By a landslide, eBay sellers say feedback changes will hurt business
Nearly 99 percent of eBay sellers responding to a survey last week said the site's recent feedback changes will hurt business. The only thing sellers were happy about was enhanced PayPal protection for Powersellers:
Read the full report here at AuctionBytes.
Neg | Pos | |
| Feedback changes | 98.7% | 1.3% |
| Fee changes | 86.3% | 13.7% |
| Best Match search visibility changes | 83.3% | 16.7% |
| Seller Standards | 84.9% | 15.1% |
| PayPal Protection for eBay PowerSellers | 29.6% | 70.4% |
Read the full report here at AuctionBytes.
posted by Steve Weber at 2/11/2008
11 Comments:
One thing is for sure - I have paid my last fees to feebay. There are a lot of other auction/sales sites out there that are free to list or much cheaper to list, and while they may not have the traffic feebay does, at least I'll have the chance to make a profit on sales. I've begun compiling a list of several that look promising, with serious intentions to give them all a try and see what happens with them. Goodness knows, it can't be worse than what I've done on feebay lately!
Can someone please explain what the big deal is? So we can't leave negative buyer feedback anymore? Who cares!? Is that any different from Amazon? Can someone please explain WHAT is so bad about the eBay changes? Because I'm just not getting it.
I agree with the first seller. There are a lot of other options out there for sellers to turn to as far as auction/sales sites, were your pofit margins are definitely going to be larger. You just have to work harder to bring in the traffic than on eBay. These other sites vary from being totaly free of listing charges, final value fees and providing a free store. The only charges the seller would incur on this type of site would be the charges associated with processing of payments. There are other sites while not being free have much lower selling fees than eBay. I believe that ebay is taking every step to eliminate sellers from there site that are not power seller or better yet in the top tier of power sellers. I know there are smaller sellers on Ebay that provide better customer service and satisfaction than the larger ones. Overall I see Ebay loosing a lot of quality sellers to other sites.
Handknits and Reading Room are exactly the type of people who, were they to lease a retail space, would forgo the expensive space with heavy foot traffic for a more economical space on a dimly lit road four blocks away. An increase in FVFs by 3% is driving sellers away from eBay in droves, but if the BUYERS are still utilizing eBay as the #1 auction site on the Web, I'll stay where the BUYERS are, thank you very much.
backgarage - When I sold on Ebay (and I still do sometimes) it was helpful to see a seller's track record. There WERE buyers who had lots of negatives who'd occasionally bid on my auctions. By doing a quick check of their feedback, I could see if they were a bad bet, block them from the auction and that was that. One potential headache gone. Who wants to waste time and money having a product go to a buyer with a history of bad payments? Also, buyers know that if they pay they can easily leave bad feedback even if a seller did nothing wrong. The feedback would often give a buyer pause, long enough to figure out that an item was at the next door neighbor's house or that the buyer had given a wrong address. It happens.
Non-paying bidder? File with eBay and move on, or write off as bad debt. If you sell with any decent volume on eBay, one or two negs isn't going to hurt you -- I think most people can tell a [CRAZY BUYER WHONEGS FOR NOT GOODO REASON!!!] from a long list of otherwise positive feedbacks.
I think eBay was right in giving more of the benefit of the doubt to its buyers. eBay and Amazon sellers have this in common: they seem to think these sites exist for the sole purpose of their home-based profit. But without buyers (who are turned off by negative feedback), no one would be making any money.
Sellers who complain about losing time and money sure seem to have enough time to waste on discussion boards and blogs griping about it all day... Just an observation.
Has anyone noticed the infringement on your 1st amendment right of free speech, if you are brought to court you have the right to defend yourself. If you are slandered it is against the accepted rules and you can sue. Everyone in this country has the right to defend themselves from accusation if they choose to do so . Ebay has removed our right to free speech our right to reply to a false witness or to give fair warning, as an example, in the case of a buyer who wants a refund but doesn't want to return an item. There are many such cases just read the comments by sellers about their experiences with some of these more unscrupulous people and you will see that we the sellers are left battling the tide without a paddle or the right to carry one in a very leaky boat.
Your First Amendment Rights don't apply on a privately-owned website.... Really.
I really don't understand why there is not someone out there who can create a competitive auction site (set up basically the same as ebay), and then advertise the heck out of it like ebay did! Isn't there some businessperson out there like Donald Trump who has money to burn on MAJOR advertising, and then knock the socks off of ebay? Put 'em out of business. Really. Why not? When a company forgets to listen to their customers, a new company should come along and take advantage of their smug arrogance. Happens all the time in the brick and mortar world. Why not now? Why not ebay? And one day we would look back on the days when ebay ruled the auction world, but they lost it b/c they thought they were untouchable. Would make a great book. The Fall of Ebay.
back garage, you are missing the point, ebay is a private site and we have no legal free speech rights however we have an a membership in the site a voice that is being silenced without the courtesy of a hearing ebay has let the sellers know that we are of no importance in the great ebay corp scheme. the fact is the people in charge don't care about the sellers they have built the site on the backs of the sellers, we make it work, buyers come there to shop for our merchandise, not ebays goods, our goods, no us no ebay.
I am so not a part of this ridiculous boycott.
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