Stand Up and Be Counted

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FEATURED POSTRichard Brewer-Hay / Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Stand Up and Be Counted

Today is an incredibly historic day for the American people. I for one have never been more excited to watch the news than I am right now. Coverage begins at 4pm PT and will go well into the night. Bloggers will be getting blisters and the poor fail whale over on Twitter will have been sweating for the past 24 hours knowing what it has to keep up with tonight. I filled out my absentee ballot last night after much deliberation over the different propositions and candidates (I still like the grass-roots, “old-school” experience of going to my voting poll and getting my sticker but with all the props to deliberate over, I have to go through each decision at home rather than in a booth).

It is the second time in my lifetime that I am able to vote for the leader of the country in which I make my home and I’m very excited to see how things shake out by tomorrow morning. However, despite the title, this isn’t going to be another blog post aimed at encouraging you to go vote. If you need encouraging to vote, you simply haven’t been paying attention and don’t worry, I’m not going to start comparing this blog to voting for the president of the United States but today is a big day for eBay Ink too.

This blog turns 7 months old today. 128 posts and approx. 3,000 comments later I decided to go back to one of my first posts and the very first comment received:

Richard,

Good luck with this effort.

As long as we can stamp out “eBay Speak” and generate good, old fashioned, honest discussions with this blog, I’m all for it.

There is currently a lack of trust (in management) on the part of many eBay users so it may take some time.

– Randy Smythe, My Blog Utopia

In hindsight I think I was pretty successful in the first 7 months of this blog in accomplishing what I set out to do: report on eBay from the inside and be as open as possible with the reporting. However, a comment on Ink 11 days ago really made me take a harder look at what has truly been accomplished. There were two significant occurences on Ink in October from a corporate blogging perspective. eBay’s ban of Ivory was first reported here, so “exclusivity” was one thing. The second accomplishment was securing a guest blogger who has promised to return on a regular basis with new posts. Something I think this blog definitely needs more of. But it’s not enough. We can do more with Ink and we will.

One day, years from now, my wife and I will start our own business and open a family brewpub where friends and family alike can come and enjoy a handcrafted ale with a hearty meal and share in laughter. It is this entreprenuerial spirit that first drew me to eBay and still does to this day. I not only joined eBay because I thought the idea of launching and writing a blog from inside such a diverse, successful company would be both exhilirating and challenging; I joined eBay because I knew – and I still believe – that it is one of the best places for anyone to start a business online. Now, I don’t discount the fact that a heck of a lot of changes have been made to the eBay marketplace since I arrived. Some I’ve agreed with and others I’ve been wary of. Regardless, this blog will always be a place where I hope to inform people of those changes and vision to the best of my ability. Sometimes with the straight news; other times with my own take on it.

I don’t want Ink to become a place for press releases to get re-written. Plain and simple. After all, if Steve Mills of the Shelbyville Times-Gazette in Shelbyville, Tennessee can make accurate and concise observations like this, I should be able to do a better job of it myself considering that I sit just a few desks over from the eBay executive team.

So here’s to finding strength in our convictions and acting on them. Now, I must go vote.

Cheers,
RBH
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TheBrewsNews / November 4th, 2008 at 10:17 am

Great post.

P.S. It only took me two words today to say exactly what I meant and not the several hundred that I usually take to express myself :)

Cliff Aliperti / November 4th, 2008 at 11:48 am

Excellent, Richard, totally agree with thebrewsnews above, though I’ll expand a little bit more:

“I don’t want Ink to become a place for press releases to get re-written. Plain and simple.”

Is exactly what we tweeted about (oh, probably about 11 days ago I’d guess) and I couldn’t agree more.

I’d say that I hope eBay Ink continues to be the most transparent portion of eBay, but actually I’ll reserve that hope for the main site and congratulate your slice of the site as the current title-holder in that regard.

Thanks,Cliff

JJH / November 4th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

I wish we, the users, could vote about you, eBay, the company, and and vote for new management just as we’re doing right now for the “new management” of our country.

I think you’d find the results of the vote to be very disappointing. I think a number of you would be out of work.

2008 has be a VERY unhappy year here for sellers using eBay. Too many Draconian changes that are not working, too many bonehead rules, too many policy changes, too many software glitches that disadvantage the seller and cause unjust feedback or lowered DSR’s. I could go on and on, but I’ve said enough.

For everyone else, get out and vote. Vote your heart, vote for who you think is best, JUST VOTE!. Who ever wins will be our next leader, and frankly I do not think it can get any worse than it has been for the last 8 years. I hope I am about to wake up from a long nightmare.

Chris @ TameBay / November 5th, 2008 at 1:21 am

@JJH A new president gets four, maybe eight years to make a difference. The new eBay management has been in place less than a year… not fair to kick em out before they’ve had a reasonable time for their policies to make a difference ;-)

dimes / November 5th, 2008 at 11:59 am

@ Chris – John Donahoe was appointed president of eBay Marketplaces in February 2005. His four years are almost up.

JJH / November 5th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

Chris, that was a joke, right? I thought so. Very funny.

Their policies have made a VERY big difference. All bad.

Davey / November 5th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

There is currently a lack of trust (in management) on the part of many eBay users so it may take some time.

-Randy Smythe

Richard, I must say that the blog has been at least a good attempt at public disclosure and you’ve worked hard at it. Not being an ivory seller, I can’t appreciate that scoop the blog got either. Nor could I appreciate the “Green” HQ building my fees paid for.

But I can say this with assurance: Trust in ebay management has only declined in the interim. Things like Lorrie Norrington saying here how much small sellers are appreciated, but come on, how has this been shown since she came and paid us lip service through your blog? I think tha answer can’t be posted, as it is one word–zero, or arguably negative.

