Why ebay is down? How far can they go? Depends on how much they stick
it to their customers.

Exhibit A:

Buyer disputes: when you run into problems, they make you jump through
hoops to get your money back. I purchased an item last year with an
accessory that was to be "thrown in". The seller admitted (by not
answering some questions) that he didn't send it. eBay made me get an
appraisal (leg work and wasted time). In the end I didn't get anything
because of a small, silly technicality.

Exhibit B (fee structure):

1. A while back I tried selling some new hard drives for about $72
($18 below market). I had qty 20. I only sold two and had to pay over
$6 in fees *each*. I gave up. And that was before the price hikes.

2. Due to the economy (people scraping for cash to pay their
mortgage), I figured it would be easy to find a particular, high-
dollar luxury item that used to sell one to two per month. In the last
three months I haven't seen one. Why? Higher seller fees.

If the economy suffers, then revenues will suffer. That's just life.
Instead of reducing expenses or riding out the storm, eBay raises its
fees drastically. Imagine GM raising the price of their SUVs because
less people are buying?

Exhibit C:

60 day searches on 'Completed Auctions' have been cut down to 30 days.
If you want to view 60 days like before, THEY NOW CHARGE A FEE!
Charging for incidental value in this day and age is plain evil. This
is a foolish desperate measure IMO.

Exhibit D:

Paypal.com. To add insult to injury, paypal.com gouges and is forever
changing their terms to put more money in their coffers, without
adding any real value.

Exhibit E:

They've partnered with Buy.com. If you're a power seller selling
anything from books, music, to computer peripherals I'd be pissed.
This is a HUGE mistake if you ask me. So now they want to change their
auction model to a shopping hub? Well, there are tons of players in
this arena:

www.froogle.com
www.pricegrabber.com
www.nexttag.com
www.mysimon.com
www.shopper.com
www.amazon.com
(...and lots, lots more)

Exhibit F:

I haven't purchased anything on ebay for about a year now. THERE ARE
NO MORE DEALS.

No wonder their stock is down.

p.s.: notice how more and more sellers are starting to appear with <=
$200 paypal insurance whereas before they used to cover "up to
$2,000"? Exhibit G: MORE FRAUD. And guess who pays? Not ebay. Sad. I
used to love this company.

Isn't dropping the listing fee  good for both the buyer and seller? I
still don't understand why the sellers are so upset. BTW, I have been
a buyer for many years and I never sold anything.  The Paypal works
great, too.

Once you total all the fees (listing+closing+???) you'll see that it's
more expensive for most sellers. First and foremost, I'm a buyer. Good
deals are getting harder to find (I check every now and then). The
sellers (the one's that are staying) pad their auctions with the extra
charges. Ultimately, who will pay for the increase? The buyers.

Paypal is great for buyers. But sellers are gouged another 3% I
believe.

The fee thing is ridiculous.

Your being taxed 3-4 ways, if not 5.

1) initial Fee
2) Final Fee
3) Paypal Fees
4) Shipping Fees
5) State Tax

God damn !!

As to dropping the listing fee: This is only good for sellers if/when
items do not sell. As eBay lowers the fee to list, they are increasing
the Final Value Fee at the same time, thus when the item sells, eBay
is taking a bigger cut on the final sale price of the item. A few
cents saved on listing is wiped out by the increased Final Value fee.

Despite eBays statements otherwise, this new fee structure has no
benefit for sellers, and buyers are going to find unique items and
bargain prices a thing of the past on eBay, as well as higher prices
across the board. This eBay inflation is also carefully manipulated on
eBays part as higher prices mean higher revenue based on fees.

As to PayPal, remember that PayPal's fee structure takes a cut of the
entire transaction, i.e. winning/final bid as well as shipping &
handling. When buyer uses check or money order PayPal sees no cut of
any action, hence eBay is forcing PayPal on buyers and sellers as a
self serving move to increase their profits. This is not a service to
either buyers or sellers, it is simply greed on eBay's part to enhance
their revenues.

