EBay accuses Amazon of trying to 'illegally poach' its sellers

[fastjag1]

The news headline for 10/03/2018 EBay accuses Amazon of trying to 'illegally poach' its sellers.

Amazon does not need to "poach" any sellers from eBay. Wenig has crashed this company in to an ice burg and the stock prices are finally showing the results of his leadership and continuous updates to hide the issues on their site. I have been on eBay since Sep. 1999 selling. From 2008-15 I was making $135K per year with less than 500 items listed for sale. In Aug. 2016 I was on par to make $150K going in to the holiday season. Anyone in business knows that the holidays mean $$$. From Aug 2016 to present day my sales IMIDIATELY dropped to $70K EXACTLY per year and have not changed. There may be up's and downs but you don't lose $75K a year in sales over night unless there is an outside force causing it. The outside force would be eBay THROTTLING and LIMITING the sales of US based sellers. I countered this throttling by increasing my inventory. I now have over 1000 items listed for sale. That is MORE THAN DOUBLE THE INVENTORY, Result...My sales are now below $70K per year! When contacting CS at eBay they LIE and say there are NO LIMITS on my account. REALLY? In closing, there is no reason for Amazon to poach any sellers from eBay. Quite frankly, eBay is shoving sellers out the door to make room for all the Chinese based sellers and their lead based, cheap plastic, sub-par, flea market products! eBay has fallen so far that this once household name has barely any relevance in the online sale community. Trust me I know. I am presently in a 38hr blackout with no sales...again I have 1000+ items in my PAID FOR PREMIUM STORE. I pay for a service that eBay is not only failing to provide but they encourage growth and then secretly limit your companies ability to grow! eBay FIRE WENIG! Reboot your site to a time before Cassini, do away with Cassini and get rid of 95% of your un-needed updates that broke your once working site. IMO!

[castlemagicmemories]

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@tunicaslot wrote:

People here don't believe that tho as they never bother to read the Amazon boards. When you wear blinders you only see what you want to see.

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So true and there is a LOT of that going around!

[calistas_closet33]

You are 100% correct. I don’t sell on Amazon, sold exclusively on ebay, except for Mercari for one type of product that does well there, then when sales started declining, costs increasing, completely fraudulent buyers that are always right, new hoops to jump through that make no difference in sales, and then I realized that there are customers/buyers, but they are not buying on ebay in my category.. I think ebay has a reputation issue. When someone prefers to buy on facebook with more risk..they can open a paypal dispute, but still no seller ratings etc... something is wrong. I do not buy a lot on ebay, however the vast majority of my purchases have been a great experience. But I am careful with who I buy from, and in the early days..i was shopping in 2003-2005 a lot, I looked at it as a casino excursion...I would not spend more than I was willing to lose. Now I buy very little, mostly because I’m annoyed with selling.

[zamo-zuan]

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@tunicaslot wrote:

People here don't believe that tho as they never bother to read the Amazon boards. When you wear blinders you only see what you want to see.

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I've experience on both, they both have their share of problems.

Visibility is more of an issue on eBay than Amazon. Amazon is slightly more "transparent" in how you can earn visibility, although with that comes a bit less "fairness" if you are knocked down a bit for some reason.

China is a bit more of an issue on Amazon than eBay.

Policy changes are a bit more frustrating on eBay.

If you have major issues on Amazon, getting past their automated systems is one of the most annoying/discouraging processes ever.

If you do have a major tech issue, Amazon is better than eBay in that department. EBay outsources their tech team & catalog team, which in my opinion is crazy as those are the 2 most important areas of eBay.

EBay's API & developers site is one of the most poorly documented sections I've seen in over 20 years of programming. Especially if you attempt to use any of their SDK's. Many pages are seriously more than 5 years out of date and/or broken links. Amazon's system is more complex, but much better documented. You can tell it was actually designed by IT professionals, while eBay tacked on many completely separate systems designed by clearly different teams, with different design intents, that don't always like to play together.

