eBay Shopping Glitch Could Impact Sellers

by: gizmo

Ebay needs to honor their own. Glitch? keep that money & draw interest till the end.

An honest , balanced venue , is all that will work. Nothing else they do, will help anything. I cannot protect my good name , why bother? Ebay does not protect buyers.

You want good results , Have a real balanced field , good sellers , good customers. Equality for all , stop hindering growth by driving sellers down ,with one sided bullcrap. You lose your sellers , you lose period.

The only growth I see is allowing Walmart sears & countless others jumping in. Not real sellers. You wont find it on ebay.

by: sasikat9

Fleecebay and marketing dollars should never be used in the same sentence.

Fleecebay dollars are not for marketing they are for paying the inept leadership only.

by: Philip Cohen

People are actually relying on the eBay Bucks program to pay for further purchases? No disrespect intentioned, but would eBay’s “$23 million man”, or anyone else at eBay, be worrying about such buyers? I very much doubt it; after all, eBay now has all those international up-market brands to sell to consumers—LOL …

Regardless, another eBay "glitch"? So, what's new?

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid … http://bit.ly/11F2eas

by: Ming the Merciless

Another "glitch" favoring ebafia?

How convenient for their bottom line.

by: BobNJ

No one has mentioned what happens to eBay bucks when eBay and PayPal split. Wonder if it will no longer exist?

by: Shop and Ship

Actually, beyond transferring PayPal funds from the Seller's account to the Buyer's account, eBay Customer Service is feckless and ineffectual at resolving meaningful Buyer issues, like Sellers harvesting personal information and selling it to the highest bidder.  

by: Ric

eBay does not need new buyers as much as they need to focus on and reengage the millions of buyers who already have existing accounts but have been driven away by eBay's miserable excuse for a search engine and poorly conceived policies.

Under the John Donahoe reign of terror, eBay has succeeded in alienating thousands of sellers. The resulting ripple effect has been a marked decline in buying activity.

John Donahoe's eBay consistently failed to accept the fact that the majority of eBay's most active buyers were eBay's active sellers.  In ever increasing numbers, sellers have been showing their displeasure with fee increases and the many anti seller policies by abandoning eBay and taking buyers as well as their own purchase activity to other sites.

Additionally, as sellers move their inventory off eBay and into other marketplaces, eBay loses much of the SKU diversity that eBay was once famous for.



Fixing eBay may require more than simply rolling back the anti seller policies such as the defect policy and the easily abused return policy imposed during John Donahoes reign of terror.  eBay needs to find a way to motivate the sellers who have been thrown under the bus by JD to return - and that may prove to be an expensive proposition.

First, eBay would need to retire the Can't See Me search engine and return to a previous search engine that actually worked. If I were in Mr Wenig's shoes, I would not even announce the retirement of Can't See Me, I would simply let the improved results speak for themselves.

At the same time, I would restore Time Ending Soonest as the default search method - THAT I would announce.

I would invite sellers who have closed stores in the past few years to return and offer them significant incentives to do so. Those incentives would include free listings, discounted store subscriptions and discounted final value fees which would be in place for the first 90 days after a seller reactivates their store.  

The across the board fee discounts to returning sellers would be preceded by a complete rethinking and reversal of the many anti seller policies that followed the fee increases which ended up being the final straw for so many sellers.

Bottom line.... if eBay were to concentrate on mending fences with the tens of thousands of sellers they threw under the bus by reversing the many miss cues of the Donahoe reign, sellers might return.  Motivating those sellers to return would result in more returning buyers than anything eBay can do to attract new ones.

by: ruthie

I've seen a couple threads on the forums lately ...buyers not realizing that when they go to pay for an item, they have to TICK A BOX to have the bucks applied to their payment. It's on the ''pay now'' page.

As to ''deferring purchases because they are waiting for promotions eBay generally sends out to participants offering them four or five times the rewards'' ...

IME, the promotions are on the item page when you buy ...ie: ''you get double bucks with the purchase of this item''.

I've been in the bucks program since it started and have never seen a promotion for more than double.  

by: The End

LEGALLY : Ebay is not SELLING ANYTHING and CANNOT, therfore, offer such things.

