FORUM POSTINGS ON THE DECLINE !!

[crn303]

The number of various posting subjects on this forum have shown a decline this week to date.

Are we losing heart and accepting the situation as it is (BPF, SD etc) ?

[akemp1]

I've said what I wanted to say and while ebay have taken some notice (eg ditching the combined RM small/medium parcel rate and starting work on combined postage) it is still a less attractive place to buy and sell - and that's their choice I accept.

Ebay seem to in a death spiral of trying to rinse increasing margins from a declining userbase.

It was never healthy ebay were so dominant anyway so the extra transactions going to the other places is a good thing long term for competition. No platform should be in a position to take it's users for granted and they will have to relearn putting the customer first to stem the decline.

This change caused me to signup to the clothing market place to buy and sell as at least it's 'the real deal' and have implemented buyer tax and managed delivery properly. There are still some improvements that even they could do such as renaming the buyer tax to platform fee and getting offers and bundling to work together in the same order.

When buying I now look at both places (and tend to buy at the other place because the total cost tends to be lower) and when selling I carefully select which platform to list an item. I have found some of my stagnant ebay items can sell quickly and for more money there. I only hope the clothing place embrace the opportunity and open more categories. I still have more ebay listings to move across to that place.

Ebay is becoming the last resort place to buy and sell stuff if I can't do it elsewhere.

Not great for their shareholders but as a user it's OK as I am now active elsewhere.

If ebay wanted to kick their users to signup elsewhere then they succeeded.

[1956glyn]

A few years ago members were posting questions every 2 minutes and yes it was quite hard for regular responders (and there were far more of them then) to actually keep up.    The boards have seen a steep decline over the past few years. 

Nowadays it seems to be the same questions and gripes about the BPF and simple delivery.    I think most responders have just run out of steam and as someone else pointed out its the same old repetative posts which to be honest gets rather boring 😞  

In the coming months i would not be surprised if the boards were just done away with.     Also its not that easy for members to actually find them.

Personally i do not think Ebay will revert back to the days before the BPF and SD.    Its going to be a case of put up with it / shut up and continue .......................or just leave as many appear to be doing. 

I find that Ebay nowadays is no fun at all. 

[morseidiot2]

I've been spending most of my time building up my profile on other sites, after all Ebay is not compulsory.

I've also only listed items on Ebay that are under 100g and will go through the small letter slot, nothing else gets listed on Ebay its all listed elsewhere now. 

I've also stopped buying on Ebay altogether, I can buy what I collect cheaper elsewhere and without the BPF.

For everything else its Prime or a local shop

I suspect many of the normal posters are doing just that so they don't feel the need to post on here. We have also just had some wonderful weather and life is a bit short to be banging your head against a brick wall posting on here.

Talking of which I'm off to the village coffee morning now !

[kath3735_wxmjn]

I for one am coming on here less as i have now taken my items off, so no need to check what is happening.  I will come on just for the update to see if e bay might tweak things a bit (not that i expect them to!).  I will now have time to concentrate on the other site.

[superchallenge]

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@theelench wrote:

Another reason the number of posts are down on SC is that some of the more obnoxious 'contributors' who's main reasons for posting were to belittle and annoy by using insulting and facetious language have abandoned their hobby and gone back to the BSB to loudly complain because ebay has announced its latest plans for Promoted Listings.   Which will apparently screw them even more than they are already.

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Oh God, yeah. Those guys are the absolute WORST, aren't they?

[theelench]

Take your big wooden spoon somewhere else 🤣

[akemp1]

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@1956glyn wrote:

I find that Ebay nowadays is no fun at all. 

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I think they try and run ebay to be just on the wrong side of borderline unacceptable. Bad enough that it maximises their profits but not so awful that everyone leaves at once.

That strategy might have worked for them in the past but since I started shopping at the clothing marketplace I have been staggered at the choice and variety that I am seeing where they have mature categories. For some items I wanted to buy they had a better selection than ebay and I never expected that. The only stuff they are missing is the hundreds of near identical chinese promoted import listings to dig past. As a buyer there you get a much richer experience and see a much higher proportion of the interesting stuff that private sellers tend to list. I can totally understand why buyers are leaving ebay as shopping there is fun.

[papso22]

This is what always happens with ebay changes.  A flurry of posts , then they tail off, leaving posts from people who are actually using whatever new system it is and are having issues.

Those people can then be helped. 

[lucy_farmer]

'In the coming months i would not be surprised if the boards were just done away with.     Also its not that easy for members to actually find them.'

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I have a nasty feeling you're right 🙁

The 'community' button got moved from it's nicely obvious spot on the top right years ago, and got buried down in the  somewhat greyed-out 'small print'.

I think this was a bit of a give-away that 'community' was no longer on the important list for ebay, even back then!

And anyway, what business wants to give a comfortable place for all it's users to moan to each other about how badly they're being treated?

(If, for example, there had been a 'community' section on the Post Offices Horizon system, then the P.O wouldn't have been able to tell individual sub-p.ms, for years, that they were the only ones having the problems..)

[akemp1]

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@kath3735_wxmjn wrote:

I will come on just for the update to see if e bay might tweak things a bit (not that i expect them to!).

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Oh I'm sure you can rely on ebay continuing to tweak things when they see new opportunities to further enrich themselves. That's they ended up with the almighy mess we see before us.

[akemp1]

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@lucy_farmer wrote:

And anyway, what business wants to give a comfortable place for all it's users to moan to each other about how badly they're being treated?

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I figure we are some kind of near-zero-cost focus group for them to help them with fine tuning.

It was mentioned on a weekly community chat a few weeks ago by one of the ebay reps that people working on some of the recent changes were likely to be reading the forum themselves anyway.

That's not to say they will do whatever we ask as there's clearly a commercial tension between ebay and user objectives but I guess at least they are making better informed decisions.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"The 'community' button got moved from it's nicely obvious spot on the top right years ago, and got buried down in the somewhat greyed-out 'small print'."

And you can't even access the Community from the Home page because of infinite scrolling.

"And anyway, what business wants to give a comfortable place for all it's users to moan to each other about how badly they're being treated?"

I take from it that they're either reading the room, and/or trying to keep as much of the flak as possible internally so that less of it spills out into other social media.

[the-layer-laboratory]

This is hardy rocket science, is it? Ebay forum posters are the same users that use the ebay marketplace. It's common sense that if ebay's customer base declines (as it clearly has), forum use will decline too.