eBay

everestparts248 · ‎09-22-2021

Long time, high volume seller here.

Over the last 9 years I have been witness too many changes on eBay. Some good, others not so good.

As a company we believe that eBay has given up on building a fair and open market and instead adopted the business practices and mind set comparable to that of Amazon.

The introduction of Promoted Listings (PL) and whatever iterations followed, the coveted Top Rated Seller status means absolutely nothing. I find myself continuously and aggressively having to compete against brand new stores due to these PL's. In turn, due to the increase in competitiveness the PL rate increases. It is a vicious cycle. There is no security on eBay anymore. With foreign sellers having easy access to the US market via subsidized shipping rates & zero tariffs, they are able to sell product at a fraction of the price WITH free shipping. It is cheaper for them to ship their products half way around the world than it is for US sellers to ship an item one state over.

I believe competition is good. However, this is not competition.

Here's a few examples:

Single sellers having multiple stores offering the same products (zero policing from eBay).
Top Rated discounts were cut in half.
Ad fee rates being suggested by the company who profits off said ad fees.
Promoted Listings rank higher than Top Rated non-advertised listings.
Mandatory free returns to maintain Top Rated status.
'Seller Protections' does not mean Seller Protection.
Restocking fees removed for 'remorse' purchases and similar return reasons.

I implore you to begin thinking of your companies longevity on eBay. As you get deeper into the rabbit hole it will become harder and harder to climb out. With a little time and patience, a properly managed website will return far more than eBay ever will without stripping you of your control and independence as a business.

Keep vigilant. It's only a matter of time until eBay starts offering their own 'brand' of products which conveniently happen to be the same as your most popular items. As well as requesting information on your suppliers to "verify" their authenticity. This already happened to sellers on Amazon.

Godspeed, and hopefully happy selling.

frugality_inc · ‎09-22-2021

I was very vocal on my stance against PL in 2019. Spent hours on the phone, many emails sent and forum posts created. @jordan_sweetnam even acknowledged my post for the AMA. Only thing they've done is added where below standard can't use PLs, designed the search results to require PLs for maximum visibility and now rolled out pay per click PLs.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Ask-Me-Anything-Jordan-Sweetnam/Promoted-Listings-are-Ruining-Quality-...

"It's something I saw pretty quickly after my return... great sellers (top rated, amazing feedback, great prices) were ranking below sellers with 0 (!) feedback or (even worse) feedback scores of 94%, 96%, etc...

I think promoted listings is great tool for sellers when used correctly. Have a new product and want to have it rank up in search quickly? Use PL. But if you are new to the platform and haven't proven that you can deliver the buyer experiences of our best sellers it doesn't make any sense to have those items appear at the top. I certainly *do not* want someone taking $s out of shipping faster or packing better to invest in paying for a promoted listing placement instead.

Conversations on this topic are underway - I can't commit to a specific date or change - but don't be surprised to see us testing some things in the new year and announcing changes by Q2. "

Nice seeing promoted listing advanced sellers in the top slot shipping from CHINA. Nǐ hǎo.

That aged well didn't it? This just shows how incompetent management is at eBay. Clearly disconnected from reality.

If anyone hasn't diversified by now, you may want to. eBay is no longer our marketplace of choice as of Summer 2021. Amazon sells 4x worth with only 11% of the SKUs vs. full catalog on eBay. Cheaper to sell on Amazon vs. eBay for our almost all of our SKUs. Walmart will overtake our eBay sales next year at this pace.

eBay must abuse service metrics and promoted listings to fund the life rafts for the sinking ship.

Truly sad the path management has taken this website. Began on this website in 2017 with $800 and first 7-figure year on eBay alone was 2019. Fees are now 60% higher even before promoted listings. PLs are just a way for eBay to raise fees. Little does eBay understand, they remove the price competitiveness eBay has had versus other websites for numerous years.

You must pay for promoted listings if you want to be seen by 100% of buyers for a given search term. Have the top organic search? Buyers must scroll down on both desktop and mobile app just to see your listing. Meanwhile you get beat by a 93% positive feedback seller that ships with no tracking/ships slowly/ships from another country and has a higher price than you. How nice.

Promoted listings has now induced a pay to win environment while sacrificing quality to the platform. Combine this with where top rated / top rated plus, low price, fast shipping, high feedback is devalued for organic rankings ... Truly shows that eBay is only focused on those that pay eBay more to have the traffic.

Promoted listings offer zero benefit to the buyer. eBay continues to invest in programs that devalue this site and eradicate the long standing core competencies. One day, all of this short term thinking by management will catch up to them.

https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/ebays-plan-is-more-ads

"Thus eBay has found a short-term plan to grow revenue but still has no answers for declining market share."

m60driver · ‎09-22-2021

@everestparts248 wrote:

Keep vigilant. It's only a matter of time until eBay starts offering their own 'brand' of products which conveniently happen to be the same as your most popular items. As well as requesting information on your suppliers to "verify" their authenticity. This already happened to sellers on Amazon.

This happened long before Amazon, a company that simply followed in the footsteps of Sam Walton. Walmart, once they obtained enough data to justify producing on their own, would often sever the head of their suppliers by producing their own brand of the same widget, e.g. Rubbermaid. And before that Walmart would, and still does, tell suppliers exactly what the wholesale cost of the widget will be, take it or leave it. And Sam Walton led the way in using size to destroy the competition, the essence of capitalism, by selling at a slight loss in newly opened stores, a technique further refined by both Costco and Amazon who have all the data necessary to sell widgets just high enough to cover all costs and then rely upon yearly membership fees to generate the profit. Ebay has a completely different business model that will never be able to directly compete with Amazon other than becoming the Harbor Freight of the online world, which is clearly the direction they are moving towards.