posted on January 3, 2001 07:02:32 AM new
Protest. I think yahoo has really blown it! I'm fed up with these auction houses arbitrarily trashing these sites. Nobody takes into account the work that sellers have to put in to set up all of our listings!!
So I decided that my best way to show my displeasure was to kill all of my auctions. I'm sure I'm just a drop of a drop in a bucket but I feel better.
While Yahoo won't lose money, they sure will lose page hits, over 15 per listing from my average.
When will these idiots start to at least listen to the sellers who bring the bidders who build these companies!!
GRRR!!!
So if you're really upset, don't whine about it or complain.
posted on January 3, 2001 07:08:36 AM new
good for you, canvid! I'm with you as to the travesty of their new plan! They can't support the fees. I just started trying out Yahoo with a plan to, maybe, move there from ebay. Heck with that plan now! If I'm going to continue paying fees, atleast ebay has the exposure! I only have a few listed on yahoo as I was just testing the water but I'm outta there too!
posted on January 3, 2001 07:26:36 AM new
Go to www.AAANDS.com where you should be able to list for free. Yahoo is as dead as that site - can't hurt none, can it?
posted on January 3, 2001 07:30:38 AM new
I have almost 200 auctions currently listed on Yahoo! Auctions alone. They all will end tomorrow evening, and so will my listing items on Yahoo! Auctions. Even though I could relist them prior to the 10th, I will not. I realize not everyone has the ability to walk away from a site that ignores our pleas, or fails to correct problems, that are impacting our sales. But I'm out of there. I will list on the other free sites and maybe help them to improve traffic to their sites.
I know it is not easy, but if you are able to do so. The best message you can send to Yahoo! Auctions, for their lack of respect for our suggestions, (while at the same time putting fees on us), is to close down all of your auctions when they expire. If a massive number of sellers withdraw and go elsewhere, the impact on Yahoo! Auctions will surely show them the error of their ways. If it doesn't, I feel, they will get what they deserve. Just watch their stock then.
typos~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[ edited by CharlieOne on Jan 3, 2001 07:57 AM ]
posted on January 3, 2001 11:15:35 AM new
Mine are ALL closed as well. Can't even condone listing a million auctions with a million relists before the 10th. Nope. Just wouldn't be prudent.
posted on January 3, 2001 01:06:00 PM new
I'm with you guys. Aside from your good points I see other reasons. Almost everyone I've talked to says they will list all they can before the 10th with 2 auto-relist.
Our stuff is already lost in the jumbled end time listings, ridiculous sub-categories and search that can't seem to pick up keywords. Think how lost it will be with the mad rush of massive amounts of sellers dumping all their monthly allotment there for the next week. Even free I'd consider it a waste of time & energy to load another item there. Many of the bidders understandably hit the road when they found they suddenly had to verify credit cards. Pageviews and sales have declined steadily over the past few months. Yahoo's decision to charge now is...(as Granee said on another thread "their heads are full of rocks).
I imagine ads will be at an all time high until Feb. 10 and an all time low after. I'm outta there now and I'll be anxious to see how the place looks mid Feb.
posted on January 3, 2001 02:44:36 PM new
I with you. I'm outta there. I had over 200 auction listed at any given time. Some of these auctions generated over 200 page hits. Boy will they be sorry when thier customer base goes out the window with the sellers they are loosing today.
I have been begging for over a year for them to do something (anything) about the dead beat bidders. I think the credit card varification was a great idea. It did get rid of alot of the deadbeats for the most part.
But until they get all their problems fixed they have NO right to charge us a listing fee. They say if the bidder dose not follow through they will refund the listing fee. How can we trust them to do this when we can't even get a simple question answered in a reasonable length of time.
I have been listing there for a well over a year with very good sucess. But the last few months the page hits have declined and the closing prices have been well below what they use to be.
I am ready to only list one or two auctions on eBay and use those to draw customers to a web site instead. At this point it can't hurt any more than paying listing fees for auctions on Yahoo.
posted on January 3, 2001 03:56:18 PM new
I only have 6 auctions listed with them right now and they all close soon. I wlll not list another auction with them and I have already sent them an email stating my reasons. I think we may be down to two or three auction sites by mid year or sooner the business is just not there and they have stock holders to answer to. I understand the reasons yahoo is going in this direction but their timing is poor at best and criminal at worst.
posted on January 3, 2001 05:07:06 PM new
Hmmm, not much response and nobody has cancelled their auctions? I guess it's human nature to complain, another to actually do something about it.
