Gone

Susan became an eBay member September 22nd 1999. A few days after her ninth eBay anniversary an eBay representative told her

"everyone who purchased from your store is eBay's customer and you are nothing but a middleman for eBay's customers".

You can see a screen shot of the original discussion board comment here. This gratuitous insult was the straw that broke the camels back. Susan closed her eBay store this week.

Susan has 1182 transactions, 100% positive feedback and Detailed Seller Ratings of 4.9, 4.9, 4.8 and 4.7. The shipping cost DSR is amazing because Susan sells heavy old vinyl records! She is the epitome of the type of buyer and seller who helped build eBay and her 'eBay roots' were deep. Her eBay history closely parallels my own, she has three weeks 'seniority' to me having been a member since September 22nd, 1999 while I joined October 11th.

Susan did not join the February boycott, nor did she strike in May as so many others did. When I asked if she would allow me to write a profile she said

"Please understand, I don't hate eBay. Because of eBay I was able to start a home based business and build a good rep with my customers. I have experienced many changes over the years with eBay, and kept my mouth shut. I just rolled with the punches and kept singing their praises until this year. I think greed and poor management is hurting them."

Susan's story in her own words; this will sound familiar to many of you.

"I started with eBay September, 1999, looking for a bowl to replace the one I broke a few days earlier. The broken bowl belonged to my mother-in-law and I found one just like it on eBay. The auction was coming to an end, only minutes left and someone outbid me, with 10 seconds left I added one last bid and won. I was hooked.

I began selling little things I didn't want anymore shortly after that and loved to watch the feeding frenzy that took place in the final minute. It was exciting to watch how people reacted to what I called "my junk".

In 2001, I had to have major back surgery. Unable to walk for months, I was told I had no choice, the surgery had to take place. After the surgery I was very limited to what I could do and I began to fight depression.

A friend knowing I once sold on eBay, brought me boxes and boxes of record albums. He told me to add them to my collection or try selling them on eBay. I have collected records since the early 60's and love to show off my collection. Since my living room floor was covered in records I started cleaning them, listening to them, taking pictures and listing them on eBay.

I poured my heart and soul into my business. After selling 10 or so records, I decided to open a store front. Countless hours went into building my store."

Clicking on any picture will take you to that item in Susan's new Bonanzle booth, The Record Hut where her inventory now lives.





Why is Susan no longer selling on eBay?

• Best Match searching is one of my biggest complaints. I can't find my products in search, what makes me think the buyer is going to have any better chance?


• My sales have dropped since May to the point I spend most of my earnings paying the Ebay fees and this month wondering if I will have enough in PayPal to cover those fees.


• Instead of listing new items, it seems most of my time is spent revising to meet their newest rules.


• The DSR "star system" is a complete kick in the teeth to the sellers,


• Only being able to leave a positive for a buyer no matter what they put you through is horrible. Since it started, I have more non-paying bidders than I have had in 9 years.


• Capped shipping has effected my business somewhat. I ship mulitiple records, boxed sets, or 78's not DVDs. When I addressed my concerns about this with a customer rep. I was told, to just had the extra on the starting price of the item. Of course this works for them, the FVF's will go up. And once again, the sellers are suppose to "suck it up".


• Only accepting PayPal is another problem. Many of my buyers pay with personal check or money orders. I have never had a problem with a check or money order, but by requiring PayPal only, it is more money for Ebay.

I had a phone call from an Ebay rep. who wanted to tell me about a wonderful offer for sellers, "free shipping". When I asked who was going to pay for the shipping she replied, "I don't know". I asked if I took my packages to the post office will they accept them without postage, she said, "No". Then who is going to pay for the shipping? She said, "the script I am reading doesn't say." She will probably NOT be one of the 1000 getting laid off. She fits in their customer service perfectly...clueless!!!





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Related Stories:

And Another One Bites the Dust
Hitting the Highway

eBay Scores Twofer on Doughnuts

Just when you think eBay has scored an own goal so many times that the game is over they pull the rabbit out of the hat and do it again.

This time eBay has managed to alienate two completely different groups of sellers, at one stroke. Way to go guys! Doughnuts all round from media and clothing sellers.

