targeted in the proposed legislation” Read article from link below:

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=AP&Date=20080922&ID=9174700&Symbol=EBAY

Ebay is definitely a stock headed down down down. The Wall Street analyst’s who cover Ebay are finding out what is really going on because the sellers who actually use ebay have been seeing it for the past several years as seen by past message/bogs. This has been especially true in the past 6 months. Anytime a company treats their customers with little or no concern, it’s not a good sign for the future.

There are alternatives to ebay and they are getting stronger everyday while e bay lets it strong sellers go who offer products that drive customers to the site. Many of them showing up to other sites and, yes, drawing e bay customers to competitors site. I have talked to Ubid and Amazon, .wigix.com and they say they are seeing a flood of sellers coming over to there site. These are sellers and buyers who were content before and never even considered the idea of market movement, now they are not and are voting with there dollars and this trend will most likely continue. This will further deteriorate the system because these buyers and sellers realize that they have relied on a company that has forsaken them. The ones who may come back, if the policy does change to something reasonable for both sellers and buyers like buy.com policy, will remember the bite and the smart ones will keep there selling and buying accounts open for other sites they were forced to by bad customer service and policy.

CNBC analyst Jim Cramer said he could not get behind the company, and that someone should buy the company “and put them out of their misery.” That is a big statement in and of itself, however, that with all the negativity on message boards from its sellers and buyers in the past few months should have already grabbed someone’s attention at e bay it would seem and some favorable policy changes would have followed already, this didn’t come and could come too little too late.

It has been pointed out that CNBC analyst Jim Cramer said to buy, buy, buy at one time, the people who listened did well at that time. He has good in site to this company it would seem. Now I think this Caramer is a voice to listen to as he has made it clear that there is problems now, not anything that large sellers have not already foreseen for the last year.
http://www.marketintelligencecenter.com/articles/649789

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ebay-buyers-concerned-re-feedback-changes

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/new-feedback-policy-unfair-for-sellers

Articles from non bias 3rd party’s are now starting to surface all over the Internet community, although limited to in site, show they know of seller dissatisfaction:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/95329-ebay-is-a-losing-bid-barron-s
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m01/i02/s01

http://mashable.com/2008/04/29/wigix-out-to-steal-ebay-power-sellers-it-may-work/

It is speculated that the Standard & Poors rating will be updating soon, because of e bays unpresidented fast and agressive changes made in the last couple of months have not given any room for changes of amindments of ratings yet, but I will asure you they are coming the changes were simply done so fast and agressive that ratings have not had time to catch up. It would be advisable to keep a close eye on this in a few months when agressive policy changes reach the rating level.

