Is eBay Being Flooded by Cheap Listings?

by: pace306

People with BIG BUCKS can pay eBay to break or create ANY kind of rule or situation they please.

There's nothing NEW with eBay being a Pay For Play environment - the listing fees are too high to ignore.

Many ''old school'' electronics stores list thousands of items - although in their cases they are mostly available since they are being drop shipped from D&H, Ingram Micro or other distributor.

I again mention the story of the eBay sellers who had 20K listings bia a feed from D&H and cancelled 1000 sales in 1 day (total sales for that sku was 1100).

What did eBay do? Nothing. Cant cut off your nose to spite your face (20k listings at 20 cents each or what ever discount rate they paid) ... so they got a %97.5 rating and after Xmas due to high sales volume ... it all went away.

In THIS case its just unfair to other book sellers - but eBay isnt known for fairness, honesty or even forthrightness.

Its a shame that you have to not only fight the buyers (to get decent honest ones vs returns scam artists and the like) but you have to fight your ''we are just a venue but now that it suits us we are a managed market'' ''partner''.

With friends like this, who needs enemies??

by: alaska

EBay is also being flooded with relisted auctions. The same overpriced or uninteresting items get relisted over and over and over. For hardcore collectors of unique or rare items, in the vintage collectibles and antiques and art categories, it has become a nightmare. Constantly seeing the same unsalable items in our searches is driving us crazy. And it is killing auctions.
If eBay wants to save its vintage collectibles and antiques markets, it needs to immediately address this problem. We need to be able to filter out, or segregate, relisted items from our searches. EBay could segregate the search results for relisted items the way they now do for the domestic from the international listings in search results. They could put all of the relisted items below the ''listed for the first time'' items, separated by a line as they do now with international. EBAy does not understand how damaging the nearly unlimited free listings has been to the folks who spend a lot of time searching on eBay. We just cannot stand to see the same old stale items in our searches anymore!

by: SparklyEyes7

on Craigslist, you can now x out a listing you don't want to see any longer.

I search there several times a week for the same 5 items and it's really helpful.

by: Dhp3

I am not concerned about whether or not a mega-seller gets free listings. Big sellers play by different rules on ebay--this doesn't cause me to lose sleep, it's old news.

by: Chicago48

The reviews seem very poor and I wonder what their EB rating is like?

by: windsorbear

Alaska, I don't know how you're going to filter it out... when I relist, I use the "Sell Similar" function instead of "Relist" so that the item appears to be a new item on eBay.  Most of the sellers I know use that feature as well, so by us doing this... yes, you will see the same items over and over, but they appear "new" to eBay's database.

by: Ebay's Slow Death

There are many types of items Sellers need to relist over and over, like postcards, comics, stamps, or trading cards. You have to have that listing up when a Buyer searches it, which might be today, next week, or next year.

There are many things which will not sell immediately, because nobody is looking for it at the moment.

I'm wondering if there are Buyers that are looking for those $.99 auctions, with free shipping, when the item is worth $100.  Those poor, new Sellers will most likely be in for a surprise, but I guess it is great for the Buyer.

by: Massachusets Howler

When those guys turn off their vacation settings all the book sellers will be toast.
MH

by: gejbooks

More interested than how much/if they pay for listings is whether ebay will look the other way on feedback/DSRs.  

They will quickly rack up big negatives because they don't describe the actual copies of each book and they ship everything in plastic bags (not even padded bags).

by: angryllama

SparklyEyes2 STOP THAT !  When you X-Out listings YOU don't happen to LIKE on Craig's List that is NOT what you are doing. What you ARE DOING is REPORTING the ITEM as Violating C.L. POLICY and in all too many cases you are getting that SELLER an UNDESERVED CLOSED ACCOUNT with LISTING PRIVILEDGES DESTROYED.  No foolin'.  I've BEEN there. I to this day have NO IDEA why C.L. suddenly over the span of about 2 hours CANCELLED all eleven of my Then-Current listings for small appliances and File Cabinets. THAT wasn't the END it was only the BEGINNING of the trouble. Then when I tried to list those same items again OR entirely different ones I was BLOCKED at every turn. C.L. has a HORRIBLE plan as to how to handled sellers  "reported as violating policy" by NEVER EVER telling that self-same SELLER what they did WRONG.  Honest.  NO information and the "FIX" was to go to a thread where Tin-Foil-Wearing-TROLLS are the only source of info and ALL of them ATTACKING anyone asking WHY their account was blocked.  I was BANNED for something like 3 months and by the time that ended I was SOOOOOOO ticked off that the ONLY C.L. I've listed in the last 2 years was to POST the Community Garage Sale in our SubDivision last Spring.  I do plan to go back, but that X-ing out of items that BOTHERED you were like sticking a KNIFE in the BACK of one of your LOCAL neighbors.  STOP THAT.