I really don't mind paying fees if I get some value, any value!
Yahoo has worse support than ePAY. What they don't understand is that it takes time and money to list.
I don't want to endlessly relist. Especially when traffic is low. That's why all these other auction sites aren't doing any great business. Free isn't always free.
They blew it. All they had to do is charge a FVF and upgrade the support. As for them giving credits for deadbeats it doesn't really matter as the time it takes to file plus the lost auction amount to more than most of us would make in profit with no deadbeat.
It's a shame all those suits can't figure out a very simple paradigm. Bigger shame that they don't bother to deal with the seller and buyers in the trenches.
posted on January 3, 2001 08:27:42 PM new
Geez, I must be wrong. I guess nobody's upset about the way Yahoo is going to charge fees. Lots of smoke but I haven't read of one other seller cancelling their auctions??
posted on January 3, 2001 08:43:35 PM new
I to cancelled all but a few of my items ... hated to do it, after all, I like yahoo, but with 5 (count them, 5) whole items sold since Late October, its not worth a thin dime to me, much less the rather high fees I made note of earlier today.
Meanwhile over on upstart and somewhat crude epier, I was able to sell 23 items since July, nothing to write home about, but roughly the same sell rate as yahoo...
I'll watch Yahoo, and I won't burn any bridges, but I surely won't be in any rush to throw away my money.
posted on January 3, 2001 08:46:48 PM new
I used to sell on eGREED and was a silver power seller. I left eGREED after the extorion fees (reserve fees) were announced Fall of 1999. I tried golds (and starved) Amazon (a little better but not good) and landed at Yahoo Auctions a year ago. I did VERY well. I decided to try eGREED again this Fall and did not do well- I did better when I relisted the items on Yahoo (same title, description, reserve, and starting fee) so I decided to permanantly stay on Yahoo and continue to pay my $200. a month listing fees (for featuring items on Yahoo. My eGREED fees were $1,500. a month when I left the first time) with eGREED's new policies, there is NO WAY I will list there again (they say you can't sell the item on-line if it was listed on eGREED and did not sell- or your account will be suspended or terminated - and that means you can't relist it on another auction site- such as Yahoo)
Now I feel betrayed. Last year, Yahoo's CEO promised the autions would always be FREE and now they go and pull this garbage. I heard rumors last Spring that Yahoo was going to be sold to eGREED and I believe this is one step towards that. I believe that Yahoo will be purchased by eGREED within this year and the auction listing and FVFs are part of the plan to do this. I am VERY angry with Yahoo.
posted on January 3, 2001 08:52:37 PM new
Congrats to those of you who had the guts to cancel your auctions. No seller is too small to make their voice heard!
I think my point in cancelling this auctions isn't just to send a message to Yahoo but to the next site we all move too that will pull the rug out from under us sellers after we build them up!
posted on January 3, 2001 09:07:43 PM new
CAN'T BELIEVE THIS - we have done fantastic on Yahoo - BUT that is because we can relist and relist for free - to pay to sell on Yahoo is unreal - things move so slow, that unless one has lots of auctions running all the time and relisting, you can't survive, and to pay to put something on Yahoo to see it not sell, that is ridiculous.
I am not about to say I am canceling all of my auctions, since we were off most of December, and just started reposting, and will continue to repost and see how things go after Yahoo starts charging. If they can support the fee, fine, I'll stay, if they can't I'm gone.
I left eBay because of the ridiculous fees, and won't stay with Yahoo either if they can't earn their money by attracting active buyers, and getting rid of the deadbeats.
BUT, I do think it will reduce the endless pages of duplicate items which buyers seem to so dislike.
Time will tell - unfortunately, there isn't a FREE auction site to move to which has any real buyer customer base.
Having been at this since the "stone age," as my kids say, I'll just sit and wait and see how it goes.
If they get their dead beats in line, and can attract more buyers, then I'll make my staying decision based on how economically feasible it is for us.
posted on January 3, 2001 09:28:42 PM new
Well, I am going to stay till the end of free listing, and that will be it for me. I may even list some new items in the next 6 days, but after that I am going to start listing on ebay. I might look at Lycos as some have suggested, but they will change it all in a year anyway too.
