eBay Is Dead

[pinball-fantasies]

I am thinking eBay as a selling platform is dead since the seller protection was added ? I wonder if eBay have notice the decline in sellers since new rules started . In my 20 years of selling on eBay Ive never seen it like this

I have 20 watchers on my account , most of them are still selling but their sales have fallen to almost to nothing over the last 2 months and a few sellers have gone from the platform , its like all the buyers have gone

I wonder if eBay have notice the fall in sales or do they really care anymore

Is eBay a sicking ship and now doomed ?

[leri.forsale]

its not this. Ebay dont send me offers anymore. Thats whta i am taking about. 

[storage.boutique]

Agree, who has time to read all the nonsense on this forum at times!

[storage.boutique]

I dont think it is dead at all. It is growing rapidly according to all the figures. It is growing faster than for many a long year. Share price is up, up, up. The reason it looks that way to a lot of small time guys who shout loudest is because eBay is cleaning up its act. Personal sellers that are actually really running a business are the most obvious ones that are getting funneled out. Business sellers are having to spend musch larger amounts on advertising which is big money in the pocket of eBay and the new growth in postage revenues across the board. Has it improved their brand strength? Im not sure. I think eBay is still identified with broken old tat, shoddy customer service and dodgy dealers. But strengthening the brand is not an overnighter. If the strategy is to change to a more sustainable site in the face if the fierce competition of other sites, then I think they are making a passable go of it - but the competitive environment with new entrants must make them very worried. 

[storage.boutique]

Thats because offers were for personal sellers. That is the category that is being funneled out. eBay is growing into a proper marketplace for business sellers who have advertising budgets, customer service and post stuff on time. The days of shoddy nonsense sales through eBay are almost over I think. They are strengthening their brand by weeding out all the nonsense. People that need offers to sell are not the bread and butter of the modern eBay I am afraid. Best you go off to another website I think.

[welshjester]

End of the day eBay made some bad decisions which have made people move away from the platform, less buyers. The need to defend a platform so badly is baffling, but each to his own. I'll be giving items away as obviously good stuff won't sell for peanuts when some others have sold the same type of item for more. Utterly senseless. Something is definitely wrong on eBay's side, even if there's more than that to it.

Those that think otherwise are free to do so.

[cee-dee]

OK, there is something wrong, people have changed, they seem to want things for very little. A few years back, things that sold for £50 - £60 are now going for less than £20. Just watch some of the antique programmes on TV and see that it's exceptional items that make decent money. The also-rans end up just that, selling for little.

Take a look at some auction sales and see that quite a lot goes unsold and if you actually attend, you'll have suspicions that some "sold" items are actually "bought in" by the auctioneer because they miraculously reappear in another sale. See how some auctioneers offer "A box of mixed" or "A box of mixed china/plated/metalwork/brass/copper". Some time back those items would have sold either separately or as pairs/threes/fours/sixes. How much are copper kettles selling for now? £15 - £20? I remember when a large kettle in absolutely fabulous condition was £120. I could go on?

Now, on ebay I see sellers with loads of (not antiques) what is literally trash selling things for £4  to £10 but it seems that's what people want to buy?

Times have changed, people have changed and so has ebay. It's a lot more hassle than when I first started here.

[theelench]

Then why doesn't ebay simply remove the option to accept "Best Offer" from the listing form ?

Why does it still send me messages to "Start the ball rolling -- Make an offer" on items I'm watching and quite often on items I only viewed for a minute or two the day before?

And if ebay is so determined to 'clean up its act' why does it encourage sellers to send offers to 'interested' buyers, whether or not they are Watching or (as above) just browsing.

It seems to me that ebay actively encouraging offers and these days, with the persistence in sending so many messages soliciting offers, wants more of them, not less ?

[storage.boutique]

I think you are referring to a time when the 60-70 year olds, with serious disposable income, needed antiques or collectables. Nowadays they are 80-90 and in a different place. For example, people may have purchased an autograph of Doris Day 20 years ago, but now wouldn't know who she was.  

The younger generation want different things. This is natural. Also, the competitive environment has changed dramatically with so many other websites offering similar things. As per TV channels, things need to change dramatically or they lose significant market share. 

I thknk eBay are ripping cash out of a smaller seller base (proper businesses) by offering more services such as advertising. If you are a personal seller you are now competing against big budget companies just to get traffic across your page. This is not the place for small businesses or personal sellers - whether that is a good or bad thing.

[storage.boutique]

Not entirely sure what that has to do with the eBay brand but it makes perfect sense to me. I personally never get it, so I guess it must be something in your settings or cookies or something.