I have a dedicated special interest and hope they turn themselves around, but it is going to take some quick and correct policy change to undo what has been done in what would be considered by many as well as a powerseller account manager spoken to as “the most aggressive change e bay has ever done” it is costing sellers there business, although it is realized that a very few had to go, they are taking the good sellers, some of them my competitors out in the process. Not that I am sad to see some of my competitors go, it is still sad to know that these people have sold on e bay for 5-10 years, know they have adjusted themselves to e bay, the kind of inventory, business plan, warehousing and equipment and 100’s of thousands in inventory stuck in the warehouse they cannot sell, all of this done to a veteran of e bay because of policy changes made/implemented over just a few months. This policy change had the company treating its long term sellers and buyers like criminals. Taking away businesses from sellers by the flawed, aggressive policy change unfair to sellers and buyers.
STR is dropping like a rock. The Best Match search is fatally flawed and $0.35 listings are not going to fix that. Buyers can’t find anything. Sellers can’t sell and are being abused both by eBay with the hateful DSR system, and by bottom feeding scammer/buyers, because there is NO seller protection. The buyers agree to the sellers terms by static link contract when they bid, just as sellers agree to e bay and paypals, but are not held to the policy that is the basics of a fair transaction. The new policy changes has driven off both buyers and sellers alike. It has attracted the wrong kind of buyer and made the site a breading ground for unfair transactions to sellers and buyers. Sellers are paralyzed by policy, sellers own policy has been abused by the new ebay policy changes. There is also NO customer service provided to sellers or buyers by ebay or paypal. Sellers of the unique items that made eBay famous (and who paid listing fees) are leaving in droves, while eBay brokers deals with corporate sellers of new stuff you can get anywhere who don’t pay listing fees. And their buyers are following them. Watch the Q3 figures. Better yet, wait until the government finally educates itself on what is going on, that is when you will see investors understand after it is too late. A company of this size can keep up appearances for some time, but its customers, its customers customers, that is sellers and buyers, are speaking up and cannot be ignored in the long term, the leader of these policy’s are and continue to drive away the core business of e bay. they must answer to its customers and its investors soon. The payment system can only hold them up and serve as a cash cow but for so long.
Many sellers do not realize how eBay can legally stand on the fact that they are a “venue” when they set policy that makes all the decisions of how the seller sells, take payments, charge for shipping, return policy’s, they become more of a “landlord” or employer it would seem to most. If all transactions are under e bay contract and not contract between buyer and seller in a buyer and seller transaction. It is arguable that these policy changes can give a legal contract right of eBay being a “venue” that it has relied upon for so many years before the policy change just a few months ago.
Almost everyone loved e bay before the policy changes, most feel confident that the company will go back to old policy before it was broken by recent policy. The question many have is when and will it be too late with sellers and buyers leaving by great numbers and competitors making better alternatives available. Many sellers going bankrupt because the unfair aggressive policy change has left them with 1000’s to 100’s of thousands of inventory cost, warehouse cost and other fixed cost because business has been tailored to e bay for many years. Many great sellers who offered products that drove traffic to the site have been suspended because of the unfair and flawed policy changes. To date, given e bay before it was broken with policy and leadership change, e bay was the best online selling platform, had market position of a virtual monopoly, but this trend is slowly changing as competition is taking advantage of this situation.

I used to sell on ebay and it helped me get thru some tough job losses and paycuts. But the comments are correct.When they started hiking fees, that was one thing,but then telling you as a seller you could not leave negative feedback? I e mailed them and told them I was no longer interested in selling on e bay. Believe it or not there really are buyers out there who will not be fair with you even if you ask them to e mail you if there are problems. That was a bad move. I still buy some things on e bay but it is true that many listings are way down.

I’m surprised the article didn’t mention eBay’s ever increasing fees. I’m one of *many* eBay powersellers that have simply walked away after enduring fee increase after increase. In addition to that their ‘Best Match’ search algorithm has pushed out a lot of smaller sellers. ****Google when are you going to come in and quash eBay with a free auction site?****

Selling on ebay has become the worst. I have looked for other channels to sell used goods. Mostly, free ones.

Its not the buyers that are leaving its the sellers….

Ebay’s problems don’t have anything to do with people not wanting to do auctions anymore. People still want auctions, particularly for unique collectible items. Ebay’s fall is because they’ve spent the whole year insulting, denigrating and punishing their small sellers of unique items. It is because they’ve raised seller fees twice this year.

It is because they’ve established a punitive rating system called the DSRs (Detailed Seller Ratings) that let one non-paying buyer’s ratings suspend a good seller at the drop of a hat or indefinitely. It is because they’ve muzzled sellers by only allowing them to leave positive feedback for a transaction, whether it was positive for them or not. It is because they’ve tinkered with their search so much that no one can find anything. It is because they are committing fraud by charging sellers equal fees but giving them unequal exposure. It is because of the extremely preferential treatment given in fees, DSRs and search exposure to Diamond Power Sellers, who do not have to follow the rules that mere mortals do-and who have flooded some categories with millions of listings.

It is also because they are insisting that purchases be made through Paypal or by credit card, during a time when many people are wisely foregoing to use credit. It is because they are requiring new sellers to use PayPal and then holding their payments for 21 days while requiring them to ship merchandise. It is because due to these policies, sellers now live in fear of blackmailing, scamming buyers.

Sellers are being forced off eBay. Sellers are leaving because they can no longer make money there. Ebay wants to become an online mall. Ebay wants to become Amazon, and it never will. Amazon has customer service. Ebay has bots and clueless script-readers. THIS is why eBay is failing.

