What should eBay do now?

I, too, have been buying and selling on eBay for 5+ years and have a seller rating of over 300, 100%positive, feedbacks as well as a Top 5,000 eBay Reviewer. I think eBay has definitely "peaked". While I have bought some good stuff at extremely good prices, as a Seller, it leaves much to be desired. It seems that eBay, Paypal and the USPS are the only ones making any money. After a seller pays for listing fees, pictures, etc., then you pay an additional percentage after an item sells, as well as a percentage to Paypal, then the USPS had a price increase. Bottomline - no profit left for the seller - so what's the point in the time and effort involved. eBay needs to do something to keep it profitable for the little guy or somebody else is definitely going to take the lead !!

I'm a seller of antiques on Ebay and i'm going to start to take the direction of the sellers in this article:

http://www.news-antique.com/?id=782640&keys=Ebay-Auction-Antiques

I'm a small seller on fee-bay,,and I feel I'm being pushed out.Its really that simple I think.They are trying to get rid of the small sellers.Everyone knows theres no where else to go for the kind of traffic you get on E-bay.So we stay,,in hopes of someone listening,,(yeah right lol)someone caring about the bread and butter sellers,which keep E-bay going.Yet they are squeezing us out.I've seen this in bussiness so many times.What is this huge greed mode companies get in,where they sacifice the small to bring in the large.They almost always go under soon after.haha,,,I also predit the fall of Wal-mart.You can't get away with shutting down every mom a pop store in the U.S. WITHOUT SUFFERING SOME HUGE PAYBACK,KARMA,,,WHATEVER..Don't laugh I truly believe this.Even in bussiness.

Gary! for once I agree with you! Everything you said is pretty much true about EBay. eBay is not what it used to be. Investors as well as sellers are disgusted with this company.

Ever since the last split this company has gone no-where. And I mean -NO-WHERE...

Meg and company seem to be heading in the wrong direction, away from their roots, and that could cost them in the end.
eBay is supposed to be an auction company. Real auction companies do not charge fees to receive or list merchandise for sale. They make their money of the sale of an item.

So technically EBay is not a real auction company. EBay is an Auction venue of sorts where
people can list their items for sale at a price.

Buyers on the other hand in my opinion who are looking for merchandise can buy better at Amazon.com or Walmart. No Seconds there, as well as a guarantee.
EBay sellers sell factory SECONDS at retail prices.

Meg had better take a good look at her company and where it is headed.

She needs to start paying a dividend to her stock holders and buy back more and more stock to save this company.
I agree with others on this board. EBay currently has a bad name and reputation and in five years will be a 25.00 stock unless drastic measures are taken to turn this company around.

I do agree with your idea for the NASCAR car and better marketing and brand awareness. Even as an eBay supporter I have found recent ad campaigns to appeal to existing users and not the general population. Stuff like the "It" campaign, and most recently "Windorphins" . I do try to keep an open mind but I keep thinking of those people I know that do not yet use ebay and those two campaigns wouldnt appeal to them.

In any case eBay has gone through a period of transition and seems to be getting back on track by building its experience around web 2.0. Paypal is second in the world in online payments next to Visa, Skype the most downloaded and most used telecommunications product in the world. Ebay doesnt even have any real auction competition and while they have stumbled in their "message" I have a feeling the turnaround will surprise many people out there.

One thing that really gets me is that noone in the Stock market world seems to understand what is going on with this economy and how that effects stocks like Ebay. The consumer is tapped out, the foreclosure rate is up 90% over last year and the outsourcing of jobs has caused dramatic shifts in the economy. Many of the bread and butter customers of all middle end retailers are hurting. We get these useless Govt statistics about inflation running 3-4% when the price of everything is going up by leaps and bounds, Jobs growth (at Walmart, Target) but not for real jobs, and even the retailers that are selling things are selling things at huge discounts.

THe Govt includes Gasoline sales in its retail sales. So as the prices go up so do retail sales! By the same token , many retailers struggled to hit estimates this past year and I remember reading a record 60% didnt make it despite huge markdowns.

A common saying was "Its the economy stupid" I guess people should get "edumacated" about that and stop buying the BS and blaming eBay for the near collapse of the middle class.