EBay has traditionally worked better for the Motors products, so it is our main marketplace for that reason. But I have expressed to eBay in person that the tech site is a nightmare, to which I was told "you would be shocked how small the tech team is for a site the size of eBay".

But specifically addressing this topic, Amazon has the capability to load out literally thousands of bots at once on their servers, that would massively message every seller on eBay. To have just a small handful of accounts message this many sellers, seems like small potatoes. I can't believe Amazon would waste their time for such a small scale operation, when their resources are nearly limitless.

Amazon is actually a huge hosting company for cloud servers.

One of the companies I worked for had a breach of security once, a programmer made the source code of their program public, including Amazon API keys. This allows a programmer to design a program that could literally do anything on your Amazon account. Within a matter of days, a single malicious programmer opened up HUNDREDS of Amazon servers, in countries all over the globe, and had bots running on all of them simultaneously. It led to over $8,000 in server fees, in just a matter of days. I seen their paperwork that had page after page after page of servers that were open, sorted by continent/country.

This was the work of a single person, with access to a single Amazon account. Could you imagine what a single employee of Amazon could do, with open access to any server at thier disposal?

This just seems far too small scale and amatuer for Amazon to actually have been behind. More likely, I would think it was a specific Amazon seller doing this, in order to boost their own Amazon store.

If Amazon truly is doing what eBay claims, I hope they have an appropriate punishment. But based on my experience, I'm doubtful this will actually go anywhere for the reasons provided.

The power Amazon has with their server infrastructure, is also the reason I worry about retaliation on eBay from Amazon. This is one area eBay can not compete. It could be bad news if Amazon were to actually target eBay directly & openly.

Something else that many might not know... Amazon actually has detection systems for "linking multiple stores from the same users" that collect an EXTREME amount of information. They track social media, site log ins, they check Google Analytics for the sites you travel. Phone numbers, credit card information, email addresses, facebook names, twitter names... ALL these things are logged by Amazon.

If Amazon wanted, they could easily poach a huge percentage of eBay sellers, without even logging in to eBay. They know your email if you are on eBay. They know your website. They know your social media. They could easily use in software this to crawl along to your eBay page, and then email you directly or contact you over social media. (Which, BTW, is another reason I don't exactly buy in to these claims).

If you check the Amazon forum for users who have been suspended, search for users asking how their account got linked. You will find some hard facts about the information Amazon has at their disposal. 

Google, and maybe FB, are probably the only companies who have more information than Amazon.

[zamo-zuan]

I'm not trying to scare anyone about information sharing btw... Just being honest about what is actually going on behind the scenes. Amazon are tech giants with an extreme amount of power at their disposal. 

These claims eBay is saying Amazon took part in, are so small compared to what Amazon is capable of. Indicates to me that it's an amatuer, rather than any "professional" operation that would have anything to do with anyone who has authority at Amazon.

Direct conflict with Amazon is definitely something that is not in eBay's best interests. Or almost any companies best interests, period. What they are capable of is a very scary thing. 

[cardscoinsnmore]

I wish they would poach me. I am so tired of the constant changes, free shipping gimmick where sellers add s&h to the cost of each item, not being able to relist out of stock items at the same sale price they were originally & now every coin listed must show either certified or non-certified. And their feedback policy is deplorable. Not being able to let other sellers know about the **bleep**s that buy is a joke. Any moron who buys coins can see if a coin is slabbed by looking at the picture. And now, you can't contact buyers waiting for news about new items through an advanced search. And the high shipping they charge for international sales. I use stamps.com to save my buyers $s on s&h fees. Ebay has turned into a piece of **bleep** run by idiots and morons who don't have a clue. Also, what did they do with the corporate tax reduction Trump gave them?????? Pocket it (I;m sure) - My fees are higherr than wvwe & sales are the worst I've seen since I joined in 1999.  Pass some on to YOUR SELLERS YOU MORON!!!!! Amazon looks like a very viable option. They can't bre any worse. 

