eBay Inc. (EBAY)

All Comments on EBAY

  • commenter
    diarasc
    Oct 11 01:16 AM
    My Website
    How Would an eBay Layoff Impact Sellers? [view article]
    I have been selling on ebay since January and things have gone downhill ever since. They are doing their best to drive away us small time sellers. To many fees and rules. I wasn't surprised to hear them laying off so many people. Thank God I found an alternative auction site called ebid.net now with over a million listings. Lots of Ebay refugees there. It costs me nothing to have my estore and nothing to re-list items as long as I want (I have a seller+ account and re-couped that cost easily in the first couple months). Only a small 2% fvf if something sells. Goodbye Feebay, as we like to call it. Reply
  • commenter
    Dan
    Buchannon
    Oct 11 12:16 AM
    My Website
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    Bob C - You're right. After 25 years of work, I don't have a full time job. Ever wonder how I can be 47 and can afford not to have to work. Perhaps I'm not as insipid as you think I am. Organisation is spelled accurately if you're English. Read my bio further.

     Reply
  • commenter
    pwrsellr
    Oct 10 11:22 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    I need to correct one thing on my last post...

    Number 4 line 2 where it says 75- it should be 750. Typo.

    123 said he didn't understand the term sellthru...

    If you list 100 items for 7 days and you sell 33 of them during that time you have a 33% sellthru...33% of the items you listed sold.

    If you list 500 items and 166 sell you also have a 33% sellthru.

    Sellthru=the number of items sold divided by the number of items listed.     Reply
  • commenter
    pwrsellr
    Oct 10 11:05 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    In response to the latest 123 post 10/10 9:11 PM

    I will address only the numbered points you made.

    1) You are correct. In the ebay user agreement it says in essence, "We can do or not do anything we want to you at any time and by using the site you agree to that". [Note: I am being kind in the terminology]. ALL websites, because they are unregulated, say something similar.

    However, when Ebay was young and wanted to attract sellers, they offered a program that was "we will offer you a 1% discount on ALL fees payable on a monthly basis...provided you link our invoices to your bank accounts and ONLY have your payments paid by withdrawal ACH's. This program will contiinue as long as 1) you ONLY pay by reverse ACH or 2) there are never insufficient funds when our ACH is created." [paraphrased]. I signed up and held my end of the bargain...fulfilling 1) and 2). Once the fee increases and other changes took effect on Ebay..they "slipped in" the elimination of that program with 5 days notice. In other words...my fees increased up to 43% while my discount that I signed up for was taken away...and was replaced by discounts available on PART of the fees if untrained buyers rated me well.

    It doesn't matter if anyone else offers me a 1% discount. It was part of my cost structure and I made a committment...so MY costs as a 7 year Ebay seller went up 1% MORE than shorter tenured sellers by the elimination of the discount. The AMOUNT won't hurt me much...it's the THOUGHT added to all the other THOUGHTS that distrubs me.

    2) How much you don't understand. I NEVER SAID increased postage costs were Ebay's fault.
    The issue is this.
    a) Ebay charges a listing fee based on your initial listing price
    b) The listing fee is ONLY on the listing price...not the S/H charge applicable to the listing
    c) Previously, sellers could charge their estimated shipping costs PLUS a REASONABLE shipping and handling charge to include packing materials, labels, trips to ship etc. These shipping and handling charges were shown in the auctions and bidders were told what the charges represented.
    d) When the postal service would raise rates previously, fair sellers would raise their S/H charges to cover the increases
    e) The Postal Service raised their rates 20% or more with their last two increases. In addition, gas prices doubled costing more to mail shipments
    f) AT THE SAME TIME Ebay rolled out DSR's [on shipping time] which caused more frequent trips to the Post Office with the higher gas prices to maximize your potential DSR. Normally S/H charges would be increased to compensate.
    g) ON TOP OF THAT and AT THE SAME TIME Ebay reduced the maximum I can charge for shipping and handling by 50% over what I was charging...and made it MANDATORY or my listings would be blocked.
    h) The ONLY way I can minimize the effect of this change is to RAISE MY STARTING PRICE of each auction [or institute a higher reserve].
    i) Since Ebay listing fees are bracketed, when I raise my starting price I increase the amount I have to pay in each auction for listing fees.