An excellent post Gary! I agree with you completely. I've been selling on eBay for over 3 years and have had a store for nearly that long. I loved eBay and did nicely with it for quite a while, but for the last year especially, it's become less and less fun, and much less profitable. I'm not crazy about the fee increases, especially for store owners, but they wouldn't bother me if I saw that eBay was taking the kind of steps you mention, i.e. if I saw that the company was doing something really meaningful (rather than all of the silly things they've done) I'd be cheering them on and not complaining. eBay suffers from a lack of leadership, from a lack of vision, and from incredibly bad technology/software development. I'm not far from giving it up, frankly. And as for the stock? What a joke! Silver Lotus

EBay losing market share is a good thing a smaller eBay is better for the seller i.e. Lower fees less arrogant eBay. A big eBay has got us in the mess where in today. I'm London UK and it is now more cost efficient to sell in Camden market then on eBay.

Also I think the solution is to limit the amount of sellers. In the UK we queue yes queue for an eBay shop when one is available you can get it.
At the moment eBay stuffs as many sellers in as can fit. Being virtual can take a infinite amount an of course the price falls. Price has not worked to limit the number of sellers.

As far as the fees go Coke Cola for example does not raise the COST of a coke above the rate of inflation every year to infinity. They would make huge amounts of money but people would in the end drink some other brand of soft drink even if it was only 25% same quality for 75% of the money. Coke is a world brand they are every where even in China and the stock Coke Cola (KO) rose 23% over the last 12 months. On the contrary EBay stock is down 10% since the beginning of the year

Well said again Gary. I've been a seller on eBay for over four years. We closed our store at the end of last year, when it became apparent that eBay had no intention of increasing customer service in exchange for those ever-increasing fees. They also black-listed me, blocked my IP address, for assisting in a listing boycott. I became invisible.

Now, most companies would want to know WHY so many of their customers were unhappy. Not eBay. If you aren't happy, then get the heck out, or we'll assist you out the door our way, by pulling your plug.

Ever since Meggie took over, I have not seen any sort of growth that was aimed at seller satisfaction - only in corporate profits (ie - lining her own pockets). I would imagine that she is not going without anything she desires, while the small sellers who eeked a living on eBay for whatever reason - age, disability, etc - are going without everyday necessities. But hey - as long as she can afford more than one home and vacations a few times a year, why not.

I agree that eBay has missed MANY marketing opportunities. While we've all heard that any publicity is good publicity, I would beg to differ. eBay gets touted on The Tonight Show many times a month, but it is always in reference to a joke, not as a serious business.

However, equally as strange, is how the other auction "venues" responded when eBay offended such a broad seller base last August when they hiked fees yet again, but hid the store listings.

Where was Wagglepop's advertising? I sure didn't get anything or see any commercials - not even banner ads! They can't live on word of mouth forever, and could have walked up a red carpet, rolled out by eBay themselves, and taken a serious place in the online auction companies.

What about Bidville? uBid bought them out last year, so there were high hopes that things would improve, and a much-needed financial shot in the arm would allow them to offer some much needed advertising as well. Surprise - uBid apparently felt just existing was enough. I saw nothing, including yet again not even a little banner ad on Bidville, right when so many eBay sellers were looking with open minds and open wallets for another place to go.

I'd love some decent, affordable competition. I hope Google gets both their checkout perfected as well as an auction site up and running. I'd be glad to give them a shot.

Do I still shop on eBay myself? Yes, actually, I do. However, the volume of my own shopping has decreased dramatically, and when I do shop, I pay the cost of those higher fees with some pretty outlandish shipping charges. I try to find the items anywhere else first, but sometimes, eBay is the only place I can find that widget.

eBay is spending most of their time in a defensive mode, or pretending to be deaf and blind to the problems on the site. They claim to be putting plenty of money into technology. Well, they might be tracking everything we do a lot more, but I've yet to see much improvement in the actual service that sellers need. They make programming changes and tweaks without announcing it, and sellers find out when things are screwed up on hundreds of listings. The latest was the sales tax checkbox tweak - it left hundreds of sellers having to revise hundreds of listings, because the change was improperly implemented. Surely they can afford programmers who know how to test changes first, can't they?

How about buying a few more servers so things load faster? How about putting some money back into the company and improving what you already have that is broken, before you keep looking outward and buying other unrelated companies? Heck, I rolled all my profits back into my company for the first three years - most owners do, so they can grow. eBay is relying on finding more and more first-time sellers who are not yet jaded on the experience for their growth.

While it might work for some companies, it isn't working for eBay. I wonder if they have hired anyone to plan out the funeral? Oh wait - it wouldn't work right if they did - someone will have overlooked some important tweak. But, look for Meggie's golden parachute to open, and save herself. I am sure that is a priority....

Great article & posts! If you want to know about the REAL eBay & their treatment of customers, go to the eBay discussion boards & read about the massive seller account suspensions currently under way. Here is a link to the Trust & Safety board. It's a good start: http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum.jspa?forumID=107
Long time sellers with almost perfect feedback are being told they are in the bottom 2% of eBay sellers & having their accounts suspended. Meanwhile, mega bad sellers like bargainland, hum merrily along. It is a major public relations disaster in the making. PS: You might not have to wait 5 years for eBay to be a $25 stock...

