Is Ebay in terminal decline...................?

[exponential_developments]

I could be wrong as these are opinions based on what limited information i can see, but the changes over the last couple of years have as i mentioned in a post about a year ago, broken the camels back.

PL, and unsustainable and a flawed concept, inherently they destroy the seller and eventually ebay.

Other opinions please, from your perspective as we all see thing slightly different.

Ps......this should be the busiest time of year for many, for the love of goodness don't hold all your eggs in one basket, if they are get a Plan B and get the hell out of Dodge City........i wish everyone on here well in life.

Regards Shane.

[tornari-group]

The world (and retailling) has changed and eBay has been joined with many other on-line selling opportunities. And that's what there is out there - opportunities. Certainly, eBay has changed and it's not as easy to make a profit. But I don't think it is terminal. They are, at the moment, reactive (to other sites), rather than being pro-active. I would like to see eBay being innovative and actually dominant. But that will take a change of attitude at the top. It may be forced upon them as the competition gears up. Time will tell, but keep up the hard work for now and keep an eye out for the opportunities, where ever they may be.

[typo_lee]

Not sure if its terminal but its definitely not what it used to be. We are selling 70% of what we used to sell on here and yes as you say do not have your eggs all in one basket as if we only sold on ebay we would be bust by now. Good luck to everyone. There will be no christmas rush on here this year thats for sure.

[theelench]

"PL, an unsustainable and flawed concept, inherently they destroy the seller and eventually ebay."

I agree with you, not only from the point of view of business sellers trying to maintain some level of competitiveness, but from the point of view of a private seller.  As such I don't think of myself as having 'competition' in the same sense, I don't have to 'cost' the price of 'stock' for stuff I've had for years or think about my 'margin' or square the circle of how not to earn nothing in the face of ebays relentless demand for more fees.

But it is still a flawed concept when ebay makes it so clear that if I don't do PL, my items won't be seen or sell.

Probably demographics are against me to some degree, resulting in a slow decline in sales over the years, although sales on another site for the same niche items seem to go up, not down.

But to go from roughly one sale a month over the past two years, to 4 sales in almost 12 months this year, is not 'natural'.

IMO ebay, in its efforts to get PL fees out of me, is deliberately restricting my sales.  Having wasted my time listing something every week all year just to get those four sales, I've given-up on ebay simply because the time it took to list 42 items in order to get those sales is out of all proportion to the rewards from doing so.

Ebay has in effect turned away sales of my goods unless I still pay fees voluntarily for PL.  To me it's pointless being offered "Free to Sell" if the results, without paying PL fees, are so small.  The result is that another low volume, but trouble-free, seller has given up on ebay altogether.  Like so many others have done before me and so many more are still doing.

[exponential_developments]

It seems a shame, as sales on here used to be great, used to look forward to logging on in a morning.

[1956glyn]

Me too...now when i log on and see i have a message my first instinct is "oh no what now"

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

I think ebay will be around for a while yet.

It has been getting worse selling and buying.

I used to get many emails a day asking about items or sales emails.

Its very quiet now.

The buying experience is poor. Try doing a search for a cardboard box of 6 by 6 by 6 inches.

You get loads of listings with false lowest prices.

The search then becomes very tedious and boring.

[pg_kicks]

I think its declining but a few pretty simple changes could save it, be strict on what a business is, appreciate your customers who are alerting you to accounts that are clearly not only breaking your own policy but the law. I'd give private accounts 100 free listings a year, after that they should be expected to pay for the site, why should somebody get a totally free site when they are selling over such an amount?

Scrap the promoted listings scheme, go back to the best accounts get the best placings, if you are wanting accounts to ship fast, have free shipping, offer 57834 different postage options then there should be something genuinely worthy of it. 

Sack off half of the customer service teams, especially the ones in South Africa, Albania and Philippines, with the money saved you could employ 10 people (maybe a few more depending on how much they pay outsourced centres) in Ireland who are not expected to just lie to your customers and try and help. Get the chat bot working better so people only need to speak to a human if its a complex issue, most issues wont need a human if you have a good FAQ section.

If you are going to make any changes, big of small ask a portion of the customers (the ones who pay for the site) their opinion before releasing it (and make sure its working first).

I cant believe I have to actually type these out as they are all really basic business steps that you'd expect from any CEO but it seems eBay is built different, they want to hide and lie.

