ebay could care less about buyers and sellers as long as they make there commission,its almost impossible to get in contact with them .and everytime you inform them about a scam they tell you there is nothing wrong,if they reply to you at all.the collector car market and parts for these cars is so ripe with fraud its sickening.people selling cars with there friends bidding on them to drive up the prices. BUT ebay says for the most part people are honest,when you let them know of a problem,good answer how about fixing the problem.if every one is so honest how come they only cover you up to $200usc if you get beat.when they catch someone in a scam and they take away there privliges the person just changes his ebay name and opens a new account..

Alot of policies should be altered.The 2 that stand out for me are 1) STOP allowing automated responses.I will not name names,but to try and resovle a problem with a machine is ridiculous.Not every problem has a set answer!When an item is not received and you leave negative fedback to inform others of this,you, in return get a negative feedback AUTOMATICALLY.This is simply BAD business! 2) when you dont receive an item you paid for,they want 25.00 to pursue it.If the item in question was 20.00,it COSTS you more than its worth to pursue,therefore,try as you might,you are basically OUT the money.For the fees they charge,this should be a free service to protect the buyer.Mentioning this to them is useless,they want the BIG sellers and forget about the little guys that got this off the ground.Bad policies still reign!

Sheldon:

Ask and ye shall receive! Thanks for giving us a place to Inform and a receptive Mind. I posted this in your Fat Fee article...but it was lonely.

Pssst - wanna good news story? How about one that shows ebay lied about the percentage of Store listings versus Core listings?
Or, the fact that the numbers that prove that lie are posted on ebay's Invester page and NO ONE caught it? Not the Wall Street analysts, all the journalists writing about same or even someone at ebay smart enough to 'correct' those mistakes?

Go to ebay's Investor page (http://investor.ebay.com/downloads/fund_Metrics.pdf) and look at the figures. For all of 2005, eBay Stores comprised 9.9% of the total listings for that year. In 2006, the Q1 figures show the Stores percentage at 14.7% and for Q2, the figure is 17.7% of total listings. THAT, is the direct opposite of what has been stated - that Stores comprised 83% of total listings. Bill Cobb has stated that, Meg Whitman has stated it and it has been sent out in ebay Press Releases. Blatent mis-information.

In case you may wonder if it is simply a matter of having the wrong Header (Stores / Non-Stores) at the beginning of the row, the answer is NO! Look at the figures as they progress through the years; the mere 3.1-million at Q1 of 2003 is indeed, the figure for Stores (core listings haven't had that few, since the late 90's). Then, note the progression of the Store listings through the Quarters, as well as the ever-increasing hundreds-of-million totals for Core during the same periods. Those figures MATCH those
Headers.

Which begs several questions: Is the ebay management team so incompetent that it transposes important financial data? If not an error, then is this whole "Re-Balancing" scheme based upon a lie? Why has not even ONE financial 'expert' seen this data and made an announcement or posed a question about it?

Admittedly, the growth of Stores could pose a concern, but that was not what was announced as the main concern. Even so, the growth of Stores is due to ebay insistance to sellers to 'Stock Up" for the (then upcoming) Ebay Express (EE) site. Some of the Q1-2006 buildup of Store stock was due to ebay's decision to include store listings within the
core search - they told sellers to stock up then! They continued to tell sellers to stock their stores so that EE would have available items. It was ebay's directives that have caused the growth and if it was less growth they wanted, all they had to do was discontinue the plan for EE.

At one point, ebay stated that Store items WOULD be put BACK into the core search (after it was removed earlier), with NO indication of a 'maybe'. Go to the bottom of page 15, here:

http://pics.ebay.com/aw/pics/commdev/TownHallTranscript_042806.pdf

Same document, page 19..."We hope to make ebay Express as broad and abundant with inventory as we possibly can." They are VERY careful to have not made statements like, "Go out & BUY inventory", at least not in any of the documents that are still available on the site. Many earlier Town Hall meetings are missing.

