eBay stock dropps 9% after PayPal report of "WEAK VOLUME TRENDS" due to eBay Throttling

[fastjag1]

EBay's stock tumbles more than 9% on Friday Oct, 19 2018 after PayPal suggests weak volume trends at former parent Co. eBay. This is no surprise to many of us sellers here on eBay who have experienced the throttling of our paid for US based Premium stores. The story about this can be found by Googling "eBay Stock Price" or here is a link to Market Watch story: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ebay-stock-falls-after-paypal-suggests-weak-volume-trends-at-forme...

For all of the neigh sayers of the fact that eBay throttles & limits accounts we now have confirmation via PayPal. EBay has backed Chines sellers who had advantages of cheap shipping rates, production of counterfeit cheap knock off items produced in violation of child labor laws. However, the Chines free ride on the cheap shipping cost is coming to an end. Now what eBay? You slapped every US based seller in the face limiting our sales for years to push the sales of the Chines based seller. They won't be able to compete when they have to spend $20 to ship their $9 item!

     My personal experience with the eBay throttling model is this: I am currently in a 33hr blackout from sales with 1020 unique items listed. A slow day is 5 sales...I have had 0 in the past 33hrs! I can prove exactly when this started as eBay was nice enough to provide me with sales reports. In Aug 2016 I was on par to make $150K going into the holiday season where I make most of my sales. From Aug, 2016 to now I have been throttled to $70K per year. I combated this limitation of sales by DOUBLING my inventory by Aug, 2018. Result, a continued limitation to my sales. I doubled my inventory and my sales are still decreasing! Nobody can explain this away with anything other than eBay LIMITING/THROTTLING my account to an exact number. I pay for a Premium store and I am told I have NO LIMITS and that eBay does not LIMIT the amount of sales I can make. REALLY? I can prove this is going on and has been since 2012, however the past 2 years it has been an additional limitation to an exact number! This, eBay is why your stock is down 24% year to date! You can no longer hide the issues that CEO Devin Wenig has fleeced the eBay company while single handedley  caused the demise of 10's of 1000's of US based companies doing business on your site. IMO

[castlemagicmemories]

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@laurabeardsley wrote:

The original format was extremely successful . The auction part of it attracted tons of buyers at the time. Why do you think it would be bad to go back to this?

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Well, I stand corrected~this poster meant the auction format.

With all due respect, I think most have moved beyond that.  Many don't want to wait a week only to come up empty handed.  I believe that collectibles and vintage have an important part to play to bring buyers in, and I believe that there is a place of new and used as well.  The more variety, the better sales would be, IMO.

[castlemagicmemories]

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@m60driver wrote:

Postal increases are good for Ebay's revenue. Ebay does negotiate discounts but does not forward 100% of that dscount to sellers. They will get a small bump with no increase in their investment.

As for going back 20 years to auction days, well that won't bode well. It is a different society today, snowflakes on the left and snowflakes on the right, all focused upon immediate gratification.  Better to just price on the honest high side with a BIN and allow best offers.  Sort of an auction in reverse.

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And that, coupled with no payers, is why more than 80% of all listings are fixed price, IPR.

[castlemagicmemories]

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@laurabeardsley wrote:

The original format was extremely successful . The auction part of it attracted tons of buyers at the time. Why do you think it would be bad to go back to this?

I think the auction format was successful at that time due to the general lack of competition for Ebay at the time.  Now there are lots of competing sites to buy from.  

[partz-n-carz]

This has been coming a long time . Poorly managed venue.  Always hid the facts with smoke and mirrors .

[ed8108]

I suspect that comrade David Wenig has some plan, he hopes will soon revitalize ebay to #1. 

 : positive thinking

[twnpopcards]

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@coolections wrote:

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@fastjag1 wrote:

For all of the neigh sayers of the fact that eBay throttles & limits accounts we now have confirmation via PayPal.

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Nothing to do with throttling and certainly not proof. If you are talking about people being put on page 43 in over-saturated market on the best match search result, then I suppose if you choose to call that throttling that is your choice.

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Call it whatever you want to call it, but their search engine does have issues,  including but not limited to manipulating what a buyer sees, as they admitted in the 2nd Quarter results discussions with Wall Street.  The CFO openly stated that  Ebay was manipulating the search to show buyers higher priced items in order to raise their Average Sale Price.  

