The Nature of Change

Yesterday while I was being lazy watching reruns of Ice Road Truckers and napping, two of my favorite bloggers were busy, very busy.

Scott Pooler at Trading Assistant Journal has an immensely interesting (to me) article on changes eBay has recently made to its affiliate program, and potential consequences thereof.

Randy Smythe on My Blog Utopia! wrote on the subject of change which has been on my mind today. He also wrote a separate post comparing Amazon to eBay in apples to apples mode. Good stuff and food for thought, almost as much non ranting reasoned brain food in the early comments as in the post.

Onward; the nature of change...

Full disclosure: I am at the life stage where change, simply for the sake of change is unattractive. I tend to look at change very closely to see if there are benefits to ME.

Change on eBay this year has been and is continuing to be overwhelming. Not only the announced changes, and the revisions to announced changes but the unannounced quietly implemented changes have devastated sellers.

What is the biggest change?

To me, the biggest change in connection with eBay this year is not the changes to feedback, including DSRs, the fee decrease paired with the 'adjustment' or even the unfinding of Best Match, it is the divisive and adversarial tone that pervades the whole site. It is malicious, petty and almost gleeful from the upper stratosphere of executive offices through the Public Relations department right down into the telephone banks of Customer Service (for PowerSellers only) and it is aimed at sellers.

* eBay is no longer the seller's business partner.

* eBay is the guardian and protector of buyers from the bad sellers. Increasingly, bad sellers are defined as non PowerSellers.

* The real bad sellers are left undisturbed because the theory is that the DSRs will sort them out and route them off the site, meanwhile burned buyers are collateral damage who may be offered coupons as compensation. Good luck with that.

* PowerSellers are promoted as being eligible for all the discounts and goodies which causes resentment of them from the smaller sellers.

* Meanwhile PowerSellers are quietly loosing their perks because the goal posts shift and it is hard to make goals if you don't know what you are aiming at.

* Buyers are educated and encouraged to find fault with nearly impossible expectations of sellers.

eBay has become a stew of nastiness. Little sellers against big sellers, buyers against all sellers, all sellers wondering where the nice friendly buyers from the old days went and eBay stirring the cauldron with a big spoon.




Y'all come back!

Its Saturday, Lets Go Holoholo

Holoholo is a Hawaiian word, it means something along the lines of a fun trip, goofing off. As with so much in the islands it is also a hula, learned by little kids and remembered always. Here is Holoholo Ka'a, from the days when a ride in a car was something special. Listen carefully, there is an english verse towards the end.




Now that we are in the mood, first stop Genuine Seller, Mr 'How to Amazon', Steve Lindhorst, author of Selling On The River, is an ex-eBay employee and an excellent writer. Read a recent post "eBay and New Coke - Lessons Lost", no rant just a succinct analogy.

We've all been in those malls on the edge of town that only have a couple of second rate shoe stores and a lot of closed stores - after a time or two of not finding what you came for, you don't go back right?

Next stop The Brews News who has an excellent post on the fallacies of the PowerSeller discounts written from the viewpoint of a PowerSeller, and someone who walks the walk, daily. Here is a taste:

In our business, we always prioritize orders that are placed through our website and through Amazon because the rewards for shipping timely are greater for us on those venues. We still ship eBay orders timely, just not necessarily the same day or the next day. And that is because even if we ship eBay orders 2 or 3 days after we receive them, our DSR for Shipping Time will never fall below our DSR for Shipping & Handling. We provide very good service to our eBay customers but we provide the BEST customer service to buyers who purchase from us elsewhere.

A quick hop across the pond to international eBay trader Ed at Buildaskill who highlights yet another example from the dirty tricks (or is it just plain incompetency, you decide) department at eBay. Check your invoices!

On to my Twitter friend Randy Smythe, the master of concise and incisive, on his My Blog Utopia! for a very interesting post on traffic sources.

Scott Pooler at Trading Assistant Journal has an informative piece on a nifty free tool.

Finally check this out, full disclosure: There are mature words in this blog, if this bothers you please don't go there!

