How we’ve acted on your feedback in 2023 & what’s in store for 2024

[vintagewatchpart]

Just finished watching the video, will keep this fairly simple, I am sure many of you will have comments...

At around 1 Minute:

"my management team and I are already looking at what we can do in 2024 to remove more barriers, advocate for your interests and give you access to more information to help you keep growing"

I've got a great idea, you don't need a management team at all. Just read these message boards.

Stop putting up barriers in the first place then perhaps there would be none to remove?

You are just so out of touch with what everyone things, says and feels it is unbelievable. Look at the YouTube comments on the video after a few minutes.  

If you really care EBay, then reply and engage properly with some of the comments and evidence based issue reporting people are leaving on here.

[exponential_developments]

Don't give up hope.....They re-designed the little bell.

[iew-signed-books]

Well then, in the words of the late, lamented Leslie Phillips: "Ding dong".

[sheba-knows-best]

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@dwtrading2015 wrote:

"eBay works for my business" - you are therefore unique.  

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It works for my business too. That makes two of us. In completely different selling categories.  And whilst I don't want to put words into other people's mouths @pg_kicks  is clearly making a living (branded trainers) as is @simplyessential_uk (candles, essences, crystals etc). We're covering quite a category difference and a price point difference between us...

I've said it before, but heck, I may as well say it again. When some sellers say it is all ebay's fault, other sellers read that and feel disempowered. And as soon as they feel like that,  their businesses will flounder. Most businesses that survive, have to keep re-inventing themselves, even if the changes are often quite minor and incremental. And constant re-invention is hard work. As OJ testifies to.

EBay isn't against us. It is just a selling partner. And maintaining a professional balance towards a business partner isn't 'selling your soul' it's just... professional. And as for it resulting in higher visibility... I wish. I paid through the nose for my visibility this year. In contrast, seems to me, continuing to work with - and profit - a business partner that you loathe... well... that way madness lies.

As for this video - eay is kind of damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't. 

[pg_kicks]

Sorry I shouldnt have really replied last night, wasnt in the best of moods and clearly read it wrong ha. Yeah they are simple fixes which then wouldnt require me to contact them. What annoys me most is eBay changes stuff for the better which must take time and effort, especially the authentication system they've had to buy a company, employ more staff advertise this but then small improvements are just not done or take forever to be implemented which would then result in the new stuff working perfect.

[pg_kicks]

eBay is certainly 'working' for me it could be better but it could be much worse, its just annoying that the small changes it could do are not implemented and they'll rearrange the full system instead.

Obviously I'd love it more if it went back 5 years, best sellers got the top spots without paying for it but thats never going to happen, just like I'm not going to sell my items for the prices of 5 years ago, the world has changed.

With regards to the video, I think with the current situation eBay are in it would have probably been better if they didnt do it tbh, or use better wording. In some parts its like they havent read the room and that some are struggling, I've said before but many categories seem to have just been forgotten about as other sites have popped up and focused on these, granted sellers should notice this and jump ship and sell on those platforms but eBay should always see this and try and change it.

The only real way of seeing if the video is worth it is to reevaluate it this time next year, if eBay have tried to improve and offer a better site then its all good, but if its same old issues then I wouldnt be surprised not to see a video next year. Some of the comments on the YouTube video are pointless though.

[simplyessential_uk]

I would be intrested to ojewllery know if your positive spin and defence of eBay worked in generating better listing positions and sales.  It is now so often repeated those voicing issues and problems see sales suddenly drop or vanish.  Sold your soul to the devil.  What was the reward?

With 3million transactions a day, I hardly think Ebay would employ staff to read the boards and  "tinker" with the algorithms to positively or negatively effect those who post comments pro or against them, are you serious? Oooh but come to mention it I did get a water bottle in the post from EBay so yeah maybe that was the reward  🤣 - Seriously though you must be having a laugh. 

I agree Ebay is not what it was 5/10 yrs ago - I got a FBook memory this week from 2013 where I posted how exhausted I was from packing 60+ parcels..now ebay gave me 10-15, if Im lucky, but Im ok with that as Im now spread across 4 platforms and Ebay doesnt have the monopoly on internet shopping and there are FAR more home workers taking a share of the sales but I make my slice of Ebay work for me, I know what sells better here and what sells better on the other platforms and as Ive said on many posts, I pay 2% Promos and thats it!  

I know when I have struggled in the past Ive come to the boards for help/ advice and months ago when we had the testing debarcle I was pleased to read it wasnt just me but ppl can only moan and complain for so long as ojewellery said I can't possible start to imagine why they'd have issues evolving their businesses and finding a new path forwards. and thats precisely what businesses do - Diversify, change products, assess and adjust etc, not just moan " its not my fault" and blame Ebay.  

