eBay hands badges to top-rated sellers eBay plans to hand out new discounts and merit badges to big sellers who leave more customers happy. The online auction house said Monday it's conjuring a new "top-rated seller" status to those given high marks in customer feedback. The status nets celebrated sellers a 20 per cent discount on their final value fees while …
Oh, whoopee, a new badge ...
And, if you want to see some very obvious and malicious manipulation of feedback, have a look at
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=sfe17&ftab=AllFeedback&myworld=true
and
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=dser209r&ftab=AllFeedback&myworld=true
So much for eBay system security.
Unfortunately, an MBA apparently only qualifies you to dismantle a company; Donahoe has no concept of the fact that happy customers leads to happy profits: he apparently is still laboring under the delusion that because eBay’s position is so strong (used to be stronger) he can do whatever he likes. I wonder how many more quarters of reducing revenues and profits will convince him (and his board) otherwise? This guy is clearly a fool. And I can only restate my oft used paragraph:
The law of the commercial jungle dictates that Donahoe must eventually go the way of the “kafula” bird (that little African humming bird that, when it becomes demented, flies in ever diminishing circles, at every increasing speed, until …); it’s only a matter of time. But, in the meantime, the question is, can this turkey possibly survive yet another Xmas?
If you want to see a real whinge about eBay, from the buyer’s point of view, go to
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033
Basically they are a bunch of w@nkers. Every single policy change has been to gouge more out of the seller and remove more and more incentive to actually use their service to sell items.
Make you give free delivery on certain items so any profit margin you had is taken away? Don't worry, you'll get a nice shiny badge! They can shove it where their heads are obviously stuffed.
Before anyone goes on about excessive delivery charges - I charged £1 to £1.50 on top of the actual postage cost to cover the cost of packaging, so there was nothing being made there.
No wonder eBay are losing more sellers than they are attracting each month. Frankly eBay and their scamming buyers are welcome to each other.
I'm surprised there are any small sellers left after eBay's ongoing attempts to get rid of them with their idiot CEO's changes. I left eBay Australia early 2008, couldn't stand it any more, every single change was either anti-seller or more-money-for-greedy-eBay or both. eBay could write the textbook on how to alienate customers to the point where they leave.
Bro as much as I respect what that person said and you trying to tell us about that post, but seriously bro. . .WARN US ABOUT A WALL OF TEXT NEXT TIME.
The person who posted that had a very well detail and outlined point but seriously holy fuck bro. I think I just lost 5 years of my life reading that.
Otherwise NJ cluing atleast me intot that. It was a rather interesting read )well till i passed out on keyboard :P)
TTFN
@ first AC re grammar:
"eBay said Monday" - why would they say a thing like that? Mr. Modine should have said that "eBay said, on Monday, ...". I give it a B+ at best.
As for eBay, yes, I understand why people are cynical (although I'm sure there's more than a slight element of greed on the buyers' side and a touch of "if it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't") but basically it's common sense and a little research before hitting the 'Commit to Buy' button. I have been on eBay since 2001 and have gotten, and continue to find, some wonderful bargains and rare items.
Last year, as a birthday present, I bought my dad a pulp sci-fi magazine from the very month of his birth, which he loved. I was also able to find a (genuine, original) copy of Life Magazine from the exact day of my mother-in-law's birth. Both of these were something like 10 USD with 10-15 USD postage to Finland, which I consider to be an extremely good price! A little bit of effort and common sense is all it takes.
Sorry about that James; that's why I put the synopsis at the beginning. Did I, however, demonstate to your satisfaction that the eBay auction system is "clunky" to the point of being a joke; but not so funny for naive buyers.
But, what's the conclusion: eBay is bording on being a criminal organisation. Indeed another who posts on various forums refers to them as "eBafia" (they take a percentage of everything, cover up criminal activity after the event, and have an aversion to any regulation of their criminal activities).
Oh come on, thousands of feedback, generally positive, from established buyers. He doesn't mean the seller is manipulating it; a better word would have been sabotage. Suddenly loads of negative feedback from buyers who are quite new to eBay and have quite low feedback themselves (meaning it's probably been farmed round in circles from a dozen fake accounts and isn't genuine)? Unlikely. Then you cross-reference between the two profiles and you see it's the same feedback from the same users on both... I smell a conspiracy.
Might as well rant here.
Sold a festival ticket (at a loss - just to get rid of it) for £90 and eBay now want £9 - not including what they already extorted through PayPal (gotta be at least another £6). Then Royal Mail get their grubby hands on a good chunk of the cash too.
Well eBay can keep emailing me about that £9 till the cows come home as far as I'm concerned.
If the money was being used to fight the scammers and keep them off eBay then fair play. But it clearly isn't being used in that way, they're just lining their pockets.
