Maybe its time that ebay tell the small to big sellers in plain English that they are no longer wanted as part of the New Internet mall?, that they wish to become a site for Big Companies only.

Maybe then those small sellers will move elsewhere where they wont be put at a disadvantage by the big companies who pay less to list, get better search placement.

I used to shop at Ebay. 2007 almost every xmas present was bought off ebay. Now I use Amazon(and have done for slightly longer as I once used ebay – almost nine years). There’s no going back after Amazon, particularly after attempting to get buyer protection from a bad seller from PayPal.

I came here to see where the scene is after just over a year of Downahole’s disruptive innovations. This is pits ecommerce. I’m sure a few people are making cash out of it, but then you can say that about Brixton market when they sell off the stale fish. The whole thing is a sleaze pit coreographed by spivs. I wonder how long it’s going to take the investors to notice the marketplace is still collapsing even though the recession’s over?

If I have to offer ‘inclusive’ postage it will go second class or standard parcels resulting in less satisfied customers. The £2.95 flat rate fast delivery I offer is appreciated by my customers. Customers who receive items quickly are often surprised and are far more tolerant.

When it is good enough for the likes of Next offer flat rate delivery at £3.95 why is it not good enough for eBay in some categories? Since I adopted flat rate postage my combined orders increased, free postage would have the opposite effect as no incentive to buy more from the same seller.

The terminology is the problem as we all know that shipping isn’t free.

Maybe the only cost shown should be Total Cost inc shipping.

Would this be the one with 300 neutrals and 450 negs this month alone or the one with 400 neutrals and 1600 negs this month? Both selling stuff they don’t have or claim not to have and several products featured heavily as christmas deals. Credibility? Not in my book.

1. “My Messages” – we need an integrated CRM system – as per http://tamebay.com/2009/09/google-mail-as-a-robust-crm-system-for-ebay-sellers.html . Its not acceptable to ask us to raise the game with communications to the level of TRS without giving us the tools to do it.

2. force customers to supply a phone number on their account (for courier purposes), as Amazon do.

3. A professional inventory management system that works….something on the lines of ChannelAdvisor (but not as complex) – fully integrated within SMP.

4. Ditch the adverts and keep the home page clean.

My predictions / hopes for 2010:

1. set different levels for TRS – some categories are harder than others to sell in (complexity of product).

2. make free shipping mandatory on ebay

3. ebay to offer a fulfilment option (like amazon), where they store and ship the stock to customers.

4. bring back ebay express UK!

5. add “Royal Mail Tracked” to the shipping options drop-down.

6. Sort out the clothing category item specifics…some of them are totally wrong, misleading and duplicated.

I never thought I’d see Sue posting something like prediction 10.

If she’s done that – then things are REALLY bad

… just as most of us had already figured

(Waves to the whirly man…. LTNS )

I would opine that for many sellers of stuff which has no established market value, it is still the auction format that works best; that auctions are what the people, who originally made eBay what it was, want and eBay is suffering because it has driven away both the sellers and buyers of such items, and eBay’s revenues are continually falling because that lost revenue is not being replenished by the fixed price “retail” junk sellers, at least not from FVFs.

Where is the logic in deliberately driving away the people who had originally made eBay what it was? How could anyone be so arrogantly stupid? Maybe only an MBA.

http://www.ethicalcompanies.co.uk/?p=1248

Steve

Notwithstanding that all non-unique bidder masking is devious, the most devious form of bidder masking—that still in use only in the UK (and you have to ask why?)—prevents users from doing any such multi-auction analysis of patterns of bidding on a seller’s auctions. No wonder the UK form of bidder masking was eBay’s originally preferred form of masking: the UK cheat has no need to resort to the “private listing” (eBay’s classic shill bidders’ tool) to obscure his shill bidding.

The short sightedness of the head turkey and his gaggle of “gobblers” at eBay is best expressed by the analogy of the simple-minded aristocrat that kills the “golden goose” to get a one-off serving of pâté de foie gras. Unfortunately the living goose was not properly prepared and the pâté therefore did not have the pleasing taste that they expected.

Does anyone actually think that the people in control of eBay are simply stupid? No way. Incompetent, devious, deceptive, disingenuous, unscrupulous? Of all that there cannot be any doubt!

he cant be the only having a bad experience

but that is hugely outweighed by the millions of people who use the site every day and rarely if ever have a problem

time to stop pandering to the small minority and let the sellers get back to doing what they do best…Sell!

Seriously, it’s a problem for all sellers if buyers are driven away. This is a dual-ended network model. Both sides are necessary. Hopefully they are improving the experience so that more buyers come back to give you all more sales. By the looks of it, John D. is doing a great job in comparison to his predecessor:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ebay.com

As for how I stumbled by, well, you came up in my Google news alert for eBay and Amazon See, you came up in my search here if not on eBay

Do tell – what on earth has brought you to an eBay sellers’ forum?

And, no, I’ve never sold on eBay. I’m merely the half that is providing the demand, not the supply. Unless eBay is an echo chamber in which sellers and buyers are one and the same, I’m a pretty darn important part of the potential eBay ecosystem.

Ebay works well for us but my big wish would be to make it less time consuming to manage. Too many changes and too damned time consuming to do just about everything