I hope you enjoyed going holoholo with me,

Y'all come back

Why Buy From Buy.com on eBay? Not for Value!

These days eBay is all about 'buyer experience' and eBay has a mission to provide a 'more retail like experience for our buyers'. Those quotes are both examples of Bayspeak from Stephanie Tilenius. Sounds good, but what does it mean? eBay is just a venue, unlike the highly successful Amazon which is a vendor as well as a venue. eBay does not source, sell or ship product but instead provides a platform or venue for vendors. Vendors do have buyers but for eBay to claim those buyers as their own opens up all sorts of very interesting legal implications, but I digress.

On May 2nd eBay was 'outed' by Randy Smythe on his blog My Blog Utopia and forced into hurried transparency on a done deal with Buy.com. As the cat romped among the pigeons eBay Smoke & Spin man Usher Lieberman Bayspoke:

“eBay is aggressively using price as a lever to improve the value and selection on eBay.com. Consistent with our goals, we have entered into a partnership with Buy.com to bring their new-in-season merchandise onto eBay.com. We expect to learn a great deal from this partnership and we will build upon the results.”

"Improve the value and selection"

This caught my attention right smart! I like value! After a bit of a tussle (I like definition #3) using eBay's mah-vel-ous search I found Buy.com sells under the user ID buy and also has an eBay store. The store has a small discreet banner saying "Welcome Ebay Customers!"

I picked an item about to end; a hardcover book History, Literature, and Society in the Book of Acts with FREE SHIPPING for a mere $110. Just thrilled to see it had no bids yet (item ended with no bids)I hustled over to Amazon where I found it for $92.10 also with FREE SHIPPING. Hmmmm. My buyers mind tells me that given an equal perceived value between vendors on this new book, Amazon.com at $17.90 less is the better value.

Undaunted by my abject failure to find value in this partnership I tried again. Maybe a nice new game for the kiddies at $9.99 but no free shipping on this one, add $5.20 S&H (which seems a bit steep for 9.6oz shipping weight) for a total price of $15.19. Over at Amazon I found the identical item from Amazon seller eToys, same price but only $3.99 S&H, a savings of $1.21. My perception of value says AMAZON!

Third time is the charm. My eye was caught by this totally unintelligible title "NEW OMNT 2 SHLF FLT PNL FLR STND UP - 50" PCK 2 BOXS" IT turned out to be an OmniMount STUDIO 4B 2-Shelf Flat Panel Floor Stand, and who'da thunk that! OK, Price $799.95 plus $150 S&H, total $949.95. Back to Amazon where seller TheFactoryDepot has the same item for $551.27 plus $198.81 S&H, total $750.08
This represents a $200 (21%+) savings over eBay's buy.com value.

We are not done yet. Google Shopping found the same item from ProDigitalMall for a stunning $484.85 plus $233.16 S&H, total $718.00 and this is a whopping $231.95 savings (almost 25%) over the eBay price.

Message to buyer: Do your homework, you will find better value selection elsewhere, and as a high value bonus you will not have to deal with eBay or PayPal, you can pay with Google Checkout.

Y'all come back and be sure to click VICTORIOUSLY on any interesting links in the sidebar!

A Level Playing Field, redefined

Just a few days ago we were treated to an 'interview' of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar by CEO John Donohoe by eBayINK blog. In the third clip Pierre stumbled through the now famous level playing field speech

"...to have people by virtue of their stature outside of the eBay community somehow be treated better—special deals behind the scenes because they’re a big retailer and we want to get them to come on eBay, that kind of stuff. That would have been, that's a disaster. That is what I meant by level playing field."

which is now receiving the full PR spin via eBayINKblog. as quoted here

It’s my assertion that Pierre was talking about the conditions and approach to the Marketplace at the company’s founding. It has obviously evolved since then and it’s pretty clear that eBay has been, and continues to, expand and experiment with new pricing and business models on the site. Again, all geared at providing the best possible buyer experience. (I know, I know, there is PR-hack / kool-aid speak in that sentence… I just can’t help it sometimes).

