eBay Silences Founding 'Voices' Members

by: Martin

Wow I have to say, I just read some 140 plus posts and its been an interesting thread.

So here is what I have to say..

Obviously people care about ebay because if they didnt they wouldnt be so upset. When you really dont care you ignore it.

You seem misdirection and missed opportunities. So do I.

The only difference is some of you choose to make it personal and insult some of the same people that are on your side. And others , like me, perhaps living in a dream world think that by taking the high road and teaming up with others with brains we can make some kind of a difference.

Sure I might be wrong, but it makes a lot more sense to channel energy to be constructive rather than destructive. So many people have emailed me from here and a WSJ article its making my head spin. But everyone has good points and info to offer.

All your complaints are nothing compared to the real info and data I can spit out that prove this company has been heading downhill for 3 years. I do this regularly to everyone at Ebay who will listen. But not in a way where I call them names, blame them, accuse them of all kinds of things but as someone concerned that they are not picking up on what they should be. The most telling data piece is that in March of 2006 , 41% of Ebays users were active *bought , sold or listed an item in the prior 12 months* . Now that number is only 18%.

I hammer these things home with these guys all the time.

I have pushed for a local site expansion for 4 years. Ebay announced a plan at EBay Live -Boston, then shelved it (As far as I can tell)

The local market has exploded in this time period and Google is now local indexing as well.

People are not stupid, this site has a lot of potential and everyone knows it.

As for JD, I really dont know. I think he is following his style of doing things and perhaps another quarter or two of tough times will bring him closer to the issues. Maybe he is trying to do that now I just dont know. Never met him, blew a chance to a few months back.

The thing is to pick on Voices members, the Voices team at Ebay, or eBay employees is like shooting the fireman putting out the fire at your house. These are the good people TRUST ME.

Ive had Ebay employees come up to me at Ebay Live or in person events and say "Im glad you said what you did" or "I agree with you" or "we read everything you post on the boards"

These are good people, they are there within this company working to do their best. Sure they need their jobs and have to tow the line , but dont we all in life at times?

The key is to empower them the right way. You might not think its possible but I do.

I always think of one person in particular at Ebay. Very high up, who never fails to return an email from me. Always caring and thoughtful and as smart as they come.

This is not just JD's company, and even he might change, the key is to make them understand the complex dynamic which built this company which is now working in reverse to dismantle it.

In invite anyone to email me. Positive or negative, if you have info or thoughts Id like to hear them .

Marty

by: matza

@marty

There is a few easy simple things they can do immediately.

End best match, stop the discrimination and seller favoritism. Equality is much needed and I suggest they embrace it. Long time sellers with a history shouldn't be treated like beggars and  thieves.
Something has to be done about the scam buyers that seems to be growing rapidly. The original feedback system seemed much better suited for a site like ebay but if they aren't willing to let any buyers receive negatives they should at least give them some sort of claims filed limit or something.

knocking sellers out of business using  an anonymous star rating system that is flawed is kind of ridiculous. Wouldn't be so bad if the threshold of error wasn't 0.50% but at that rate I don't feel confident in sinking major capitol in merchandise to sell when I can be stuck with it due to any little mistake that may happen.  

Donohoe is supposed to be in charge so I'm blaming the decline entirely upon him. I always did terrific on ebay until he took over. From then on it's been a steady decline.

I also always cared about feedback and didn't need any carrot or threats to make me fall in line. Feedback was so easy to judge back then too. Now you have all these mega sellers that suck at customer service, half the time you don't get what you order and have to wait for weeks to be refunded. I'm currently waiting for my second paypal refund on an order. Both orders were placed with large mega sellers who don't even own or have the merchandise they have listed.

NOT GOOD

by: Daddy Bear Griff

According to Griff, the 2000+ negatives received by Buy are not "important statistically, expressed as a percentage of their sales". Yeah, maybe not, but they are pissing off good customers by never having what's ordered in stock. That's 2000+ users that may never use Ebay again. I'd ask Griff today, what about Ebay's new policy that you can only offer an item on Ebay, when the Doggy Diamonds list on their own site & Ebay simultaneously?

