By Walt Kolenda
I guess this is what I would say to eBay as a collective if I thought I could get it's ear. eBay, you are a great company, and I am an eBay guy, really, so although the following article contains some outspoken critique, I write it in the spirit of trying to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
I feel the urge, to write this letter as a liaison vehicle between upset eBay sellers and the decision makers at eBay. Who asked me to do it? Nobody. What qualifies me to write such a letter? I've been a seller on eBay for 9 years on eBay, I've been in the antiques/auction business for more than 25 years and have been a practicing auctioneer for more than half of those years. I'm also active blogger and podcaster and use those methods to keep my finger on the pulse of the antiques & collectibles world.
Obviously eBay is well aware that a large amount of sellers are very unhappy and/or afraid of the new feedback, detailed seller ratings, fee structure and search enhancements that are either already in place or planned for. What I don't think eBay has a grip on is, why those sellers feel the way they do, and the depth of despair. If you'll understand that, then no matter what the outcome of the new changes, eBay will grow and prosper as it should, and it's likely that it will.
I think to ignore it, would at worst, be a death of a thousand cuts, and at best, cause eBay's bottom line to reflect an "also in the race" market status rather than the industry front runner. Let's look at the core of the fire, shall we? Fee increases: They are inevitable. People grouse and complain, but, fair increases are expected and tolerated. What struck me and many others as a smack in the head, is that the new increases have been marketed to us as a fee decrease, when in reality it appears it's only going to be cheaper for the people who list a lot of things that don't sell.
To indicate otherwise, seems to imply we can't do the the math, and that's offensive. To top it off, some fee decreases will come through a very complex carrot and stick method via the DSR system that most don't fully understand and are therefore afraid of. In fact, in one place eBay itself says a 4 DSR star is good, and in another page degrades a 4 star rating, showing that eBay doesn't fully understand it's own system. These are hard economic times, many of the sellers concerned make a good percentage of their income on eBay, they have a right to be concerned about changes that directly affect the their earnings.
That said, I don't think the uproar would have been nearly as severe if you'd just outright raised fees for every one proportionately instead of making 1/2 of us feel like we're going to be punished for not meeting what we feel are unfair and complicated standards. The first and most frightening example, at least for me, is your new rule that if a seller's DSR goes below 4.5 or 85%, their items are going to be shown less in your search engines than sellers with a higher DSR.
As a 9 year veteran of eBay, nothing eBay has ever said or done had scared me as much as that new rule. The Democratic benefit of eBay's magnificent search engine is THE reason I use eBay, as a seller and a buyer. Without a fair search, eBay is really no good to me. I have a 99.8% positive feedback. Yet, my shipping DSR is at 4.6% one point away from the Penalty Box. Here's the odd thing about that, I have a 100% satisfaction guaranteed policy, so how could anyone justify leaving low points?
Here's how: I ship a lot of books and media, and some newbies don't understand that the USPS takes longer for these items to ship, or they disagree with the fact that I charge a dollar handling. Even though I mention it in my description, and it's clearly stated in several other places. Is it fair to agree to terms in a contract, and then turn around and leave reputation damaging feedback, income crushing feedback, on that transaction because you're unhappy with the terms that you agreed to in the first place?
How is that treating sellers fairly? How does in put another nickel in eBay's pocket?
I ship within 2 days as a policy and usually ship the next day as a practice, and can prove it because I pay for my shipping online with Pay Pal and the ereceipt is dated, yet I have gotten bad DSR for shipping time which eBay would not remove, nor COULD the buyer remove if they wanted to. The average eBay seller has almost their entire online persona and reputation built around eBay's feedback, do you really think if they feel it's threatened, that that could be a good thing for eBay?
What's more likely is that the threatened seller will feel they have to spread themselves out and dilute this risk by trying out other online sales venues, much like a stock holder who doesn't want to put all his eggs in one basket? That's the best case scenario, the worst being that frustrated and intimidated sellers will take a knee jerk jump right off of eBay onto another source or leaving online auction sales altogether because there's nothing else like eBay out there..
My next issues is with taking the sellers right to leave buyer feedback away, which was in my opinion, a crucial error and is a big part of the reason for the panic buzz that's on the boards and in the forums. Part of the eBay argument for doing this is the belief that many buyers were leaving because of the threat of feedback retaliation from sellers.