Why this is bad for investors is that eBay's pie has been shrinking
steadily, and eBay keeps changing fee structures in order to increase
revenues with fewer transactions. As they reach deeper and deeper into
sellers pockets, profits for sellers evaporate. Sellers are in busines
to make a profit, not to generate revenue for eBay.

Years ago, when eBay fees were significantly lower, sellers were
falling all over themselves to list and sell on eBay. Current
leadership isw blind to the stark reality that as eBay has continued
to raise fees and make it harder for sellers to generate a profit,
sellers have adjusted by pulling back.

Buyers have been pulling back as they follow sellers to other venues
or even to some sellers personal websites.

eBay has now reached the tipping point. Buyers leave when they can no
longer find what they want to buy, and sellers are leaving to avoid
astronomical and unreasonable fees.

The current recession should have generated an increase in eBay
volume, instead sales have declined. The recession is not going away
anytime soon. Q3 and Q4 sales on eBay are going to be the worst in
recent history.

This company may become the next Enron in terms of how hard and how
quickly the company collapses, and the collapse will come by their own
hand.

Yesterday Ebay terminated a lot of the affiliates working with the EPN
(Ebay Partner Network) giving them a standardized email (no specific
reason)  Considering the fact that a lot of the affiliates were
driving massive amounts of traffic to Ebay, its hard to understand why
they would do something like that.  Many of the affiliates were making
commissions of over $100000 yearly , but in the long term, Ebay would
certainty benefit from a larger consumer base.  Perhaps thier are
thinking short term and trying to boost their profits in an attempt to
recover their falling stock prices.  What they are really doing is
driving more customers/sellers away and creating a market for a new
auction based business.  I am an Ebay affiliate and have an Ebay store
and I would jump at the opportunity to leave Ebay altogether and I
know I'm not alone.
Wes

The fee structure is the least of the problems with the recent
changes. Ebay is going to be  instituting a new minimum Detailed
Seller Rating (DSR) requirement, which will require sellers to have
least a 4.3 across all four DSR categories or they will not be allowed
to list on Ebay.  This means that  a small seller can be put out of
business by ONE malicious bidder!!  Another point of contention about
this change is that Ebay tells its buyers that a rating of 4 is
"good". Enough people rating a seller as "good" can also put them out
of business.

Another change that is irking many sellers, and will irk many buyers
as well, is that sellers will no longer be able to use checks and
money orders as a payment option.  We can offer Paypal or our own
credit card processing, integrated with Ebay's system, of course.

Ebay will also be setting a limit on shipping charges in some
categories.

There's more.  Ebay has hit its users with huge, sweeping changes over
the fast few months,  Best Match searches, a revamped search page, a
new My Ebay  page, one sided feedback, suspensions when feedback drops
under a certain percentage,  to name a few. As a result Non-paying
bidders are way up, and get this: They can leave negative feedback
even if they have not paid! Ebay may or may not remove that feedback,
depending on the buyers response.  As a seller, my sales have gone
from a reasonable level to nearly nothing this week.  It is impossible
to know which of the recent changes have caused this drop or if it is
simply the economy.

I have been buying and selling on Ebay for over 10 years.  I have
almost 5000 feedbacks, 100% positive.  My detailed sellers ratings
are, 4.9, 4.9, 4.9, and 4.8.  Under the new policy a malicious
competitor, a clueless newbie, or a package lost in the mail could
destroy my ablity to list on Ebay.  I will be closing my Ebay store
before at the end of this month. The money that went to Ebay fees will
go to Google ads to promote  my own website.

Thanks Ebay!

I encourage eBay's  stockholders to go take a look at eBay's message
boards and see what is going on there. EBay has created a huge load of
ill will among both buyers and seller with the new policy changes.  If
their goal really is to turn into another big box retailer like
Amazon, they will be making the transition with millions of
disgruntled ex-eBayers who will not do business with them.  Are they
crazy?