I find there are 2 types of sellers on these boards, those who wallow in self pitty and find comfort in knowing its not just them but dont want to take advice or help and prefer to just complain and drag the rest down and then there are others who see the positive, stop and assess whats going wrong and more importantly what can they do about it...It's the latter ones I find interesting and as @ojewellery said "That little nugget" of an idea can spark changes.  

As a buyer shop less on Ebay because it is failing in knowing what it is or what it offers and there are too many poor sellers (the latter is my biggest frustrations) and I think Ebay does have to work at building its brand and buyers confidence back, personally think in years past they let anyone sell any thing and loads of sellers manipulate the variations with 99p rubbish and lost alot of buyers who now have alternatives but Im of the optamistic opinion that things will change/evolve and I will continue to work at getting the most out of my business here.

[goingfishinguk]

'A heart felt thank you for everything you have done to support your customers.'  It's about that time 15 seconds in you should probably completely disregard anything else said.  It's a shame eBay didn't do everything they could to support their customers, i.e. the sellers.

It's only been a challenging year because eBay have broken their platform...

However I agree with some here I'm all for positivity.  The huge problem with that is you can only be positive for so long.  Nothing positive about constantly banging your head against a wall.  Granted there are things to hopefully move a business forward HOWEVER if eBay continue to not fix issue such as EDDs, unfair feedback, helping scammers to 'grow,' hiding paid for listings, pushing up fees, bringing out unwanted features, breaking good features, actually NOT listening to feedback, terrible CS etc etc then there is little you can do.  This video message is what it is, a complete load of tosh and shows how far out of touch with their sellers eBay really is.  The comments below the video speak volumes.  If I'd made that video and then looked at the replies a week or so later I'd be ashamed.

[sheba-knows-best]

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@goingfishinguk wrote:

If I'd made that video and then looked at the replies a week or so later I'd be ashamed.

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Sad to say, if I'd made that video and then looked at the replies a week or so later, I think I could be forgiven for feeling deflated at the state of ebay sellers - many of whom don't seem to have any idea of how to get the best out of the platform or out of the tools provided. 

I feel for them - they're struggling - but seriously, I suspect some of them are the reason that according to some posters (I think PGKicks and SimplyEssential) buyers are leaving ebay in droves. I'm not sure they are, but I agree there are far too many shoddy sellers on ebay clogging up the search engine and offering poor service.

[vintagewatchpart]

I've been on Ebay for 23 years, my Ebay fees including promoted fees are enough to pay for a management level salary on Ebay each year.

When I talk to my customers via email (many contact me directly) and on Forums and on Social Media, they say they are struggling to find anything in a sea of irrelevant search results and are tired of searching for watches to fix and parts on Ebay. This is why my customers are leaving Ebay in droves. Perhaps other people are pushing their customers away, but I think most of us can say we are fighting for every one we can get. This is my experience, my customers experience and my niche I am discussing. Everyone is different.

Search for "trench watch buckle" - this is what I just searched for to research an item, 349 results. You could say I need to drill down through the categories to find the relevant item, great, lets do that then, if I go to the relevant categories to find a trench watch buckle, I simply can't. I'm presented with loads of irrelevant products.

So I go to Google instead. Search "trench watch buckle" - results! Lots of relevant results on Google for this particular item, guess what... All Ebay items sponsored by a third party affiliate. So the third party affiliate combined with google merchant ads has an algorithm that can pluck relevant listings from Ebay and present them to me in less than half a second when on Ebay no matter what I do I cannot find the product.

This is just one example, from one particular issue, from 5 minutes ago. Imagine that repeated every day for multiple different products not only for customers looking for them but for me trying to research them, I can see what they are encountering first hand every day.

I could write 50,000 words on 23 years of ebay history for myself as a seller and buyer, and list every positive and negative, every positive implementation or change and every negative one. 

But right now, what has changed recently that there is to be excited and positive about? 

Not all directed at you Sheba, just some relevant points in response to what you have written.

[simplyessential_uk]

I think Ebay definitely need a PR campagn to win buyers back.  Unfortunately I feel like its not shook its reputation for selling "cheap" goods and I know thats not even the case,

moreso recently as it isnt actually cheap anymore as sellers ramp up the ads and reflect that in the price, but hope thats something Ebay will work out (eventually) I do feel, unless its just my perception, that alot of emphasis is going into ad promos and perhaps ebay are focusing too much on making a % of income that way instead of the old fashioned way or finding a balance so sellers arent chasing the sales at any cost. 

I remember some years ago Ebay offered cut rate fvf for all items under £10 (sure it was 5%) but that meant all £12 goods could then be sold for under £10, win win for buyer and seller, but guessing thats not good for Ebays share holders so those same £12 items now are being sold for £13-£14 to cover ad fees, buyers look elsewhere.