That could be true, I have no idea, I'm not privy your numbers so I can't say, but surely this could have been worked out in another way, in fact when I think about it, there are many possible fixes to this, but they all involve spending a little more money on support. One statement made about this feedback switcheroo was, "we'll, we're really the only sizable online auction that uses dual feedback".
Exactly! What was the problem there? If eBay all of the sudden is afraid to be different, isn't that the same as being afraid to be great? Do you think fall-off in business was due to the duel feedback system, the very system that defined and grew you? What an odd reason to blame a fall off in business on. Maybe this: maybe the % of business going elsewhere is a result of much more competition being out there than when you first started. Surveys and exit polls are not always the most reliable thing.
Think about this for a minute: for a long time eBay had the playing field to itself. So the Web being what it is, grew a lot of businesses, that copied eBay, or is competing with them in some other relevant way. Of course you are going to start losing market share at some point, it's impossible to sustain mega growth forever.
I know this is a fast world and you have to keep stockholders happy, but I don't see how instituting policies the inspire a boycott could be something that will make stockholders happy. ( A boycott which I do not agree with by the way, I think writing letters and giving feedback is a much more satisfying method of voicing my feelings.) One of the most often heard criticisms is that sellers don't think you have any experienced "real world business people" in decision making positions.
It has been asked many times, and to my knowledge never answered, "does eBay, the world's largest online auction company, have even one licensed auctioneer on it's board?" If so, why don't you tout that fact, and if not, ...why not?
Here are some suggestions, some mine, some I've read elsewhere, but all I think, have merit.
1) If you don't have a licensed auctioneer on your board, then hire one.
2) Emphasize that these new controversial changes are an experiment that you are looking at closely. You've said this, but barely, and in a very small voice.
3) Filter a few million from advertising through to your customer support department.
4) Put a cookie/block in the buyer feedback capability that doesn't allow them to give as seller bad feedback for slow shipping when the seller can prove that they have shipped immediately via Pay-Pal online shipping records.
5) Reconsider allowing sellers to leave feedback for buyers.
6) Take some of your customer support crew and train them as detectives to find sellers who are unfairly gaming the system.
7) Stop re-acting to every mainstream media eBay fraud story like it's a nuclear blast. Not one of these over-hyped reports has done a fraction of the damage to eBay that eBay does to itself by over-reacting. sellers.
8) Give sellers a little more credit for brains and don't treat them like whiny children when they have valid issues. Treat them like whiny children when they are acting like whiny children.
9) Institute a gradual education process to teach new buyers 'the ropes' as they come onto the system, don't make it optional, but don't feed it to them all at once.
10)Get rid of the DSR, everyone, including eBay itself seems to be confused by it.
Weren't we told this was an experiment that would be monitored for success?
It seems pretty clear that its the cause of a lot of grief and I don't see any evidence of it helping anything, after all it's been in place a few months now, and eBay still found it necessary to make even more drastic feedback system changes, so how could it be judged a success?
11) Find more ways to get much better PR out there on the things that you're doing right!
There are 11 statements made above, whether you agree or dis-agree with them, I don't think you can argue that one of them could in any way hurt eBay, why not try at least a couple.
Here's what I think eBay is doing right.
1) The 'shop victoriously campaign' is very clever and it has a sense of bringing eBay back to it's roots, an online auction company.
2) Buying StumbleUpon was genius and keeping an iron hand off of it is admirable. You've allowed it to keep it's very essence, which is the best social bookmarking site on the net, and a heck of a lot of fun!
3)You've lowered your book and media listing fees to a very competitive price, I believe this will be significant enough to gain some of Amazon's marketplace share.
4) The free gallery was a good idea.
5) Pay-Pal seems to be working smoothly and you've managed to keep Google's Checkout marginalized to an insignificant portion of the marketplace.
6) You seem to be giving the appearance of wanting to crack down on fraud.
7) For now at least, the stockholders still have faith in the company, and the stock is stable.
eBay's a great company, and became so with the help of a lot of great people, die-hards, devoted because they felt like they were part of something that had their best interest in mind. In my mind the solution to putting out this firestorm and getting back on track, is to make those people feel that way again.
Walt Kolenda is a license auctioneer with 9 years of eBay experience and 25 years in the auctions and antiques business.
To see more auction related articles written by this author go to http://www.auctionwally.com
