@spittser wrote:
Yeah, that's the ticket. It's the economy. Never mind that we all went through the great recession not too long ago and, at least for myself, never experienced anything like this. I'm down 60% from last year and about 78% from the year before. In 2008 and the subsequent years, I saw sales lag by maybe 10-15%, but guess what? I just worked harder and listed more merchandise. My business increased to where it was before the downturn. Yes, I had to work harder but that's expected in any business. In the current eBay atmosphere, I could double, triple or even quadruple my listings and it wouldn't matter. There's even a good chance my numbers would decrease. That's not the economy! That is manipulation! Why people keep making inane excuses and attempt to defend the indefensible is beyond me. Oh, and BTW, I'm not blaming anything on GTC, this was going on long before March. Any damage caused by GTC is miniscule compared to the destruction caused by Cassini or whatever they are calling their Artificial Unintelligence these days.
Honestly, Cassini had its issues, but at least was built on some type of logic.
This isn't Cassini anymore, and hasn't been since December 2017-Jan 2018. That's when they started integrating AI in to it.
Then all though 2018 they started combining the new search with their "New eBay Catalog", at which point it fully merged with the catalog in Sep-Oct 2018.
We'd be far better off if we had Cassini than this. Because at least Cassini considered sales history and quality control.
The current search gives absolutely no path for healthy competition. This is key to the design of any search system for any market. Sellers need to be able to compete against each other, and if they do a good job, if they take care of their customers, they get rewarded for it.
This is non-existent in the current search. Making it destined to fail.
This is beyond the other issues of top sellers seeing nothing but decline. It's designed to spread the wealth. It's no coincidence that Wenig keeps talking about how many "new sellers they brought in". It's no longer about quality sellers, or the people that kept eBay alive. It's "more sellers".
This logic is flawed. If the wealth is spread, they're giving sellers no reason to take eBay seriously, no way to differentiate themselves, and no way to actually survive on eBay. EBay has became supplemental income, rather than an actual place of business.