And if Ebay wants us to live & die by feedback from unverified users, I hope they are prepared for the restraint of trade cases when it's proved malicious bidders are hurting sellers. Especially after user info is pulled, and it's something even a moron can figure out is wrong, like 1234567890 as a phone number, which I've seen twice. Can't these idiots that are screwing up search figure out a way to blockk false Ids? I wonder if Uncle Griff or Lorrie, or any other Ebay employees(they have to mention they are Ebay employee in listing, so it's easy to find them) had a rash of unverified bidders back out, or even better pay & leave negative f/b, and all 1s how fast things would change.

by: Jo

Griff has no idea what he is talking about. Statistically it may seem irrelevant but it is far from that. currently buys FB averages out to about 1 neg per 300 feedbacks. However it is the overall amount that people see when they look over a sellers profile. If you average out buys sales and feedback with say a small seller who has the same percentage over say a year of selling The smaller seller will look better each and every time.

If a smaller seller has 300 sales & 1 neg in a year they look much better then buy who has say 2245 negs and 675,000 sales in a year. Personally If I had to buy on eBay I would buy from a small seller each and every time, and would never even remotley consider buying from sellers such as Buy, Smartbargains or Shoplet. Its a no brainer  

by: Flower

@Marty
No disrespect or personal insult intended, but your posts lost their luster long ago. Now all I see in them is mind numbing, ever scrolling meaningless nothingness. I would bet my life I am not alone. Sorry.

At what point do you throw in the towel and admit that using ebay is unstable, unwise, unrealistic, unfeasible in too many ways to enumerate? It is not a viable option for either the pro or hobby seller, serious or casual buyer IMO. It has been increasingly worse for a 2-3 years if not more.
Will you go down with the ship, still waving your pom-poms?

If you have so many facts, why not present them to the general populace in a factual, non biased way? All of them, not just a teaser.

I started getting out of there in 2006 when things started looking more like ownership than "just a venue".
Happy to report that with 2 websites featuring samples and contact info, my 'little thing" is thriving like it never did on ebay, at a fraction of the cost, time, effort, and hassle that ebay/paypal was. The independence is priceless.
Ebay was like training wheels for e-commerce for me. There is a world-wide-web out there. Ebay is only a very small part of it.
I should mention that I already had built the biz IRL before ebay existed. Depending on them for anything was a mistake, in hindsight.

As for the other ebay alleged shills/fanbois. Why do you all let them get you worked up? Aren't you falling right into their plans by even acknowledging  and/or responding?
Don't allow these hooligans to steer or influence your conversations in any way.

Instead, even now when I see that type of thing going on,it serves to inspire me to spread a bit of truth and facts about ebay in real life.
Really all it takes is a sour face and a grimacing "eeewwwww" whenever ebay is mentioned, perhaps mention of ID theft, scams, virus trojans etc and I can be sure they won't be going there. Ever.
Negative word-of-mouth is much more powerful than ebay's propaganda and diversion trolls. Keep that in mind people.

The loudest voices ebay (management) is hearing nowadays are only in their heads.

Ming, again, point us all to your blog please.

by: Jo

If people here want to get an idea of who the diamond sellers may be it is safe to say just check out uncle_griff's feedback profile because he is buying from them. I guess  jd has  issued his ruling to have the employee's do a good deal of their purchasing from them.....It also keeps the diamonds feedback percentage per sale looking better.

uncle_griff


http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d
ll?ViewFeedback2&userid=uncle_griff&ftab=AllFeedback


Now lets see Marty wants us to embrace the employee's and that they are our friends. The only thing I have heard from them is an occasional we hear you or we are on your side, but nothing else.
Personally I think they are just worried about their jobs and nothing more. Speaking of eBay employee's here are two links for one. They take paper payments in categories not allowed by eBay..The first link shows 8 listings by this seller to which he takes paper payments and states he is an ebay employee in the communication paragraph...now the second link has 540+  listings to which they state they take paper payments in 2 areas of their listings. Again in categories not allowed for paper....We used tiny urls because each eBay link was over 400 characters long.

http://tinyurl.com/mnlljg

http://tinyurl.com/ldw9j

by: Martin

Flower here is a post I made on the Wall street Journal article about Skype complaining that the author was giving too rosey a view about Ebay in general... - Marty
(since you asked for more info)

Rumors? How about reading the most recent quarterly report? Or even scrolling down on the WSJ page this article is on about the chance Skype will get shut down? HERE are just SOME figures from the most recent quarterly report..

Net Revenues down 4%
Net Income down 29%
Marketplace Revenues down 14%
Vehicle sales down 32%

And as for those registered user numbers...

