eBay has Amazon envy: Cuts fees to get more fixed pricing

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eBay needs to be exposed

I admit, ebay does not rank among my favorite companies. They never have, really. I've been with them 10 years now, and have never seen a company deserving accolades. But, the concept of ebay is awesome. Which is why I have tolerated them.

Contrary to what Larry Dignan stated, "Clearly eBay wants to hang on to its sellers and prod them into putting more inventory on the site." No, for many sellers, it is clear the opposite is true; they want to shed itself of the up-til-now tolerated small seller. But, in doing so, has ebay broken laws? I think they have, and hope ebay gets investigated.

In Feb. sellers and buyers united to create one of the largest and most organized boycott efforts against ebay. This is thanks to social networking sites such as Myspace, Facebook, and forums such as Delphi, where many ebay members have joined forces. The result is we have been able to, for the first time, come together and plan a boycott. Thanks to the many members who participated, a May 1st & Beyond boycott was planned, and is continuing to this day, and will continue until the members say otherwise.

Heading up this May boycott has brought several things to my attention. The first is that many of these changes ebay/paypal have introduced are at best creeping around the edge of the law. At worst, they are actually violating statutes and laws.

One of the latest issues, and biggest issues, has to do with backroom deals. As I read The Sherman Act, it seems such deals are indeed illegal. But, not being an attorney, I would need more than the wording of the law to determine such a thing.
Nevertheless, I did do some research, and based on my findings, it seems that ebay has some "splainin to do". If you have time, please, take a look at the video I put up on youtube, which shares actual numbers from ebay's backroom deals with Buy.com. The video can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKkUCMLZG6E

I am and have been a member of ebay since 1998. I'm mostly a buyer; but, have sold on ebay to trade items in my collections.
There are some serious flaws in ebay's thinking. But, I will applaude their efforts to fix things such as retaliatory feedback. I agree that is a flawed system. I do not, however, believe that ebay is fixing the system by taking away the rights of sellers to leave negative feedback for bad buyers. Instead of disallowing negatives completely, and thereby allowing bad buyers to extort sellers, ebay should be willing to open their ears to ideas from all within the community. Not just their precious top 200 sellers. Even those who buy and sell once a year have great ideas. And, maybe if they were heard more often, they'd be prone to buy and sell more often.

Recently ebay made an attempt to push Australia to accept PayPal as their ONLY method of payment. While the boycott efforts were instrumental in getting the ACCC (Australia's agency to regulate competition and fair trade) to initially deny this, ebay pulled their request at the last minute. My contention is, ebay never really expected to win. They simply manuevered to get PayPal a mandatory form of payment. Because they know, if PayPal is accepted, most users will use it.

All of that was given a heading of "safer buyer experience". Once again, this is merely perception. And I would say a facade at that. While ebay/paypal pretends to offer protection, Amazon really does. PayPal has so many loopholes to squeeze through, while Amazon has an A-Z REAL guarantee. Perhaps that is because Amazon receives payment, then immediately disperses it through to the sellers. Now THAT is REAL buyer AND seller protection. Unlike Ebay's "Well, the seller has to have 98% feedback or higher. The seller has to have the PayPal button." (Which btw, I was informed by PayPal to NOT include in my listings, because that is how unscrupulous people gain access to your information, and send phishing schemes).

Ebay/PayPal is also with holding PayPal payments for as much as 21 days (180 days in some cases, under some circumstances). They claim they are not under banking rules. However, I contend, if they are providing bank services, that indeed needs to follow banking laws.

Why all these changes? Its not to follow the Amazon pattern. It is however, to give the perception of being a big friendly business to buyers. In the meantime, sellers and buyers who know better have been boycotting since early Feb. and have seen ebay artificially inflate listings, by incorporating their SDC (Shopping.com) businesses into the ebay listings; for what reason? A glitch? No. SDC is incompatible with ebay listings. Its to demonstrate to investors that listings were not affected by the boycott. To make things seem ok in the disaster area called ebay. But, I ask ebay to explain things. Because we deserve to know the truth. Investors deserve to know the truth.

Please join the boycott efforts;
Tim
http://myspace.com/boycottebay
http://forums.delphiforums.com/boycottebay/start

Posted by: LegendsOfBatman   Posted on: 08/21/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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