Will eBay Sellers Soon Be Vying for the Buy Box?

by: eXtinctBay

This would perhaps be fine for commodity items, but not collectible, unique, and vintage goods.

Why, oh why, eBay, do you continually think you can beat Amazon at their own game?? You can't!!

What's next, FBE? Oh yes, eBay will open warehouses and hire workers to pick and pack merchandise sent in by sellers, and charge storage fees as well. NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!!

So the Bay will never out do the River, and they should just get over it. If they can go back to their roots and feature the merchandise that cannot be found anywhere else, this would benefit everyone.

Problem is that many of the sellers who have left due to the Donahoe era seller flogging will not return. Until they do, eBay may never see double digit growth again, while Amazon sales are up over 20% quarter to quarter.

Also, as I have mentioned before, the Amazon ''Buy Box'' does not always feature the item that is the best deal, just the one which makes the most profit for the site.

Smart shoppers will go to a more normal search, and find the item that is the best deal, not the one that is being crammed down their throat.

by: DingDong

EBay, needs to go back to the old ways of having small sellers have they unique items out for sale.

Ebay cannot complete against Amazon.

by: Ming the Merciless

The insanity continues as more and more totally useless and delusional ebafia employees attempt to justify their jobs and/or stumble up the corporate ladder.

Amazon Lite. Very lite.

Ebafia continues to implode at breakneck speeds.

by: toolguy

@eXtinctBay

"Smart shoppers will go to a more normal search, and find the item that is the best deal, not the one that is being crammed down their throat."

Are you saying that Amazon shoppers AREN'T smart? Because that's exactly what they do. . .

by: iheartjacksparrow

Devin seems to be obsessed with Amazon. Every new eBay "innovation" mirrors what Amazon has already implemented.

As many people have said for the last few years, eBay needs to get back to what made them great: selling stuff you can't find anywhere else.  

by: The End

Ya, If I was still selling on Ebay, they would choose my product to fill their needs 8 out of ten times. The other sellers of substandard, "Ho-Hum" similar products would lose sales to me 80% of the time.
Still not enough to get me to come back to Ebay.

by: The End

Dear iheartjacksparrow  : Right on, right on, right on.

by: RL15

just another way to funnel all the sales to the Chinese sellers and the big box stores.

by: FeelingFroggy

First off one has to have buyers in order for them to use the little box.....In reality this is funny as a barrel of monkies.

If Ebay wants to play like Amazon they need people with a brain and an IT group that can program. As of today they have neither so this is as funny as all of the other great unbeatable deals Fleecebay has going for it.

Off to Amazon to spend our money today. Ebay sucks for just about anything anymore. Easier to use Amazon or Walmart. Beats ebay daily.

by: pace306

The issue with eBay having a buy box - is that eBay ISNT honest.

Personally, Id rather do business with Tony Soprano then Devin Wenig - at least Tony had morals.

If eBay ever created such a thing, they would simply funnel their beloveds to the box and everyone else would get no business. You know people like  gearxs (801532) - THEY would get the eBay buy box. Shame they only have 4619 negatives this year - so far - the year is only 1/2 over!

On Amazon, theres no Cassini. There are no switches to filter out people, theres no games, no lies - and thats ALL eBay is really all about. On Amazon its simply your feedback percentage + being %2 less then the lowest guy - with FBA sellers going first. Its not rocket science, its simple business - numbers.

ANYONE that listens to one of the eBay fools is himself a fool. None of these people (people like Bob Kuphead whos last gig was Delta airlines - an airline that has one of the WORST repoutations in the industry) have an idea of how eBay works, should work, could work.

Any 9 yr old can make eBay into Amazon - problem is it doesnt work.

If eBay wants to get beyond the %3 quarterly growth - its easy - easy as pie (hmm pie)....................... just show all sellers items 24/7/365 in every country. Thats it - simple easy, and PROFITABLE. BUt dont tell Kuphead that - hed rather tell you that the reason that eBay doesnt do "Amazon business" is that greedy sellers wont do 60 day free returns.  

by: TomH

We mainly sell old, vintage, one-of-a-kind unique junk. This latest wet finger in the air will do nothing for us; just as nothing eBay has done in the last ten years has accomplished anything else than bury us in manure.  

by: eBay Shill Buster

The old buy button will be sold to the highest bidder as part of Devin's eBay casino promoted listings scam, simple as that, this is why upper management at eBay has to go, the 'improvements' they come up with are schemes that slowly destroy any integrity the marketplace has left which is very little.