    So No...Postal rate increases are not Ebay's fault...but the changes and restrictions forcing me to pay higher listing fees as a result ON TOP OF their listing fee increases ARE Ebay's fault.

    3) I don't know what terminology you don't understand. How I know Best Match and not the economy caused my unit sellthru to fall from 33% on average to 12-17%? Because it didn't happen gradually. I sold worldwide. If I had sales percents drop or fluctuate gradually over 8-10 weeks or more I would chalk it up to the economy. When my sell thru drops from a CONSISTENT [over 7 years] 33% or so to 17% THE SAME WEEK Best Match is instituted and has REMAINED at 12-17% since BEST MATCH'S introduction when nothing else in my selling practices or items has changed...I can only believe BEST MATCH is the cause.

    If you want to know what BEST MATCH IS...it is a default in search that rewards those Ebay wants to reward and punishes those Ebay wants to punish. IT USED TO BE that the default in search was TIME ENDING SOONEST. Now the default is BEST MATCH. If you are a diamond seller [highest volume seller] your listings would appear at the top of the list when a bidder searches for an item. If you have lower DSR's, your listings can be 10 pages from the front...no matter WHEN the ending time is. Therefore your sales will suffer EVEN THOUGH you pay the same or MORE than the high volume seller to list.

    4) Shortage or shrink is a term you may understand from Retail parlance. You factor shortage into your business model. Obviously if you are listing 75- items a month and have 2 non-paying bidders it is a nominal hit on your bottom line. But if you NOW list 150 items a month and have 10 non-paying bidders..it is a major impact. Buyers have been emboldened by Ebay because they can never be given negative feedback. Used to be that a few negative feedbacks in a short period of time would get bad buyers kicked off Ebay. No longer. Now buyers can break the Ebay contract [by not paying for instance] AND ALSO trash sellers by leaving NEGATIVE FEEDBACK for the SELLER for reporting the non-payment to Ebay. Some buyers bid for the heck of it with no intention of paying like it's a game. Now there is no downside to doing that and it shows.
    5) My fees will go up BECAUSE
    1) EBAY RAISED ITS FEES 25-40% and more [printed fact]
    2) My sellthru has declined 16-21% as stated above. Translation, I will pay TWICE as much in listing fees [unlike Amazon, you have to pay listing fees whether your item will sell or not] because instead of a 33& sell-thru I will have 12-17%. That means I am paying listing fees on 16-21% of the items that last year sold through [and therefore you recouped those fees as part of your shipping and handling charges] and this year you will not.

    I am not so naive that NONE of the sales decline is as a result of the economic turmoil. That's why I am jsut LEAVING EBAY as my primary source of income [and only listing 20% as much as last year] and have moved on to doing something else to earn income. So I don't need to REPLACE Ebay because I'm not doing similar selling somewhere else.

    Other good small sellers [I previously sold $60-100K a year] are leaving for many of the same reasons I outlined in the many entries I left above.

    If you can conceive of the Mall of America in Minnesota [2nd largest mall in North America with 5 levels and 500 stores] telling all sellers under a certain size to go away...and there are 6 anchors and 100 other stores left after that edict. and the hundred stores left have their rent increased by 20% while the biggest don't pay any rent at all.

    1) Will the remaining stores be happy? 2) With the store selection reduced and the prices in the smaller stores increased to cover the higher costs, will the 12,500 parking spaces ever be full? As less customers come into the mall how long until some of the 100 stores left shut down or move?     Reply
  • commenter
    rctman
    Oct 10 10:44 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    Just in case anyone is interested buy.com has 782,502 Ebay listings with no listing fees.....what a deal for them !!!! Reply
  • commenter
    rctman
    Oct 10 10:29 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    123.....Apparently you are a remedial reader or speak without doing your homework. Good luck if you are trying to short. You may point out each part of my post you did not understand, in fact you may even make a checkmark below:

    New Paypal 21 day hold policy on funds for new sellers=0 New Sellers.

