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Threatened eBay boycott to start today |
People all over the internet, all over the world, are seriously pissed off at Feebay at the moment. So angry, that there is boycott starting on Monday to protest changes the auction site has made to the way feedback is handled, among other things, like raised fees, sellers standards, and the way search works. There are a ton of people who make their living on eBay and are hard working people. They fear the changes, which seem “unwarranted”, would make it harder for them to depend on eBay for income.
The straw that is breaking the auction giant’s back is that the new feedback system would allow buyers to leave negatives for sellers, while sellers can not do the same should a buyer deserve it. This threatens the already fragile reputation system. People just can not fathom such a Forest Gump type move. Many admit that the feedback system is already flawed, but many sellers think this change is going in the absolute wrong direction.
Who knows if the boycott will do any good, but it is generally agreed that the site has gone downhill over the last few years and their numbers have suffered bigtime. I can’t say I blame the users for protesting. I am personally aware of several horror stories that happened to friends. Only time will tell.
[Auction Bytes] VIA [Crunchgear]
TAGS: auction, boycott, eBay, ebay sucks, feebay, feedback, strike   |
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Because we all know that the plural of “anecdote” is “data”.
It doesn’t take long to gather all sorts of horror stories online from sellers and buyers alike. The real data is in ebay’s site stats over the past 4 years. That tells the entire story of their decline, which is a direct result of their treatment of users. That’s the way I see it.
eBay Seller Revolt Starts — eBay Auctions drop 1.7 million (1,758,127 — 12.65%) by 1pm on 2/18/08 (first morning) of eBay Strike.
http://powersellersunite.com/auctionsitewatch.php
Support The eBay Boycott 2/18/08 - 2/25/08
Quit your crying and give it a chance I make my living from ebay and the way I look at it is , Deal with what is given out be a better seller and your clients will do the same , there will always be a few bad apples hopefully your able to deal with them, If there was no Ebay there would be nothing to complain bought than you can go back to flea markets garage sales. Give it a chance. Perry…
Actually, there’s the beginnings of a revolution going on… Check out what these folks have to say:
https://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/subat
Give it a chance? Give what a chance? I already know my fees will increase an average of 25% from the fee structure change. What am I waiting to see? How much bigger my bill is this month than last month?
Perry,
The argument that one should be flexible and learn to adjust to the changes is valid.
However, there is no reason for sellers to continue doing business with a company for which the terms are no longer advantageous. Your threshold may be different than others’ but there is some threshold for which you would no longer be able to adapt.
Also, there is no reason to believe that improved sellers leads to better clients.
I just set up a new ‘buyer’ account on eBay and am buying up a bunch of stuff from non-striking powersellers. eBay only required my new, fake eMail address!
I never realized how much fun it can be to shop with no intention of paying!
I will deserve every nasty, negative feedback I get!
anyone out there want to start a new site to sell on the internet??
I think this is a great opportunity, feebay is going downhill, and I for one am tired of paying e bay , more then I make myself, off the site!
I can live with the new policy changes if and only if eBay would do one thing to help sellers. Create a buyer verification system. Require each and every new buyer to open a Paypal account with a verified address just like sellers have to do. Make every new buyer deposit with Paypal an amount of money equal to their first bid to be forwarded to the seller should they win that bid. If the buyer does not win they can either leave the funds on account for a future bid, or have them refunded to them. This would end most of the problems sellers are worried about with the feedback system. It will end worries of negatives from non paying bidders, sport bidders, bids from competition trying to neg you so you can not compete with them. Scammers are not going to want to pay to leave a negative feedback!
Why won’t this happen? Because eBay uses the data from all the sport bidders, scammers, etc to beef up their numbers that they give to their investors. If they actually enforced something like this the membership numbers would probably drop 30%.
Bottom line appears to be we really don’t have a viable auction site alternative. God knows I’ve looked over the years.
New management, new greed levels.
Same old lousy story.