[fatbobfan]

'many of whom don't seem to have any idea of how to get the best out of the platform or out of the tools provided' 

Ill get banned if I expressed my true feelings..... tried the nice way in weekly chat, my feedback was appreciated.......

[dwtrading2015]

"It is just a selling partner. "

You hit the nail squarely on the head there.  eBay was once a platform which alowed businesses to independantly trade, independantly sell, independantly promte, discount, market, label, catagorise, embelish and develope their own business on their own terms.  Not anymore.  People now work for eBay, or as you put it being in partnership.  eBay does not know these markets, it doesn't know the niche products, or communities that collect or seek spare parts.  The people, the businesses themselves develope all that expertise and eBay should do no more than simply provide a platform to allow seller to connect to buyer.  That is long gone with eBay now firmly in between as a middle man trying to coordinate buyer and seller in order to grab a few pence more.  As night follows day, buyer can no longer find seller, seller can no longer market to buyer and both are going elsewhere.

"It is just a selling partner. "  You said it!

[pg_kicks]

Im sorry I just seem to be negative but you could turn that around and say eBay dont know how to get the bets out of their own platform, this forum alone is a pretty wide base of different sellers, yet the weekly chat is full of copy and paste answers telling us nothing is broken even though the results (not just search) are showing broken findings. 

The reporting feature for one is broken, if used correctly they could stop the dropshippers, stop the chinese sellers with fake UK addresses shipping from China, stop the fake items being sold, all of these drive buyers away from the site or turn away credible UK sellers as they cant beat a Chinese copy on price, but can certainly beat it on quality. Its a 2 way street that many sellers refuse to move with the times but eBay also refuse to move too.

The authentication scheme has been great for me, but I gave them a really simple solution to a pretty big problem, tell the buyer about the scheme after theyve purchased, you'd think all buyers would know, eBay thought they would but they dont, adding it on the top line of the email after purchase would solve so many pointless questions and put the buyers mind at ease, but alas its still not been sorted and I still get messages from buyers asking why I havent sent the shoes directly to them.

We really need both sides working together, listening to each other and finding the best possible solutions, but it seems for some atleast that they wont change and eBay dont seem to want to take any constructive criticisms or atleast act upon it.

[patrickbegood]

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@ojewellery wrote:

How could an evidence based reporting system work, proposals and votes, priority system for fixes, request tickets - remembering anything labour intensive would cost us in fees?

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I'll tell you one improvement:

for every significant change made, describe the problem it is intended to fix.

Add data on the number of reports of that problem, rounded up or down if that's desirable from a data-protection POV, if it may be contentious (or just in general).

This prevents bright development teams having brainstorms and creating solutions looking for a problem, eg Ebay autocorrecting brand names in URLs of search results, after the first page of results which has to be one of the wackiest things I ever saw. I cannot to this day imagine what problem this was supposed to fix?

Give the change a number so sellers (and buyers) who are on the ball can give accurate feedback and the team knows right away what happened, when, where, and how.

This is especially important for any tinkering with Search which is the lifeline between buyers and sellers.

Secondly, use technology to pay attention to things said on here. Yes some people are extremely hostile and negative, a bit weird, and there's a lot being said, but why not use AI to scrape the things people say and condense them down to numbers and type, then cross-reference this to Ebay's policy/software changes and updates?

This is already possible, there are free interfaces like tldrthis.com which do this with articles, and Ebay could get their own to keep an eye on Community trends.

(I'm not a seller, just a fairly casual buyer, and I do also try to address things as positively, or maybe more accurate to say as productively, as possible.)

[ojewellery]

@patrickbegood thats some very interesting thoughts.  I remember about five years ago having a chat after a presentation with someone talking about social media monitoring for key phrases related to brand.  Got my head spinning, in a good way.  It was one of those this isn't relevant to me right now but has so much potential moments.  Ai, which would need to be monitored and taught for this application, has such enormous potential to lighten the man power load in this sort of area.  Its also potentially open to load manipulation.  But nothing is all one way and I think you're on to something, it could be an overall improvement.

I'm surprised that eBay don't appear to beta test more features before being rolled out - I know they do for some, it just appears many things go mass live.

I do want to say I'm not anti hostility and negativity.  Everyone needs to have an outlet and better the boards than direct to customers.  I couldn't cope with sacarin sweet boards where everyone is ultra nice and treading on eggshells.  I appreciate the candor, low level moderation, opportunity to debate and learn.  Hostility on the boards is generally just pent up frustration at not being heard.

