posted on May 11, 2001 09:05:01 PM
This is all about money. (of course, you all know that, and I'm not trying to insult anyones IQ)
How Smart is Meg Whitman? My guess is she's fairly smart. Does she know this latest move has ticked off a lot of sellers? If she doesn't, the stockholders should get a new CEO, but I have a feeling that she factored in the negative feedback they where going to get.
Is this latest move kosher? My opinion is PART of it is.
Direct link to an offer to sell merchandise? Let's admit, yes, while it was allowed, alot of us took advantage of it, and it helped make a few sales. (My page has over 6000 hits, and I'm sure a large part of them came from my auction links.) BUT, what I was buying was an auction of one specific item. I understand the rational behind this.
If you consigned an item to a B&M auction house, and waited till the auction of your item started, then jumped up, and hollered "Folk's I got more of this stuff for sale, see me after the auction", What would the Auctioneer say and do?
Email link? This is another story, and I'd love to see Meg back down on this one. Until ebay wants to be more than just a "venue", impeading communication in any fashion between the seller, and any potential buyer is just plain stupid. The spam thing was an insult to MY IQ.
I think they have been READING (at least a sample of)the emails that get sent via "ask seller a question" and gathering statistics. (they know better than to to use the info in it's raw form, it would open a bigger can of worms) I hope they got a few laughs at some of the dumb questions.
Meg isn't done with ebay yet. What's this storefront thing going to be? Better question is what's it going to cost to put items on the shelf? *Some* of my stuff might do better that way.... Who knows?
My BIGGEST pet peave is ever changing rules. If Meg wanted one peice of advice from me, it is let us get in a comfortable routine, we are more produtive, and get more listed and sold that way. Sheeshh..
posted on May 11, 2001 09:58:00 PM
What gets me is this will impact the large E-bay sellers the most, businesses and retailers who were providing E-bay with a lot of revenue and gaining loyal customers for E-bay and the seller. This will make E-bay much less attractive for the type of businesses E-bay was hoping to get more of. I think they just shot themselves in the foot big time. Also many businesses had links to E-bay on their websites, if fair is fair, it's time to have these removed. I think E-bay will really see a serious revenue downturn very soon, as more large sellers and little sellers throw in the towel.
We really could use a new venue, maybe Micro-soft or Wal-mart, some company much larger than E-bay could start an Auction business and bully E-bay around, like they do us sellers. If I was an E-bay stock holder I would definitely sell unless Meg is replaced!!!
Auction Watch, maybe your company should become an online auction venue, you have a large enough base for a good start!!! Look at it this way E-bay has done all it can to hurt Auction Watch and will continue to do so.
posted on May 11, 2001 10:41:26 PM
I think meg already knows what will happen: the rule will be announced, sellers will #*!@ and complain, buyers will continue to buy, a small percentage of sellers will leave but the majority will just continue to list because the buyers are still on Ebay.
I hate some of Ebay's rules, but they are a business. Frankly, I *expect* businesses to be out for their own gain, 99.9 percent of the time. If in fact they ever were interested in helping you 'grow your business' they are not any longer. The links to your businesses take people away from Ebay. Now me personally I would think ebay would allow them just for goodwill because the percentage of businesses they would draw away seems likely to be a very small amount and it doesn't seem worth riling people up, but I guess they are out to stop every leak. It's silly to expect them in ANY way to allow you to advertise business they don't get a piece of. If I ran Ebay I would (because I have this silly notion that there's such a thing as 'enough money') but I am not a business having to answer to a board and to shareholders. Frankly I'm surprised they allowed links to sites for this long. The only time it actually makes strict financial sense is when they're being reimbursed for it---such as with banner ads. Expect the links in the me pages to be disallowed soon, I am betting they will be gone by the end of summer.
Ebay is a classic example of a company going from a small, individually based, flexible operation to a larger, more conservatively run operation. I don't think it's a bad thing for Ebay. I think it might, in some ways, be good for us sellers. But I'll leave that for elsewhere, I'm kinda sleepy. In parting let me say that I consider myself lucky that I have only been on Ebay a few years and I have never had the slightest illusion or feeling that this was some kind of community. I gather that some feel the pain much more deeply, but I'm glad I don't. I never really expect more from them than from any business. I find I am rarely disappointed.
As a kind of analogy: Even if I spend lots of money and time at my local gym, recommend them to all my friends, pay my dues regularly and even pay for extra classes at times, and volunteer in the kid's area 2 times a week, I will still not be allowed to advertise my own private classes (if I had something like that) inside the gym. Because I help them grow their business does not entitle me to expect them to help me grow mine. It's a not a community of equals. If it were a non-profit community excercise class then maybe it would be OK, but my chain of gyms is a corporation that's publicly traded. They can't afford the luxury of being a community---it costs too much. If they're going to get involved in 'the community', they would rather just donate money to the boy scouts or the special olympics, not promote even one tiny competing business. Face it---"Money" and "communities" don't go together very well. But I don't expect them to.
Lower your expectations of Ebay and you will be less frustrated.