What is the cause of the kerfuffle and precisely who is in a state of discombobulation? Remember the listing insertion fee decreases in February with the concurrent adjustments to the Final Value Fee? This is the same play.

There are some differences. The changes are deeper, deeper is Bayspeak for 'more'. We have the decrease in insertion fees and extension of listing duration which could be beneficial if it were not tied to a 'rebalancing' of the Final Value Fee.

Back in February it was an adjustment, that didn't fly. Six months later we are calling it rebalancing and that will not fly either. Its an increase.

Once again it is take it or leave it time for sellers in the USA. eBay said earlier this year that the USA would never be PayPal only. When eBay moves to an all electronic payment marketplace later this year it will effectively be PayPal only because the only alternative offered is not a viable alternative. Propay carries an annual subscription and a higher rate. I covered this back in May.

Here is the official word from the 8/20 Announcements workshop discussion thread.

"eBay will offer several other electronic payment options in addition to PayPal, namely ProPay to start, with more electronic payment providers to be added in coming months. Google's and Amazon's products and services compete with eBay on a number of levels, so we are not going to allow them on eBay."

Take that Google Checkout!

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Bonanzle blog

Can eBay Get Worse For Sellers?

In one word? YES!

Auctionbytes Blog has a post and there is an article and a survey for you to check out.

Lots of rumors flying around. Points to ponder:

High sales season is approaching fast, and in keeping with eBay's customary 'squeeze the seller' policy this is a good time to apply the thumbscrews. If you are still committed to the eBay venue with no viable alternative "Watcha gonna do?"

Bear in mind that this is all speculation and there is no way for a rational person to predict with any certainty which way eBay will go. How could this be better or worse for you as a seller?

I have chosen an item which sold, Fixed Price for $9.99. Shipping on this item, which weighs 14oz packed is $5 and it will ship Priority with delivery confirmation, I will use PayPal and PayPal Shipping. I have not specified cost so there is no profit calculation. Subtract cost from net on sale to get pre-tax profit. Seller is not a PowerSeller.

Note that percentage of 'eBay take' will decrease somewhat for items which sell higher than $25.01 and further decrease for sales over $1000.01

eBay & PayPal 'take' as of today is 19.5% of sale price.















Plan 'A'- no Insertion Fee, 15% FVF on Sale price but not shipping.
eBay & PayPal 'take' is 22.3% of sale price, this is a 2.8% increase, for eBay.














Plan 'B'- no Insertion Fee, 15% FVF on sale price and shipping.
eBay & PayPal 'take' is 29.8% of sale price, this is a 10.3% increase, for eBay.














I have seen many posts today with the writers uttering cries of delight at the prospect of zero insertion fees. Here is one who has completely missed the point; eBay increasing their take on anything that does sell.

As a powerseller with over 20,000 feedback and great DSR. I would list list list and list some more. Everything in my store would be out on auctions. Thats about 15,000 items. Talk about flooding a catagory.

I am not totally convinced that free listing would cause eBay to be flooded. If that was the case why are all the other free to list sites not flooded?

We have to remember that eBay the auction site is a very small part of eBay Inc. Looking at Marketplace (which includes Kijiji, Shopping.com, StubHub, etc) earnings Q1 08, John Donohoe stated that advertising revenues were up 151%. I think advertising is where eBay is going now.

Finally a quote from an interview with Randy Smythe that Ina Steiner did almost two years ago where he asks eBay a speculative question.

What do you want to be? Do you want to be a shopping portal, or a shopping destination? Make up your mind.

They're saying, well we need monetize our null searches, right? We have millions of null searches every single day, we need to monetize that. That's fine. But tell your customers, your sellers, that you're becoming a portal, so they can go and buy keywords ... and move on to their website and not pay you to list product on there.

Points to ponder indeed. I think the evidence is clear, eBay wants to be a shopping portal. If Buy.com is a desirable seller despite a very low sales : listings ratio with free listings, more is better. More space for advertising will do the trick for the next quarter or so. What do you think?



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eBay 'Seller Out of Business Overnight' UPDATE

UPDATE:
A narrow escape for Scott Wingo, read all about it on eBay Strategies Blog

The definition on the video clip is terrible but this is something we are not hearing about in the press on eBay Live 2008. Turn the volume up.



