Sellers AND buyers are planning a large scale boycott on May 1st to try and get ebay to reverse recent and on ongoing changes, and to make other improvements. So far, ebay is completely ignoring its users and many are leaving, or have already left in disgust. PLEASE help support the upcoming boycott. For more infomation, you can visit various forums out there such as www.powersellersunite.com and www.paypalsucks.com, or even the "seller central" form on ebay (before some threads are censored). THE MAJOR ISSUES: 1. Feedback Changes: A. Buyers will only be able to receive positive feedback effective May 2008. B. Feedback older than 12 months will no longer be applied towards your feedback percentage. C. Neutral Feedback will now be considered as negative to determine buyer dissatisfaction rate and seller account restrictions 2. DSR'S (Detailed Seller Ratings): A. eBay allows buyers to think that a 4.0 (on a scale of 1-5) denotes good business practices by the seller regarding item as described, communication, shipping time and shipping and handling charges, while sellers are subjected to various penalties for that same score. B. DSR's are rated on a curve. Results of this curve may make even a rating of a 4.8 the median in a given rating category. C. DSR'S will now be intertwined with "Best Match" search positioning. D. eBay is unjustly red-flagging "good" sellers as well as "bad" sellers by stating sellers with a 4.5 rating (On a scale of 1-5) now have a "low" rating, thereby implying they are in the category of "bad sellers". E. "Bad" Sellers will be kept because of their monetary value. 3. Minimum 21 Day PayPal Hold For Risky Sellers And Risky Categories: A. Sellers whose total feedback score is not more than 100 will have payments held for up to 21 days. B. Risky category sellers will be subjected to a 21 day hold, even well established sellers. C. Sellers with 5% or greater negatives in a 30 day period will be subject to the 21 day hold regardless of the circumstances. 4. Unreasonable Fee Increases: A. Promoted to the Ebay community as decreases, only the insertion fees were decreased. Insertion fees decreased by $.05 with the gallery picture given free ($.35 savings) yet FVF (final value fees) raised by as much as 66%. B. Reserve fees increased from $1.00 to $2.00 and will no longer be refunded if the item sells. C. Store FVF's (final value fees) increased to 12% above and beyond monthly and listing fees. 5. Miscellaneous: A. The universal anonymous bidder policy promotes additional unsafe buyer practices and has led to buyers losing trust in the system. B. The majority of Power Sellers will not qualify for newly stated discounts. C. The note "This item is not covered by buyer protection on eBay," which is placed in two areas of the listings of sellers who do not offer PayPal, causes harm to the good sellers' reputations and intimidates buyers. D. eBay sellers are red-flagged on their listing page if their rating is 4.2 and below. (per the beta test). E. When sellers are red-flagged, eBay also lists other sellers' items on said sellers' listings. (per the Beta Test for eBay Express items). F. Non-existent customer service. G. Paypal is being forced on sellers and buyers as the only acceptable means for payments on ebay. Australia is currently a test for this. This amounts to double-dipping by ebay, and opens the door for future hikes in Paypal fees. H. Buyers can get a Paypal refund for any lame excuse, and in many cases, can get a refund AND keep the item. (Read ebay forums to find out how to do this.) I. ebay is close-lipped about their substantial plans for changes to ebay. They appear to moving towards a retail site similar to Amazon.com and are planning to get rid of all of the "small" sellers and the auction format.
I think this won't make any difference at all - most of the changes are for the good of the buyer and without the buyer, eBay is worthless.
Ebay is trying to make the market an entire buyers' market - what they're forgetting is, I know this myself as our company use eBay as a merchant window - without sellers, you can't have buyers.
Well, even though they say this doesn't work. I don't buy or sell on eBay anymore. I used to be a HUGE seller and had tons of feedback, but their fees ate my margin. This new guy at eBay really sucks... well I guess he's not new anymore, but ever since he came in free listing days came extremely far and few between and almost always have a catch. Also fees have skyrocketed. I don't use eBay at ALL anymore.
EBAY BOYCOTT INFO: http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=2010176973&forumID=143&x#2010176973 http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000558754&tstart=0&mod=1209510593051 http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000686663&tstart=0&mod=1209510948388 http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000553623&tstart=0&mod=1209511290146 http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000690598&tstart=40&mod=1209510770244
Ebay banned my business & no reason was given we were top rated sellers. ALl they really stated was we are not interested in doing business with us lol. Im boycotting in NY with a team of top sellers.
Ebay was always a little schetchy before, now with the new changes it will be even harder not to scam. It will be easy for me to boycott them on the first. I'm boycotting them right now. I hope it works. I have my doubts.
I haave 500 sellers in NY ready to shut down there stores & ready to boycott. We are taking them down.
The popularity of Ebay is going down day by day. This is try that ebay is worthless without the buyers, but think if seller is not agree to sell then what buyers and ebay would do. It's good to improve functionality, systems, terms, feedbacks etc but keeping the equal importance of buyer and sellers in mind.