On page 4 of this document (http://pics.ebay.com/aw/pics/commdev/July_Town_Hall_Transcript.pdf) you can read where Bill Cobb actually states that ebay 'incented' the Store sellers to 'load up' on their listings because of these two factors - EE and store inventory in core search. He admits to it, "If anybody was wrong, it was us at ebay." Unfortunately, that apology doesn't make the inventory *magically* turn into cash.

They caused, and continue to cause, the main portion of the "Troubling Situation" (Ms Whitman's words) AND they, evidently, intentionally use incorrect data to justify their current actions. There's more happening here than what it appears.

I'm sure that most Financial Analysts and Shareholders don't give a damn about any lies, mis-managed monies and/or levels of incompetence, as long as they make money on their advice/shares. Bludgeoned baby seals, be damned - that sort of attitude. So be it. But, if there is something else happening here, perhaps they might just want to know
what that 'something' is. Before eBay possibly joins the ranks of Enron or Tyco.

Thanks for reading!

BRAVO..BRAVO. & BRAVO

Good way to end this week, THE SUN ALWAYS RISES..
Best wishes.

This is sort of a long post, and I hope you'll bear with it. I found transcript of an interview with Pierre Omyidar, the founder of eBay, conducted way back in 2001. Mr. Omyidar's comments sum it all up - it shows what eBay used to stand for, and the striking contrast between it's original philosophy and it's current philosophy. See interview below:

Q: What made you decide that a community approach would work in creating an online marketplace?

A: It would be nice to say it was positively motivated, but in fact, it really wasn't. It was my reaction to some of the negative things that I saw happening very early on. The birth of the values that we later crystallized came as a reaction to a necessity that I saw, that sometimes people were a little quick to react and didn't give a lot of thought to the fact that most people are honest and good and trying to do the right thing.
It was just a matter of communicating to folks what I felt about how people should treat one another, and about how most people feel they should treat one another, just reminding folks of those values and hoping that they would buy into them and live that way.

Q: How did you communicate those values, which remain so important to eBay today?

A: It was all through e-mail. Quite often, I would receive an e-mail saying, "Hey, this guy clearly ripped me off because it's been a week since the auction ended, and I haven't heard from him, and I've sent him a dozen e-mails in the last three hours, and he hasn't responded to a single one." I would say, "Put yourself in the other person's shoes, maybe they don't turn on their computer every day. Don't jump to negative conclusions, maybe there's a reasonable explanation." In almost all cases, eventually I would get back an e-mail saying, "Oh, you were right, everything's fine."

Q: eBay is so much more influenced by its own customers than other companies. How did you make that happen?

A: It was of necessity, frankly. I had the idea that I wanted to create an efficient market and a level playing field where everyone had equal access to information. I wanted to give the power of the market back to individuals, not just large corporations. That was the driving motivation for creating eBay at the start.

But then beyond that, I didn't have a whole plan for how it would evolve. How it did evolve was that users would write to me and say, "You should do this, you should think about this, you should deal with these issues." I had the very luxurious job of saying, "That's a good idea, and that's a good idea, and let me go do that."

It was letting the users take responsibility for building the community -- even the building of the Web site. That's the kind of thing I tried to keep and encourage as we started building our product marketing teams. We wanted to remind people that the best ideas came from the community. They're the ones that are out there actually using the product and, in some cases, making their living off it. They know what it needs more than we do, generally.

Q: I gather you used to answer all these inquiries and then rewrite the site software to incorporate the changes that night -- a pretty fast feedback loop.

A: That's exactly right. From a customer-loyalty point of view, I learned later, it's wonderful when you write into a company, and somebody who's responsible responds to your e-mail and says, "You know what? That's a really good idea. Let me work on that." And then in a couple of days, you actually see the changes on the site. That gives you, as a user, a sense of ownership of the site. And it makes you a very loyal customer.

Q: What other things did eBay's customers suggest early on?

A: One of the most important things about eBay, the thing that keeps the community together, is the Feedback Forum (a system by which buyers and sellers publicly rate each other on transactions). I had a bulletin board at that time as well, in February, 1996, where members could talk to each other. Members were saying, "Gee, how do we know these other people are good? We need a way to get to know people." I came up with the idea of the Feedback Forum. But I really credit that to the community.