by: FEEbay

@angryllama
Have you ever considered another line of work?? It may serve your blood pressure well...lol

by: RAOTFLMAO

@angryllama...
I think you are incorrect, the X is to hide a listing HOWEVER it may be like ebay and if it gets enough hides then that means it is uninteresting and gets flagged.  Here is what CL says about flagging: CL users flag postings they find inappropriate via the "prohibited" link at the top of each posting.
I hit the X all the time after I look at a posting and am not interested I hide it so I do not look at it again.  What I hide is usually overpriced items, items with no photos, listing obviously from dealers (which is prohibited in "owners" listings and need flagged anyway)  It takes hundreds of "flags" from different unique ip addresses to be removed.  Now the more you are flagged and removed then the lower your threshold is for flagging to get you removed.    

by: Zarzuella

I am a bookseller;  I have been selling against the Thriftbooks companies and their ilk on Amazon and other bookselling sites for years.  Their ratings generally stink; their poor book quality grading and the fact that they often do not have the item in stock when it sells weeds out the more astute buyers, however they do pick up the cheap bottom-feeder buyers - and welcome to them.  It will be interesting to see if eBay plays the same games with their FB that they did with ToysRUs.

by: Volvo351

What? feeBay [mis-]management allows their preferred Chinese sellers to flood the site, to the detriment of small sellers who built feeBay out of nothing?

Anyone shocked? Anybody?  

by: Volvo351

@Alaska

I beg to differ w/ you about "relisted" items being either overpriced or unwanted, which amounts to the same thing as it's "unwanted at that price."

Sell-thru on the site has collapsed since The Hoe took control. It's not uncommon to relist at least twice before you connect w/ a buyer. Check my items - I use my eBay handle here. Most of my items are the price leader for that type; I check the category and don't overprice. If you have the ONLY item of its type, priced at half or 1/3rd of new, that's a fair price. Still items run 168 hours without a bid. Maybe it's Can'tSeeMe, maybe some other problem. But "overpriced?" Nope.

by: kellewic

I read lots of these articles and inevitably people bitch about eBay - I agree they suck and their site sucks.

What I don't get is there are so many people bitching BUT STILL USING EBAY. Seriously, if you hate it that much then don't use the damn site. There are dozens of other sales channels to sell your shit at both online and offline.

Complaining to eBay is useless; if all the people who complain and bitch simply left eBay then maybe they'd notice. Those that make whatever money they can only at eBay... sucks to be you.

by: JQ

Back in May Ebay lost much of its independent bookseller inventory when they forced through the Spring Seller fee hike. The number of books listed for sale on Ebay is much lower now than it was before the fee hike, and the books listed tend to be from large lowest common denominator companies such as Thrift Books and Better World Books (a for profit company that pretends to be a charity).

Ebay's response to this is pretty predictable. Rather than roll back the fee hike to try to attract the small sellers to again start listing their inventory on the site, they instead struck deals with huge corporate sellers, giving them free listings, scrubbed feedback, and duplicate listings, in an effort to rebuild their number of book listings.

This move will only drive more small book sellers off Ebay as they will be the only ones paying fees and being fairly evaluated, while the big sellers receive all the advantages Ebay can offer.

Devin Weing, another example of how he is working hard to reconnect with Ebay's seller community. Nothing positive will happen at Ebay until there is a deep house cleaning of all senior management.

by: Orwellwasright

In my opinion, the one decision that is most responsible for ebays sad decline is this:

Somewhere, somehow the decision that having one seller sell one million items , was far preferable to having 1000 sellers sell 1000 items each''

This philosophy of course applies to all aspects of ebays marketplace , not just books

Since, The smaller sellers pay higher fees, have better selection and better service , and add varitiy and interest to the site.
And of course tend to be among the best customers when it comes to buying on ebay, makes that decision seem remarkably short sighted and downright stupid , but it seems that new management has determined
that following the failed policies of the past, is easier then actually trying to reconstruct ebays successful past by admitting that catastrophically bad decisions mortally wounded the site and trying to heal and rebuild

by: Bidonmine

This is what Ebay has been aiming for. A company like this with say 10 to 20 accounts can cover 90% or more of consumer book requirements. Ebay can then continue its purge of the small sellers without any loss (or minimal loss) of ebay's income.
Now they can get rid of the less profitable small accounts.

by: TomH

''Nothing positive will happen at Ebay until there is a deep house cleaning of all senior management. ''

Agree, but nothing like that is likely to be in the cards -- Pierre and the BoD are the root causes of what has been and is wrong with eBay -- not likely to change in any meaningful way short of eBay being purchased by someone else.