Active users edged up from 88.3 to 88.4 million for its lowest gain (100k) in the 4 quarters presented in the release

In the meantime they had to add 37 MILLION new accounts to eak out that 100,000 active user gain. Now according to the data... This is showing incredible user churn.

A full 82% of Ebay's registered users have not "who bid on, bought, listed or sold an item within the previous 12-month period."

I found this troubling as well.. "GAAP operating margin decreased to 19.6% for the quarter, compared to 24.8% for the same period last year" That is a 20% decline in margins!!!!!!

So pretty much every metric possible is flashing serious warning signs and yet the author does not mention one of them?

by: Ming the Merciless

@ matza

I don't have a blog and won't until I figure out a way to avoid leaving any trail whatsoever.

Please post the user ID of that scum buyer you alluded to yesterday. I want to block him/her asap.

I like your idea! Sellers could quite easily shut down ebay employees who sell. It would take a few dollars and about a week.

People have been telling what Marty claims to be telling ebay for quite some time. Ebay refused to listen in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009.

These HO changes are and ALWAYS have been all about the stock price, executive stock options, and executive performance bonuses. It makes NO difference whether the stock belongs to billionaire NEG MEG, The Ho, The No, or the shysters who approve illegal policy changes.

If accurate financials were actually released, the stock would probably plunge below $10 again. But when you only release carefully selected metrics, cooked statistics, and a lapdog media and analyst community, then nobody really looks too closely.

This corporation has now lost significant amounts of money for three consecutive quarters yet their stock has risen and we predictably read that The Ho is "turning things around."

This is because ebafia has intentionally lowballed quarterly guidance so they could crow about beating Caball Street's "expectations' even if they beat expectations aka ebay's lowball guidance figures by an anemic $1.00 per share.

What HONEST analyst or journalist buys into this garbage? Nearly all of them do because they're just as corrupt as the corporations they "analyze" and "report."

They ALL belong in prison.

by: matza

@ming

sorry there are so many people on my blocked bidder list I don't remember which one he is. It happened 6 months ago and he nor I ever exchanged feedback. He doesn't leave feedback so there is no record of him thanking everyone for all the refunds and free stuff.

New entry on ebay ink blog stating the GM thing is working and is a great success.

Not so according to what the report on cnnmoney.com says.

Now gee which report should I believe the one generated by ebay?

by: fruity

You ever see those movies where the mobster is getting ready to off someone and the guy sees he has few options and its just a matter of moments. What he always does is say hey, I got information, I can get them to talk, let me do this, they'll speak to me and I'll bring them to you and you'll have the advantage of the important information that you really need.


They only empathize with you when it furthers their agenda and the agenda is about preserving their status and their necks, not yours. And they do that by hanging you out to dry. To get you to think they're your friend, integrate in with the masses, to listen to you, be that shoulder. But when you look at their years of postings, and when they choose to stand up you'll see its very timely. and they always say. I know people, I talk with them, I have information, listen to me. let me be the one to make the call. Hear me, listen to me, pick me, trust me, listen to me, follow me, pick meeeeeeee! lol

but in the end, the gangster rubs him out. Because nobody likes a rat.

by: fruity

Ming,

testimonials from people who get an indirect or direct incentive to say good things has very little impact. Its disturbing and aggravating but its a little boo boo. There's bigger issues than that. Ebay probably wants sellers to go talk to the media about this because if this is the extent of evil that gets people riled up, surely everything else  minor. That's how I think they respond to sellers.

I have no use for the big media outlets beyond telling the editors about their crummy journalists. I trust ebay more than I trust them!

****
John,
Your post gives me an idea, I think I will run with it.  Express complaint writing. I love it

by: Ming the Merciless

@ fruity

Ebay has trained the business media to call sellers with legitimate complaints

-- "noise"

-- "disgruntled"

-- "whiners"

-- "losers"

-- "failures"

and so on. In fact they deliberately created positions whose responsibility it is to diminish, insult, and demoralize sellers so they'll leave ebay voluntarily.

Unless counterbalanced, bribed sellers giving glowing testimonials about ebay WILL have an impact, IMO, because ebay will ensure the media and analysts either hear no other voices or demean and degrade those who dare contradict ebay management.

DEATH to ebay corp. in 2009.

by: Harriet

Martin-

You said, "I hammer these things home with these guys all the time."

