Did eBay Blunder with Its Digital Content Strategy?

by: Pete

LOL …eBay the online seller’s friend!!!

They have destroyed so many profitable categories with all their stupid policy/ideas...this is a perfect example.


Off topic (but not so much)

I moved onto Amazon 4 months ago, I receive around 25-30% higher sales price than eBay
I actually get the postage I pay..not a reduced postage cost charge as I am made to accept on  eBay
I have received only ONE Amazon member message in all that time…on eBay literally hundreds of idiotic questions in the same time frame
Oh and I almost forgot sales on Amazon over took eBay after the 3rd week
eBay T&S and Customer support …plus the idiotic and pathetic live help can all Kiss My *ss after the past 5 years of hoop jumping I’m Gone

by: My Own Website Not Quite Paying My Bills Yet

All of Ebay's management team have MBA's which stands for Master Butchering of Auctionsite.

by: Mercy the Mingless

Brian Burke... Brian Burke... Brian Burke...

Rings a bell.

Brian Burke...

Oh yeah, now I remember.

''A neutral is a negative because it isn't a positive''.

THAT Brian Burke.

by: Philip Cohen

“This ease of replication creates the opportunity for sellers to list thousands of the same item in an attempt to manipulate the Feedback system.”—Brian Burke.

So, what’s changed; there’s still plenty of unscrupulous sellers dealing in feedback and eBay knows it and still does nothing effective about it.

Do a search for auction items starting in the range 1-10c with free delivery and you will see what I mean.

eBay’s chief headless turkey, John “Noise” Queeg-Donahoe, is an arrogant, ignorant fool.

eBay/PayPal/Donahoe: Dead Men Walking.

by: gonefromebay

eBay's "rogue Trust & Safety" department is a perfect description.  As for feedback manipulation ...lol ... guess eBay wanted to do that without the interference of buyers and sellers.

Ebay has destroyed so much.  Can't wait for the next bright idea to surface.

by: Sayonara eBay

Why do I get this warm and fuzzy feeling whenever I hear that eBay failed at something?

by: GazLanNaThai

It is typical of eBay, that their stupidity and lack of understanding of their own business, led to opening the doors for one of Amazon's greatest success stories.

I wonder if the eBooks marketplace had not been handed to Amazon on a silver platter, if the Kindle and Amazon's digital content division could have become the runaway success that it has become.

It also leads me to wonder if Donahoe is also on Jeff Bezos's covert payroll?  He has made so many decisions that have directly benefited Amazon, that I believe the Wall Street scrutineers should inspect the share portfolio of Donahoe and all his immediate family, including those of his household servants and any nominee directorships they all have.

As to PayPal being a winner in this - Oh Ina, c'mon - surely you understand that seriously merchants in the micro-payments industry won't touch PayPal with a 20-foot bargepole - it's simply too expensive and carries too much risk of fraudulent chargebacks.  How about reporting on the very real alternatives out there - there's a long list of them.

by: Another Wronged Seller

@sayonara ebay

''Why do I get this warm and fuzzy feeling whenever I hear that eBay failed at something?''

How true!

I find it sad and comical at the same time that ebay has created this set of circumstances that sellers who have an active interest in ebays success since they sell there, take such great pleasure in its failures. Only in this ebay created reality would sellers want the venue they sell on to fail.

Its like the disgruntled employee wanting the company they work for to fail because they hate their boss. And put himself out of a job!

Only ebay and JD could create this alternate reality.

by: e-memories

Does everyone remember how they started enforcing the ban before the official day announced?

One way in which it's an abject  failure is the 'green' aspect.
(As we all know, ebay loves to tout itself as being so green.)

Instead of DLing the data, under the current scenario, it's absolutely, needlessly *wasting*  resources, polluting the environment, adding to global warming etc as it gets physically shipped, and reshipped.

As pointed out above, they haven't changed a thing in terms of nixing feedback manipulation.

Why can't this billion dollar+++ corporation just have hired some real humans to watch for and remove the one penny wallpaper & other FB scam listings?

They used a cannon to do the job of a flyswatter. They killed off a good a part of themselves.

by: JOHNNY

eBay is run by a bunch of stupid white men in suits.

Employees at eBay hold meetings and change things just to change things to show John Donahue they are working on stuff.

The mentality inside eBay is dumbed down, most employees there are going through the motions, over educated, but really didn't learn much in college. Just applying what a textbook told them without incorporating real life and humans to their madness.

by: nadine

"Now that ebooks are mainstream - Barnes & Noble now sells more digital books than physical books on the world's second largest online bookstore, BN.com - it looks like eBay may have made a strategic mistake that could be costing it millions of dollars in lost revenue."

Gee, ya think, Ina? But thanks for pointing it out. With today's booming ebook business, it's an excellent time to rub eBay's nose in their own self-inflicted, colossal stupidity.

by: No Soup For You

It's amazing. Why do they keep these crackers on the payroll?

eBay had it made prior to Donahoe coming on board. The company has made so many mistakes, destroyed so may sellers and businesses, and their numbers continue to decline when the should have been going up.

The company is run by idiots. It's time to do a housecleaning.

by: permacrisis

Do bathtubs get wet?

Facebook has made no secret of its intention to take over the entire web- messaging, marketplaces, IM and chat, everything. They have a shot at becoming ebay's stiffest competition- without even thinking about it.

They could drive a stake thru ebay's heart with an auction portal as a mere afterthought. If it happens, I'll be there with bells on. If Mr. Zuckerberg needs to use my items to finish off Mr. Donahoe, they are his for the taking.

by: joelhellmann

to paraphrase what President  Lincoln said about General Ambrose Burnside in the Civil War:

Only eBay could grasp another defeat from the jaws of profitability.

People who screw up this often no matter how big go bankrupt.

by: My Own Website Not Quite Paying My Bills Yet

To paraphrase Captain Smith:

Relax, this ship is unsinkable.

by: Fruity

no. ebay struck alliances with Apple and Microsoft and Yahoo. They simply decided to split up the ecommerce pie

Ebay, Inc profits more from paypal in other channels for ebooks than the offering of ebooks.

by: Ron

It's obvious that Donahoe and his team never understood eBay's business model.  Instead, they took a bunch of data and tried to maximize short term profit to the detriment of the long term health of the model.  They're basically a bunch of bean counters, without vision, and sorely lacking true understanding of what eBay needed in the long term for meaningful growth.  And that's why the marketplace division is going to report another marginal quarter in their next earnings report.  Without Paypal, the Emperor would surely be seen to be without clothes.

by: Harriet

Ron-

You have the right idea. It was a horrible blunder by people who didn't understand the quirky nature of eBay. eBay has been so destroyed by this management group that I don't think it can ever recover. It's very, very sad. The stock is not doing well, and is having an awfully hard time trying to maintain any forward motion. It gets ahead a little, and then slides right back. It is stuck in a narrow zone.

This blunder was a major one. Sellers knew it when it was done, but nobody paid any attention to their thoughts.

We all need to move on to other venues and get started somewhere else. I just finished my best online holiday sales period ever on eCrater. I am very happy.

If you are doing well on eBay, then God love you. Stay and be happy. But if you aren't doing well there, time to cut the apron strings. eBay taught you how to sell online, now take that information with you and develop your business in a better place.

by: Rupert Pupkin

eBay paid lip service to "banning" digitally delivered goods but nevber really enforced the "ban."

The sale of this type of material is endemic throughout the site so their lust for $$ trumps eBay's altruism...as always.

by: Digby

Maybe someone will write an ebook one ebays mistakes and bad decicions.