The 'eBay employees' did not seem to have an answer. Scott says they were Channel Advisor's Michael Jones and eBay's Todd Lutwak.

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A Little History

eBay is run by people who have never retailed for a living or been self employed. Selling on eBay is like living on George Orwell's Animal Farm. All sellers are equal only some are more equal than others.

We saw the writing on the wall in 06 when store fees rose nearly 70% but stores inventory became visible in search to compensate. Sales took off and life was good. Two months later we were taken out of search again because "eBay needs to re-balance the marketplace and return to its core values" Translated this means big time sellers of imported junk were seeing declining sell through rates in their auctions due to buyers being able to find fixed price items in stores, and they were complaining, loudly. Management had an epiphany, eBay needed to re-balance, more auctions, less fixed price. Did store fees decline to previous rate, given that what we were paying for in the increase had been withdrawn? Don't be silly! Bait and switch anyone?

Back in 06 it was clear that we had too many eggs in one basket and we began to explore other channels. We explored alternative auction venues, none had the traffic to make the effort worthwhile. We built a website, we promoted it. We learned that if you are not paying 40% of your gross sales to eBay you can survive with less sales. Like most small sellers we were frequent buyers too. As our listing volume declined so did our purchasing volume on eBay.

We remained as eBay sellers through price increase after price increase, cutting overhead to the bone in order to remain competitive in our pricing because there was no viable alternative. This is not true anymore. Venues such as eCRATER, Loudfrog, and Etsy for the hand-crafters and their suppliers are much more viable for sellers.

The three straws that broke this camels back are:

1. Detailed Seller Ratings; which are extremely important to the viability of the seller and framed deceptively to the buyer. For example Shipping Time, on a scale of 1 - 5, 4 is 'quickly' to the buyer who thinks this is a good score. eBay regards 4 as so poor that you are a risky seller, will loose your power seller status with the much hyped 'discounted fees', are restricted to Paypal for payment (who may hold the buyers funds for up to 21 days). eBay ignores the fact that to a buyer speed of shipping has everything to do with when they have their purchase in their hand and nothing to do with how fast the item was packed and taken to the Post Office. Sellers are being rated on UPS and USPS job performance.

Looking at the Shipping and Handling charges ratings raises even more questions. How can FREE SHIP rate less than 5?

2. Feedback. We agree that retaliatory feedback is a problem. Most retaliatory feedback is left by super high volume sellers who use automated like for like programs. When a buyer uses negative feedback to ask the seller a question "When are you going to ship my item?" you can see why the programs are popular. Fixing the problem by preventing use of these programs would make more sense than removing the only tool a seller has to evaluate the buyer.

3. Buyer fraud is increasing and eBay ignores it. They get their fees regardless. Non Paying Bidders are at an all time high, for now. It is going to get worse May 1st. Because verification of Buyer ID is not required any buyer who dirties his ID simply abandons it and gets a nice clean new one. NARU? Not a problem! It is almost pointless to block a bidder. I had one blocked bidder come back three times with a different ID each time to win auctions she had no intention of paying for. I lost money each time and she is still out there.

4. Disrespect for sellers or, as I prefer the word, CONTEMPT. eBay management & their PR department disparage sellers routinely. We are 'just noise', 'flea market sellers' and we must be stupid too. A nickel less up front and 3.5% increase up the rear is not a decrease and we are smart enough to figure that out.

As a seller of high quality new American made greeting cards which I sell from $2 and up, fixed price, eBay & Paypal together take a minimum of 35c IF + 17.5 FVF + 30c + 2.9% = 82.5c (actually higher because Paypal's cut includes 2.9% of S & H) This leaves me with three choices (a) selling below cost, (b) raising prices = declining sales, or, (c) leaving eBay.

So, here we are, two years down the road from "eBay needs to re-balance the marketplace and return to its core values, auction sales" and eBay seems to have turned around and be driving in the other direction. Now we want more fixed price, and will be getting away from auctions as soon as we can.

Hear me well eBay. I will not be bringing back the 3500 multiple quantity listings I had in my eBay store when you shafted me in 06, those listings I removed when you doubled my listing costs in 07, those fixed price listings you would like to charge me 12% final value fees on. I am a businesswoman. I can't run a viable business with my venue micromanaging it.