I didn't necessarily think that was really going to work, but to my surprise, it did. Most of what I saw was positive ratings, not negative ratings. That's when it hit me: You know what, people really get a good feeling themselves when they can give praise to people who deserve. That is more powerful than the need to complain about somebody. It was a wonderful revelation.

Q:What has made this community keep working as it has grown into the size of a small country?

A: As much as we at eBay talk about the values and encourage people to live by those values, that's not going to work unless people actually adopt those values. The values are communicated not because somebody reads the Web site and says, "Hey, this is how we want to treat each other, so I'll just starting treating people that way." The values are communicated because that's how they're treated when they first arrive. Each member is passing those values on to the next member. It's little things, like you receive a note that says, "Thanks for your business."

If you want to think about it technologically, it's like peer-to-peer and distributed networks, where there's no centralized control. Those tend to be more robust than ones that are centrally controlled. Same here: The values are distributed throughout the community. They're not centrally controlled by eBay.

Q: Will that method continue to work as eBay gets millions upon millions more customers?

A: I think it will. There is a question and concern that if, for example, we bring in a lot of new people all at once who are only attracted to eBay because of the commerce aspect, because they can get good prices or certain types of merchandise or whatever, it's much more difficult to communicate to them the values on a person-to-person level.

What we do have to be cautious of, as we grow, is that our core is the personal trade, because the values are communicated person-to-person. It can be easy for a big company to start to believe that it's responsible for its success. Our success is really based on our members' success. They're the ones who have created this, and they're the ones who will create it in the future. If we lose sight of that, then we're in big trouble.

Q: EBay seems to be becoming more of a government, though, with explicit "laws" against certain conduct, such as selling firearms.

A: Our role at eBay has become more political. The community really is no longer the way it was in the early days. My philosophy then was, let the community govern itself. That philosophy didn't really scale up. I would have wanted it to. But I realized in early 1998 that at a certain point, you have to say, well, there is a part of the community out there that isn't appropriate, such as alcohol and firearm sales.

That was a role that I think the vast majority of the community wanted us to take. It was something that they felt that they couldn't do themselves. We did that very reluctantly. So we were very careful always to involve the community in everything that we do. We bounce every idea off the community.

Q: How do you make sure eBay's managers keep doing that as you bring on more and more new employees?

A: The key is keeping the community not only in mind, but involved. It has a lot to do with giving up a bit of control. It's very different from, say, a retail environment, whether you're online or offline. You control the inventory, you control the way that inventory is merchandised to your customers, you control the way the salespeople are trained. Everything is under your control. But at eBay, the customer experience is really not under our control. You can only influence it.

Q: Is that tough for traditional managers to handle?

A: It's a very different way of developing product or marketing plans or whatever than most people are used to. Whenever I talk to people who are relatively new to [working at] eBay, there's always a certain amount of time of adjustment. These people have to get used to not being able to predict exactly what's going to happen and not being able to have complete control. It sometimes take months of deprogramming for our new marketing people to get rid of that instinct.

Q: It seems ironic that eBay started out intending to level the playing field for small businesses and individuals, and now eBay is a big corporation. How do you make those jibe these days?

A: It sure is ironic. I like to think we're a different kind of big company, because of the way we interact with our community. If we lose that, we've pretty much lost everything. If you're starting a revolution and you succeed, then are you still a revolutionary? It's a little bit weird, but I think we still have a long way to go, bringing the level playing field to the rest of the world.

Did I read Ebay are "financially sound from an investment perspective" right? Cheers for the laugh! I would comment more but i'm in the process of smashing up my house so I can drive down its value and then get someone to buy it so it will be a good investment for the future. Problem is I can't find any volunteers who are willing to decorate and restore my smashed up house. LONG LIVE EBID!!!

A very well written conclusion to the ebay saga. Living in a glass house, you shouldn't throw rocks and all that you do, is seen through those glass windows. Policing minor infractions, while permitting the sales of precursory chemical that are restricted my Homeland Security, bring to mind an extreme double standard. The saler of dime store items vs corporate industry. The imbalance so great, that sure, sellers are mad! The fee hikes were merely a last added straw, not the source of all woes.