[crg_music]

They seem to have given up on business sellers for the moment. 

Obviously the competing with fake private accounts has meant many leaving.

Other sites are considerably cheaper or free(selling + subsequently buying) so the only way they will be able to compete moving forward in my opinion is to follow vinted and become free to sell for all with optional payable upgrades then charge the buyer a fee. I feel if they dont follow this they'll lose all businesses selling low value items.

I cant and refuse to compete with a private seller, a genuine example (10k items listed, 12k feedback = 300 in the last month) seems hes got the free listings system locked down. But also how is he still here?, theres another with a YouTube channel where he goes around carboots then lists here and sells, all in 1080p.

Limiting listings makes no sense so they need to do away with shop limits fullstop.

Also the site is so hard to find anything, it was so simple to browse 15 years ago, now everything hidden in menus and dont get me started on the search. Back to basics, strip it back and make it all work as it should.

[exponential_developments]

And todays glitch is postage labels..........

[1956glyn]

Todays glitch here is now nearly 3 inches of snow...all we were forecast was a bit of sleet 😁

Hopefully more people will stay in and buy off the site.

[tressygirl]

If they buy @1956glyn ,  lets hope you and other sellers can then get out, onto those roads, to post! 🤔

[1956glyn]

I have to list to sell lol   Not bothered for a couple of weeks

One PO is about 200 yards away

[theelench]

It may be "around for a while yet" but will it be any use to people like me?

Rather belatedly the CEO, earlier this year, acknowledged that ebay's unique mix of businesses and it's army of private sellers made it what it is today.  Even going as far to say that he had evidence that buyers who also sell, buy twice as much as buyers who only buy.

Yet for best part of a decade ebay has introduced change after change to facilitate businesses and ignored their effect on private sellers.  Most of them have been hailed as improving the "Buying experience" and which would increase sales.  Yet NONE of them has ever increased my sales, which have steadily declined.

I've clung on long enough and like so many others have had enough of the smoke and mirrors and the outright lies that ebay spouted to cover the increasingly difficult to use site and the falling sales that it produced.

Free to List a thousand items a month was useless to the vast majority of private sellers.  80% off FVF didn't help much either, if sales were on the slide.  For some time before they disappeared the offer didn't even produce a blip in the number of listings of what I sell, because it became clear that listings made under an offer were even LESS likely to sell than normal.

So now that's all gone and it's Free to Sell, on a site that's configured to prevent sales unless I agree to pay PL fees.  Does ebay think I'm stupid and can't see that the site is still the same as six weeks ago and my items are STILL just as unlikely to sell?  No matter how good I am as a seller or how rare or unique my items are?  Neither comes into the equation any more, it's all down to How much will  I pay ebay to get a sale and yet again I'm at the bottom of the pile, under business sellers with the time, inclination and (above all) the cash to pay ebay what it "recommends".

I don't think this latest installment of pulling the wool over private sellers eyes will be a great success and any success will be short-term at best.  I've not seen any noticeable increase in listings in my niche since it began.  Even in clothing and other "Focus" areas increases will probably be short-lived and sales for businesses will continue to fall in line with the declining numbers of private sellers without whom most ebay businesses wouldn't exist.

[pg_kicks]

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@theelench wrote:

Even going as far to say that he had evidence that buyers who also sell, buy twice as much as buyers who only buy.

---

Nothing against you but this line is the most pointless line eBay have ever said, well along with the At eBay, we are dedicated to ensuring a fair and equitable marketplace for all business sellers.

Unless they release evidence they could say anything and as long as it fits the argument they will have people repeating it. On this place, reddit, and other places I've yet to see more than a handful of business sellers who have had more sales since free listing for private accounts so whilst sales may have increased overall its gone to private accounts which many are breaking policy all whilst eBay charge businesses to run the site.

I say this as somebody who doesn't mind genuine private accounts having limited free to sell, not 3600 a year but a sensible amount.

[theelench]

I agree with you as I'm repeating what he said and wonder why it was only acknowledged so recently when the connection must have been increasingly visible to ebay towers years before.

Also, as I also said, that so often ebay would push its "Increasing Sales" narrative in the face of evidence that for significant numbers of private sellers, it was clearly having the opposite effect.  

