POOR SALES = MORE BUYERS NO LONGER USING EBAY?

[candytan67]

So I managed to find some info on yesterday's eBay 2021 Q4 Results.

It came as no suprise to me - after seeing my own declining site sales last year - that again for the third consecutive quarter that the "Number of Active Ebay Buyers" has fallen down to 147million, an overal yearly decline of nearly 10% . 

2021 Q2 = 156million 

2021 Q3 = 152million

2021 Q4 = 147million

2021 Q1 = 163million.......................2021 Q4 = 147million  (-9.8%)

While I am no fan of eBay and the manner it treats it's sellers - I would not like to see the site fail.

Why do buyers appear to be deserting eBay?

We need the answer fast and eBay need to find a solution even faster to help save our businesses.

Is the current "eBay search" (The Sales Prevention Tool) to blame?...........................or is it something else?

Answers on a postcard please!

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

The search on ebay is bad but not as bad as Amazon.

Amazon often shows completely irrelevant stuff before the relevant stuff.

I have an item on Amazon which is the only one of its kind.

In a search it comes about 30th !

Even if you do find it Amazon wont add a buy button to the page ! You have to click on buying options to see a buy button.

As for Etsy well last fee I was charged was 32% !

These online venues for selling need some laws to make them more fair.

[Anonymous]

Easy answers.

Actively emcouraging Chinese sellers with awful feedback to the detriment if the people who actually made Ebay in the early days....forgetting their customer base and values. 

A search tool which sorts all the Chinese sellers first and foreign sellers to the extent its not worth bothering to search an item.

I'm short. Forgetting the little man and people Ebay was built on. Courting China ..trying to be Amazon = alienating.

[bennotbill]

This is how online buying currently works for me.

I now Google the item I'm looking for.

A recent example showed eBay a fiver cheaper than the high street but it was a shop display item - no good

Amazon same price as high street nothing special - no good

Manufacturers web site same price as high street but with free next day delivery free extended guarantee - a winner

I buy much more from high street shops and sellers/manufacturers own websites now. That all started in spring last year when eBay's search started failing to give me any meaningful results.

[nebs9999]

If ever I google something to buy I ignore the ebay results, as they are not reliable. They generally show the price of the cheapest item from a multi item listing, even if it is not what I searched for. Sometimes it is OK, but I'm no longer willing to click on 10 things that are wrong before I find what I am looking for. Worse on ebay, where you sort cheapest first and it is always the cheapest item of a multi item listing that shows up.

For example, I just searched for 1000 C4 window envelopes, cheapest first. In the first listing they cost £68. It took me 2 minutes to find 1,000 for £58 further down. Thats why I don't bother any more. 

We all know the reason, eBay want you to buy something where they get a promoted listing fee. But they need quite a few 2%'s of £68 to make up for the 10.9% of £58 they have lost  by me going elsewhere. 

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

Amazon had a great year $574 billion turn over.

[tech-tonix]

For that problem,  could you try "For FORD & other big makes" in the description, nowhere near what you need, I know. You could try also doing what Ebay let their Chinese sellers do, & include readable words "For Ford, Vauxhall, Peugeot" superimposed over the photo. What's the worst that can happen ?

[messier44000]

Pretty much all of my sales this week on the website  / You-tube + customers contacting me 

about coming to my weekend public open days.

Think its more to do with eBay being selective with search (diplomatic way of putting things).

Amazing how many times I hear customers saying that we searched on-line and found you (website).

Also the the amount of times customers have come to my open days saying You can`t find anything 

on eBay anymore . Are eBay listening ? or is it all hunky dory and working as designed.

[theelench]

---

@nebs9999 wrote:

For example, I just searched for 1000 C4 window envelopes, cheapest first. In the first listing they cost £68. It took me 2 minutes to find 1,000 for £58 further down. Thats why I don't bother any more. 

We all know the reason, eBay want you to buy something where they get a promoted listing fee. But they need quite a few 2%'s of £68 to make up for the 10.9% of £58 they have lost  by me going elsewhere. 

---

I'm probably asking a stupid question but how can ebay do that?

If they offer buyers the search option "Cheapest First", how can the results not have the cheapest first?

I'm not well up on trading / advertising standards and as I search for Collectables, never search for "Cheapest First". 