Also when a customer searches for a specific baseball card that I am selling on Ebay and is unable to locate it, that is a search engine issue, whether it is throttling or just a major issue with the search engines algorithms, it is a major issue for Ebay.  This is especially true when the buyer leaves this site and goes to another and finds my item for sale and then asks why i didn't have it listed on Ebay.  When I tell him it is, he tries again and is told that it still does not exist.  This is before I had logged into Ebay and eliminated the listing from Ebay as it has now sold on another site.  Needless to say the customer was not happy as they went back AND CANCELLED their Ebay account and now buy only on that other site as well as Facebook.

Ebay also wants to sell more stores as that does not require a buyer to actually buy anything but brings in guaranteed revenue each month which Wenig admitted they would need during the transition to the product pages.  So the best way to do this is spread the wealth on sales using your search algorithm to show certain sellers listings while not showing others so that hopefully all sellers sell just enough to at least keep their stores open and for Ebay to get paid for them.  While this is in Ebays best interest, which they are supposed to do as a publicly traded company,  it is not necessarily in the buyers or Sellers that are paying to sell their items on Ebay, best interests.  But again, this is nothing but short term thinking and fixes as they continue to lose sellers to other sites where business is growing and items not hidden and the buyers then follow the sellers to the merchandise they want to buy, not what the platform wants to show them.

Ebay needs to find the happy medium to keep not only buyers happy but also the sellers if they want to continue to show improved growth.

[auctionpet]

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@ekmadonna wrote:

I was in an antiques store yesterday, there was a couple and a single individual talking with the store owner, they all sell on ebay, I was just being a fly on the wall perusing the store owners inventory and let me tell you the whole half hour conversation was about ebay and there was NOTHING good said about this site. It's word of mouth my friends, the reputation and the conversation no mattter where I am at local auctions, estate sales, the flea market... none of it is good. this place is alienating alot of people.

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If they have nothing good to say about ebay, then why are they all selling here?! If things are so bad, why are these people still at flea markets, estate sales and auctions spending more money on things to sell!

Therein lies your answer to the lack of sales for many. I've been stating it for years......there are MORE and MORE sellers here every year. MORE competition than ever before and FEWER buyers! Sellers fail to realize the impact this has on their sales from year to year. They all talk about how good they did a year ago, etc. Well Sears, JC Penney and Kmart also used to do well......where are they now! Competition brought them under.

Listing more and more items isn't necessarily the answer. There comes a point where it's too much for buyers to wade through. I have a few hundred items listed and often sell as much in a single day as sellers I know who have 5000+ items listed, and I'm not saying that's alot!

Sellers complain, but they still don't leave. Instead of finding another means of income, they just remain and complain more. Ebay isn't forcing anyone to sell here.

[sonoranboutique]

I think "throttling" could just be a natural effect of sales slowing down.  When your sales are slow you have extra free time, and you want to compensate for the lost sales, so you list more items.  Soon, you do make up for the lost sales and you are selling the same as you were before.  But since you've listed more items and your sales are the same as pre-slump, it feels like you are being "throttled".  But if you hadn't listed those extra items, perhaps your sales would have been much lower.

This always happens to me in the summer when sales slow down.  Also ebay has a lot of competition now so I feel like sales overall have slowed.  I don't know if ebay actually does do throttling, but I think there is a natural effect where slow sales can easily cause the illusion of throttling due to the reasons above.

[msgs_treasures]

I think part of the issue is that millennials don't buy antiques, generation x'ers buy some, but not like thier parents the baby boomers, who are all getting to the age of going into nursing homes and passing away, the market is flooded with stuff once saught after and millennials don't want this stuff. Millennials want electronics, toys from the 90s, vintage t-shirts (from the 90s) they don't want crystal from the 1940s.  Like it or not Millennials have huge buying power and buy most thier stuff online....which is why all these retail stores are going out of business....it's not ebay throttling....

[gracieallen01]

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@castlemagicmemories wrote:

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@laurabeardsley wrote:

The original format was extremely successful . The auction part of it attracted tons of buyers at the time. Why do you think it would be bad to go back to this?

---

Well, I stand corrected~this poster meant the auction format.

With all due respect, I think most have moved beyond that.  Many don't want to wait a week only to come up empty handed.  I believe that collectibles and vintage have an important part to play to bring buyers in, and I believe that there is a place of new and used as well.  The more variety, the better sales would be, IMO.

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I think we are getting two different views of ebay here - the auction seller and the fixed price seller.