Your reading on "Reddit and other places", combined with my not seeing any significant increase in listings in the categories I sell in, if anything re-enforces my belief that many private sellers now fall into the category of "once bitten - twice shy" and wonder just how much of an increase in listing / selling by private sellers is ebay actually seeing?

And please don't muddy the water by bringing businesses pretending to private sellers into it.  I'm talking about what has happened to genuine private sellers over the past decade and what IMO, will continue after these most recent changes.  By which I mean there will be no real change for them, it will still be a site configured around the needs of business sellers. 

For private sellers it will still be a place of slow sales, payment holds and where trying to sell anything on so convoluted a site needs the encyclopedic knowledge of a full-time seller just to avoid the numerous pitfalls. 

That some business sellers have an advantage over correctly registered businesses because of ebay's negligence, has nothing to do with them.

In the short-term there may be an increase in sales going to private sellers.  I've often complained about the activities of re-sellers.  I wonder how many of any increased private sales is due to the re-sellers having a field-day with wave of new seller's items to cherry-pick?  But how many will stick around when the reality of being a genuine private seller on ebay becomes apparent and they face the issues I mentioned above as  their norm?  IMO the decline in private sellers may show a short-term blip, but with ebay now, essentially the same as its been for years the decline will only continue.

And IMO that decline will continue to have the knock-on effect for business sellers that is already apparent, less sales.

[santlache_sales]

Yes, 100%, eBay has been in terminal decline for probably the last ten years.

Why ?

Because eBay have totally abused their position as the leading platform of it's type, hiking fees beyond all reasonable expectations to feed their ever greedy shareholders, which has meant fleecing sellers for as much as they can get away with.

Combine this with taking total control on every aspect of a sale, stealth fees like 10% on P&P for no other reason than to line ebay's pockets, and you have some of the very unattractive things eBay have done to screw the platform further.

Then we have the con of their 'promoted listings' and a search engine that is no longer a search engine, as it has been so manipulated by eBay to show what they want you to see, not what you want to see.

At the end of October we had ten days without a sale, as of today we have now gone seven days since our last sale. The pattern is there for all to see - Visibilty - No Visibility, and switched off by ebay.

This is unsustainable.

Yes, eBay is very much finished, they've managed to totally ruin the site.

[santlache_sales]

Is it in decline ?

Put it this way, in my line around ten years ago if you went to the front page of items for sale, nearly all of this first page would be some of the biggest dealers in the country selling their top items as a 'BIN', items priced in the thousands and some very nice pieces to boot.

They have all now gone due to the totally unreasonable hike in fees and ebay's insistance of having full control over every aspect of a sale. In the past eBay was a very attractive platform that delivered, now it has become a very unattractive platform and it does not deliver any more.

Our sales can attest to that, with seventeen days of no sales in the last month.

[pg_kicks]

I never muddied the waters, eBays lack of action did, and as its a major factor in why eBay is declining its only right to bring it up. I'd rather a slow selling but free market place than a slow selling and expensive market place, if it wasnt flooded with accounts getting it for free it might be better. I will continue bringing it up until its fixed, if you don't like it then please just don't comment.

What advantage do correctly registered businesses have over other correctly registered? If you mean buying power or discounts due to sale volumes thats just business, allowing accounts to break policy and law is not just business.

eBay made up/created/found figures to state buyers who sell buy more to fit the narrative to give free selling to private accounts, if it was a solid fact they'd release figures, same as if sales were increasing they'd release figures for pre-loved instead of using Germany, a whole different market with strict ruling on who can and can not be a private account.

[vintique*violet]

I say this as somebody who doesn't mind genuine private accounts having limited free to sell, not 3600 a year but a sensible amount.

Agreed...Genuine private sellers no way can list 3600 items a year... I could not even reach 300 a year let alone a month. 

Those who do are obviously " masquerading" 

Currently I have 22 items listed ( most have been re-listed numerous times) with barely any interest or watchers. I have had a conversation with an eBay agent who said " Sell things people want to buy?" 

As a private seller for the past 17 years  I do actually buy more than I sell...  the decline  in the platform, which I must say is not user friendly , is not subtle ...it is definitely in your face for both business and private sellers.

Foreign sellers are abundant and seem to be increasing ( China, Taiwan, India, Morocco, Sri Lanka etc) .. perhaps that is where eBay see the future of their platform? A foreign ( global) market makes of great interest to shareholders.