eBay

zamo-zuan · ‎07-19-2018

I stumbled upon the interview where eBay's CFO stated:

"First off, as we kind of talked about, there is a fidget spinner dynamic that in Q2 of last year brought a lot of low ASP (Average Selling Price) items that were a lot of new buyers as well, and we have not retained those new buyers to the extent that we have in the past. They're a kind of "one and done," if you will, buying those fidget spinners - and they were very low ASP items.

So, as we lap that, that certainly makes it feel like the underlying growth rate is decelerating when in fact it's more a one-off aspect of that.

And that same thing is pressuring active buyers, but now, the other thing we talked about was we had been favoring higher ASP branded items in our search, and as that has kind of offset some of the pressure that we got from the fidget spinners in the sold item number pushing ASP up a bit, but really sold items down. So hopefully that's clear. But that's the dynamic between those two both active buyers and sold items."

Frankly, I find those comments completely shocking.

In the 3rd paragraph, he directly admits to manipulating the search to favor higher ASP branded items!

Furthermore, he says this is the reason sold items were down. With all the sellers having major issues with sales lately who do NOT have higher ASP branded items, this would be one large contributor to lack of visibility and sales!

This would explain why sellers who sell collectibles/unique "unbranded" items have been having issues lately.

It would also explain why those of us who are still awaiting to be added to the new catalog are having issues lately...

Sellers have been begging for some transparency. It's a shame that we have not been getting any clear information on the cause of our issues, but eBay's CFO will gladly share this information with Wall Street...

terrycanarsky · ‎07-19-2018

What I read is, "Last year we welcomed a LOT of cheap foreign **bleep** into the eBay market - and that made us a lot of money in the short term. Unfortunately all those new buyers have already gone because , well, we don't have enough good stuff for them to buy since we chased off so many sellers-of-not-cheap-**bleep**. We really like the higher end stuff - you know, like those other places sell, but now we're in a pickle."

~M

zamo-zuan · ‎07-19-2018

Well, it's straight up admitting to the fact that fidget spinners brought high sales numbers but low average value... they encouraged this thinking buyers would stay... and in return they manipulated the search results to favor high price branded items, in order to make those numbers look better for their reports...

How is any of this fair to their sellers, or better for eBay?

If I was a stock holder in eBay, I would be distancing myself as much as possible after those comments. In no way does anything he explains encourage growth or betterment of eBay, or eBay's sellers.

terrycanarsky · ‎07-19-2018

Yeah, but how many shareholders actually pay attention beyond how much their shares are worth any given day?

How many higher level executives actually pay attention to --- or are held accountable for --- what comes out of their mouth when they're pandering to an interviewer and trying to avoid the sinking pit of Stupid?

'Fair' doesn't make shares go up in value, and 'fair' doesn't create a decent executive who cares about the worker drones. Remember, eBay bought up a billion dollars of their own shares when the prices went down in Q1 - for the purpose of making the company appear to be more solvent than what it was.

You and I have bills to pay, and we do not, cannot, operate at the same level of disconnect as these folks. For us, these shenanigans are deal breakers which threaten our livelihoods; for eBay it's business as usual.

It's all relative.

~M

zamo-zuan · ‎07-19-2018

Not to mention, the part about "branded" items, shows they were favoring specific big name brands. What brands, exactly, were these...?

So unfair that certain sellers and/or brands are being favored in search...

And this is straight from the CFO's mouth...

zamo-zuan · ‎07-19-2018

@terrycanarsky wrote:
Yeah, but how many shareholders actually pay attention beyond how much their shares are worth any given day?

How many higher level executives actually pay attention to --- or are held accountable for --- what comes out of their mouth when they're pandering to an interviewer and trying to avoid the sinking pit of Stupid?

'Fair' doesn't make shares go up in value, and 'fair' doesn't create a decent executive who cares about the worker drones. Remember, eBay bought up a billion dollars of their own shares when the prices went down in Q1 - for the purpose of making the company appear to be more solvent than what it was.

You and I have bills to pay, and we do not, cannot, operate at the same level of disconnect as these folks. For us, these shenanigans are deal breakers which threaten our livelihoods; for eBay it's business as usual.

It's all relative.

~M

I would pay attention if I was a share holder. And if I seen the company obviously tweaking their numbers for a report, I would get distance myself as trying to manipulate their numbers in the report, show they obviously have something to hide.

They are too distanced to see it, but in this case, "fair" actually does help their shares go up in value. Because the lack of fair policies is the true reason for discontent in the eBay community.

If they were fair, the market share for top sellers would not have decreased in order to satisfy the situations he is describing.

How about letting sellers do what they do best and actually SELL?? That will bring more money in to the company for all the share holders.

Let's not forget, part of his statement, was that favoring high ASP items, brought the total amount of sold items down.

This means they reduced the amount of total sales, in their favoring of high ASP.

That is insanity and does not help eBay at all! They could have had more sales, but it would have affected their ASP too much???