[theelench]

I'd agree that 'people have changed' and one way that is evident on ebay is that there a lot less private buyers than a decade or so ago.  Whatever the reason for their departure, it has drastically reduced the number of bidders on auction listings, so they often sell for one bid, or not at all.

Yet, when I used to list auctions I'd always get a few Watchers, who mostly never bid.  Some checking sale prices, but others just waiting for me to send them an offer at a lower price.

It's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to see that many are Traders who, if they bid at all, only ever bid the start price.  They are effectively controlling sale prices whenever they can.

I still collect vintage glass and regularly browse google shopping and etsy and in my niche it isn't difficult to spot numerous items that sold on ebay for one bid of (say) £10, only to appear on another site at a far higher price.  So easy to spot when the sellers pinch the original sellers photos.

It's also true to say that what buyers buy has changed and copper kettles may  well have seen price reductions.  It's the same in my glass niche.  I had to get into bidding wars to buy some of the weirder pieces of Stolzle.  Today they sell for a fraction of the price I paid.

But it's just as true to say that at the time I picked-up some bargains, by todays standards, in Uranium glass that was regarded as a curiosity a decade ago, but today is fought over.  Or Cloud Glass that few could be bothered to I.D, so sold as common UK Davidson, when in fact it was far rarer and made by European companies.

In some ways ebay has not "read the room" correctly and made mistakes by continuing with its boot-fair scrum attitude to collectables that was appropriate when ebay opened up the whole world as a market place.  Giving collectors access to an unprecedented range of items that they could rarely find locally.

Those days are gone, collectors are no longer content to grab anything they can find, they're more sophisticated.  They aren't content to try to winnow a few items out of 10,000 ads. in Home and Garden category, for modern Chinese "Art Deco style" tat, they know what they want and expect to be able to find it easily.  Ebay has failed in that, indeed it's made finding rare items increasingly difficult.

Yes, it is a lot more hassle, both for buyers and sellers and whichever they happen to be, they're more likely to be disappointed.  Which is why ebay has become a playground for resellers looking for cheap stock and lower prices that they can make a profit on elsewhere.

[theelench]

I replied to your post #144 where you say "People who need offers to sell are not the bread and butter of modern ebay I'm afraid".

So why doesn't ebay simply remove any mention of offers from the listing form and stop sending messages to accept or send offers from the site if this is part of the "shoddy nonsense" that you think ebay is trying to rid itself of ?

[theelench]

I think you are mistaken about the reasons behind several things.

"The share price is up, up, up."   

 Mainly because ebay spends billions of $ every year on share buy-backs reducing the number of shares and increasing their value, propping up the price.

It's more accurate to say that since before Covid and its lockdowns ebays revenue, active buyers and sellers and GMV have all been in decline.   The lockdowns gave the numbers a temporary upward blip, nothing else.

It's also true to say that most years, if background price inflation and specific inflation to delivery charges are taken out of ebay's 'growth', it's virtually non-existent.

Effectively ebay's increasing share price is more to do with inflation and massive support by ebay , not due to any real growth.

"Personal sellers that are actually running a business are the most obvious ones that are getting funnelled out".

That should read, "Business sellers that are pretending to be private sellers.........etc."  A business is a business whichever account type the person running it uses.  By definition anyone running a business cannot be a private seller  --  only a "private" seller.  So this is a problem caused by criminally inclined business sellers and they that are being 'funnelled out' so slowly that, according to some registered business sellers, the problem is increasing not being successfully dealt with at all.

"..... change to a more sustainable site in the face of fierce competition of other sites, then I think they are making a passable go of it - but the competitive environment with new entrants must make them very worried."

& on another post " must change or lose significant market share."

Ebay has been losing market share since before Covid as measured by its GMV and active buyers and sellers.  Mostly, I would argue, as private sellers decline in number.   They may not be "ebay's bread and butter" any more, but losing millions of what should be regarded as its captive audience and natural buyer base to those new entrants should indeed make them 'very worried'.

Particularly if they are being replaced by a flood of new business sellers (both registered and 'private' business sellers) all fighting over a declining number of buyers.  That's not, IMO, changing into a more sustainable site, it's cutting off one of its feet and one that it will desperately need in the race ahead. 

By doing so it's giving away a competitive edge.  One that has already been happily received by the "V" competitor and which provoked the (almost) panic reaction of "Free to Sell".  Which in turn has exacerbated the problem of unregistered business sellers.  Hardly a great success story if ebay is "cleaning up its act".  

The last quarters Income Statement has shown some real growth but, to me, that falls into the category of "One Swallow does not a summer make" and only if during the rest of the year that growth is sustained can it be seen as ebay having a successful strategy to pull itself back towards its previous dominant position.