
What eBay chooses to do with its money is one thing, but now that it plays in the payment-processing game, how it handles sellers' funds is a different story.
Here's what eBay tells sellers seeking answers on how eBay is handling their money:
Author: eBay for Business
Hello Dawn - Thank you for address your concerns with us. This is definitely not the experience we'd like for our sellers to have. Currently our managed payments specialists are having a longer than usual wait time. We do suggest requesting your call back as soon as possible since call back spots to do fill up quickly. Your feedback is always appreciated and we're hoping to get this call back issue resolved in the future. ~Gabriel (Facebook post, February 9, 2021 at 3:24 pm)
This is not a start-up company, or a company that is having cashflow issues and struggling to fund proper customer support for its customers.
On the contrary,
eBay recently shared that in 2020, it paid $447 million in cash dividends to shareholders.
It also took $5.1 billion in cash and bought back shares of eBay stock. ("A company might buy back its shares to boost the value of the stock and to improve the financial statements," according to Investopedia.)
eBay management made the decision to leave what sellers describe as inadequate customer support for those experiencing problems accessing their funds, despite the over $5 billion it had in its coffers last year.
This leaves sellers scrambling when they can't get answers about things like disbursements (payouts) and potentially impacts the cash flow of small businesses. It's hard to imagine a company like PayPal not getting called out if it provided the kind of service eBay sellers describe.
The
thread on the Facebook post is eye-opening for anyone not already familiar with the issues with which sellers are struggling. It may be tempting to dismiss comments left by anonymous posters on industry boards. But Facebook doesn't allow anonymous posts - these are sellers using their real names to lodge their concerns.