eBay Seller Purge 2.0

by: RCL

I take anecdotal info with a grain of salt--and I guess I may be hoping ''it couldn't happen TO ME''. When it does, I'll know for sure that years of satisfied customers and continuous sales don't count for much from a small seller. Right now, I am just appalled that any of this could be true. I DO NOT ACCEPT RETURNS because I do not want a 14 day return cycle, and eBay gives me no latitude. I have guaranteed satisfaction from my first sale, and I still do; but my ''preferences'' say no returns. Maybe they'll boot me out, too.

by: JOHNNY MASADA

well, I hope ebay stops asking for new sellers, they can't seem to educate and work with the ones they have.

accepting ebays list of best practices as if they were MANDATORY are probably essential to staying the course.

DO as DSR Ratings suggest you do or, they will DO you in.

Don't sell CRAP on ebay, even if you call it crap - you loose, sell it on craigslist or donate it for the business deduction you will need!

DO Raise your price to include shipping cost and provide "free shipping"

DO Choose a one day handling time and DO ship within that window, your buyer usually does not care you have the use of only one arm and are blind in one eye.
They want it NOW. does not matter how happy they are with your item or what glowing positive feedback you receive, those 1 and 2 ratings are a killer.

DO accept returns, choose 60 days - it comforts and calms a legitimate buyer.

DO Choose your battles wisely - don't fight for 5 dollars, don't fight with a thief - report, and whatever you do don't F with a legitimate customer,  keep records and take the deduction on a forced return as a business loss.

DO familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of the vero program.

Watch out for accidental policy violations, you will find there is no defense.

This is not your ebay, this is ebay's ebay.

by: NetWatch

Selling on ebay as a small seller and remaining there for any length of time these days is analogous to walking through a mine field successfully.

by: Ric

It's been discussed since shortly after John Donahoe first joined eBay... John Donahoe does not like small sellers.

This second purge of sellers shaves another unknown number of small sellers allegedly from the bottom of the seller list.

The problem with these regular purges is that with every purge, good sellers find themselves closer to the bottom and prime candidates for being in the next group to be pushed out the door.

eBay wonders why sales do not grow...let's see....

Endless stream of system glitches.

Search that is completely dysfunctional.

Seller purge # 1, and the subsequent loss of those sellers as buyers.

Ludicrous changes to the User Agreement.

Admissions that eBay deliberately hides seller listings even though they still collect listing fees for listings they intentionally make invisible.

Forced participation in the Global Shipping program.

Forced participation in eBay's managed returns program.

Removing eBay gift certificates from stores.

Seller purge 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 etc...

The list is endless, and yet eBay's management continues to be unable to see the self inflicted wounds they are creating. Soon, the wounds will be too numerous and deep and the patient will not survive.

One day, when eBay crashes under the weight of too many useless poor decision making executives and too few buyers and sellers, they will look back on the self inflicted problems they themselves created which led to the slow and painful death of eBay's marketplaces.

People say there will never be another eBay.... but the way this iteration of eBay is run, nobody wants another.

by: iheartjacksparrow

This should be a wake-up call for small sellers, if the first purge wasn't, that selling on eBay is a dangerous proposition.  

by: Map

On This Day in History:

August 6th ebay purge 1.0 nuked 15,000 sellers.

August 6th was also the day that the atomic bomb was dropped over the center of Hiroshima, Japan.

Sept 11 2013 was the day that ebay came out of the closet with the new user agreement that says they can hide seller listings and not show them.

However sellers have known the TERROR of EBAY has been hiding seller listing since last fall when CANTSEEME search engine was up and running.

October 8th: If reports are true that ebay purge 2.0 has began then on this day in history was the Great Chicago Fire.

On this day, flames spark in the San Jose barn of John Donahoe.

by: Rexford

I'm speechless.  It defies logic.  If  they are going to purge sellers, they should at least divulge the reasons why.  To have the sellers guessing and not knowing why they were purged, and then to have other sellers reading about it and wondering if they will be next just isn't good business.

