Forum Moderators: buckworks
Acknowledging that most online shoppers cannot be bothered with auctions, eBay plans Wednesday to announce changes to its fee structure that emphasize fixed prices over bidding. The move is intended to help eBay compete more effectively with Amazon .com and other big online retailers.
The announcement, timed to increase sales during the holiday shopping season, is just one of the changes eBay has made in the last few months aimed at reducing its dependence on its auction business, which is growing more slowly than fixed-price sales. It provides yet more evidence that consumers are losing interest in auctions now that online shopping sites have become more affordable and easier to use.
It failed to stay within its "niche" and as others have expressed became too greedy, focusing more on the golden egg then the goose.
I have / had been using eBay since 98, way back in the beginning and I am in the process of canceling my 6 year old PayPal account (didn't sign up right away) and filling a complaint with the BBB. I have never in my lifetime been so frustrated with a company as I am with PayPal -- but I won't get into that here.
Anyways, on one hand it's sad to see eBay go...I remember buying a front side marker lens for my old '88 Honda CRX as one of my first auctions, it was fun and exciting! While the buy it now is ok, that does seem to get more into Amazon's territory and because of all these issues I can definitely say eBay 'pushed' me into Amazon.
I guess this can just be a reminder to all of us who own our business, remember you mission / niche, and focus on it!
eBay is like every other big company - they now have a ton of execs who have to justify their jobs by 'improving' something, which usually means being out of touch with what the customer wants and making problems worse.
It used to fun (and simple) ten years ago.
If they really had any sense, they would allow shops to list their items on buy it now for free. I would list loads if I knew it was free until someone bought and then I would have to pay the final value fee and the PayPal fee.
I thought this was a good idea for a brief second, but then I realised eBay would quickly be filled with rubbish!
but then I realised eBay would quickly be filled with rubbish!
You mean that it isn't now?!?
Today's market-makers were not started because everyone was happy with the status quo.
Ditto for PayPal. A company so out of touch on how to treat customers only serves as the fuel to drive its future competitors.
Well I did waste my time filling and guess what...PayPal was exposed and I got my refund! Well worth it, and not that hard!
Re Paypal, they did not get the share of the market they now enjoy with being as bad as some people make out. They have many millions of members but as with most companies we only ever here from those who have problems. I have used them to buy and sell for years without a single problem and always found their support (in the UK) to be very good.
This change will actually benefit our selling model on eBay. But we plan to continue to ease off the venue and concentrate on our own website.
PayPal: We do mid 5 figures a month with PayPal (eBay, website and phone order using Virtual Terminal). We've only had a couple issues, all of which were resolved in less than 24 hours.
The majority (not all) of the horror stories about PayPal I see are sellers who don't follow PP/eBay rules and get bitten or have poor business plans to begin with. Do they screw up? Sure they do, as any company does, including mine. But they are not as evil as one would think reading PPsu*** type websites.
