eBay suffers 13% drop in auctions during boycott
By Triston McIntyre
For many people today, eBay isn’t just a place to participate in the sales and purchases of auctions — it is a way of life. That way of life was drastically challenged when eBay recently announced negative changes to the fees and feedback system which resulted in a seller boycott. The boycott is definitely having an impact, causing a 13% drop in total site auctions.
The drop in auction listings has been monitored by medved.net and dealscart.com, which claim that listings have gone down to thirteen million since the beginning of the boycott Monday of last week, according to USA Today.
The changes to eBay’s feedback and fee systems aren’t horrible for buyers, but are terrible for sellers. Though listing fees are slightly lower, completion fees are significantly higher; additionally, sellers may no longer leave feedback for buyers.
The changes to the listing fees and selling fees obviously reflect a greater percentage of completed sales than previously in eBay’s history. Most sellers work diligently to list and market their products so some sort of sale is completed; by increasing the completion fee, eBay is just restructuring its system to better benefit eBay…not sellers.
Furthermore, the change so sellers can’t leave buyers negative feedback has huge implications. Sellers rely on negative feedback to protect against a flood of buyers who have no real responsibility once they participate in an auction. Where buyers were once accountable for bidding on auctions and then not following through or making the transaction difficult for the seller, that responsibility is gone.
Sellers will suffer greatly from this; sellers rely on these safeguards as many sellers support themselves with their eBay auction business. That is exactly why there’s any boycott worth discussing.
If the boycott doesn’t affect the changes to eBay, I would expect to see sellers start initiating changes of their own. For instance, some sellers refuse to allow bids from users who don’t have a certain level of feedback or have a certain number of completed transactions.
If it was me, I would do something drastic like only accept bids from users who had a certain number of completed sales as well as purchases — and who had stellar feedback. The nice thing about eBay is sellers still have a lot of control over their own auctions.
The boycott will conclude tomorrow; hopefully sellers regain some of the power they held before the changes.
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February 25th, 2008
The boycott continues from today until March 3rd. It has been extended because ebay has not acknowledged the sellers complaints, let alone addressed or remedied the problems. I have permenantly ceased using ebay, and I was primarially a buyer and an occasional seller. I will not spend money at a business who says my money is only good enough when I am buying, however if I want to sell they will be happy to charge me 66% more to do so and openly state their disdain for me and my “flea market” items while they look down their noses at me and my money. No thank you! I have moved to ecrater and I could not be happier! http://theeclecticcollector.ecrater.com/
February 25th, 2008
About a year ago I asked them why the listing fees were so high and was told it was to keep good quality merchandise on the site
and if the listing fees were lowered there would we an over saturation of poor quality and duplicate items. Now they have changed
their model by lowering listing fees. Their business model has been suffering and their decreasing traffic is now equal to the traffic
they had in 2002.
Some retail analysts have agreed to having a one way feedback system like other retail sites is a good idea but what they seem to forget is that on Ebay a customer is not a customer until someone has paid for something. Seller’s would have to stop filing non paying bidder responses and end up paying double fees to salvage their ratings. Larger sellers who have other outlets will be damaging their reputation on the new feedback system if they have their own retail site or store by having negative comments from Ebay users who simply don’t pay for the item. What seller would want reviews for something they didn’t even sell. The DSR requirements are marginal to get a 15% discount off the fees. I have seen sellers with zero shipping cost barely maintaining customer satisfaction for shipping cost.
They really needed to stabilize their situation but instead of throwing water on the fire they have actually thrown gasoline on it
with their upcoming feedback changes. Sure the stock is down a little bit and has been on a downslide since 2004 but in
my opinion an investor will be lucky to get out now.
Our company has shut down our listings and may not be able to sell again on EBAY with the new feedback changes. The pricing
structures do not matter to us as we could have passed that on to the buyer. Our EBAY fees in 2007 were in the 6 digits and our
sales in the 7 digits. This lost revenue is real for EBAY and this is just from one of their many lost customers this week since
the strike.
This is what happens when a company so large makes such drastic changes. It would have been better to announce and implement it in steps.