OR could it be things like HIGHER COSTS TO SELL ON EBAY!? OR, sellers can’t leave negative feedback for buyers anymore? Buyers can inflict losses on sellers, and eBay doesn’t give a HOOT. Without sellers, eBay is no more, and only EBay doesn’t seem to get it.

I used to do a ton of sales on Ebay, but as they got bigger, they became less friendly, raised rates, and and made it tougher for the seller. I know a lot of small sellers who dropped out as well, which leaves behind professional stores, which usually charge as much as retail. They forgot their roots.

David Joseph says that eBay’s challenge is the buyers’ shift away from the auction format, however I disagree that this is the problem. The problem stemmed from eBay exec John Donahoe listening to bad, uninformed judgements like this. Ebay built itself around a core user group who came to ebay because they like the auction format.

For some reason the talking heads believed that eBay could only grow if they tried to compete with sites like Amazon. Bad choice, it only put eBay in direct competition with large sites like Amazon, instead of letting them stay at the forefront of their own market of auction format.

The inane changes that eBay has been making to their format has only opened the sellers (who are truly eBay’s customers, the buyers are not) up to ridiculous fees and scamming buyers that takes money directly out of the sellers’ (eBay’s customers) pockets. Hence, sellers, good sellers, are leaving by the hundreds, if not thousands, and big retailers like Buy are swarming in like locusts with junk products or useless products. A big problem for eBay is that many sellers were also big buyers on the site. I would be willing to bet that Buy has never bought anything through the site, except free listings. And not many people ever bought from Buy anyway, that’s why they agreed to sell on eBay to help boost their poor customer service-backed sales that were missing from their own website.

Then eBay introduced a true virus of technology (?) in a search engine called Best Match that throws this junk, that a buyer searching for something specific has no want or need for to the top of the search results pages. Buyers searching for a yellow vase are forced to scroll through pages of DVDs, bicycles, and books, and they give up.

So a big portion of the buyers, old and new, on the site have left, and more and more fraudulent buyers have figured out how to scam the sellers that are left, because eBay does virtually no kind of customer service or security to investigate claims of scams and fraud.

I hope the stockholders read the comments, because eBay will never make it back into the “Buy” category(talking about stocks now, not the etailer) with their current direction under John Donahoe. Ebay is just becoming another, expanded Buy.com, instead of what gave them their success, being an auction site.

Don’t forgot Ebay’s other big mistake — pissing off the sellers. No one I know wants to sell on Ebay anymore because of the jacked up selling fees, and the fact that you can no longer leave negative feedback. Why would you sell on Ebay when you have so many other options nowadays that don’t suck?

To bad someone on wall street doesn’t really do an indepth research on this company. Ebay has screwed with sellers and they are leaving in droves to better sites. I for one hope Ebay goes down the drain. The have morons for management. There site is so full of fraud and glitches who wants to be a seller there.

Just a quick heads up, it is not the economy, credit crisis, or any other outside influence that is causing eBay to fall, just eBay itself. They are pushing out the small sellers in droves in favor of the big box retailers and have, essentially, alienated their bread and butter, the sellers. take a look sometime on the forum boards and what buyers and sellers are saying about it.

Too many Ebay sellers are selling ‘new’ items at prices above local retail or above established e-commerce sites. Most of my buying on Ebay has dwindled away in favor of better prices, shipping and service from e.g. Amazon.

Referencing craigslist as Craig’s List lessens the credibility of this article and its author…IMO.

It’s very simple. Ebay treats its seller like a street pimp treats its hookers. I try to sell on Amazon whenever I can. Ebay triple-dips on fees. They charge you listing fees, then ding you again once the sale closes, then ding you again on paypal fees. Don’t you get it Ebay? We hate you!. The world will be a better place once Evil-bay is gone.

Are the analysts still not getting it? Ebay sellers are being forced off left and right due to extortion, high fees, absolutely no protection from ebay, its a nightmare over there!! There is less being sold because there is less to choose from, and though most buyers are honest, it has created a monster list of unscrupulous buyers and ebay gives absolutely no services to each many long time sellers, they are leaving…leaving…leaving…leaving…