Comments on: eBay’s Identity Crisis: PayPal and Paperless Payments as an Example

By: nadine

nadine — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:35:02 +0000

Yes, excellent post, brews. It came to me that eBay’s belatedly announced 1/3 off sale on auction listings is part of their identity crisis: they literally don’t know how to price their auctions or what do with them. They must have one internal faction that is arguing: make listings free and charge only on the back end. But another faction argues: no keep charging, but make the front end fees less, and so on. They are giving each faction a bit of the action to try to collect data. Of course, each temporary ‘sale’ skews their data set. Maybe next month they will try two weeks of front end fees only? who knows.

By: Judy

Judy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 03:20:19 +0000

Another excellent article, thanks Brews. The last paragraph sums it all up for a lot of us I think. While I’m very grateful to eBay for teaching me how to sell, I’m even more grateful that their endless policies and changes pushed me out of the eBay corner into the World Wide Web.

By: lamplady

lamplady — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:51:57 +0000

An excellent posting and my sentiments exactly. This is why I stopped selling after ten years on eBay. I felt they were micromanaging my business in unacceptable ways.
Unfortunately for me, I sell antiques and collectibles it has been hard finding new venues with any traffic but I’m working on it. Seeauctions and Bonanzle are two up and coming sites for those of us who can’t use Amazon.