Good information in all of these posts. Stockholders please pay
attention. Perhaps we may be able to help one another. The sellers can
let you know how bad it is, you can voice your concerns to eBay and
perhaps the ship will right itself. eBay will not listen to us and
will not tell you the truth. Seems there is a opportunity here.

I did want to comment on ric's mention of the tipping point. I also
feel eBay has reached it. It is a gut feeling, just like the one that
told me what the results of 2Q would look like and the stock drop that
ensued. eBay is enormous and enormously complicated. When it begins
the downhill slide there will be no stopping it. You can either get
out of the way quick or be sucked under with it.

We are no longer selling after 10 years on eBay. 100% feedback, with a
50% repeat buyer status with DSR's 5.0, 4.9, 4.9, 4.8. We agree with
DeborahGreg that one problem bidder or lost item can result in loosing
the ability to sell. To make matters worse with us we only took
payment by check or money order the entire 10 years we sold. Figure
this out shareholders...50% repeat buyers, great dsr's 10 years taking
check or MO and eBay pulls the plug on us. Check my user id for
yourself . We sold under the user id claypipe...We have tried to enter
the workshop boards to post comments on the upcoming changes but
because we voice our opinions eBay has taken a communistic stance and
has blocked us (and many other sellers I might ad) from entering the
workshops. When we were able to enter the work shops and post a
comment eBay would remove it so the pinks didn't have to answer it. To
all shareholders who decide to read this, we do not deal in stocks and
don't know the pros and cons of buying eBay stock, for all I know
everything that eBay is doing may be what a shareholder wants, I don't
know but I will tell you for certain the site is running rampant with
problems and needs to be carefully looked at by the FTC and any other
agency that deals with anti trust laws.
In my opinion the stockholder should be asking for Donohoes and
Norringtons resignation.

Three years ago I was doing very well selling on ebay. In fact that is
how I made my living, supporting three children as a single parent.
This was working good, I was home whenever the kids needed
something. ! have a 100% feedback rating with a average DSR rating of
4.825 out of 5.0
Now, I am in the process of finding a 9-5 job because do to the
changes on ebay, I can no longer use ebay as a source of income.
The main reason was the increase of listing fees in the area where I
sold. It use to cost me $55 to list an item and I only had a 5% rate
of non-payers. I was giving ebay $1000 - $1500 a month in fees, plus
the fees ebays pay-pal charged. It was good as sales were good. I did
not mind.
Now, since ebay has changed their policies, it now cost me $76 to list
the same item and I have a 40% of buyers not paying. Every time a
buyer does not pay, ebay keeps my $76 in listing fees and suggest that
I re-list it. I guess so they can make another $76 off of me.
The drastic change came when ebay changed their feedback policy to not
allow sellers to leave negative feedback for non-performing -bidders
(NPB). This has allowed bidders to bid without paying with no negative
impact on the buyers part. Ebay says they receive an unpaid item
strike. However there is no way for a seller to know that and the fact
that ebay allows buyers 2-3 unpaid item strikes a month. Sellers now
have no way of informing other sellers that this is a bad buyer. Ebays
new policies made sure that even the worst buyer has a 100% feedback,
which deceives the sellers. The new changes actually encourages buyers
not to pay and if that buyer complains to ebay, ebay will give them a
coupon to save money on their next purchase.
So as you can see, I was giving ebay good money and they did nothing
to protect me from bad buyers.
Before I was able to block bad buyers by looking at their feedback
rating. Now, no seller knows who the bad buyers are. The sad thing is
that NPBs can still leave the seller a negative, even though they
never bought the item.
So as ebay was collecting more money from my business, I was receiving
less in sales. It is also the fact that ebay is not honest to the
public. They claim cheaper fees for the sellers, but make no mention
of the increase of NPBs where as ebay makes free money from the seller
and when something is sold, how they double dip the seller with Final
Value Fee (FVF) when an item sells and then charging them a second
time by using pay-pal for the buyer to pay. Ebay is now forcing
sellers to use pay-pal. A seller does not have a chance to make enough
money any more to support themselves as ebay does not allow the safest
payment option there is, a postal money order. The reason is obvious,
ebay will not get there share of the payment as they will on pay-pal
which is full of fraud. Not only that, a lot of buyers do not feel
safe paying on-line and would rather pay by money order. I would say
30% of my buyers paid that way, which was good because I did not have
to give ebay more money, as they own pay-pal.
So no I do not make money off eBay anymore, I do not sell there
anymore, but ebay sure made money off of me.