Scammers will have a field day. Pathetic time wasters.
Those of us with better things to do will find creative ways to continue.
well, if you think about it- for all the sellers on ebay- over 80% of them are buyers to!(from my research in 8 hours)
try to find a seller that has not bought somthing on ebay in the past year who has a feedback of over 50!
I think this boycott will be heard!
Also one more complaint that is never brought up-
ebay makes a commission, right? just like sales tax, property tax and ect.
So when inflation hits and prices go up they make a persentage of the higher priced item, Just like sales tax- for example a $10,000 car in 1995 now cost $18,000 so if sales tax is 7%, the amount of money the state collected in 1995 was $700 now on the same car they collect $1260! and they want to raise sales tax?? ebay fees? property tax and ect… think about it? What a crock!
This is my opinion- Ebay has gotten a Big head and is greedy and it will come to a end, if us sellers and buyers unite we are one! We really are- remember all sellers are buyers?
Lisa
Two remarks:
- As a buyer, I’ve been hit with retaliatory seller feedback (I paid within minutes, thus fulfilling my duties as a buyer; however, seller admitted she shipped to the wrong address but refused to refund monies; when I left neg feedback, so did she). From that perspective, I welcome the changes to the feedback system.
- As a seller, it’s still a market economy: if the cost of doing business is going up (for whatever reason), so will eventually the prices paid by the consumer. eBay’s fee increases will be passed on to the buyer by higher opening bids, higher buy-it-now prices, higher S&H fees, etc. Since it affects all eBay sellers equally, this won’t turn into a competitive disadvantage WITHIN the eBay universe. However, eBay will eventually lose part of its pricing advantage over the “outside” world…
I too am a buyer and seller. My wife has been with EBay for many years and has just reached powerseller status in the past year selling dolls. Her only source of income is from this. With the new fees in place her profit has been cut in half as sales have dropped as well. Her shipping costs exceeds her item cost most of the time. I have been a member for just over two years and was just getting my sales increased. The changes have got me not wanting to sell any longer. To top it off I got a buyer less than a month member who claimed the item he got was bad. He opened a dispute on PayPal after I had already agreed to refund his money, including shipping both ways. I refunded his money two weeks ago and have yet to receive my item back. I had left a good feedback for him at the time of purchase. When I filed a dispute for the item not being returned he went crazy. He has emailed me through EBay and through the dispute console calling me a “LIAR” and “IDIOT” as well as threatening to further damage me as much as possible through the community board and even went as far as stating he knew where I lived and he has friends here that will keep e from ever selling a bad item again. I had a 100% score before him. He has called me names, threatened to do all the damage possible to my user ID and the personal threat where I live. I have wrote to EBay and they will not remove the feedback and have yet to do anything about his vulgar language and threats. I had only one chance to write a short sentence to reply to the feedback to warn other sellers. He somehow was able to add two more nasty and lying comments about me and yet I have no recourse? With the new policies now in place I can not leave a bad feedback. I am out my money. my item and have some crazy guy threatening me , my family, and my EBay record. He has one positive feedback that I left. He is in the clear and EBay won’t6 do anything. Sellers don’t have a chance anymore. I have had “bad” buyers before and have always settled it even if I had to take a loss. That is okay and expected every now and then. This buyer will not respond to emails and continues to harass and threaten me and EBay’s new policies leave me nothing to do. The 5 star rating system is a joke. If you think of it like a 1-10 rating, no one is going to leave 5 stars. Like the olypics and beauty pageants, nobody ever gets a 10 and people will do the same with this 5 star system. You have to mantain a certain “star number” to be a powerseller. This 5 star system will eliminate many sellers for no good reason. I too wish someone would open a good site like EBay was when it started. It is no longer a yard or garage sale but bcaters mostly to very large overseas companies that have flooded the market with prices the US could never compete with. With their liostings it has also made it impossible to find the good deals from regular people without spending hours searching through so many pages.