This "glitch" is proof of Ebay's own acknowledgement that it is ONLY A SELLING VENUE.  

by: comet

@Ruthie---I admit I have not "used"  any ebay bucks recently but they WERE automatically included--in my case you did not GET a CHOICE on what item you wanted them applied TO;  whatever was the next item you bought got the Bucks taken off;  no box to tick off.  

I believe back when the promo STARTED there was a TICK BOX but not for a long time now.

Course ebay could very well have more than one way to do this depending on the Whim Of The Day.

And in order to GET ebay Bucks you need to BUY something and in order for ME to BUY something I need to have SOLD things---

Catch-22 right here folks.  

by: toolguy

What site doesn't have "glitches"?

Lately we've seen them from Etsy, Amazon, Bonanza & eBay.

If you beat one horse you have to beat them all. . .

by: ruthie

@comet ...I just spent my bucks last week and had to tick the box in order to use them, same with the last 3-4months.

Buyers get to chose what they spend them on now.

by: AgendaSwallowsAll

We had no problem redeeming a portion of our Bucks today, we just copied & pasted the code in page #1 of checkout. Furthermore, last month we had 1 5x offer, 1 10% offer & 1 3x.

@Ric: Did you mean time ending soonest across the board or only for Auctions? There are numerous reasons as to why things are the way they are in the evolution of JD & Co. but one that is most glaring at least to me that really hasn't been addressed here unless I've missed it is the sellers who are making the most proactive attempt at directing buyers to their own websites cover pretty much the first 50 items per page in search. Some have their website emblazoned in all of their pictures, others who know JD & Co. will not allow .com in their user I.D. use -com behind their website user I.D. name, others direct one to their facebook page, others have their phone number, etc.

Yes Cassini has been a bust, when Stores were actually Stores where only a sampling of a given sellers inventory was displayed in a generic search, the site wasn't clogged for lack of what may be a more appropriate word, things worked much better.

JD & Co. keeps on saying they're trying to get more buyers and/or sellers to the site. Any seller who signed up in this day & age of the site would either have to be unfortunate, ignorant or a masochist, there is no upside to signing up at this point of the site's evolution. As far as recruiting buyers goes, they still don't get and it appears they may never get that it was the sellers who have been chased who were in large part their buyers for having far more disposable income selling on a site that was in fact ''a Venue''.

I don't wish to ramble forever, it's kinda fruitless but if one looks at the number of sellers who direct buyers to their site while taking into consideration the closure of eBay Stores along with the multitude of sellers be they still having on or long gone, neither having the disposable income they once had, it's at least clear to me why things are the way they are.

These are not stupid people so I'll have to assume all of this has been done with purpose for the sake of a singular self-serving agenda I can't wrap my arms around because my mind can't go to the depths of why one would willfully destroy countless lives for a scheme that has resulted from that singularly self-serving agenda.

by: Bloggo

What site doesn't have "glitches"?
Q: Is there any other major e-commerce website that has as many glitches as ebay, or as often?
A: No

by: Basset

I used to have the tick box show up to choose whether or not to redeem the bucks.

Then it changed & now I do as Agendaswallowsall does - I cut and paste the code when paying.



As a buyer: Repeat sales would be encouraged by repeatedly FINDING what I want.

Positive reinforcement works!


eBay SHOULD be wooing sellers that have what buyers want and that NO OTHER VENUE has.  Namely a good assortment offerings of collectible, pre-owned vintage, new off-season, boutique, parts and items not available anymore, etc... They should zero in on what Amazon and Etsy do not have or allow.  Be THE unique venue.

Chased some of those sellers away? Time to send flowers (or chocolate in my case) & apologize.  

Added bonus - that flock of sellers likely contains buyers.

by: Volvo351

eBay [mis-]management: the Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight! Name the initiative, and they'll find a way to Fork It Up!

by: Philip Cohen

Still, only receiving 6 out of ~80 of my "saved search" emails ...

I wonder how long it will be before they fix this "glitch"; in the meantime, I buy nothing on eBay ...

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid … http://bit.ly/11F2eas

by: Puck

eBay management can blame this SNAFU on the robots.