"I can only think there were either no better candidates for the ebay management roles or there were serious deficiencies in the recruitment process."

Maybe (I'm sure you realized my last sentence was very tongue-in-cheek).

Trouble is, the higher you climb the greasy pole, the less it becomes about genuine competence, and the more it becomes about delegation, connections, talking the talk, and putting a spin on things to suit your own personal career ambitions rather than what might be best for the company/organisation and its customers/users.

For all we know there could be many eBay employees further down the food chain crying out for change (if only to make their own jobs easier, let alone making things better for us), and who are being ignored by the higher-ups just as we are.