The insulators category at Yahoo has 1242 listings right now, and about 580 are mine. There is another seller who has about the same as me and I bet he quits using yahoo too. Together the 2 of us account for 85-90% of all the listings in insulators.
They will drop 80-90% of all listings, very possibly more in the next month.
What a shame, I really liked Yahoo and pushed it a lot to the insulator collecting community.
posted on January 4, 2001 04:19:49 AM new
I smelt a rat when I had to verify my credit card a few months ago so I stopped listing on Yahoo and looked for other places to list on. I found ePier, Dutchbid, Popula, eOrbis and Excite and have sold something on most of them in the past few months. If enough of us dump Yahoo immediately and put our efforts into any one (or all) of the above we will go a long way into building up those sites so that in a year or so they, too, can lampoon us with high fees and poor service. In the meantime we can revel in Yahoo's wake.
posted on January 4, 2001 05:12:45 AM new
Hi Folks,
Waiting until the 10th is not much of a show of action. Believe me. If enough people actually PULL their auctions rather than wait it will mean something.
posted on January 4, 2001 08:54:40 AM new
Lol i agree with you 100% I am in the process of cancelling 300 auctions on Yahoo! I wrote them a letter telling them their site does not get enough bids to support a listing fee. I can handle a final value fee but DEFINITELY NOT a listing fee!
posted on January 4, 2001 09:23:13 AM new
I am in the process of closing 3 booths with over 1000 auctions total. I have been selling on Yahoo for just short of 2 years now and feel like I have been kicked by a friend. I have taken pride in selling nice products at reasonable prices and have many repeat customers. I have taken pride in Yahoo and have bought from there as well when I was looking for items. This has really made me mad and I have moved my messenger as well. I won't pay for the quality of service they offer.
posted on January 4, 2001 11:41:15 AM new
Way to go forshoppin. You sum it up perfectly.
The more people that CANCEL their auctions the more it will be felt. I think Yahoo has betrayed too many of us as most of the other auction houses have at some point.
I think it's also important that the new sites that pick up the lost yahoo business understand that they can't get away with the same tactic.
FREE isn't always free. It costs time and money to list. I have no problem paying fees as long as it's based on something. Support, traffic, sales. I'm not asking them to pay my way, just for my way to pay!!
posted on January 4, 2001 06:35:20 PM new
I am cancelling, cancelling, cancelling and it feels good. But I do hold onto the thin thread of hope that Yahoo will come to it's senses. However, I am at the same time watching Yahoo's stock falling, falling, falling. I wonder if it's enough to get their attention?
posted on January 4, 2001 08:15:47 PM new
Keep up the good work. I'd love to see 10,000 auctions CANCELED before the 9th. Yahoo is counting on people riding out their relists and leftover feedback credits to cushion this blow.
My current balance is -$1392.79
All that credit money. I won't use a dime of it. Screw Yahoo and screw the genius that decided to put the screws to us sellers!!
If 10K auctions closed mulitplied by 20 hits that would be over 200000 page views gone. And that would be a very small amount.
posted on January 4, 2001 09:58:32 PM new
Ebay is going to be a monopoly soon and well be gouged even more. Realistically, there aren't any other viable sites. They are all run by incompetant MBAs who know nothing about marketing, nothing about retaining sellers, and nothing about creating a site that is effective for buyers. Even big time Amazon fails miserablly with their auctions, and they are the only one's who have a remote chance of taking on ebay with an ample audience, if they tried that is.
If you need a good site that isn't an auction site but works better than one, I recommend http://www.metaexchange.com/. They do good volume, but the list of categories is only starting to grow. Their customer service is AAA+++, and if enough buyers wanted to create a new category they would. So put them on your list of sites to check out.
posted on January 5, 2001 12:27:51 AM new
And I just dropped 100 of my 460 stamp auctions. I am so ticked! I sell hundreds of $3-10 items every month, but some sit for awhile before they sell, so 20 cents a pop adds up VERY FAST. Can't we have a compromise whereby auto-resubmissions aren't counted? Yahoo has gone too far too fast. ARE THEY LISTENING???!!! My game plan is to re-list all my cheaper items before 1/10 at low. low prices, then list the better stuff on eBay. Too bad, this has been a lot of fun ... until now.