In the coming weeks more will shake out of this skirmish about who and what sales with a lack of oversight. How ebay responds in the next few weeks will determine whether that fire spreads. The fire as you say is small, but not yet contained.

The Rambling King

Countdown to devastation; aka I Love Ebay



I love Ebay. Because of Ebay, I have been able to make more money, hire employees, buy supplies, purchase, and organize sales. For most of us, Ebay stores are the most profitable way to sell wares. Before the July announcement, the sky was the limit for us here at Ebay. For every 100 new listings we put up, we would regularly sell x% of the listings. We created a profitable business model. We were on a trajectory to have 100,000 unique vintage ads for sale out of our Ebay store by next year. (100,000 listings x .03 each = $3000 month). Final value fees paid to Ebay and Paypal will also proportionately increase with more listings. Obviously, we will not be giving Ebay anywhere near that much money under the new fee structure.



I started my Ebay store after a career in finance & investments. I can tell you that I personally will be shorting Ebay’s stock right near the time of their next profit announcement (Octoberish). Here’s the reason: the ebay bozos have plenty of “gray areas” in their balance sheet & income statement at this point to make October’s numbers sound great, thereby eliminating most investors’ fear. The problem will come after that when they have used up those “gray areas” (income shifting from one enterprise to another, accounting re-evaluations, and so on). In 2007, Ebay will no longer be able to hide this blunder any longer and the investors will punish them. When the stock bottoms out, I will buy it again. Then thanks to the battered price, Yahoo or someone else may come in and either buy Ebay or merge with it. Personally, I much prefer the management of Yahoo over that of Ebay.



This is by far the biggest disappointment from a business partner that I have ever witnessed. It’s like a partner saying to you, “I know you are making money, and so am I, but all that matters is how our investors see things. They want a high turnover on listed inventory. They want us to show a higher percentage of listings sold. The investors decide my salary and not you.” It won’t matter to them if in 2 or 3 quarters, ebay will tank. In the investment world, that is 2 lifetimes from now. But really the problem is that they are looking at the wrong numbers. Ebay is not stocking physical shelves with inventory, we are. We are the ones to be concerned about how fast our items need to sell, not ebay. Look closely at the ebay financial statements and you will learn that store listings are not currently a money losing endeavor for Ebay. Despite the message to the contrary, ebay makes more profit every time someone places a new store listing. The only reason for the increase is to appease investors who are concerned with “turnover.”



I am quite convinced that this is the biggest policy mistake that Ebay has ever made.



Ebay can and just might change their mind about this fee hike; however their focus is investor perception, and implementing a fee hike and then taking it back a few months later may call the leadership into question where jobs would surely be lost.



However, if they don’t reverse the fee increase, they will be the ultimate cause of the demise of this once great company. In my opinion, the store model is the ONLY ebay model with real growth prospects. It allowed people to try to sell items that wouldn’t sell as well at auction, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s almost everything. Over the last 12 months, 90 percent of our sales came from store items. Auctions are a promotional “Gimmick” for our store nothing more. Yes I could simply list all my store items in Fixed Price auctions every week if there was no store. Check my numbers, would that pay off for me? No chance.



We considered 3 reactions:



1. Impulsive/reactive – immediate closing of store, listings. This is an emotional reaction to the perceived betrayal of our partnership by Ebay.



2. Weak/impotent –choosing to stay and “adjust” to Ebay’s new idea of what the marketplace should be.
a. The problem is, as most of us bigger sellers can attest, Ebay appears clueless as to what customers really want. My customers want to be able to buy what I’m selling without waiting around a week. Furthermore, many of my items take weeks and even months to find a customer looking for it. The store model is a perfect profitable model for my store and most other collectibles sellers.



3. Pro-active – Realizize that you can’t just shut your business down in protest, that will only hurt yourself. Take your time and slowly phase out of Ebay. And even give them a little bit of time to take back this mistake. I don’t believe for one minute that they will not reconsider this outrageous fee hike when they begin to see the impact. Unfortunately, they really won’t see the impact until early next year and by that time it will likely be too late to bring the disenfranchised sellers back thereby permanently scarring Ebay. Full time sellers should already be registering domain names and buying advertising on other sites. If you sell something that people want, eventually they will find you. Your goal is to find your customers and bring them to your website. If like our traffic reports, you see that the majority of your customers were referred to ebay from google searches. Cut out ebay and give the money to google and yourself.