It seems to me like most companies would take corrective action with some warnings and tips to under performing sellers, who as others have mentioned, are also buyers.

by: cybergirl

Ebay not disclosing the criteria and the lack of transparency on how they decide to suspend a seller is exactly why I am in the process of closing my ebay store. Also the ridiculous policies they keep trying to force on sellers. I have been selling on ebay for almost 9 years, have always had 5 star dsr's in all categories, 100% feedback, a 14 day return policy, one day handling, etc. The constant glitches, the "we might or might not" show your listings in search results, the global shipping program, managed returns, and the constantly broken search has me totally fed up. Over the past several years my sales have been going down further and further. It has become apparent ebay no longer welcomes the small seller, even if you have glowing feedback and try to implement all of their stupid programs/policies they push on you. I decided to take all my items down to wholesale price a month ago, go back to a basic store and try to get out of ebay before I lose my ass. With the debt I incurred trying to keep my ebay store running for the past 3 years, I had to refinance my house to pay off all my bills, so now I have no worries or obligations to sell off my remaining stock and get out as soon as I can. I could even close my store tomorrow with absolutely no worries. I am just so very tired of playing the ebay game.

by: Xander

In case anyone was wondering why ebay removed the policy compliance feature from their seller’s dashboards, here lays the answer.

It would be difficult for ebay to purge sellers if their accounts showed ''High Compliance'' in their dashboards. Now that the compliance feature is absent, ebay can claim any reason, real, erroneous or otherwise to suspend sellers who do not jump high enough to be part of today’s ebay.

It’s just a matter of time before the site is only big business and low cost import sellers which is a far cry from what made ebay attractive in the pre-Donahoe era.

I've often wondered; how Pierre Omidyar could sit on the board knowing how far ebay has strayed from it's roots? I certainly have a lot less respect for him now. How much of a humanitarian can one be to sit silently on the board of directors and watch JD pervert his original creation?

Ebay wants sellers who will comply with ebay’s every desire without hesitation. Sellers who cannot see the writing on the wall now will become toast in the future.

Those who remain in eCommerce will be diversified with their distribution campaign. The time where a seller could root-in to one venue has passed.

Years ago, a close friend who came back from overseas military duty had a button on his hat which read-
F*** it before it f***s you. If you have not already diversified your distribution portfolio, time to get on the bandwagon.
Xander

by: StickAForkInIT

Google "eBay Guardrail eBay Quick Decline Program" and you will know what the criteria are, which eBay is using to suspend sellers.

For a Small Seller, if you are unlucky enough to get two sets of low score in the same month, Guardrail will eat you up and spit you out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxxyDmWWrYA

by: StickAForkInIT

Johnny Masada,

A seller can do EVERYTHING that ebay asks of them: follow eBay's best practices, check the Dashboard and run the reports daily to determine the DSR's received, sell impecable products, do free shipping, have NO communication with your customers thru eBay, 1 day handling, 14 day returns, GSP, managed returns, Thanks You notes on the shipping label and in the package, perfect discriptions, 100% product guarantee, a product that is not covered by the vero program, no account or duplicates infractions … squeeky clean.  

But if a Competitor decides to run you out of business, a Buyer has a bad day, they leave feedback on an iPhone, A Seller gets low scores and decides to take it out on another Seller, a Buyer decides to play "trash the Sellers Account," or a Sport Bidder or eBay Terrorist make you the victim of their games, and you are unlucky enough to receive several POSITIVES and ALL low scores, not all the "Best Practices" in the world will help you.

EBay will show you the door.

by: ebayisajoke

eBay's stock today was down 5% but it won't be long before share holders start feeling the crunch because of eBay's policies. Oh WAIT!, they cook the books over at eBay!!!! never mind.

by: Santini

Motley Fool just posted a video:
What's the Future Look Like for eBay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV0bWwM5xe4

Their verdict: meh...

by: mjr55

First off, bad business decision to let Ebay refund a buyer instead of you.