    New policies on current sellers regarding DSR's and suspension of same etc...= significant loss of curent sellers

    The new first ever partnership between Ebay and buy.com, whom has a megasite called buy.com. Using Ebay w/payment via Paypal is hit and miss on either Seller or Buyer Protection. Read the fine print ! You wait 30 days, try to resolve with either for 60 days and exceed the time limit for CC chargeback. Paypal represents themselves....do a Google search and you will see. Why would anyone keep Ebay/Paypal as a middleman, when you can buy direct. Would you ? Only if you have Ebay stock...right ?

    How can a company establish growth by listing a competitor's inventory ? And listing it at the same price ? Ebay buyers are supposed to be savvy and will peg it down and figure out it is easier to go to buy.com.

    So....SKIP EBAY AND GO TO buy.com !!!!! Save a step.     Reply
  • commenter
    123
    Oct 10 09:11 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    I want to understand this from the perspective of small sellers (who are also, by the way, big sellers having sold thousands of dollars worth of goods on the site, ironically). But the comments on here are difficult to understand because of all the Ebay seller jargon. There are only a few posts on here written in English, let me try to parse those:

    rctman 10/10 - 8:01PM-unintelligible post;
    patricia 10/10/3:14PM-unintelli... post; what is best match/diamond sellers/sell thru?
    powerseller 10/10 10:55AM:
    1) Ebay doesn't have to give you a 1% discount. Does anyone else give you a 1% discount?
    2) How are increased postage fees Ebay's fault? OK I see that you have to raise prices to make up for increased postage, but that's the case anywhere, not just Ebay, I presume;
    3) I don't understand 3 because (i) I don't know the terminology; (ii) I don't see how you can blame best match, etc. for this and not that maybe people just aren't as interested in your items. How do you know that it's the new listing format?
    4) I don't see how this is a change; is it just that the existing system is less effective than it used to be?
    5) Again, OK your fees will go up but why? I just don't see any hard evidence that it's because of any changes that Ebay has made.

    I for instance enjoy Ebay sites and services. I am not a heavy user of Ebay but I have sold things on there I wouldn't have been able to sell anywhere else, i.e. my used laptop, because I just don't trust any other site like Ebay. I know if I buy/sell there, I will be safe. And I don't care how much stuff costs elsewhere (i.e. some no name site) if I don't know the company. I also really like half.com and that site has saved me some cash on textbooks and DVD's. I have never had a problem with Ebay and they have always had great customer service.

    It's funny because I think it's in vogue right now to trash Ebay without having any real evidence or proof anything tangible that they're doing differently or wrong (at least not that I can understand from these posts). The stock is down 50% in the year but the business is not down 50% on the year; in fact the business has grown over the last year. I don't care, I hope the stock goes down another 50%, if the underlying business is sound, that is what's important. Whitman has been selling but Ebay has bought back about $2B of stock in the last year, and at these levels I presume that they are buying more hand over fist.

    Most of you also fail to mention how competing sites are any better than Ebay, thus darting the question: WHERE WILL YOU GO IF NOT EBAY or an affiliate of Ebay, i.e. Craig's list/half.com/etc etc?

    Please keep trashing it. The stock will hopefully go down even more and that is probably a net good thing for me. I also hope that management will implement changes to make your experience more pleasant. I think everyone can and should win here. If the management really is making mistakes with the auction format, I presume they will eventually listen to you and make the changes that you request. I don't think they want to lose business.

    I admit I may be a clueless nerd but I was hoping to make some sense of the posts, even though these complaints are probably not that significant to Ebay the company, not Ebay the the auction site. Looks from here like that might be difficult.     Reply
  • commenter
    rctman
    Oct 10 08:01 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    Also...let's simplify the equation for all the experts:

    99% of new sellers cannot sell and wait 21 days to see if they get their money from Paypal = 0 New Sellers.

    Current policies and changes = significant decrease in Current Sellers.

    I agree Ebay doesn't feel they need these sellers, but why in the world would I buy from buy.com using Ebay/Paypal when I can go to the buy.com website and retain all of my credit card consumer bill of rights = You do the math.