[desertratmotosports]

This.   So the 3rd party selling has certainly evolved over the years.  It has become more restrictive on how the seller communicates, what they sell, how they sell, types of images displayed, limited desctription, linking, method payments...on and on.  It's almost become to the point we become contract employees and we are merely small distributors under the umbrella of eBay and your store is an illusion of small business.  

Well, Bezos.  The multi billionair who is on the advisory board of intelligence at the Pentagon, has data collection devices in millions of homes (Alexa), one of the few if not the only retail company that is federally subsized (USPS providing delivery services for a LOSS at the cost of tax payers),runs one of the largest media companies (you can peddle whatever **bleep** you want), owns Whole Foods, produces TV shows and streaming service and now investing into health care industry with some of the biggest banks in America.....what could possibly go wrong economically?

I think it's time for those of us who run a business on eBay to consider re-writing or write a new business plan.  I'd say switch to the river, but I got a feeling that horse is about to change colors at some point and you will see similar behaviors.  Your mark up better be good if you sell on the River.  Personally, I'd leave retail completely out of nnew business plan or use retail as side filler or augment with a labor service. 

[hioctane62]

Also, what did they do with the corporate tax reduction Trump gave them?????? Pocket it (I;m sure)

They likely "creatively" found a way to show it as profit. Ebay is spinning everything into profit these days (think false SNAD).

[calistas_closet33]

I think they may be more difficult, but that is changing daily with each new policy on ebay. However selling on a site that accounts for 50% of all online sales vs 6% with ebay, well Amazon has earned the ability to be difficult because they have 50% marketshare.

[dugoldstuff]

Is eBay SNADing Amazon?

[papermoneyforme]

Wenig needs everybody but himself to blame.

All he has to do is put on his mirror "I am the boss, and it is all my fault" and look in that mirror morning, noon, and night.

[ozarkjoe]

It just occured to me that this is a sign of desperation on the part of the River.  As it is they make little profit on selling, almost all of their profits is from their cloud services.   Maybe their stock is due for a big correction?  

[vintagecraze50]

Yes, I went to some AMZ boards recently and you can find EXACTLY the same issues people deal with there. If you are a small seller there you most likely will get overcome by competitors. 

[vintagecraze50]

The grass is always greener on the other side. I seriously think not.

[vintagecraze50]

Mr Wenig has had a lot of major issues to deal with in revamping this site to make it more appealing to buyers since he started.  Sellers being allowed to cuss at customers, refuse their return requests, Sell Snad worhty items, provide late shipping times, never send the item, I could go on.  I hope he can smile when he looks in the mirror becuase he has done alot to improve the quality of this website. Sellers need to inprove as well . NO one person is responsible for everthing in a corporation.

[nowthatsjustducky]

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@desertratmotosports wrote:

This.   So the 3rd party selling has certainly evolved over the years.  It has become more restrictive on how the seller communicates, what they sell, how they sell, types of images displayed, limited desctription, linking, method payments...on and on.

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Sounds like I made a good choice in firing them as one of my venues years ago and then redistributing the stuff I had there exclusively between here and other places I sell.

I actually did pretty decently there in the early years of 3P selling, dealing with a lot of the used toys and electronics there that I do here; and in many cases fetching higher prices and turning better profits there than here.

But then, once word got out; the kindergarten class arrived and peed in the pool, beginning the race to the rock bottom on stuff that was fetching great prices here at the time.  All the categories I was dealing in crashed big time as everyone else fought tooth and nail to be the absolute lowest no matter what.

It was good while it lasted, and was a significant part of my income back then, but things picked up here and especially the other big E since I started working them harder; and I can now easily do without the River.  I am finding three regular venues to be sufficient, here, the big E, and the smaller e; sometimes tinkering with a 4th just to add more variety as time permits.