EBAY BOYCOTT PLEASE READ LOCAL POWER SELLER IS A RIDER TOO!

[xr-nut]

dear friends,

As some of you know, we have been selling on ebay for several years now. Recently ebay has changed a few things regarding feedback and the selling fees. Sellers on ebay will no longer be allowed to leave feedback unless it is positive, feedback buyers can leave will remain unchanged. thats right, buyers can leave any feedback they want, any! the fee increase coming was reported by ebay to be a reduction in fees. thats right, they told us a reduction-heres the truth: sure the insertion fee is lower(5 cents) and the gallery picture is now free(35 cents) BUT the final value fee(the price an auction ends at is what the seller pays on) has increased dramatically. without boring you with the details, our business will pay over $10,500 more this year to ebay as a result of ebays "fee reduction"!

as a result of these annoucements, thousands of ebay sellers-us included-are proposing an ebay strike. we will not be selling or buying on ebay during the week of February 18-22. what im asking is that if you are planning to sell/buy would you mind waiting one week? while i wonder if ebay will even notice a strike, im hoping that by spreading the word around it might help in the cause. I know(believe me, i know!) that ebay can be almost addicting, but surely we can live without it for one week!

you can check out yours truly in the links below, one is a magazine article for fortune small business magazine and the other is a video link of the live tv show i was on called fox business news happy hour.

thanks joe btw-yesteday ebay canceled ALL my auctions for a supposed description violation! dont think they arent watching all this!

http://www.foxbusiness.com/video/index.html

then click- "shows" then click- "happy hour on fox" then click- "sellers with voices"

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/07/smbusin ... 2008021009

[Savage]

I just just getting ready to list something. I guess I'll wait. Thanks!

Just saw the video. That's awesome that you contacted Fox!
What's your ebay id?

[troy]

Good job in the interview, Joe. eBay just doesn't care. I'm a tiny drop in the bucket, but I won't be buying or selling anything on eBay during the strike.

So they actually canceled all your auctions? You think it was in direct retaliation for your involvement in the strike? A-holes. I sure hope enough power-sellers strike so that ebay feels it.

I wish they had not purchased PayPal...they are giving it a bad reputation as well.

[xr-nut]

heres a link to out ebay pages,

http://motors.search.ebay.com/_W0QQfgtp ... eQ2dpalace


i didnt contact fox, the called me!! the producer of the show(chris wallace) read the bit in the fortune magazine and wanted me to talk aboout it. it was pretty neat, i think my head is finaly un-swelling!!

ebay cancelled all my auctions because i listed their toll free number in my descriptions! i had been doing it because of the changes, here it is: 866-515-3229

thanks for the support guys, see ya all in arkansas!!!!!!!!!!!!!

btw check out this site: http://www.powersellersunite.com/auctionsitewatch.php
it looks like they are not even going to feel a thing : (

[Savage]

I think you/we could make ebay feel a dent if it was more organized in advance. This is the 1st I've heard of it.

[troy]

It was probably organized as quickly as possible. It's not like ebay gives a huge advanced warning about raising prices and generally making it more difficult to do business.

The latest changes, as I understand them, hurt sellers, not so much the buyers. You know, if ebay made a few changes that end up making life a little bit harder for sellers, but in the the process make things better for buyers, I might applaud ebay's decision. The problem is, though, that ebay treats their buyers piss poorly, too. As a buyer, ebay is great UNTIL you have a problem. Then, you are screwed. ebay makes it virtually impossible to get support. If ebay would dump some money towards CUSTOMER SUPPORT then maybe a fee raise would be acceptable.

My account got hijacked and several fraudulent auctions placed in my name. It was very difficult to get the situation remedied, and ebay basically treated me as if I was the problem. They replied to me with idiot instructions for how to protect my password--indicating it was my fault their system got hacked. OK, I don't know that their system got hacked, but my password is/was a secure one and I don't share it. I do Internet development for a living so I doubt I was tricked by a false login link in an email or similar attack.

[Savage]

You may have read my post in a negative way. I didn't mean it that way; just constructive critisism.

[Hank Moody]

Joe this sucks! I will boycott ebay for a week, damn the man!