As for autocorrecting brandnames.   My favourite new development nightmare was on Amazon.  They decided in fashion, which incorporated jewellery, to unify all S/M/L sizing to read as Small, Medium and Large.  Everything in fashion that was previously S became small.  I can see the logic and unification is great, in theory.  But UK ring sizes typically start at a J and get bigger as the letters run through the alphabet.  My rings that were an S, one of the larger ring sizes, suddenly were described as Small.  L one of the smaller sizes were suddenly a Large.  Caused a real headache, masses of returns and unhappy customers.  It quietly, at some unanounced point, allowed sellers to change back to S, M and L.

[thebeautician]

Yes, there is AI to do that, and lots of ongoing research projects focused on AI bias. I think that would not be truly useful.

Honestly, I think they ignore the forums because people posting on here are not part of their business strategy. The management already said that 20% of the sellers produce 80% of the revenue and they are focused on those sellers. Probably no one on these boards is part of those 20% so what we express here is pretty much irrelevant, and they can afford to lose us all, so they think (and maybe they can).

I think there are several flaws in that same strategy but I don't have all the data to make a proper judgement. But one thing is for sure: buyers are leaving because:

1. The site tried to be like the river, and will never be able to catch it (plus the EU is cracking down on them, and they are only starting)

2. Buyers can't find what they need, and when they do, the prices are ridiculously high in comparison with the competition on other websites. The high prices are in part responsible for pushing away buyers: greed repels the demand.

3. The site resembles other popular Asian selling sites and that pushes buyers away as well, no one has the patience to look for items lost among 1000s of multi listings, duplicates, and so on. So what we are seeing may be a weird "Gresham's law" effect, but applied to e-commerce markets.

In the end, we don't matter.

[sheba-knows-best]

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@thebeautician wrote:

Honestly, I think they ignore the forums because people posting on here are not part of their business strategy. The management already said that 20% of the sellers produce 80% of the revenue and they are focused on those sellers. Probably no one on these boards is part of those 20% so what we express here is pretty much irrelevant, and they can afford to lose us all, so they think (and maybe they can).

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It would have been foolish of them to say that! Not impressed. I don't suppose you have a link... or can recall when management said this? I'd be interested to see the context.

The whole point of ebay is that its USP is you can 'find anything on ebay' which is why it needs the vast majority of us, not just 20% who bring in steady (but often ubiquitious) sales.

[padanpcparts]

To be fair, I definitely remember hearing the same statement made regards 20% of sellers making 80% of revenue. Not sure it was e-bay though, might of been one of the other sites that comment on this platform. 

[thebeautician]

I'm not sure why you think it would have been foolish to say that; it depends on the audience and the words you use to say it. Pareto's law can be applied not only to businesses but also to marketplaces. As in businesses, the focus should reside in the best-selling lines (+/- 20%), however, you can't dispose of the 80% for several reasons, but mainly because some of these may evolve to be in the 20% and the rest drive traffic to your website. Anyway, how many of you are often among the "selected sellers" they choose when offering promotional discounts at the top of the page?

Although you can't get this distribution data from eBay, it can be estimated by the feedback.

If you want to understand a bit more of what's going on you have to listen to what eBay says to its shareholders and know how to read the information. Most of what is happening now it's partly a result of the shift announced years ago. Despite not everything going as planned and more recent changes, at least they were successful in one of their goals: they successfully managed to make money from selling advertising solutions to sellers (PLs). But if you look closer at their remarks, they will give visibility to items that are in high demand (promoted or not). I suspect this is the reason why promoting only gives you a limited boost and explains the weird selling patterns, but I'm only guessing. Naturally, larger sellers (the 20%) already plan their businesses to sell items in high demand. The small business seller who buys stock and waits for it to sell over the years is now more vulnerable than never because if their items are not in the "high demand" categories or are not favored by the algorithm for some reason(s), they will lack visibility and may see their sales drop very quickly and have their business at risk (hence the important of not making your business rely solely on eBay).

Some people have been unable to get the "whole point of eBay". But there you have an interesting (and long) reading that I'm sure will be enlightening, draw your own conclusions.

[bravergrace]

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@ojewellery wrote:

As for autocorrecting brandnames.   My favourite new development nightmare was on Amazon.  They decided in fashion, which incorporated jewellery, to unify all S/M/L sizing to read as Small, Medium and Large.  

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I can see the problem that would cause for ring sizes.  Horrific.

I have problems with autocorrecting brand names as it is - for example, I sometimes a vintage clothing brand called M and S.  Not Marks and Spencer - they predated Marks and Spencer, and are totally unconnection.

As for sizes, it's hard enough convincing my new customers that a size 10 sock is not made to fit a size 10 shoe - and I really wouldn't want eBay making "corrections" in this regard either.  Offering me the suggestion, that's something I'd welcome.  But not deciding eBay knows better than I do, because as with most specialist items, it really doesn't.