You have written a thoughtful and constructive post. However, you are preaching to the choir. From what you have written, it is obvious that you have done your best to make some kind of constructive change, but sadly it has not convinced the most influential people to head the ship off from dangerous waters.

Those who are commiserating with you are merely stroking your ego and giving you an "atta boy".

All you and others who agree with you can do is to keep trying. But I fear that those who have the power to change will never recognize the flaws of the direction eBay has taken.

I think what we all fear is that eBay has gone way too far to ever get back on track.

Understanding this unique and quirky marketplace is not JD's strong suit.

He has missed the mark and alienated too many good people.

It is best to wring as much as you can out of eBay, and make an orderly and planned exit to other venues where it is easier and much more fun to sell. But don't wait until the last minute. Start now and diversify. These things take time, and you want to have a good foundation elsewhere.

by: Martin

I happen to think the opportunity for change will come as Ebay continues to sputter as a result of the many issues we raised. There will either be a management change or a "seeing of the light"

There are some incorrect statements above, or at least misleading. If Ebay has done all this for "the stock price" then they still failed as its down 60% from when we started sounding alarm bells.

AND, this is despite a 4 BILLION dollar stock buyback program done at the same time insiders have been bailing out.

There are a few other important statistics to keep in mind. Paypal is now only paying .1 percent that is POINT ONE PERCENT on your money. They use to pay 5%. Add that up and figure the effect of that on earnings.

Second, figure the effect of free shipping on GMV . It pushes it higher because prior to this shipping costs were not part of GMV. And it fell 14% anyway despite this.

Also the numbers have been bad for a few years but hidden in the last few years by the effect of the weaker dollar the inflated foreign earnings. I pointed this out on many discussions about Ebay earnings.

Another issue is the massive SKype write off (in the billions) they did a year or so ago? This had the effect of putting tons of loss in one quarter and reducing expenses in future quarters or the numbers would have been even worse.

Ebays profits tumbled despite laying off 10% of its workforce, which is huge for a company like Ebay where workforce numbers are lower per $ of revenue than at many other companies.

The bottom line is sooner or later a new direction will be sought.

About 6 months ago a BusinessWeek reporter wrote a good article on the company. I emailed him and told him about my idea. There was some good interest.

However, even then the hard numbers were just coming in and it was unclear how Ebay's new direction would turn out. Now we have more ammo, way more ammo.

The thing is I am not someone that has to trash a company to make my point and some people dont like that. I have tried to assemble and have assembled people with ideas, some excellent ideas to help this ship right its  course.

I think currently we have about 14-15 solid thoughts on the turnaround plan and I have run these things by many people.

I can tell you quite honestly that there are people within ebay that are awesome people and I can reach at least some of them . But more importantly I want to approach this in a way that doesnt have to trash anyone because you never know who can be your ally.

Take JD for example. I never met him. He might get into a bind as a result of the current course and really down deep be interested in saving his own butt and this company if there were some new ideas that could work.

Maybe not, but what I am saying is at times  there have been people that argued with me constantly from within Ebay that now see my view and are the strongest allies I have.

And after re-reading this thread I have to say.. lay off Garnor and Cheryl in the Voices program because these employees are totally comitted to Voices and go absolutely above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that program continues and thrives. They do what they can within their current framework and have good hearts. I know them both personally.

This is not to say there is no reason for some past Voices members to be upset. Lord knows I have been upset at times, many times. I post how I feel just as  I do here.

I just choose to try to make a difference because in the past I have made a difference. Maybe its harder now, and maybe less people are listening but you have to look at this like resistance movement with tons of allies on the inside.

A team of 40 Ebay employees just established the Green Team (see the home page). In this area they talk about the value of resales vintage items in the Green sense and designed a great area that could gain some traction with buyers and sellers.

The people in Givingworks and WorldofGood and other projects are also committed and wonderful people when you meet  them.

All across eBay there are great minds and caring people.

Id hazard to guess more than half of the people that work there would feel happier if they felt their community was more responsive and active , heck they own stock too, and its gone nowhere making most of their options worthless.

I hope you know how to email me my email is clhct1@aol.com . If anyone wants to stay in touch. I think my Ebay blog I started 4 years ago is linked to my name as well here.

Currently I am not selling a thing on the site, and have sold over 7,000 items over 5 years with a 5000 plus feedback rating. My fees use to be 600-700 a month and might be 30 bucks this month.

