What Goes Around

Aphorisms of the day:-

What goes around comes around.
Pride goes before a fall.

I just read one of the poorest excuses for a blog ever, at the Wall Street Journal of all places. A rehash of rants from February paired with words of wisdom from a Guru and not worth wasting time on other than the comments.

I am beginning to regard most market analysts and 'journalists' with scorn. The shame is that people who read them for information may well be more informed than the writer. If they are not, they will never know they have been fed inaccuracies and downright wrong information. This is a disgrace.

If sellers are paying for listings that are hidden they will not list.
If buyers can not find what they are looking for sales will drop.
If a venue fosters an atmosphere of dislike and mistrust, visiting there will not be a pleasant experience and visits will drop.

What goes around comes around, or, to put it another way "they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same" (Job 4:8)

eBay did not become a mega-giant one size fits all sales venue overnight. Neither will any of the new ‘alternatives’, but if sellers start listing on the ones that have Google feed and fit their buyer demographic; then as eBay provides a deteriorating buyer & seller experience so the market will shift.



In the words of the immortal Charles Schultz

"No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it."

Small sellers grew eBay to what is was a year ago, it is on the downward slope now but with the help of Google Shopping search small sellers can grow replacements.


Y'all come back!

A Message From Australia on Change at eBay

"To me, the biggest change in connection with eBay this year..."

Hmmm, yes, it really is only this year. It feels like half of the ten and a half year period that I have been on eBay, but it really is only this year. There have been adversarial issues in the past, but nothing that prepared eBay's actual clientele for the treatment they have gotten this year. I am sure that there were cheers from some sellers when it was announced that Meg Whitman was departing from the eBay corporate structure, but I suspect most of those who were cheering would welcome her back with open arms if she returned to eBay now - assuming of course that those who were alert enough to the issues that Ms Whitman presented, have persisted with eBay this far since.

Some of the shifts are downright bizarre in the business sense. It is one thing to accept that there is a need to keep buyers happy so that they will return to the site and spend money and keep the wheels of commerce turning, but this years shifts in attitude, have created an illogical aura that the buyer is eBay's customer, and the seller is a supplier who is not to be trusted even though they are the ones who pay eBay's bottom line from all angles. PayPal is free to buyers, the so-called "protection" insurance scam is free to buyers, and of course the sellers (rightly) pay the listing fees and commissions for the items they sell, but sellers who attempt to pass on their costs and fees at any point in the transaction are now to be held in contempt (even though the majority of buyers actually see through the flaws in this logic).

Sellers are now the enemy in eBay's eyes, and in order to stop off-site sales and to increase the use of PayPal, eBay is attempting to convince the buyers of this. If they succeed, though, why would buyers return to eBay at all?

So the eBay seller is now an outcast in their own marketplace. The current and recent changes have removed everything intuitive from the search engine on eBay, and punishes sellers for having the audacity to try to build a profit margin into their business, while eBay itself steadily increases the fee structures imposed on sellers. My own business is probably paying at least 25% more in fees this year to eBay, through the listing fee "reductions" and "free" gallery adjustments at the beginning of the year on the USA site, and through the enforced acceptance of PayPal on the Australian site, add to this the steadily increasing postage costs and the inescapable increases in fuel costs which both affect every eBay business but are beyond eBay's scope and control, and I am thankful that I sell old and unusual items which create auction competition and a decent profit margin - I don't know how anyone can "retail" new stock on eBay. At the same time as eBay reaps their increased fees though, they are "rewarding" and "incenting" sellers to REDUCE their prices and offer free shipping - those who don't are punished through poor search exposure and are effectively being labeled greedy and arrogant by, umm, the greedy and arrogant.

The change has been constant and relentless this year for both eBay's customers, and those who buy on the site. Buyers I speak to in person complain of constantly having to relearn how to use the site, how unnecessary most of the change seems, and some reduce the amount they use the site for these reasons. Having to re-adjust each time you buy is just hard work, and becomes hard to justify when it is so constant. Everything that made this marketplace work is being interfered with, and yet the marketplace still works in spite of the way that eBay manages it and interferes with it. How this business model can survive though is beyond me, other than it's mere market dominance meaning that it continues to steamroll through eBay's section of the overall marketplace, replacing it's cast off sellers and buyers at a fairly steady rate. In doing so though, even if it remains a place of commerce that is viable to some, eBay has trashed it's brand beyond recognition this year. Sellers like me continue because, at this stage, it is still viable for my own business model and lifestyle, but any sense of loyalty that I had to eBay has been killed this year. I have plans loosely in place so that I can walk away from the site as soon as it is either nonviable, or I am squeezed out overnight by either policy changes or just waking to find that I am not a registered user. So be it.

Ranting yet again, Kevin

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!

Update EBS Liquidation and Investigation

For victims that have not received the EBS liquidators report, please contact:

SV Partners liquidators
phone: 07 3310 2000
email: ebs@svp.com.au

they will place you on the unsecured creditors list, and at the moment it looks like you may receive around 30% of your money once EBS' assets are sold.

You can also try for a Visa/Mastercard refund. In Australia, as in the USA, MasterCard® and Visa® Card Association rules and regulations govern liability with respect to disputed transactions; which includes a 90 day window of opportunity for chargebacks. In the event that a merchant collapses then the acquirer bank (the bank which issued the credit card) meets its scheme obligations and then gets into line with the rest of the unsecured creditors for whatever it is owed. Contact your bank.


If you paid with PayPal and have been refused a refund, ask again. Ask to speak to a PayPal supervisor, be prepared to argue a lot. You may get a refund, others have! As is usual with eBay a 'wait patiently' announcement was made on the Round Table board on 29th July, and nothing since.

Detective Senior Constable Michelle Cavanagh, a member of the fraud squad at Queensland Police, said she was waiting for information from the liquidator to determine where all the money has gone, and whether anything illegal has taken place. The Queensland Police fraud department had received 16 complaints so far, she said. An investigation is in process but it could be months until the investigation is complete.

Y'all come back!