Well, since I buy on eBay, but never sell, this change might actually benefit me personally. The only negative feedbacks I ever had were due to fraudulent retaliation form a buyer who sold me several counterfeited team jerseys. When I posted negative feedback based on counterfeit goods, he retaliated by falsely claiming I had not paid, even though I had PayPaled promptly and in full.
Now, I suppose this new rule would prevent that sort of abuse, but at the expense of depriving sellers of recourse when buyers do actually fail to pay, or return goods or file claims for frivilous or fraudulent reasons. But this was totally unnecessary in my case. As eBay owns PayPal, their own records showed beyond doubt that I had paid promptly, yet they allowed feedback they knew to be false to be posted and refused to remove it. So they refused to do the reasonable and honest thing to prevent abuse, yet take this current drastic and unnecessary action.
One thing we can be sure of - this recent action is not motivated by a desire to serve customers, since eBay doesn't give a damn about customers and never has. Asolutely the only thing they care about is maximizing their fees. So they must believe that in some way this action increases or at least protects their revenue. My guess is that they calculate that it is really the willingness of buyers to use eBay which is the foundation of their business, even though it is the sellers from whom they actually collect the fees. So they are doing everything possible to attract and retain buyers, even buyers who are unreasonable or downright dishonest and a nightmare for sellers to deal with. After all, once eBay collects their fees on a sale, they don't care how much grief the buyer subsequently causes the seller.
I'm not at all sure eBay has the right business model here, apparently based on the belief that sellers have no choice but to use eBay, while buyers have lots of options and therefore must be catered to. In the world of classic bikes, while eBay has certainly made it possible to sell bikes and parts more easily, I think it has probably had an even greater benefit for buyers, as bits which once were "impossible" to find can now in some cases be obtained quite easily. Some sellers, I think, have even been hurt by eBay. I can think of at least a couple of sellers of classic bike parts just prior to the rise of eBay to popularity, who having developed good sources for parts then regarded as rare, were able to command good prices for those parts, as many buyers knew of nowhere else to obtain them. Now, with eBay, many of these parts have become almost commonplace and prices have fallen accordingly, hurting those who used to be the "exclusive" sellers. This has been especially the case as more European eBay sellers, located near the original source of the goods, have begun selling to American and Japanese buyers. It would be interesting to know if the move of BC and Cecile back to the US was at least in part motivated by the increase in European eBay sellers, which at least to some extent had to erode the great advantage BC and Cecile had in being located in Europe near the source of the goods.
I'm sure that many eBay sellers are sufficiently dissatisfied that they would gladly move to an alternative online service with lower fees and otherwise better treatment of sellers. The big question is whether buyers would move to wherever the goods are available, or whether sellers will always stay where the most buyers are, which eBay seems to be betting on. I think we will find out in the next few years. If the eBay strategy turns out to be a disastrous error, it won't be the first time a dominant but arrogant and greedy organization was destroyed by its own miscalculations.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Big Spring, Texas, USA
Nick March <nicbordeaux@yahoo.fr> wrote: The header says it all, and I'll stick by it and assume full responsability . Received some mails a few weeks back from ebay.fr saying that sellers can no longer leave feedback. Or that they can leave positive feedback. Though t it was spoof and discarded it. Then this morning I open ebay and find tha t on a item I sold, I can indeed only leave positive feedback. This means t hat if I sell something to a nitpicker or a guy with a terminal chip in his shoulder, he can hit me with unjustified negative (a lot more nitpickers o ut there than one would believe), and I can do nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Now who is the overeducated genius who came up with this one ? No serious s eller is going to continue with ebay on those terms, just hit and run merch ants or kids with no idea.
Only thing I can think of is that ebay wants to bankrupt itself, because th ey make their bread from paypal, sure, where the seller gets loaded with th e charges. And from seller insertion fees and commission on final sales val ue.
My oh my, ebay, you have shot yourself in the foot, the pain will be unbear able within two months, time it will take for the totally negative effects of this "strategy" or "brainstorm decision" to hit.
OK, buyers didn't dare retaliate most of the time (myself included) with in itial negative feedback beause of a certain bad feedback from the seller, s o something had to budge. But shooting your breadwinner? Look ebay, if you need a genius to help you come up with that sort of decision, I can think o f any number of winos, wisecracks or else who'd do the job FREE. Or you can take me on, and for a very, very large sum I'll explain to you how to run your show.
In the meantime, first unjustified negative I get, I shut down my ebay acco unt, and set up my own salesfront website. Not using paypal, thank you all the same.
Can anybody come up with a logical explantion to this seemingly suicidal be havior from what was (well, still is for a small while) the most successful online auctionplace ?
Nick March, Agen, 47000, Lot et Garonne, France.=0A=0A=0A ____________