Emotions and frustration are still running high among eBay sellers over changes the company is making. The situation has received a lot of attention from both the blog community and now the major media sites. When U.S. News starts showing boycotting sellers the alternatives to eBay, it makes you wonder if eBay really understands how concerned their community is. Today eBay reacted to some of the anger by cutting fees for some merchants, but not really responding to seller concerns.
Ms. Norrington said the seller’s concerns are simply less important that counteracting the widespread view that shipping costs on eBay are often sky high.
“Let me be clear: our goal is to improve the buyer experience,” she wrote. “We will closely monitor the data. If buyer trust in the marketplace is not improving as intended within the next six months, we will take action.”
What does that mean? It really seems like eBay is making a bad situation worse, and acting like a corporate bully. Why on earth would they be so dismissive of seller concerns? Because they can I suppose. Nobody really likes arrogant corporate or political types who forget “the little guy.” And eBay’s sellers are “the little guy” who happen to be their strongest assets. The little guy is now trying to boycott.
EBay isn’t too worried about the possibility of a seller’s strike, according to spokesman Usher Lieberman. He said the company isn’t considering altering or postponing its policies due to the outcry.
“We’ve had hundreds of threats in the past, and they don’t seem to have had much impact,” he said.
Has eBay forgotten the long-held secret about auctions? A lot of buyers are also either sellers, or would-be sellers. Countless millions of eBay’s buyers also sell stuff, or secretly want to sell stuff. That’s the eBay magic… “Wow! Maybe I can sell my stuff too? Maybe I should try it… Look what I found! This looks easy… I wonder if…”
Lately its been more like “Why bother?”
I wonder in a few years if the advertising slogans from eBay will say, “We want you back!”
* Full Disclosure: No ownership of eBay at time of writing.
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I would respectfully disagree. More and more sellers do not leave feedback until the buyer leaves feedback. They do this to allow for retaliatory feedback. I buy and sell. When a buyer pays, that is when feedback should be left, not as a response to the buyer. It is funny, I was middle of the road with this until I received a retaliatory feedback last week. First feedback ever less than positive and I buy and sell. As a sellor, I have found that so long as you ship quickly, pack well and respond quickly to questions, feedback is easy to earn. It also does not hurt to explain why your shipping costs what it does in the item description.
Hi Javert- Thanks for the comment (just pulled it out of the Akismet que). You make a valid point, and I agree with you about leaving feedback immediately as a seller, after the buyer pays. That’s a sound approach that would benefit the sellers and the company. eBay could have provided incentives to sellers to do just that, and penalized others. But is it worth such enormous change for the small percentage of sellers that take a retaliatory approach? Time will tell, and maybe the changes will make little difference in the end.