Don’t worry about the day to day numbers of listings/stores or whatever. In the short term, these numbers are highly variable and the accuracy is still ultimately dependent on information provided by Ebay. If there are 15 million listings on Ebay today and one year from now there are 15 million listings on Ebay, investors will be very angry. Growth is everything and if the company doesn’t grow by the consensus 27%, the stock price will be battered. Battered stock prices usually means that people get fired and are usually replaced with people who have an opposite perspective. In other words, at the next shareholder meeting, Cobb & Whitman should be fired! Replace them with people who see the incredible growth opportunity of ebay stores. Return ebay to it’s place as an innovator, as a wealth creator. I for one place a vote of “no confidence” in the current ebay management.





Best wishes to all.

Jeff

What truely saddens me is for all its money, ebay gets more publicity for being unethical and deceitful and this fee hike then it could actually buy.

Why not give the alternative sites as much free publicity also?

Sadly, there are (currently) no alternatives to eBay.

What company in their right mind would increase fees when traffic is down by 10 million visitors a day and product sell through rates are at an all time low?

eBay.

Ty Tribble, your right! There are no alternatives to the barely ethical ebay... But I can name SEVERAL other ETHICAL auction sites.

Its a shame that a company who can treat its customers (they people who pay for the services) the way it does gets all this free publicity. Yet sites who could use some good publicity during this time as alternative selling sites won't get mentioned.

EBAY isn't the only game in town. THERE are other sites, sites with owners who care about their customer base. But I honestly think that most are so addicted to ebay's kool-aid that they can't think.

There are alternatives to eBay in many non-US markets. One such site in Australia (oztion.com.au) has had a membership increase of around 15,000 members in the past month, all of whom are credit card or address verified (or both), and keep in mind that Australia only has a total population of around 20million...

I've been watching this whole thing unfold and done a great deal of reading and research and I'm convinced that eBay are going to start scaling back and concentrating on the North American site and let the rest go down the gurgler.

For eBay, that might be a very GOOD move, and those of us who are nothing more than a minor blip on eBay's radar (i.e., non-Americans) are happy to support our own home-grown local alternatives.

Thank you Sheldon, Thank you.

As you know, I have been one of the loudest speakers over there at eBay since this situation reared it's ugly head. Although some of my assertions may have been "off the mark" the fact still remains that we know that something BIG is wrong at eBay.

I mounted a VERY visible protest in one of the message boards over there. I am personally responsible for directing many of your responders right here to you. Although they monitored us VERY closely and picked us off one by one, as they could, by applying their loosely written and arbitrarily applied rules, some how I escaped the ax. Until one fine day:

The day that I expressed a particularly disturbing revelation that I had come upon, using my own experience as a former Wisconsin State Certified officer of the court, they axed me from the board. I'm not sure why, but they shut me up.

If you want to get a look at what the REAL protest looks like in there go to:

eBay> community> discussion boards> The Soap Box> Raising Fees??????

Read all that you can stand. Try to sort the truth from the banter and hype.

Use your head and tell us what you see.

Again, I thank you Sheldon.

Gary E. Sattler
Former WI State Certified Animal Control Officer

I do customer service for one of these alternative sites, and I would dearly love to promote that site here. I would like an affirmative confirmation that other sites would get some of the publicity that is so freely given to ebay.

Great post. Judging by the comments, Ms. Whitman should look outside more.
We've been selling Harley-Davidson (used only) on ebay for years. The amount of fraudulent bidders/winners we encounter is amazing.
I really don't have the answers, but there must be some way to more thoroughly vet users.
Buyers are constantly battling this, and getting refunds is very challenging (and yes, they are nice though).
Ebay is the only game for us, as Google Base, Craigslist, etc. have nowhere near the reach.
$2.5 billion for Skype?
How about improving the existing product?
Thanks,
EJ Passeos

My message to eBay:


Dear eBay,

You are devastated, or soon to be. We have tried to save you. Our help has been denied. We tried to counsel you. You would not listen. The share holders are listening but they have given all they can. You have their money. They are angry.

