Projects Possible

As many of you know I dabble with selling on eBay.  You can put “eBay” into the Search Box on the left over there and you will find me looking for seller tools, you will read about Gixen sniping software, I comment about Auctiva, I even commented on the recent 66% increase in final value fees at eBay.  It just wouldn’t be right if I let it pass without some kind of a comment.So what really are the issues that have so many sellers upset?   For me these are the biggies:

• No negative or neutral feedback can be given to buyers.
• Paypal can hold my money for 21 days
• The fee increase disguised as a decrease.

They are also ranked in order of importance to me.

Let’s look at them individually

Feedback - When I accept payments from buyers I want to know that they aren’t going to stiff me.  A quick review of their feedback lets you know this relatively quickly.  I also will not accept personal checks or money orders from any buyer that has a feedback score that is less than 10 or if they have any payment related negatives. 

The argument that I hear is that when a buyer leaves feedback if it is in any way neutral or negative there are a group of sellers that retaliate and post a negative to the buyer.  In effect they have alienated the buyer from the eBay community and that buyer will no longer buy.  I have been a victim of this.  I posted neutral feedback for a seller due to lack of communication and merchandise that I thought could have been better described.   It wasn’t 30 minutes later and the seller hit me with a negative on every item that I had purchased (I had purchased 5 items.)  As a new buyer I was quite angry.

What is feedback anyway?  I have always thought of it as a rating or indication of how well your portion of the transaction went.  For the seller as soon as you receive payment you should be posting feedback.  If the buyer purchased your item and they paid you for that item what more is there?  For the buyer, once they receive the item and it was as you described, they should leave their feedback.

I would be much happier with a system that required a seller to post feedback for the buyer and limited the buyer from posting feedback until the seller had posted or XX days had past.   If the seller did not post feedback for his portion of the transaction then he doesn’t have an opportunity to post feedback when the buyer post his feedback after the XX days have past.  For example:  I sell a widget to you for 1.00.  You pay me with Paypal the next day.  I as the seller would post feedback at that point indicating my impression of that portion of the transaction.   You your widget arrives broken and you post me a negative feedback based on your experience.   My experience is now pretty negative as well because I know what I sent to you and it wasn’t broken.  I respond to your negative feedback with my comments and you respond to my comment.  End of feedback war.   I blacklist you from my buyer list and I move on.   Cost of doing business online.

In a typical retail transaction if a customer brings something back more often than not they are angry at the situation and the person working on the returns desk is taking the bulk of their negative feedback.  The difference is that in a typical retail transaction you do not get to know anything about your buyer ahead of time but as a retailer I can choose to refuse service to anyone that enters my store based on past experience.

Paypal - I love this method of payment.   I use it pretty extensively to both buy and sell online.  The thing that rubs me a bit wrong about this is that when a deposit is made into my account eBay can arbitrarily decide that the transaction might be an at risk transaction and hold my money for 21 days.  The real kicker is they don’t have to pay any interest on that money they just get to keep it in their coffers and earn interest on it.

If I were to use a normal credit card merchant account I would get the chargeback and they would deduct it from future payments to me.  If there were no future payments they would send me a bill.  What makes eBay think that their “bank” (and for all intents and purposes Paypal IS a banking type institution) should be different from any other banking institution. 

If they want to hold my money they absolutely should pay me interest on that money since they are earning interest on it.   They also need to clearly define what types of transactions they are going to hold payment on.

Fees - They are sure talking up the reduction in listing fees.  Look at what a great company we are.  We are going to reduce the fees to list items so you can list more with us.  God forbid you’d sell an item that is over 20.00. (or whatever that magic number is)    Sellers with a large sell through percentage are the ones that are really getting hit on the backside of the transaction.   Sure they reduce the amount that they charge you to get it into their system but if the transaction finishes they are hitting you with 66% more in Final Value Fees.   So if you do what you hope to do…sell items then in the long run you are in a worse financial situation than before the fee adjustment.

Overall I would have to say that the changes are designed for the buyers.  They want to make the buyers happy.  We all like happy buyers.   When buyers are happy they buy more.  But it is a fine line that you have to walk when you also depend on the sellers.   eBay I think tried to walk the fine line here by disguising the fee decrease as something they are doing for the sellers and the Feedback for the buyers.  (I think they did the Paypal thing for eBay… it’s much easier and more profitable to just keep the sellers money until we’re sure there aren’t going to be buyer disputes.)  Reality shows however that sellers are losing all around on this one.

I don’t think the STRIKE was effective.  I really don’t think eBay cares!   I think they should…with stock prices falling, and competition gaining footholds the “glory days” of eBay I think are over.  With the new leadership at eBay in place it may be an opportune time for some of the big fish to jump into the mix…Will we be seeing a Google Auction Site or a Microsoft Auction Site?  Heck if Microsoft gets Yahoo they have one already to dust off and revitalize.  eBay may still be the big fish… but it takes a lot of little fish to keep a big fish fed…

So having said all of that eBay seems to have the buyers right now for the seller’s product.   What’s it going to take to move that buyer to the alternatives?

What are the alternatives?  ePier.com, Bidville.com, OnlineAuction.com?

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