Canadians Get Relief from New eBay Tracking Requirements

by: Ric

So if I read this right, Canadian sellers who sell on eBay.com will be able to qualify for Top Rated Seller and 20% discount without meeting the same requirements US sellers will be forced to achieve.

Once again, we see one size fits all policy, hastily cobbled together and announced without fully considering all of the implications being rewritten before it is even put into play.

I am beginning to wonder if eBay is a multi billion dollar corporation run by out of touch millionaires or a grade school business project created by the slowest kids in the class..

by: Red Ink Diary

I would want independent verification of Uncle Griffy's pronouncements on international trade if my business survival hinged on its accuracy.

by: BetterThingsToDo

One thing I've learned is Fleecebay doesn't know what the right hand is doing because the left hand is feeling for a cookie in the cookie jar.

I wouldn't hold my breath if I was a canadian seller. Until the head nut at Fleecebay says its so it ain't so.

Even when the head nut speaks, its usually with a cracked nut.

by: Beth

I use eBay, Paypal and USPS shipping and First Class parcel rates has FREE Delivery Confirmation since last month's price increase.  

by: BetterThingsToDo

@ Beth

First class tracking on parcels has been in existence for over 2 years now.

The problem everyone is having is THERE IS NO TRACKING AVAILABLE ON FIRST CLASS MAIL. Like a letter or postcard.

by: Stockmiser

I don't get the logic here.  Shipping from Canada to the US is an admittedly slow process - so some form of tracking is exactly what the buyer needs since it can literally take extra weeks for something to arrive.

In sharp contrast, I can ship an small flat item in an envelope from NY to CA for 45 cents, and it will arrive within 4 days 99% of the time.  So raising that shipping cost BY OVER 300% to $1.65 - not counting the extra packing costs - just so we can get ''delivery confirmation'' is absurd.  It's a fix for a problem that does not exist.

The buyer will either have to pay a lot more for shipping to get a service they do not want or need - or the seller will have to earn a lot less per sale.

No matter how you do the math, a TRS either raises shipping or loses the 20% - and both will inevitably get passed on to the buyer.  

This will result in less sales and lost sellers for ebay.  Very short-sighted.  Ebay is about to lose an entire selling tier - small items like stamps, postcards, ephemera, and other like items that might not cost that much, but have huge volume and attract countless buyers.

by: 10 year seller

@ stockmiser

''This will result in less sales and lost sellers for ebay.  Very short-sighted.  Ebay is about to lose an entire selling tier - small items like stamps, postcards, ephemera, and other like items that might not cost that much, but have huge volume and attract countless buyers.''

That's what they want. They don't want the bad publicity they would get for dumping small sellers at one go, so they plan to nickel and dime them off the site.

Next they'll go after the small to medium sellers who compete with the large merchants. They still need the fees from small sellers until they achieve their goal.

The large sellers have awful feedback. The small sellers make them look bad so they have to dirty them up.

How's that for cynicism.

by: Philip Cohen
Web Site

eBay is going down the gurgler and the idiot children playing in the eBay executive suite have to try to come up with ideas to stop the rot that they themselves started and continue to promote. Every decision now made by eBay is pure kneejerk in response to the descending “bottom line”.

Why do you think that eBay from time to time now offers various quantities of free listings? It’s not because they want your millions of extra listings, it’s because they are self-destructing and they are short of FVFs to maintain their bottom line and they are therefore desperately trying to find ways of compensating for that loss by squeezing a few extra pennies out of the remaining peasants.

The fact that these eBay imbeciles haven’t got a clue and that the rusting hulk is now barely seaworthy should be obvious to all; eBay’s “insiders” certainly recognise that fact.

The only thing I don’t understand about eBay is, who is currently pumping the hot air into eBay’s stock price?

Still, all the eBay “insiders” are taking advantage of the current higher price and are dumping their eBay bonus stock immediately it is acquired:

http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1321240-12-4
http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1209175-12-4
http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1219662-12-2
http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1218363-12-2
http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1434414-12-6
http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1303935-12-4
http://investor.ebayinc.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1322858-12-2

Isn’t it nice to know that these guys have such confidence in the business they are running, not …

“When Do We Start Calling eBay A Payments Company?”

A tale of two clunky, unprofessional and utterly unscrupulous commercial entities: eBay and PayPal

http://bit.ly/wpl5DT

eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking

by: BetterThingsToDo

@ Cohen

You can check just about any business that gives their employees stock options and those EMPLOYEES ARE ALWAYS SELLING THEIR OPTIONS.

In the grand scheme of things it DOESN'T MEAN A THING.

by: Philip Cohen
Web Site

Oh, now I understand, it’s only the stupid non-executive employees and their retirement funds that leave their savings in the companies that they work for. The managing executives that actually know what is going on sell their bonus shares immediately and salt the resulting funds away somewhere else.

But I did misspeak. For instance, Donahoe previously owned 164,378 eBay shares; he then acquired a further 468,617 shares at $0 and immediately sold 206,213 of them at $36.37 for $7.5 million (no doubt John needs those funds for his weekly household expenses); so he does still hold 426,780 shares. Let’s face it, it would not look too good had they all, he particularly, sold the lot. Give ’em time …

eBay / PayPal / Donahoe: Dead Men Walking