Last time I used ebay was around 2001/2002. Why did I stop using ebay?
1.) Too much fees.
2.) I could find most things I want from other sites like Amazon for about the same price and not worry about being jacked.
3.) Customer service sucked.

Ebay is great for someone looking to buy rare items but I honestly don't find it any longer useful for things for day to day things.

Dear sir;

You nailed it. I have been a small ebay seller of books for 7 years and business stinks with a capital stink. I blame ebay's lack of interest in the small seller - instead they have been nickel and diming us for years. I am stopping soon - it's not fun anymore
naldotho

i am an avid ebay user, i have 400+ feedback, 99% positive, and a top 10,000 reviewer and writer,
i am tired of not being able to sell something on ebay and make a profit, so i started my own online auction site in 2005
i list items there and whenever i sell something i send a little note to the new buyer to check out the other site, the fees are lower and the final value fees are lower, it is free if you list an item under a dollar

okay, enough advertising for me www.mega-bids.com

ebay has some great investments that it needs to monetize like they did with paypal, they own 25% of craigslist, they own skype, and now they own stumbledupon.com along with half.com, if these other sites really take off, they could really expand their growth while positioning the auction
side to gain more users. i personally use half.com and get GREAT deals and i sell books on there also
check me out on ebay, greenbadger75

CEO Meg said repeatedly that "no CEO should remain in the position for more than seven years" up until her sixth year. She's now on what? Nine? Ten? Total hypocrite, but the $$$/power will do that.

eBay's fees are far too high for what the offer, ditto with PayPal fees. If they want to make more $$$, they should sign up more buyers and/or sellers and move more product. It's like New York state - they've lost their tax base because so many people have left, so they keep raising their taxes to make up for the lost money - and more people move. Google's "Checkout" and Craigslist will eventually kill eBay because they just don't get it - they should be finding ways to make more $$$ each quarter by increasing their customer base and average number of transactions - not raising their fees. And with the USPS postage rate increase now, it's really not worth selling anything on eBay any more unless you just want to get rid of it - often the tax write-off of donating it is better than what you can make.

It is very sad, but eBay has`ran it's course' as a great place to sell your junk, collectibles and other leftovers. I have a trunk in the garage, full of stuff I would have sold a few years ago, but now I don't even bother. A garage sale is a way better prposition!

I was Ebay's biggest fan until last month.
After 8 years of sales,99.8% feedback, and recent power seller status
my account was permanently suspended due to suspected trademark
violation. Another household member re-registered without my
knowledge to buy a dog house (not to sell) which also violated
EBay’s rules. I had over 4000 positives.I am a Registered Nurse and
work full time with very young indigent girls during their first
pregnancy and follow their child until he or she turns 2. I used most
of the profits from EBAY to help these girls. I have homeless 12 year
olds...Hurricaine Katrina wiped out a tremendous amount of housing
here and other resources. It's impossible for me not to deeply care
about the children that I work with. My trunk is full of clothes and
toys.( We do weekly home visits if they have a home, otherwise I see
them whereever they are).I do everything I can to help the girls.The
studies based on the statistics of this program have proven that a
young girl’s life can completely change if she is in contact with
one nurturing adult who shows true interest in her. I have not had
one girl that I’ve followed get pregnant again in the almost 3
years while I am seeing her and her child. I get them from probation
and judges. Honestly, their lives do seem to change after being
enrolled in this program. I get them back in school or GED
classes....and try to get help with finding a job.I bought closeout
lots of clothes from department stores and individuals. It was my
assumption that everything was authentic. I have written to the
company that filed the complaint...and to Ebay. It was never my
intent to violate any companies trademark.I offered to mail or fax department store receipts etc. No one responded. It's all very automated....It feels like EBAY is the "Big Brother" that was feared in so many futuristic movies. I feel like they don't care about the sellers or the buyers. I guess it's all abou the money. I have tried to be very personal in my sales. I corrected a problem the minute it was identified. I wrote personal Thank You notes. I feel like I "met" many interesting people from all over the country via my Ebay store. I was thankful for the support and all of the kind words that my buyers sent after Hurricaine Katrina.(New Orleans still has not recovered....many areas look exactly as they did right after Katrina).
I now have lots of
merchandise-name brand clothing and no where to sell it. I will
donate it to the girls and their families if I can't get
reinstated.If anyone has any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate
your advise.