Why can't there be one honest, hardworking reporter out there to get
to the truth or are they all in eBays pocket.

The answer is quite simple.

Just as eBay continues to censor / delete posts from discussion boards
and to block members that are critical of new policies from
participating on boards, I am convinced that any reporter that does a
negative story on eBay becomes cut off from future communication with
eBay executives.

The result is that reporters shy away from hard reporting, and instead
just report the pabulum that they are fed by eBay executives.

Reporters will not be comfortable reporting negatively on eBay
unless / until the company hits bottom or is indicted over Fair Trade
violations.

Here is an opportunity for someone.  Create an off-eBay website with a
database of Non-Paying Bidders.  If it's done right, think of the
traffic a site like that would generate.

It wouldn't work, because people would submit people they didn't like
to the database and corrupt it. The only way it would work, and I
doubt sellers would go for it, and it's against ebay policy, but if
the sellers gave the developer access to their account via the api, it
could be a 100% accurate, but granting access to the developer,
essentially gives the developer complete control of your account.
That's not a concern if the developer is trustworthy.
However, once ebay found out about it, they'd ban the developer from
the API, and it'd be gone in about a week, because it's against there
rules to disclose that type of information.

I am also an eBay seller, and now I will stop using, user id: pmp-
industries....I have 100 percent feedback score and been selling for 5
years. July-August I started selling 3g Iphones, at very low profit
after ebay and paypal fees. They require you to only receive payments
through paypal for selling this product. After my tenth transaction
they froze my account paypal and ebay so I could not get money out and
I could not sell anymore on ebay. Reason 'suspicious' transactions.
They ask for supplier and receipts of phones and tracking number for
last phone sold. I sent both same day. It is now three weeks with no
response to me whatsoever. I am done with you eBay and I will be
shorting your stock.

Kevin

Yes......it is true EPC (Ebay Partner Network) has unjustifiably
terminated a large amount of EPC affiliate accounts. There is a
massive following on their message board:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum.jspa?forumID=1000000047&anticache=12...
. I can guarantee this will not look good for their upcoming stock
margins. Large affiliate boards such as DigitalPoint, AbestWeb, and
WebmasterWorld and in a huge stir over the situation and its only
getting bigger. Many long term affiliates who have been with the
program for years are finding themself suddenly clinging to nothing.

We desperately need a comparable eBay competitor soon. This is
ridiculous.

Hardly a fees decrease when they expanded a final value fee tranche.
This went from $.01-$25.00 at 8.75% to $1 - $50 at 12% or 15% for
media.
They added a extra $25 range to the higher percent take rate.
Another problem is shipping fee limits. The overage will be rolled
into asking price, then calculating in the final value fee, will raise
prices on ebay for most any product with shipping restrctions. Media
actually will be over MSRP.
This new model will not work.
Also no buyer urgency when no ending time, the new search is broken
(Finding 2.0), etc, etc.

Ebay is in for some huge problems with bringing buyers to the site
with product pricing being so high.

This company is scr_ _ ed plain and simple. They have no choice but to
raise their rates to many sellers have left and a lot more will be
leaving when they evaluate this website to sell on......http://
www.goantiques.com/ .....is  working on an auction format designed for
sellers from eBay. This is NOT by any means a  small website. look it
over carefully . This site is poised to take off very quickly....eBay
says that the auction format is a "has been". If this site does what I
think it is going to do the eBay shareholders may want to dump the
stock and invest in this company, because the collectibles market is
not a has been market, and any smart seller in this field should give
this site a careful consideration.

