Auction Business Frank Ross on 27 Jun 2007 09:50 pm
eBay Seller Smackdown
I noticed this post on AuctionBytes and was really quite alarmed after I started reading some of the complaints by sellers. There are alarming complaints in both the AuctionBytes replies and in the eBay forum thread.On one hand, I can understand the idea behind this robotic removal of non performing sellers. Non performing sellers undermine the marketplace and deteriorate the buying experience.
However, I cannot appreciate the way they are implementing this. There is no apparent appeals process. Ok eBay is not a democracy, but last time I checked it is a business. eBay forgets who pays their paychecks - the eBay sellers. While they do get revenues from other sources as I was reminded by Corey Kossack, let’s face it. The lion’s share of eBay’s revenue comes from its sellers.
As Ina pointed out in her blog post, eBay has “increased the demand for customer support, but ….. capacity has not increased.” Randy Smythe has long complained of the lack of scalability in eBay’s business model. ‘One size fits all’. This cookie cutter punishment is along those same lines. Problem is, one size doesn’t fit all and there is no perfect algorithm that can catch every wayward seller perfectly.
This ‘our way or the highway’ method of doing business is not unique to eBay. I see a similar pattern with the way Google does business. There are numerous complaints about Adsense accounts all over the web suddenly getting zapped with no apparent way for the account holder to inquire or appeal the decision.
What’s an eBay seller to do? Wow this comes out like a rant. Don’t get me wrong; I still think eBay is a super place to do business. But this underscores the idea that one should not rely completely on eBay. eBay sellers should have a plan a do business off eBay as well as on eBay.
Tags: Selling on eBay, eBay Crackdown, eBay Smackdown, eBay Seller Crackdown
on 04 Jul 2007 at 9:59 pm 1.eno59 said …
Hi there are a lot of us being hit by this absurd FB system. Right now EBay is worse than the buyer. Since us SELLERS are the ones paying them the monthy fee and they are MULTIMILLION $ company and to cheap to have a 1-800 for their PAYING SELLER and refuse to answer any emails for well over 3 months now. Plus its true since we are using the contact to dispute this safeharbour(not at all safe %100 failure even was for one of my neg feed backs from 2002). So they can get all the proof that a buyer should never have left the neg in the first palce ,but they refuse to answer or even look at it. I got 1 cover letter . We don’t want automated answer they are %100 useless. I hate paypal for the same thing I was so releaved that I found a 1-800 for them . Using it and talking to a real person things were fixed like they should be(a bit of a fight but hang up and find the right person to talk to) . I played with the bot 2 more times after it was takin care of and same responce O.o
I know they will have 15000+ emails so 15000 people are all wrong . please I can’t believe you can be that stupid and ignorant . But unfortunatly there are some people that are 
. http://pages.ebay.ca/help/feedback/questions/retaliatory-feedback.html
looks like this page makes it clear people that want to screw a seller c an no problem and there is nothing we can do about it . well I hope Ebay dies but as usuall the evil allway win.
on 04 Jul 2007 at 11:14 pm 2.eno59 said …
So as a Seller with EBay
When a buyer complians just give it to them free so you’ll recieve a pos feed back suck it up as one seller told me.
Once again the huge companies allways figure a way out for their responsabilites. They make the FB system but not resonsable for it .well they do pick just what they want to be responsable for and to bad for the rest.
They use it but not fully responsable for it . Lawa once again stink.
on 08 Jul 2007 at 1:05 am 3.Joe Bloe said …
Frank Ross is 100 % on target! Anyone who does an appreciable amount of business on Ebay knows the customer service is the pits, your selling account can be suspended without warning or recourse and the seller is guilty until proven innocent. Always have a backup plan! Check out: http://whyebaysux.blogspot.com/
on 07 Aug 2007 at 8:35 pm 4.SellingElsewhere said …
On the spot 100%. I’m one of those “non-performing” sellers that was suspended for a while, then NARU’d.
I’m a seller with 99.8% feedback. No negatives since Nov 2002 (yes, almost 5 years), no neutrals for more than a year, and only 1 mutual withdrawal. I’ve been selling on eBay for more than 9 years with almost 9000 completed transactions.
One day back in May, I was suspended. No email notification, no response from eBay. Two weeks later, I received the dreaded “bottom 2%” letter. Two weeks later I was NARU’d. No recourse, no response, no help from eBay.
As of this date, I’m still NARU’d. You know what? I’m not as unhappy about it as I thought I would be. I have other auction sites I’m selling on and sales are picking up.
I think if eBay ever un-NARU’s me, I’ll just tell them “no thanks, I’m never selling here again”.
Sellers are eBay’s bread and butter, and yet they cater to everyone else BUT sellers. Sure, there are a lot of bad sellers, but there are also a lot of great sellers …. decent folks who are trying to make a living or need extra income.
People need to realize there ARE alternatives out there. It takes time to build sales, but the effort is well worth it.
Just my .02
on 22 Aug 2007 at 6:13 am 5.Keith said …
I am another one of those suspended sellers. I got suspended after I got hit with a few of what I call “Buyers from Hell”. I talked about two of them on my newly-launched website, suspendedebayseller.com. One is a credit card thief who charged back on the items he bought after he got them, the other is someone who has his wife take his calls and hide from you and lie about whether or not you have reached the account holder.
This post is 100% on target, as mentioned above. eBay really had their head in their rectums on this one. But I will help them pull it out. Since they don’t even want to respond to certified mail and have already shunned the chance to help me through normal customer service channels, the only choice they are leaving me with is a lawsuit, which I will be filing quite soon.