are e bay blind, or do they have a cunning plan baldrick ?

[Anonymous]

hi please allow me to vent my spleen 

dont e bay ever read the boards on seller central if only to gauge the feeling of the sellers.

e bay has come up with yet another fee to get a bigger slice of the cake.

if you read the posts a lot of people have said they intend to close their shops and giving up selling  and thats just the business sellers without looking at the private sellers who are abandoning e bay in droves.

dont e bay realise that once these sellers leave it will be difficult if not impossible to entice them back.

the platform seems to be outpricing itself or seems intent on commercial suicide.

now if i owned e bay i,d be doing everything in my power to stop those sellers from leaving especially those small private tat sellers who made e bay what it is and the ones e bay seem intent to force off the platform.

add to that e bay passing seller details to HMRC can only frighten people off the site and sell elsewhere.

(is that legal)....

they are practicly gifting sellers to rival sites like FB marketplace,vinted and etsy the last two who have taken the best parts of e bays model and created a platform out of it.

those at the top must like politicans live in some sort of protctive bubble or just be insulated from just how bad e bay has become.

or is it part of some master plan discussed secretly in the boardroom as to e bays future  a future we have yet to see.

or could it be something to do with e bays biggest rival amazon a deal perhaps in the offing ???

are its sellers to be sold down the river or flushed down the kermit ... i fear the worst is yet to come   

[magpiecorner1]

Well, surprising I'm in Scotland, but just a couple of miles from the whole motorway network, with a Grand Espace touching 200k miles, always good to have a workhorse.  The 5th or 6th one we have bought from eBay sellers.  We have as many potholes but I think you can spot them a tad better than in most cars. 

Though if we are still affected by EU rules, I hear that they are touting to make it law to be unable to repair older cars.   That will either wreck or be the making of eBay motor parts, but my hubby has already planned his retirement around bringing muck cheap car parts over from the continent.  They do say never retire!

[joa.mos]

They simply do not care to listen to sellers or even realise how bad things are, If we are not making sales E Bays profits must be down, Without sellers they have not got a site but they seem unable to grasp this fact, 

Such a shame it used to be so good and I relied on it to live, I have an Etsy shop now and that outsells E bay, 

Just wish they had left everything alone and stop all these useless changes for change sake. 

[magpiecorner1]

But the profits are doing well, they have just changed their plan a tad.

I'm taking bets that Etsy will follow where eBay leads, promotions will cost more, and I'd even bet that we will be seeing a monthly subscription on Etsy soon. 

[Anonymous]

i looked at etsy myself £11 joining fee which you dont find out about untill you register

6% selling and 16p a listing

i deleted my account in minutes of signing up im not about to lay £11 out on a chance

as you said could be out of the frying pan into the fire

[the-nutwood-collection]

@magpiecorner1 is right to say that if 20 sellers selling the same thing reduces to 10 sellers selling the same thing eBay will still get the sale.  The problem is when there aren't multiple sellers selling the same thing.

The strapline used to be 'You can buy anything on eBay'.  If everything is on eBay, then buyers will look there first.  If they find what they want, there's a good chance they'll buy it.  This is why everyone wants to be at the top of the first page on Google - see it, buy it.

If the reduction in sellers leads to a lack of diversity in items offered for sale, then buyers won't make eBay the first port of call - and this is the problem.

From the last SEC filing, it seems that eBay is reviving its interest in the C2C market - in effect, going back to its roots - which probably explains the free to list, free to sell offer which has alienated the business seller community. 

[vinylscot]

To return to a familiar culprit, I believe a lot of eBays perceived ills at the moment can be traced back to problems with the search function/process.

A couple of years ago, eBay forced sellers to use item specifics, arguing that it would enhance the search experience once fully rolled out. It has never been fully rolled out. Sellers went through a ton of hassle updating listings to comply, and buyers were never told anything about item specifics.

Therefore, the required change in buyer's search behaviour has not happened. I would say you can still buy anything on eBay, if you know how to find it. Sadly, many buyers don't know how to find things these days, and consequently, many that do find items are getting bargains, as so many haven't been able to find the item at all.

Buyers are being forced off eBay by the inadequate search function. Obviously, the so-called "cost of living crisis" has an effect too, but don't underestimate the effect of the awful search function.