I was a ebay seller (AND BUYER) with 100% feedback.  I sold $$$ worth
every month and I bought $$$ every month.  After the feedback
announcement in february I stopped selling AND BUYING.  There is
absolutely NO WAY I will EVER use ebay again for ANYTHING.  The items
I sold (antiques / collectibles) did best at auction and there is no
way I will list them at fixed price (at least on ebay)  I did not mind
the fees as much as I minded the feedback and favoritism (caste
system)  If ebay had customer service they could have given amazon a
run for their money.  Unfortunately ebay does not in any way
understand the concept of customer service and they haven't since the
IPO.  THIS is what has killed ebay.    ebay committed corporate
suicide and they will never recover now.

Friends do NOT let friends ebay

There's an old saying, "If it ain't broke don't fix it."

Unless eBay's management are complete morons, they knew the
consequences of their announced changes and previous changes.

What I'm wondering is - Why are they trying to destroy their company?

I don't know why they are trying to destroy the company but there is
also another saying in the computer/website world...The people who
make it are the people who break it...It is self explanatory, so I
guess we will have to see how all this plays out over the next year or
so....Good post

If meg whitman got out theres a big message there to eveyone get out
now shares will drop everyone in saying it can't get worse but it will
ebay refused and is still refusing to listen to it core of sellers
they even refuse to listen to their investor they took a perfect
business model and in their arrogance messed with it so it does not
work anymore i used to be a loyal ebay seller/buyer but i will not be
using the site again no matter what the do you can only take so much
from a bully before you do somthing about it

worldofgood.com = more list padding from ebay to keep the appearance
of good figures
 Ioffer.com is hot there heels with no sneakey backhanded deals to pad
out their listing even the new ebay search was introduced to make it
look like lots of people are still selling there i typed in beatles
the other day on both site and ebay had 7000 listing of which only
about 2000 actually had beatles in the title ioffer came up with 3500
and all had beatles in the title Ebay is getting a bit desperate "now
we want to save the world!!!" of course you do your own little world
ta ta Feebay.

Ebay is not listening. Sellers are leaving in their millions. Most are
signing up to the worlds no2 online auction site www.EBID.NET free
listings, 2-3% final value fee only. Read Ebays own discussion forums
and then read Ebid's. You can actually feel the difference. When
Ebay's crippling new fee's come in this month, it will be all over for
Ebay. Self destruction. What a pity.

 Here is an opportunity for someone.  Create an off-eBay website with
a

The problem is that if eBay cared, and was running a business that was
as concerned for the seller experience as it claims to be about the
buyers experience, then eBay itself would not be blocking sellers
ability to tag these NPB's, and would be providing this information
themselves.

Currently, a buyer is not actioned by eBay until after they have
scammed 3 buyers, assuming that the sellers report the offenders.
Right now, sellers are so disgusted with the lack of customer service
eBay provides, many simply suck up the NPB issues, and the situation
continues to grow daily.

Instead, since eBay collects fees on transactions they consider
complete even when the buyer fails to make payment, there is no
motivation on their part to flag Non Paying Bidders.

This is on a long list of changes that have destroyed the trust and
confidence which buyers and sellers once had for eBay and PayPal, and
is contributing to the success of other sites as buyers and sellers
now disgusted with what eBay has turned itself into mi9grate to venues
with substantially lower fees.

Who wants to pay top dollar fees to be scammed by non paying bidders
which are allowed and encouraged to thrive on eBay.

Personally, I pulled out of eBay back in April and now sell on other
sites that are truly interested in supporting sellers, or at least not
getting involved with every minute detail of a sellers business. The
fun and profit has returned to my Internet sales experience since I
left eBay and am now back to running my own business.