Originally Posted by
Campag4life
If you think about Ebay's calculus...it is no different than other corporations....vol. X margin = profit. It like a big poker game.
When ebay enacts rules that alienate membership, they have to extoll more margin to derive the same profit.
Perception here on the 41 seems to be...the pendulum has swung too far in favor of the buyer. Perhaps with Paypal fee's, the buyer is who ebay tries to protect...versus sellers....or ebay believes if buyer's flee from the market..worse than losing more sellers because of uneven playing field.
When anybody here takes exception to ebay's practices...look no further than the bottom line for ebay. We just don't see it...but the guys at the controls sure do and what steers their decisions.
One might think so- but consider things, like: In one quarter, Amazon's sales were up something like 27%....while Ebay's were up....1.7%. Consider that Ebay is alienating so many customers, both sellers [for reasons already mentioned] and buyers [not being able to find what they want due to their favorite sellers leaving and a dysfunctional search engine which "figures out *what they really want*" by using Al-Gore-rhythms, instead of just displaying what they search for- among other factors], that they must rely on tactics like acquiring new customers to replace the departing (which is much more expensive than keeping existing customers) which may keep them afloat a little longer, but which ultimately is not a valid way to cultivate long-term business.
Despite Ebay's take of high revenue, they aren't actually making much profit off of that revenue. The main thing keeping Ebay afloat, is the profits from Ebay-owned PayPal. I would say that if it weren't for PayPal, Ebay would be bankrupt already.
One thing which says more than any balance statement: At the Post Office in the little town closest to where I live, prior to '08, there was always a line of people at the counter- all Ebay sellers, shipping packages. 6 months after Donahoe took over.....those lines were gone. I've never had to wait on a line at that PO again- not once in the last 5 years.
I used to do most of my online purchases on Ebay. Now, about all I buy there are occasional DVDs and a few little <$5 items. In the past, I not only sold on Ebay, but also managed the accounts of two other people. In total, we generated on average about $36K a year in Ebay/PP fees. They don't get a dime from us now.
There has been a mass exodus of small sellers over the last few years. Even former Ebay cheerleaders are now jumping ship...and it is not only expensive for Ebay to recruit new sellers to replace the departed...but those new sellers don't last long- either getting booted because they can't keep up with Ebay's insane and tyrannical policies...or quitting in disgust; they're not like the people whom they replaced, who were there for the long-haul- often having 10 years of experience on Ebay. And now, as mentioned previously, even the big corporate sellers are jumping ship one by one.
They can cater to unreasonable buyers and scammers all they want, but if you go to Ebay and can't find what you're looking for [for me, it was always the vintage and used one-of-a-kind items!] or can find it cheaper elsewhere.....that will reflect in Ebay's bottom line- even if they can hide it through creative accounting, and fool the stockholders for a while.