Isn't putting more expensive items above cheaper ones misleading buyers into believing that £68 is the cheapest?  

Doesn't that infringe some code of advertising or something similar in trading standards?

[toolboss15]

Thats why I don’t use eBay much now, this has become a non-user friendly platform. Due to dumb defaults when searching and other rubbish eBay has introduced. Suggest like me I now do most of my shopping on other platforms, even when there is fraudulent listings eBay do nothing even when you show proof of the fraudulent listings., so they are no better than some of the crooks that sell on here. It becoming a non-usable platform.

[arfurdaleymeetsdelboy]

Hi

My views havedropped dramatically, I thought Ebay was a platform to sell your goods but they are failing.

By their own promotion tool they are not working for us, they are supposed to already promote our wares not ask for more money to do it, they are not physically doing anything so why want more money, it is a program that they should already have. 

By Ebay offering this tool they are admitting that they are underselling for their members this is wrong. I listed two Lladro wallets for £5.00 they wanted £1.49 to promote them then take a large chunk if it sells. This is greed and we all need to enquire why this tool is not already being used to sell our goods why do we have to buy it? Ebay has become a really bad place because of the fees etc. They do not care about anyone except profit.

Stan Simons 

[whf-southampton]

You have hit the nail well and truly on the head. Ebay should be providing an even marketplace for all sellers, with promoted listings provided as part of the basic selling fees. we should not be having to pay extra to see any sales at all, suggesting that they are not doing their job properly in the first place. As an accountant of 45 years, I find their fees system quite appalling

There are huge issues within the site, the fees, the automated returns service, the impossible task of trying to get to speak in person to a customer services rep with regards to complicated issues, the search system that never seems to work properly whatever they try. and many, many more.

They really need to involve top rated sellers from all different selling genres far more in order to sort out just what is going wrong within ebay and causing it to slowly fail when other platforms see to be surging forward.

Nigel Schoolcraft FCCA

[tothemoonresales]

... Well eBay finally got me "out of the game", closed my shop at the start of Jan, and the last bits of my stock now ended. I would like to say it's been fun but the last 2 years have been hell.
Will I return?  Not at present! Let's hope they can finally resolve/fix things and the economy also recovers at some point . . . . All the best everyone.

[theelench]

I'm not quite 'out of the game' yet, but I'm getting closer to that point.

The lack of buyers is only one factor.  The suspicion that I might have more if ebay wasn't hiding my listings in it's continuous arm twisting efforts to get me to give them 25% of my sale price and P&P costs.

The feeling that ebay is undermining my perfectly good reputation as a seller by lying to the few buyers who do manage to buy from me, telling them their goods will be delivered the day after purchase.

A new fee that I feel is only the thin end of the wedge and will be hiked (like the others) as required so that ebay can continue to pay dividends that are way too high while neglecting a site riddled with faults and glitches.

I'll probably continue to list a few items as a token effort and to keep the selling account open, but it will be done without enthusiasm, just a chore that has to be gone through although it's unrewarding pointless 'make-work' in the hope it might lead to better days.  Which I doubt.  I don't think I've ever felt so negative about ebay.

[jow1995]

thats very sad your closing, with 9k items sold and 100% feedback. Why has it been "hell"? 

cheers

Dave

[exponential_developments]

Active buyers is now down to 132 million.

[oilydub]

Do you know what they were down from?

[exponential_developments]

Last two quarters were the same at 132 million.

[exponential_developments]

Suppose if you look at the numbers posted at the top of this thread the decline has been fast, and out of a global population is not a large amount of buyers.

[oilydub]

Apologies should have looked there before asking the question.

That is a serious drop.

In our household there seems to be a delivery every other day from Amazon & I'm the only one using Ebay

[exponential_developments]

My family and i all live a long way apart, so we have family meet ups and go for a meal etc, my oldest Daughter is a manager for a car company, they have a large office, not sure how many work in it but its a lot, she said out of those staff and her friends none use ebay, i asked why, the usual answers we are all used to, plus she said she got free Prime for a year.

I went upto Newcastle a couple of months ago to see family, i just parked up outside their house and an Amazon van pulled up outside nextdoor......ebay can't compete, maybe that's why EDD are so short......