I would not invest in ebay stock for a number of reasons:
1) The management gives away its profits from my efforts to buyers, not because they have proven that they deserve refunds, but just to keep them happy or to get them off the phone. I have experienced too many return requests that were unjustified, yet supported by ebay customer service. My most recent one was a DVD/VCR sloppily returned in a box without the packaging material, resulting in damage. I did not have to pay full refund for the item or shipping, and my selling record was not negatively affected, but ebay kept the buyer happy by granting his refund, when they should have terminated the account for egregious recklessness, especially since he was also a seller. ebay seems to want everyone coming back, when they should more often say, "Good riddance."
2) One should have confidence in a business's management to invest. I have well-founded confidence in ebay's MISmanagement. Far too often, I look to see ebay's product descriptions, only to respond in laughter or disgust. The people writing and posting these descriptions are blithering idiots. Just look at the description ebay hosts for a Sony ECM-HS1 camcorder microphone. It's a specialty product that Sony makes for hot-shoe connection to some of their camcorders, yet ebay calls it a "direct box", which is a gadget that matches impedance and level, and they describe it as wire-connected, which is true of a direct box, but certainly not true of any of Sony's accessories for their multi-interface shoe. From what I've seen, this is only one example of thousands or tens of thousands of incredulously ridiculous product descriptions. I made an earlier post about the ebay-provided information of compatibility of a camcorder with the several Mississippi OS versions: 98, 2000, XP, etc. Do NOT accept ebay's item descriptions as factual or even credible!
Under other account, I was buying and selling on ebay back in 1997. ebay was a better community then, with less management obstruction in transactions, at least in my experience. Sellers could even protect others from harm by posting negative feedback on buyers who had earned it! I might have been willing to buy stock then, but not today. I've seen too much MISmanagement to want to be an owner. ebay may be making a profit, but I'd rather profit from a business for which I can have more respect.