I plan to be more active, but for now Im taking a break.

I also lost a lot of energy when eBay canned their local project, and made a lot of changes that in my opinion hurt collectibles sellers. So Im just like many of you.

But attack the problem, not Voices members, Ebay employees or other people that might all think the same.

And I can tell you there are plenty of smart people all around that know what went wrong and how to fix this mess. That is , if there is even time left.

Maybe once I gel all these thoughts I can get INA to post about it as well.

In any case this has been a great discussion.

Marty

by: ebaystillsux

Geez, Marty. Don't you think that the Voices members who were among the original ones also thought/think they got through to eBay in the past and helped to effect positive changes or stop negative ones?

And where are they now? Outside looking in with all their efforts sneered at by present-day eBay.

I'm talking about Voices members who gave it 10 years of their time. I know at least one who beat his head against eBay's brick wall for years. He advocated for the best interests of both members and eBay itself. I have no doubt that they listened to him at one time.

But NOW they do not care. They don't want his opinion and they don't want yours. There is no eBay Community any more. It's a fantasy and anyone who doesn't see that has his or her head in the clouds.

You may continue to believe that eBay can change into something worth preserving but one thing you cannot change is eBay's abysmal reputation. So why waste your time? It IS possible to have a profitable online presence beyond eBay. Maybe you should face facts and move on like so many others have.

Or channel your energy into something else... advocate for those who have been beat up by this country's present economy. I know that you are interested in that. Do some real good.

by: Daddy Bear Griff

Marty, you remind me of Griff: "hey bring me your problems" Just another way to silence dissent online & maybe you are just fishing for IDs to report to Ebay. So read the blogs & get your info that way so we can be anonymous, and at the same time keep the noise up.

by: Flower

@Marty
Thanks for replying. Just the type of thing we wanted to see, somewhat.
I still feel you are perhaps much too attached to ebay despite the fact that you know better than almost anyone the nature of the beast.


@Ming:
Get crackin' !

The rest of you all out there fall in too.
The Sword of Damocles was not tied on with mountaineering rope or bungee cord.

by: SteveO

Martin was right about something:  "And after re-reading this thread I have to say.. lay off Garnor and Cheryl in the Voices program"

Indeed, They should be shown the door.  

Why?  Because they reflect the current eBay and it's illusion of community.

The Voices program is a perfect reflection of eBay as a whole.  It's now an illusion, using up the last of it's remaining glory.  

That's why the old voices were kicked to the curb- Morontes did his best to manipulate them out of the picture playing games with increased participation and then using the overcrowding that he created as an excuse to do what was clearly the goal all along.   He wished they would have taken the hint so he could have acheived his master's goals with less bloodshed.  

Finally, they don't need to hear how it used to be anymore.

Now that members know they have a short shelf life, I hope they will give up the butt kissing and say what they actually think instead of saying what  will keep them in the program indefinately.

A perfect reflection of eBay, he is not about anything but manipulating the "metrics" to justify and sugar coat the predetermined outcome.

History has shown "doing my job" isn't much of a defense.
 
 

by: matza

@marty

For cripe sakes it's not rocket science!

They are about to make another change that is going to send more negative shock waves with the new dsr scoring. I suggest they totally scrap that plan immediately before the damage occurs.

Best match is the cause of most of the decline. They changed what people were used to seeing for 12 years and killed auctions.

They made radical changes during a recession. When they should have tread lightly and been happy they were thriving. They are pushing free shipping which raises prices for everything and there are no more deals to be had.

They need to change as much as possible back to the original formula. They need to treat long time sellers better and start limiting what a new account holder can and cannot do.

They need to make buyer claims and complaints filed visible on their feedback pages so there is a public record of problem buyers.

Reverting everything back to how it was would be the ideal scenario if they would like to stay in business. If not than OH well go ahead and keep dying!

by: ebaystillsux

Time to stop wasting time trying to make Marty see the light beyond eBay. I am convinced he will never get it after seeing his latest comment on the ebaystink blog.

"It is my belief that in the end VOICES will save Ebay from itself. I will certainly do my best to make sure that happens.

In no way will other social media outlets even come close to offering anything Ebay truly needs to stay on course.

As a matter of fact I will bet that within 3 years many of those Voices members “let go” will either be back or ambassadors of the reinvigorated Ebay that found its path back to the greatness it once had.

Marty"

Huh? What planet did that come from?