If this looks too wordy for you, then instead of complaining, please skip and move on to the next comment ! :)
eBay is a business. It needs to earn money to survive. If you were to sell your stuff from a shop then you would be paying rent, rates, taxes, electricity bills, advertising bills to the local newspaper, insurance, oh yes, and WAGES to the person/people who man the shop and can't have another job whilst the shop is open.
I suppose you might sell second-hand stuff through the classified ads in the local paper. Take a look at the cost and the exposure and the sales volume --- compare that to eBay.
Get real, 10% to the provider of the venue is a great deal by comparison.
Someone commented about not paying the £9 fee from a £90 sale. Well, you are the type of person who causes eBay's running cost to increase and hence the prices to follow. I think its called 'leaching' amongst those who do it --- I simply call it theft! You had the service. You knew the price. PAY UP!
As for Mr Cohen's post, I thought it was interesting until he called someone (correct me if I'm wrong, a multi-millionaire) a fool. Well, Mr Cohen, until you are also a multi-millionaire and almost a household name, I think you need to go back to the drawing board --- maybe sit on your hands ! If I might proffer a reason for why you aren't doing his job, its because he isn't a fool by any stretch of any imagination, other than yours. :)
My daughter-in-law sells all the stuff they no longer require on eBay. She decides how much she wants (minimum) for each item and adds on all ebay/paypal costs (including the COST of postage if free postage is also being offered. The buyer bids more than that, then they get the goods -- otherwise she lives to fight another day. It isn't rocket science, just simple business practice.
My wife buys a lot of stuff on eBay and has never been let down by a seller. She pays through PayPal and there has never been a problem. She was slightly disappointed about one item (said to be new) which had a small scratch on it. She mentioned it to the seller who immediately sent a perfect replacement with a label to put on the return AND THE STAMPS! I personally call that damned good service. If only the High Street were so good!
Sorry its wordy, but there was a lot to say ! (Chest feels much lighter now!)
Cheers for the (comprehensive!) write-up. You've confirmed my suspicions.
eBay have been playing sellers and buyers off against each other for a while now. Seems like they're going out of their way to shield sellers who manage to artificially inflate their sale prices whilst at the same time squeezing legit, small sale value sellers.
I only buy or sell low value "widgety" items on eBay now. Too much risk for anything else. Besides, Amazon provide better value for selling and buying items that they have listed.
They succumbed to the "next quarterly revenue" temptation, always trying to squeeze more money. Now its hitting them. They started by empowering the little guy, now, to try to make more money, they are screwing the little guy. Welcome to the Web 2.0 gyre, next up, craigslist.
I admit that my linked shill bidding case study and comment on eBay is a mouthful and a bit long for those with a limited attention span. However I have tried to cross every “t” and dot every “i” in anticipation of the nonsensical, disingenuous responses that the article did indeed get from eBay.
I like the “sod off back to Twitter” quote. Are all Twitter users therefore “twits”? Maybe I am too old to appreciate such technology but I can’t imagine ever wanting to tell everyone, let alone anyone wanting to know, that I am about to scratch my arse. The same comment for Facebook and the like.
Of course, the advantage of having an MBA is that you are able to understand that when you drive away so many customers you have to try to make up for the loss in revenue in some other way, otherwise you don’t get your executive performance bonus. Of course, anyone with half a brain understands that such actions poorly thought out can lead to a downward spiral, such as that that eBay is presently in now.
You have to ask yourself how an organisation with such greedy, incompetent managers, who appear to be so thoroughly despised by so many of even their remaining customers can possible survive, let alone thrive? Of course it can not and the evidence of that is in the downward trend of the quarterly financials.
For he who cannot see: If you look closely at those feedbacks you will see that the language in both attacks is similar (non-English speaking background) and in each case there are 10-12 negative feedbacks for the same auction number. How can that possibly be genuine.
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=sfe17&ftab=AllFeedback&myworld=true
and
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=dser209r&ftab=AllFeedback&myworld=true
The real question is, how can an attacker put multiple feedbacks on the same auction. No doubt the receivers of this feedback would have complained; but clearly no action was taken by eBay. So much for eBay’s system security.
We really are dealing with an unscrupulous, disingenuous, uncaring—and if you consider their deliberate consealing of fraud—a criminal organisation (eBay that is).
To the man from the eBay PR Department of Spin: With respect to the competence of the “fool” currently in control of eBay, look at the financials and then ask yourself, can this turkey possibly survive yet another Xmas?
It may be that they were multiple item auctions/Buy-It-Now products, meaning that a single listing had many products to sell. Whilst the same message was posted twice by each person (buying 2 items?) - 2 accounts posted the same thing (twice) - which seems suspicious.
However, my point, whether or not this was fraudulent feedback, is that I believe it is possible to legitimately get multiple feedback for a single item number if they have multiple items to sell in that listing.
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