I guess your only recourse is to take off their 1-800 number and pass the increase costs on to the buyers, since you can't say anything bad about them... Sounds like an opportunity for someone to create a new website for motorcycle/auto parts auctions.

[troy]

Sounds like an opportunity for someone to create a new website for motorcycle/auto parts auctions.

Chicken & egg. Sellers wont come unless you have buyers. Buyers wont come unless there is stuff for sale. Ebay had the huge advantage of first to market.

Right now is a time when a lot of high-power sellers are looking for options. So if a competitor wanted to start up, now is as good a time as any I suppose.

The basics of building an online auction system are actually rather simple. I think the ebay story is that one guy wrote it on a weekend. Obviously it has grown a little since then! Growing to handle thousands of transactions per second is not for the meek.

Joe, did you actually use the standard auction mode or did you use "Buy it now"? Do you need/want an auction type store or do you need a more traditional web-store with an online catalog of parts with prices listed and a shopping cart system?

Getting a great website built is no small task--it is an industry filled with thousands of "webmasters" promising big results with very few shining stars. The bigger tasks, though, are search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing your website . If people can't find your website when searching for "Harley parts", then you don't have anything.

Developing database-driven Internet applications is what I do for a living, but I don't claim to be a great website builder. I'm not the right person to deliver that highly-polished front end. I'm also not an expert in website marketing. The code I write is mostly for company Intranets.

[xr-nut]

Here are some numbers for you guys watching this: last year my business spent just over $20K with ebay, and $10K in Paypal fees. with the changes in place now those numbers will be $30K and $11K. PLUS we as sellers will not be able to leave feedback that represents the TRUTH about the transaction/buyer. PLUS PP can now put a hold on MY money for up to 21 days. those holds can be spurred by a couple diff things, one being 5 or more neg feedbacks in a 30 day period. without being able to protect my FB, how long will it take to get 5 negs?! plus we are required to go ahead with shipping even if there is a hold!

as a business man i understand that there will be fee increases. this increase is 3.5% and will amount to roughly $10K. in the post above HM noted to add some in each auction to cover the diff. we could do that, but its a double edged sword. in the new fee structure, ebay will give power sellers(98% FB or higher plus consistent high sales volume/$'s) discounts up to 15%! but one of the criteria to meet is a low DSR(detailed seller report) that is input by the buyer when/if they choose to leave FB. so in other words, if the buyer decides to be honest and leave good marks on the DSR and our percentage stays above 4.8 out of 5% we can get the discount. i think ebay is holding the cheese just out of the mouses reach, and getting rich doing it. so since we have just over 5k auctions every year, i could add 2 bucks to each's shipping costs and cover my $10K expense. but i risk my dsr in doing so. (btw-my overall DSR is below the requirement now!)

i am opening a merchant credit card account (thanks for the link troy) so we will no longer accept PP. ebay requires ALL new sellers to accept PP.(arent monoplies illegal in the US) my buyers will still be able to pay anytime, night or day, with any CC. plus they will have moslty the same protections as PP with their CC company. the fees are about .5% lower than PP also. i have also opened a bidville.com account. they are a start up auction site with REALLY low fees(for now!) a store costs $100 per year with zero insertion fees and zero final value fees. do the math here: 100 bucks versus $30,000 while im sure the sales numbers/amounts will be less initially we a going to try it out.


due to our contract with our supplier we have to use an auction format. they require a fast turn around time for dispo of parts. so a regular website format wont work.

hey savage- this all started for me on 1/29 when the change email was received from ebay. if the normal joe read it and didnt click the links for further details they didnt get any of this info. you had to go the site and dig around for the real changes. most buyers wouldnt even get the fee increase email only the changes about the FB, etc. so far on the site counter it looks like ebay is down by about 2 million auctions since this time last week.

MAN IS IT APRIL YET????????????????

[Hank Moody]

I manage contracts for the government and when I do a cost estimate I usually apply a 3-4% increase annually. But you are right Ebay is setting you up to fail those bast#@&s!

Hey Joe do you sell Husqvarna parts????

Besure and post your new acution site so we can take a look.

Keep up the good fight!