Also, correct me if I am wrong, but we all have known that Ebay marks you down if they have to take the refund from you (meaning it's a case closed in buyer's favor). I would suspect if you are a small seller that 1 or 2 of these could put you over the 0.30 threshold for that.

I hate refunding fraud buyers as much as anyone....but when it comes to weighing refunding $25 versus a mark...it's an easy business decision for me.

by: StickAForkInIT

mjr55,

The Seller says that the Buyers claimed they didn't get the items.  He says the items were delivered, and he had tracking numbers, but eBay ignored them.

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Seller-Protection/I-ve-been-
quot-indefinitely-restricted-quot/m-p/17769755#M1767

by: windywillow

Some must not realize everyone is not cut out for selling on line. This purge is less than 1% so the total amount getting the axe is good for ebay and buyers.

by: FeelingFroggy

If the truth were 99% of these sellers know why they have been cut but just won't admit it.

by: The End

"...she put me on hold twice and then finally said "my business is not right for eBay."
So then the question is > What was this guy selling ?
Are they returning to vintage and used stuff ?
Are they removing New Stuff ?
Could they possibly think they could compete with ETSY ('cause that ain't hapnin')?
AND > Is there anybody out here that will finally create JUST A VENUE (shut up and just let us sell anything we want and accept any form of payment we want) ?

by: RCL

Haaaaa in the early years when eBay was ''just a venue'' it was like the wild west and we sellers staked out our hopes with hard work (remember when you had to get up at 6 AM to list an item in under 15 minutes?); now, it's a dictatorship but for one small savings: we are free & welcome to leave anytime. I suffered some horrendous rip-offs way back in the 1990s and eBay shrugged. NOW I WOULD PAY BIG to have ''just a venue'' again. I'm at Etsy--it's okay, but many of us will never see again the money that we used to make at the good old eBay.

by: justsaying

What eBay is doing and has been doing for a long time is shocking!  It's nothing more that unethical and deceptive to the buyers, sellers, and to stockholders--in other words, to everyone it has a relationship with.  But I would like to put a different spin on it:  I contend that corporate management has created an ebaykenstein, and they do not have a clue in he** how to fix it, nor do they wish to go public and admit any failure of their course of action for the past many years.  They simply have decided to handle it by "firefighting", which is NOT that way to run a giant worldwide corporation like eBay.  The proof is in the pudding.  First, eBay decided to pursue the idea of becoming a retail outlet for big box sellers, so in order to do that, they needed to be able to manipulate the search, which the old search engine, Voyager.  So along comes Cassini, which would be able to anticipate what you were searching for before you even knew yourself.  Here was the first very foundational problem of their current course of action.  The very premise of designing the new Cassini search was wrong from the start!  Ebay searchers do not search like say one would want to by using Google or Bing (and Bing being from where the designer of Cassini hailed from).  So, the idea and very foundation of this new course of action was totally off-course for what eBay was!  Also, moving to Cassini would allow eBay to use fewer and smaller (cheaper and regionally sectional) servers.  These cheap servers from China are throw-aways!  Ebay had to start rolling blackouts and regional sales because each of these servers could only handle so much (and much less to be sure!) information at one time, in contrast to the old, reliable, and powerful servers that Voyager used to run on (which could handle worldwide amount of transactions at once--meaning that our listings could be seen all the time by the whole world at one time).  Well, now that they've spent tens of millions on this new infrastructure and new search engine, does anybody really think that they're going to admit failure?!  Well, the smartest corporations have done so in the past...remember when Coke tried to change it's original recipe, or more recently when J C Penney's backtracked on it's attempt to stop having sales, but rather just have low prices all the time--neither of these worked.  But the CEO's were smart enough and humble enough to admit their errors, change their courses, and the public praised them.  Success!  The only thing that we could possibly hope for is that the corporate management of this ebaykenstein that now exists would admit they were wrong, get back on (the old) course, chuck Cassini, and bring back the old reliable servers--now that would be a success story!