    Only time will tell     Reply
  • commenter
    rctman
    Oct 10 07:31 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    Dan...it's organization...okay

    Get on the stick !!     Reply
  • commenter
    Dan
    Buchannon
    Oct 10 07:09 PM
    My Website
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    @pwslr - As much as this may sting, let me be so bold as to say that your position comes from the belief that management should or still sees small sellers as the core of its conglomerate of a business which now includes dozens of brands. The fact of the matter is that if you read all the so called silly analyst reports as you might say, this organisation no longer views small sellers as integral to its business.

    You are absolute correct when you argue it from your small seller point of view, but the market and business have moved away from that. My perspective is from the macro -- to be inclusive of every potential piece of revenue and income stream that this entire business that EBAY stock is represented by. Sorry if that pains you but that is why I write for stock oriented blogs, not seller or buyer community blogs.

    Reply
  • commenter
    pwrsellr
    Oct 10 04:08 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    Analysts: When have you EVER seen a stock with no debt, no inventory, flush with Billions in cash and Billions more coming in, ALWAYS beating Wall Street estimate guidance quarter after quarter, have a stock performance like Ebay???????????

    Stock Performance:
    1 month -31.2%
    3 month -43%
    6 month -49.7%
    1 Year -59.9%


    What does that tell you????

    1) Shareholders...some are sellers and are fed up?
    2) Shareholders who are NOT sellers are reading Ebay blogs and threads and are mortified?
    3) Many many disenfranchised sellers ARE ALSO BUYERS AS WELL....GONE!

    There has to be a reason that forces are burying a stock of a company with such a great balance sheet. And it isn't just the current financial meltdown doing it...it has been happening for a long while now.

    I am no professional analyst [and (disclosure) I don't own any Ebay stock nor am I shorting it] but if Wall Street looks 12-18 months out and this battering is what's happening to the stock isn't there a problem here?

    123, Mr Buchannon and other analysts...CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?
    Reply
  • commenter
    Patricia013
    Oct 10 03:14 PM
    My Website
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    pwrsellr - you hit it right on the head over and over again...but then, you're an experienced seller and you know the real ebay from the inside out. These analysts cannot possibly understand ebay or how drastic things are becoming there...they can't possibly and yet they spout off figures like its gospel. Ebay's core is still the foundation of its business and that foundation is FAILING. I'm a 10 year seller who can't even get views on my items due to best match. Best match, in the end will be heavily weighted toward Ebay's diamond sellers - the very sellers who pay little or no listing fees and have miserable sell-thru rates. Donahoe is killing a once vibrant company with a half-baked attempt to turn it retail. What do you think "disruptive innovation" means? It means disrupting the workings of a successful company and turning it into something else!!! Without a vibrant core there will be NO money to buy things like Skype or Bill Me Later. You can't build a house on a rotted foundation and that's what ebay's core has become! Right now they are inflating the number of listings by offering 35 cent fees for 30 days - that only causes sellers to list things that have been sitting around in their Ebay stores. The listings look great...the sell thru - is dismal! No good sell-thru, no revenue, no money to buy things like Bill Me Later or pay the salaries of the remaining 10,000 workers! You'll see more layoffs, you'll see more sell offs and finally you'll see lower fees and maybe even rescinding of some of the super-restrictive policies laid on sellers! Its the only way Ebay will keep any sellers! I believe (and a lot of other sellers do too) this cannot be done with the present management. The present management caused this problem and are willing to plod on to total destruction rather then say they've been wrong! Reply
  • commenter
    jay dee
    Oct 10 03:05 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    123 you are a clueless nerd - all ebay is to you is a just another company to try and make money with on the stockmarket.
    You really don't have any clue and you really don't care other then whether it might be a good investment for you.
    Reply
  • commenter
    hobo
    Oct 10 01:40 PM
    eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away [view article]
    All of you go check out ola.com you may be pleasantly surprised. It looks like finally,another,BETTER site may emerge. Reply
  • commenter
    DownWithEbay
    Oct 10 12:17 PM
    eBay: A glimmer of Hope for Feedback [view article]
    correction to comment above...I meant to say J Donahue ISNT treating small volume sellers as valued customers.

    For most of us....if we dont feel ebay treats us as a valued seller...we certainly wont shop their either.     Reply
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