This is my last plea. Let us save you please!

Step back, for a moment, listen to what we have to say. Your time grows short. We can save you and we're not yet too far away. Turn to us. We love you. We grieve for you. We want nothing other than what is best for us all. We have willingly absorbed the costs of showing you that.

I am just one man. But, I am a man who can put you back on the path to recovery. Give me your time. Put me in place. I will restore your friendships. I will restore your good standing. I will restore your peace. I have that ability. I offer my gifts for your taking.

I can, in 30 days, restore your client base.
I can, in 30 days, restore your employee morale. I can, in 30 days, restore your stock value.

I can in 30 days create for you, your clients, your investors and the public a vision for eBay that will carry it into the next decade with safety, prosperity and peace.

I challenge you eBay to take up where Pierre Omyidar left off. You have abandonded your roots. You have departed from the community we created.

We miss you eBay, please come back to us.

It is not WE who are leaving.

It is YOU who have left us.

We DO love you eBay... please don't go away.

Gary E. Sattler

Laus Deo

You have truly captured it. If eBay would actually do half of those procedures maybe than it would feel more like a partnership rather than butting heads every few months.

eBay provides a venue to sell items online. EBay does not force anyone to sell on their site. Anyone can leave and stop listing at any time. EBay does not hold a gun to anyone's head forcing them to sell anything. EBay does not make anyone buy anything either. EBay is a business.

If a person wants to sell on eBay they must adhere to eBays rules and regulations. Sellers who sell dollar store items ($1.00-$10.00) will probably not make any profit on eBay due to their fee structure. This cannot be helped( We have too many dollar stores already) We would all like to become millionaires selling on eBay, lol.

eBay was started selling collectables. I see listings all the time that no body would ever buy. The market will only bear so much. It is not eBays fault if your items do not sell. They do not guarantee a sale by listing on eBay. Stop blaming eBay! Take a good look at your business! Is it right for eBay?

If your not making any money then it's time to fold up shop. Demographics have also changed since eBay started 10 years ago. Baby Boomers rule the internet, and will for years to come. EBay buyers are aging, buying different things from what they did 10 years ago. Time will tell if eBay survives as we know it now. All things change, even eBay.

All good points Tracy...Back to "grow or die"...not blame. Ebay should still promote the highest of business ethics standards and not let things slip as THEY grow.

Perhaps another message is that someone should start "eBay II" and gather up the low end of the market in a smaller scale enterprise which you imply the market is ready for.

Tracy Riggs states

eBay was started selling collectables. I see listings all the time that no body would ever buy. The market will only bear so much. It is not eBays fault if your items do not sell. They do not guarantee a sale by listing on eBay. Stop blaming eBay! Take a good look at your business! Is it right for eBay?

I agree that it is your choice wether you use ebay or not
this is precisely what is happening and why if they are not careful they will implode

stores were opening in the UK ( where is sell my collectables ) and people were being ACTIVLY ENCOURAGED by eBay to open and stock stores. Earlier this year a small fee increase was announced and it did not attract ANY attention as the sellers were happy ( as happy as anyone can be about any increase )
stores kept listing items on .co.uk and people kept listing core items as well
in fact the % was roughly 50/50 store to core
a good business model that could have been used throughout the rest of the company strangely enough the day after the price hike was announced many stores received promotional packs regarding stores

ebay IS only a platform that introduces people to each other .... if we dont like the service we can do what you suggest .. leave

that will start a chain of events hard to stop

1/. Fewer items for sale
2/. More chance of being scammed
3/. Stores leaving will take some customers to other sites that would have not used had it not been for the store they use moving
4/. this in turn will mean fewer buyers
5/. Fewer buyers means fewer sales
6/. fewer sales means less use of paypal ( an ebay company )
7/. paypal profits falling mean a price increase to compensate
8/. this will mean fewer people will sell items on ebay due to the double whammy of paypal and listing fees rising

and then its back to point 1

as you can see once it starts it will be a very hard circle to break