For instance, they should have done the price changing first, then the paypal escrow change and then alter the feedback system
with a few months span in between.
Why would a company so large make such a major change to their successful recipe? Businesses
always have peaks and valleys, even McDonalds has suffered market share in the past but would they alter the Big Mac? Any smart
business person knows that something else might be up. Is it because they want to batter their own to stock and buy it back at fire sale prices?
Or is this something an ego driven Meg approved knowing it will tank after she is gone, only to make her actions in the past look better?
In my opinion, Ebay should stop trying to be like Amazon but instead should put focus back to their roots as an outlet for used
and unique merchandise. It was a great place to recycle with the new and the old along side each other. They have obviously forgotten
that many smaller sellers sell their old stuff to buy new stuff on ebay. These smaller sellers who want new merchandise usually just
go to the big box stores.
In the past Ebay has kept their competition at bay but with that gap now closing they have opened up an invite to large companies who could fill
the new void. Believe me Google is not blind and has to see this opportunity and could probably cook something up in a
matter of weeks that will send former and existing sellers running to them leaving Ebay on their knees.
My advice for used and unique sellers is to shop and sell on alternative sites like ioffer.com. For new items Amazon will be a great
alternative. Ioffer has already spiked up to 1/6th the listings quantity that ebay has currently. And if you own Ebay stock DUMP it
while you can before the ramifications are played out.
February 25th, 2008
I believe that Ebay is being as evasive about their listings being down just as they were being dishonest about their fees being reduced!! They lie all of the time to their sellers and buyers, and I can only imagine the lies they tell to their stock holders!
This boycott of Ebay is not over… It’s just begun… They will be exposed and investigated to the fullest… Just like the bogus 3 million dollar sale…. They called the News the second the auction closed without having evidence that it was a real buyer… In the end, it was bogus, so the man who owns the collection is left with ebay fees for the listing and NO recourse for the phoney buyer…
And the 3 million record sale at Ebay was done by a bogus buyer!!
What Ebay failed to do was verify the buyer and then notify the News Media that this was a bogus bidder!!
The seller lost out on the listing fees with ebay by a deadbeat bidder; the buyer was suspended as his account is not active…
They did this as a futile attempt to take the focal point off of the continueing BOYCOTT OF EBAY!!
They have rigged their system so that the seller is a sitting duck for any type of con artist imagineable…
They lied about a fee decrease, which was actually a 67% increase in fees for the seller…
They have destroyed the very people who helped them become the big power business that it is…
WE WILL CONTINUE TO BOYCOTT EBAY and make the public and stock holders aware of the lies in this company… They will be investigated for padding sales and deceiptful advertizing schemes…
SHAME ON YOU EBAY!! BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU!!
BOYCOTT EBAY FOREVER!!
February 25th, 2008
I am VERY confused by the fuss. Fees aside, eBay, quite a while ago implemented a stricter Non-Paying-Bidder system which allows sellers to refuse bids from eBay users that have repeatedly not paid for auctions that they have won. This is a MUCH more useful tool than negative feedback ever was. AND the changes to remove negative feedback from non-paying bidders and count feedback from repeat buyers more than once both INCREASE the strength of the feedback system for sellers.
February 25th, 2008
GOOD ON THEM… Until the changes buyers could not leave negative without a negative retaliation from sellers. Now if we get poor quality products and long delivery times we can tell it like it is.
April 24th, 2008
Ebay are simply turning more and more corporate, forcing smaller sellers off their site, and giving more advantages to large business and corporate companies. These changes, combined with ebay’s removal of all digital delivery based items are turning lots of small scale sellers away from ebay, but the real nail in the coffin is actually their best match algorithm which favours bigger more established companies and ensures one off or occasional sellers will not get the same exposure for their items.
Hopefully, iOffer, Ebid, or some of the other auction sites will take advantage of the situation and grow to compete with Ebay!
Dan
http://www.realsubliminal.com
May 27th, 2008
The only reason I have 7 negitive feedbacks out of 850 is that I left negitive for the seller and of course got negitive feedback back. I love the new system. Shipping prices are already down.
August 4th, 2008
Very interesting blog, i have added it to my fovourites, greetings