About starting a business here: I’m sure you are aware that many business just getting started can be shot out of the sky for 30 days or more, or certainly wiped out in search order, with just one bad feedback, even if the bidder did not get around to paying. Then you’re stuck with inventory you can’t do anything with but try again on another site. And how do you appeal the suspension or listing limitation? You can’t! There is no accountability–the bots are judge, jury, and executioner! The humans you can reach are impotent to do anything but tell you you are suspended. Ebay’s customer service is still the worst in the industry.

How do you know that BUY or another Diamond Powerseller won’t move into your space and bury you in Best Mash search, leaving you anonymous and again stuck with stale inventory?

How do you deal with your shipping cost DSRs when they paradoxically fall when you use Free Shipping, and ebay won’t do the right thing and make that DSR like it is on half.com? How do you deal with Paypal glitches where your funds say they are “unclaimed” for weeks now, and you can’t ship to the disgust of your buyers? Can you hear your shipping time DSRs falling, and the last place you will see any mention of the ongoing problem is at ebay itself, where the problem is still cloaked in secrecy? Do you really want to start a business here? Sort of like selling home lots on an active volcano, if you ask me.

I heartily disagree that ebay is the best place to start a business–it isn’t at all, and matter of fact, due to the instability of the platform and policies as Mr. Donohoe’s team continues to disrupt the marketplace, probably one of the worst out there. It is clear to many of us transitioning out of ebay, that the only safe businesses to start here are owned by the likes of BUY.

ExtremelyReliable / November 6th, 2008 at 7:09 pm

We have been selling books on eBay/half for five years with 4.9 DSR up until about 60 days ago. In last textbook season (fall’08), we increased our inventory on half.com almost 20 fold. Scammers started buying our items with fraud funds on half.com. We got hundreds and hundreds of notifications from half.com asking us not to complete transaction and refund buyer. Sometimes, we got those notifications after 3-4 days of transaction. In few instances, half.com told us not to ship and then they reversed themselves in follow up email. We lost $8xxx.xx by shipping items to fraudulent buyers. We could not claim penny off from those sales as we got notification from half.com that we should not have shipped those items.

We stop shipping items to all buyers whose status was “Not a Registered user”. First time buyers who have not verified their email can still complete transaction but their status would be “Not a Registered user”. Half.com warned us that if we continue to ship items to fraudulent buyer and keep claiming, we are at a risk of being identified as a part of fraud schemes. Buyers who got refund from us instead of book had following profile.

1. At the time of transaction, they were on site for less than three days.
2. They were marked as “Not a Registered User”
3. They had zero feedback or some auto-generated feedback at a time of order.
4. They buy very high value items and requests expedite shipping.
5. They would not respond to email requesting further order verification.
6. Most of time, they would have some numbers in their user name making it look like auto-generated.

Per half.com, those are typical characteristics of fraud buyers. We got 10 negative feedback out of 430+ feedbacks in last 60 days. All the negative feedback we received follows exact same pattern described above. We chose to refund to about 5 % of customers instead of shipping item.

Please look at this decision from seller perspective as someone who has made significant loss fighting with frauds. We did not had enough information to separate good buyers from fraud buyers, Less than 10 % of buyer whose status were “Not a registered user” turned out to be genuine buyer after verification of their email. None of them lost money as we refunded them right away. Our current feedback rate is 97.3 % positive with DSR of 4.37 and higher.

Unfortunately, few genuine buyers also received bad service as we could not differentiate them based on available information. We had choice of either taking huge loss or ship item out to every customer or risk negative feedback. Financial losses were starting to be unbearable. eBay put us on restriction for 30 days and without any further explanation, they suspended us indefinitely.

I called T & S to discuss decision, I got sarcastic laughs and shouting. I realized I had access to TSAM and called them. They listen to me carefully and nice no at the end of conversation.

I only had three negative feedback in last one month restriction period. Two of those three buyer wanted to revise feedback but I could not send them feedback revision because of ebay sitewide glitch. (Talk about bad luck). One negative feedback came from database error in half.com. (Bad luck on our side)

eBay just refused to listen to us and shut door fast on us. No appeal, no Logic in this Jungle raj. Very very disappointed.

What more can you do stay afload on ebay ?

PAR / November 6th, 2008 at 11:52 pm

BRAVO Randy – your post is right on…but be careful cause your post will be pulled and you won’t be able to post here anymore…all because you dared to speak the truth!

Davey / November 11th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

Richard, I’m curious if given what posters like Extremelyreliable above and those like I have to relate, are you still as confident that ebay is a great place to start a business (I mean a legitimate business and not a scammer looking for easy marks)? If so, what categories within ebay do you consider still to be “safe?” Would you feel this way if you had to access CS and T&S the way we do rather than seeing them down the hall? Or, do you view us as not representative of sellers as a whole?

What things might ebay do to make this a welcoming community again?

I would rather I represented someone who never had similar ridiculous problems with ebay. But, I don’t, and I fear I’m far from alone.

brongagma / November 18th, 2008 at 1:06 am

Actions speak louder than words :P

Henrietta / November 18th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

Hi Davey,
Are you being sardonic? I have never spoken to a living human being at eBay in nine years and 880 FB.

The only customer service I had was from the good folk who volunteered in Answer Center, other sellers, bless them. Without their help I would have quit the first year.

I understand from my neighbor that they have something called OnRamp now where new sellers get to speak with a human but after a short time that goes away and you are on your own until you get to higher than basic PS.