smarmy1 wrote:In December and early January, I purchased some fairly common RPG items from Titan Games and placed a couple of their store items on my EBay watchlist to buy at a later point. They were all new items with good prices and free shipping. About a week ago, I noticed that most of the listings were ended early. I thought this was odd and today noticed this interesting 'About Me' page for their store:http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl ... itan-gamesI wonder how many other large resellers will soon abandon the Ebay ship and head for Amazon?
Plaag wrote:Amazon sellers don't combine shipping, so its fitting for them.ShaneG.
HermitFromPluto wrote:I think the part about feedback is bu*&^*it. I know no one who likes the new version. It is ugly, less information fits on the screen, and it makes things more difficult to find. Ebay just does what it wants, it doesn't really care about customer or seller feedback. If it were put to a public vote, the old system would stay for sure.
EBay Sales: Going, Going...The e-tailer's first quarterly sales decline reflects faltering consumer spending and shows efforts to reignite growth have yet to bear fruit By Douglas MacMillan By his own admission, eBay Chief Executive John Donahoe is "frustrated." With good reason. Fourth-quarter results reflect the company's first-ever quarterly revenue decline, a sign that Donahoe's effort to reignite growth has yet to take effect. On Jan. 21, the company said sales dropped 6.4%, to $2.04 billion, amid weakness in consumer spending and strength in the U.S. dollar, which reduces the value of overseas sales. "It's a sign that eBay hasn't been able to buck the trend" of poor consumer turnout during the holiday season, says Jeff Lindsay, an analyst at New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein. "All the advantage of the online channel has gone mostly to Amazon." Fixed-Price Shopping Goes to AmazonBut eBay's (EBAY) most recent earnings reveal deeper problems than a sour Christmas. As CEO since the March 2008 departure of predecessor Meg Whitman, Donahoe has redoubled efforts to cut eBay's dependence on auctions, which have fallen out of favor for many consumers, and raise the company's reliance on fixed-price items. In short, management has tried to make eBay more like online retailing stalwart Amazon.com (AMZN). Fixed-price sales now account for almost half of all transactions. Yet, consumers who shop online are flocking to Amazon and other retailers. At eBay, the core online shopping business suffered a double-digit drop in revenue, down 16%, to $1.3 billion. Transactions on its site, excluding the especially poor-performing auto category, fell 12% over the same period. "At the end of the day, if you compare the experience of buying fixed-price items on eBay vs. buying them on Amazon, Amazon wins," says Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co. who has a neutral rating on eBay's stock. "It's such a better shopping experience." Amazon doesn't report earnings until next week. But the site surprised analysts in December when it reported its best Christmas ever, with 6.3 million items ordered in the holiday shopping period. According to ComScore (SCOR), traffic to Amazon in December 2008 improved by 9.8% over the same month in 2007, compared with eBay's 2.5% drop in traffic over the same period. EBay still has the most unique monthly visitors, though the gap is narrowing. Donahoe's Strategy Falls ShortOnly a year into his job as eBay's president and CEO, Donahoe has spearheaded efforts to make the site more compelling for both buyers and sellers of goods. He has addressed making the site easier to navigate and making transactions more secure. His strategy for drawing more revenue from the site by helping the most successful sellers—by including a "search by popularity" function, for example—has drawn criticism from smaller sellers, many of whom have defected to other sites. The company's most recent financials don't help his case. "I am as frustrated as anyone that the changes we made in 2008 didn't lead to immediate results, but I think it sets us up to go after our key priorities in 2009," Donahoe said in the earnings conference call. Things may get worse before they get better. The company said first-quarter profits will be 32¢ to 34¢ a share, well below the 40¢ estimated by Wall Street. The company didn't provide a full-year outlook. Profits are being helped by the company's plan, announced in October, to eliminate 10% of its workforce. Shares of eBay slid 6.5%, to 12.47, in extended trading, after the results were released. Economic weakness isn't helping Donahoe's cause. "Unless they can get the core marketplaces business to turn around, and a fair bit of that will depend on the economy, then they're going to have to look at some more strategic measures," says Sanford C. Bernstein's Lindsay, who has a market-perform rating on eBay's stock. Those measures include refinancing its debt, buying back more stock, and even spinning off or selling its Internet-calling unit, Skype. And now, Amazon is not the only rival eBay has to worry about. Increasingly its auction business is being undercut by classifieds site Craigslist, according to Scott Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor, which helps sellers manage merchandise on e-commerce sites. Those people who are "cleaning out their closet and selling what they find online" are migrating to Craigslist, he says, because "you don't have to deal with the complexity of fees."
serleran wrote:The new "My eBay" page is a cesspool. The layout is atrocious, and somehow it managed to lose an auction I had bid on -- it no longer lists it as bidding, lost, or won. Just gone. Yay. Cannot even "opt out."I think its time to remove them.
Badmike wrote:I don't know what would be more troubling, that Amazon and Craigslist are having a better time right now, or that traffic is decreasing to Ebay. Both may be linked, and are very ominous.
benjoshua wrote:The thing that I don't understand is that eBay's strength and appeal has never been its fixed-price items. The allure has always been in the auction process and "the deal." You can get stuff for really cheap sometimes. If that's the case, why go head to head with Amazon and fixate on fixed-price items? I think eBay should offer fixed-price listing as an option, but to focus on that instead of their strength makes no sense to me. The other thing that I don't understand are the constant changes. They keep changing this or that in the name of improvements. Sure, increase the bandwidth or the number of servers or go after new countries, but they keep tweaking fees and layout when they had a great thing years ago.I don't know. It all reeks to me of efforts to increase the value of the stock and someone wanting to place their mark on the business; two initiatives that frustrate me and drive me away.In their defense, I do think eBayers have learned how to abuse the system better and get around the Feedback system or the fees and such which can be frustrating for newbs. A change was called for. But instead of simply hiring more quality control people who would actually kick out problem sellers (takes a glance in Coug's direction), they create policies that sound good but don't really touch the problem sellers.EBay just doesn't get it. Make it fun by making it an auction site that suspends problem sellers for year and allows them back in on probation status for another year. If they don't clean up their act, kick them off permanently. That's a change I'd like.
Pipswich wrote:I still think you guys don't understand many buyers perspectives. As a seller, I don't like DSR's, I just don't hate them. As a buyer, I love them. Almost every major collector I know pretty much quit buying on ebay because they don't trust ebay, paypal and most of all the sellers. There was way too much fraud and misrepresentation. Sellers are not screwing around much anymore. My last couple of legitimate problems were remedied by the sellers very appropriately. If all sellers start taking care of the lifeblood of ebay... the buyers who spend the money... then buyers will come back. Now ebay certainly needs to do something to prevent buyers from committing fraud and just stealing from sellers. I have never seen much genuine effort to actually stop that problem on Ebay or amazon.
Badmike wrote:There is absolutely no way Amazon should be doing better than Ebay, being that listers on Amazon can ONLY sell what is in the Amazon data bank, while theoretically Ebay is open to anything.
