subject: Why Has Ebay Become A Hostile Sellers Environment? [print this page] Datalite UK Ltd supplies picture frames and personalised gifts, and much of its early business was via eBay. In fact eBay provided virtually instant access to a huge marketplace of sellers, and this enabled the company to achieve the coveted Power Seller status with 100 feedback based from thousands of customers under the old system, but now found that eBay had made a decision where unreasonable customers could hold a seller to ransom. Immediate examples include buyers leaving it until the tenth day to pay this is the day a seller can file a late payer report. The minimum feedback a seller can leave is POSITIVE. A vindictive buyer could leave NEGATIVE feedback complaining goods took over ten days to receive despite the seller promptly despatching goods following late payment. Some buyers were known to ask for extras additional to the described item (courier delivery instead of royal mail, additional accessories) implying that they would leave NEGATIVE feedback if this did not happen. Worse was apparent from other sellers, some unscrupulous buyers were instigating false claims of non-receipt or transit damage on the implied threat of leaving negative feedback, knowing that the seller can do nothing but leave good POSITIVE feedback.
eBay clearly had rapidly become a hostile sellers environment, and in the process appears to have forgotten the salient truism that its actual paying customers were sellers; buyers were in fact customers of sellers.
Datalite UK Ltd had enough of this, and reached the decision to discontinue selling through eBay. Its eBay Shop has been closed and all former items (at times hundreds) withdrawn from eBay sale, albeit of course available through other outlets such as their own websites.
The immediate effect of discontinuing eBay was an instant reduction in dealing with administrative bureaucracy. Another apparent advantage was an improvement in the financial bottom line, discontinuing eBay led to the discovery that in many instances Datalite was competing with itself customers were choosing the inevitably cheaper eBay prices than from the website. By the time all eBays fees, average lower selling price, time spent, bureaucracy, and feedback system hostile to sellers are factored in; the sad conclusion was reached that eBay currently offers a poor deal for most sellers. One cannot help thinking about the old adage of killing the golden goose that laid the golden eggs!
For more information on this topic and similar business articles see http://www.datalite.org