One is the seller of the odd, the collectible, the unusual, the OOAK, the rare, the 'cult classic', the 'nostalgia' vendor, etc. - not the commodity seller.  Auctions work well for them (us ) and collectors - be they serious or occasional - may often become impatient to get what they are bidding on, will wait, if they must, because of many reasons, starting with general availability ('I finally found one'!).

The other is the seller of the commodity, the bulk items (shipping supplies), the current fad, (cell phones or computers, new uniform jerseys, fidget-widget, new toys, hardeware, new tools etc.), the drop shipper of anything 'new', or the person who sells current items that have a UPC.

I think ebay could go back to being the auction site because, even today, there isn't anything out there that could compete with it.  ebay isn't going to be another Amazon - Amazon already has that market, but they wouldn't be able to compete with ebay in the auction arena.  

Unfortunately, there are too many sellers that would be put in a hard place because auctions aren't very well suited for car parts or kitchen supplies or general new/used clothing, ad infinitium.  Neither would the ebay setup be able to handle the change back.

I don't think that many people fully comprehend the differences between the two types of seller.  If ebay knows the differences, then they have been ignoring them for years.  However, I don't think ebay has enough time left to een begin to repair the problems and causes.

[pillarboxred]

They are trying to be Amazon. But lawmakers around the world quite rightly have the knives out for Amazon, so it is not a good business model. Most sellers I know in Edinburgh have either given up eBay or using it occasionally. People are flocking to the physical markets again.

I think part of the problem is Search and part of the Search problem is that the coding is done by people with little knowledge of the art world language of collectors and dealers so searches produce bizarre or boring results. One glint of light is Item Specifics which is getting better. But it is unfair to pitch UK sellers who work in a legal environment which is strict as far as Trade Descriptions go against sellers in other countries where any claim can be made and "antique" seems to be a spray-on tone or curly shape.

[vintagecraze50]

They do need to advertise the brand. again. But, they wont have the money to do that if they are selling high volume fidget spinners. Their revenue comes form a lot of cheaper items sold in the millions. At least that is what I thought when the article came out about the fidget spinner thing. But  I think, not sure, that was just one snapshot of revenue from a specific time frame.

[vintagecraze50]

Short term holding and buying and selling it off when it goes up a bit. It's volitile day trader type stock.

[vintagecraze50]

They will make more money if they include PP with their payment processor so they can catch all the payment methods. Leaving PP out is not IMO a good plan.

[turquoisetulips]

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@fastjag1 wrote:

EBay's stock tumbles more than 9% on Friday Oct, 19 2018 after PayPal suggests weak volume trends at former parent Co. eBay. This is no surprise to many of us sellers here on eBay who have experienced the throttling of our paid for US based Premium stores. The story about this can be found by Googling "eBay Stock Price" or here is a link to Market Watch story: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ebay-stock-falls-after-paypal-suggests-weak-volume-trends-at-forme...

For all of the neigh sayers of the fact that eBay throttles & limits accounts we now have confirmation via PayPal. EBay has backed Chines sellers who had advantages of cheap shipping rates, production of counterfeit cheap knock off items produced in violation of child labor laws. However, the Chines free ride on the cheap shipping cost is coming to an end. Now what eBay? You slapped every US based seller in the face limiting our sales for years to push the sales of the Chines based seller. They won't be able to compete when they have to spend $20 to ship their $9 item!

     My personal experience with the eBay throttling model is this: I am currently in a 33hr blackout from sales with 1020 unique items listed. A slow day is 5 sales...I have had 0 in the past 33hrs! I can prove exactly when this started as eBay was nice enough to provide me with sales reports. In Aug 2016 I was on par to make $150K going into the holiday season where I make most of my sales. From Aug, 2016 to now I have been throttled to $70K per year. I combated this limitation of sales by DOUBLING my inventory by Aug, 2018. Result, a continued limitation to my sales. I doubled my inventory and my sales are still decreasing! Nobody can explain this away with anything other than eBay LIMITING/THROTTLING my account to an exact number. I pay for a Premium store and I am told I have NO LIMITS and that eBay does not LIMIT the amount of sales I can make. REALLY? I can prove this is going on and has been since 2012, however the past 2 years it has been an additional limitation to an exact number! This, eBay is why your stock is down 24% year to date! You can no longer hide the issues that CEO Devin Wenig has fleeced the eBay company while single handedley  caused the demise of 10's of 1000's of US based companies doing business on your site. IMO

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Although my sales are up right now I've noticed a severe drop in views . Its hard to understand how a new listing has only received 3 views in 4 days  which isn't anywhere near normal for my store . Tulips