Getting Tired of Hearing This Particular Ebay Story

How many articles have you read where Ebay is pitted against Amazon and the reason Ebay is falling behind is that they kept their auction model too long when customers wanted a fixed price setting. Bull!! Ebay had Ebay Express and they have fixed price and also buy it now. None of those things excelled like auctions. Ebay began dumbing down its own site as far back as 2004 when it did away with the very popular Going, Going, Gone. Since then it has manipulated search, cluttered its site with ads that actually drive traffic OFF to other sites and strangled its sellers with rules, rules, rules and fees galore! The selling environment for many has become too stressful to bother with and the buying environment for buyers is not much better! Buyers can't seem to find what they want on the flawed Best Match search and often just give up! About the only thing that "progresses" are the fees and rules.

Well, I really would like to hear from people who actually SELL on Ebay and know the ins and outs of ebay... Fact Ebay is killing itself by its own greed. There have been heavy fee raises thru the years (two this year alone - they are NOT decreases as ebay states) that sellers can't offer much in the way of bargains and still make any kind of a profit. Ebay is strangling sellers with fees, with a terribly flawed search called Best Match and in tying their standing in the listings to an also flawed DSR rating system. Most sellers have thrown up their hands and they are leaving. So...what you will eventually have left is just another retailer site with fixed prices - not unlike Amazon but not nearly as well run - also not unlike Walmart, Sears, Target, Best Buy ad naseum...all of whom are online and becoming very active with shoppers who don't want to go to the mall.

The problem with Ebay is it lost its way and it lost its heart, which is the uniqueness and the rarity of items that made it what it is today. They've driven out small sellers in favor of diamond sellers who get free or reduced fees and have dismal sell-thru rates. Buyers are actually complaining that they can no longer find the small sellers they bought from in the past. Ebay needed tweaking - it needed some of the excitement back. Dropping Going, Going, Gone was a foolish move. Cluttering the site with ads that take customers off site is a trade off - they don't care if sellers lose out as long as Ebay gets the revenue THEY need from sellers fees and ads! There seems to be NO solid plan for the future for this company! If there is they sure are keeping it under their hats.

Best Match search was an even worse move since it hides sellers wares who are actually PAYING FEES for the exposure! All the crazy new policies brought down on sellers just this past year also keep driving off good, honest sellers...not the bad sellers - bad sellers will stay until they're physically ousted! Ebay didn't need this "disruptive innovation" that is killing and dumbing it down until nobody cares about it anymore. That's the truth - fewer and fewer buyers and sellers care about it these days. They've become "that crazy company". So...please all you writers who seem to be using the same copy, consult some long time small sellers before you write an article so the story can be told as it really is!

Sorry for the vent but I think I read one too many of those articles.