Loosely translated as "that's what he said but not what he meant"

The reason for all the spin is the astonishing news (NOT) that Buy.com, which has been selling on eBay since December of last year, has cut a special deal, congratulations to ex eBay seller Randy Smythe on his remarkable nose for news.

Playing with numbers, a single DVD Flubber is listed on Amazon.com at $12.49 plus $2.98 shipping (assuming you don't take advantage of Amazons free shipping by spending $25) and on Buy.com's eBay store at $12.63 plus $3.40 S & H, a difference of $0.56. If Buy.com were paying standard eBay fees their IF and FVF (0.35 + 1.11= 1.46) together with PayPal fees (0.30 + 1.9% = 0.60) would be $2.06, (less 15% PS discount off FVF = 0.17) total $1.89, if they can keep their DSRs up. I think we can safely assume they are not paying standard fees.

It will be interesting to see the response of major sellers to this news, especially those who are not getting PowerSeller discounts and are about to loose PowerSeller status altogether.


Next post . . . Who knows! . . . Y'all come back and be sure to click VICTORIOUSLY on any interesting links in the sidebar!

A Silver Lining to eBay's Digital Dark Cloud?

From a recent press release:

For several months, Amazon.com has been adding more features and enhancing the functionality of its mobile website for customers who want to shop using the browser on their mobile phone. April 2nd 2008 Amazon.com announced the addition of TextBuyIt, the latest in a series of mobile offerings for Amazon.com customers.

“With today’s launch of TextBuyIt, any Amazon.com customer can now use any mobile device to shop and buy from Amazon.com, at anytime, anywhere they are,” said Howard Gefen, Director of Amazon Mobile Payments. “With TextBuyIt, if you’re walking out of a concert and want to buy a CD from the artist you just saw, or if you’re at dinner and a friend tells you about a great book you should read, all you have to do is get out your mobile device, send a text message to Amazon, reply to the response, confirm your order, and your item will be on its way. “It’s incredibly simple and convenient.”

In recent months, Amazon.com customers have used their mobile devices to purchase everything from books, to big screen HDTVs to $30,000 watches using Amazon's mobile website.

Contrast this with eBay's recent policy change confining digital goods to their Classified section. eBay's Brian Burke, Director Global Feedback Policy stated that this retrogressive step was to preserve the integrity of the Feedback system,

Digital goods are often reproduced at little to no cost to the seller. On eBay, this creates the potential for Feedback Manipulation (both real and perceived).

Strangely, at the recent Workshop for digital sellers Jim "Griff" Griffith, Dean of eBay Education, was pushing eBook sellers to place their books on other media.

The new policy also presents intriguing marketing opportunities for the enterprising seller of digital content to add value to their content by offering it on media that can be used for other purpose. For example, offering one or more eBooks or templates on a USB flash drive, SD, or Compact Flash memory card.

A quick search for 1G USB flash drive on eBay produced hundreds of listings starting at 1c with $8.99 S&H. This Marketing Solution will financially advantage eBay while simultaneously preventing feedback manipulation? How? It does raise the cost of buying feedback if feedback manipulators were stupid enough not to go look for a cheaper item.

The predictable furor from sellers of digital media, who were effectively put out of business on less than one weeks notice has possibly had one good result. Zipidee the Digi-Goods Marketplace is waiting to welcome them with open arms and has added an eBook category to facilitate the transaction. Zipidee has a rapidly expanding seller network of more than 1,000 content producers and distributors and over 150,000 repeat customers.

eBay’s recent decision to de-list digital sellers from its auction and fixed price listings has created a huge opportunity for us.

said Henry Wong, Zipidee CEO

“From its inception, Zipidee has embodied an open marketplace where video and audio creators have complete freedom to sell their digital products, at whatever price they choose, and in any category they want. Now we’re extending the same opportunity to eBook publishers. eBay’s decision to only list digital goods in the obscure Classified Ads is akin to hiding a needle in a haystack. This will dramatically reduce the monetization of sellers’ digital goods”

he added.

Having checked the Zipidee fee structure, ex-eBay sellers will need to re-evaluate their business plans. I believe craft related digital sellers will be better served at Etsy but others may find Zipidee to be the better solution compared to eBay Classified.