My theory is to let these guys do what they want to do and never pay them a dime unless eBay performs, it is called perfomance marketing, in other words, only pay eBay a dime when they make me a dollar in sales, no store, no paying for listings, no promoted listings, no paying eBay for listing items.

If more sellers would think like this it would force eBay executives to run the marketplace properly, if sellers are willing to give them free money, these guys are going to run with that, but it is not working.

Promoted listings did nothing last quarter to increase sales for eBay, in fact they are down since they started promoting them.

by: eXtinctBay

@Tool

While the conversion rate is higher on Amazon may be higher with the Buy Box, their buyers have choices.

And ALL OF THEM are listed in order of price for ALL AMAZON BUYERS to see.

The question with eBay is: How many other listings of the item will be shown if there is one preferred seller??

And here is the problem. Like @Pace mentions, there are switches to filter out sellers. If eBay really wants to be like Amazon, they would show EVERY listing available for purchase.

Especially when the seller of each item is a paying customer, and is charged a good amount of money to enable their item to be sold on the site.

If one can list on Amazon for free and have their items shown, why can't eBay show all listings, especially when someone is giving them money to do so??

And, yes, I do understand that Amazon collects more in fees on the back end than eBay does. But they also have no problem with showing their buyers every option available.

by: toolguy

@eXtinctBay If one can list on Amazon for free and have their items shown

If I'm not mistaken Amazon charges $39 a month just for the right to be a "seller"

That's NOT free. . .

by: RKTOYS

@toolguy
Amazon has two tiers of sellers.  One is free to list with ridiculous fees.  The other is $40/month with ridiculous fees.  The difference  is that the $40 club can adjust shipping be region instead of always eating the paltry $4 that Amazon passes along by default.

by: TomH

@ toolguy

Actually it is $39.99 to be a professional seller. lol

To be a SELLER just list your item in the right category and pay nothing until it sells.

If you are a basic/non professional seller, then part of the fees collected is $0.99  per item in addition to the other selling fees. The professional seller does not pay the additional $0.99 per item sold. This has nothing to do regarding FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon).

Of course there are many ins and outs and details upon details, but the above is the basic setup. I sold for about ten years at the basic level, not much, about 500 items a year, with nary a fee until/if item sold.  I'm now fairly in with FBA but still have about 60% percent of my inventory as FBM (Fulfillment by Merchant)

by: eXtinctBay

@Tool

I would be very happy to hand Amazon $40 a month for professional selling fees.

Sadly, since they now want receipts from my ''suppliers'',  I cannot sell much of anything. Most all my items are no longer allowed, so bye-bye to a pro plan. And neither of us make money here.

I used to move hundreds of dollars a week of merch on the River. Now days go by without a sale.

But I do know that the items I have left are at least being shown......

by: guitar1

It would simply help Ebay if they had a database team that understood databases. The first thing Ebay should do is put the guy in charge of the database on Amazon selling, he would understand the huge difference in how the two databases work. If Ebay keeps changing their database every summer like they have been, many of us will get tired of redoing our data every summer. At least amazon updates their data fields and gives you clean information on what to change. Ebay just says your data isn't working good luck figuring it out.  

by: eBay Shill Buster

eBay is pulling down listings from sellers who pay them 500 bucks a month for stores because they don't think the listings sell fast enough for their taste.

So database problems are not all they have, they are blaming sellers for eBay's inability to serve web pages which is a joke, Google has never had that problem and they have the entire web indexed.

See these sellers comments if you want more on eBay and join Glassdoor.com and see what eBay employees say about the Titanic.

http://downdetector.com/status/ebay

by: rachel

eBay is not Amazon. There is one enormous humongous ecommerce site called Amazon. Initially  in the late  90s  pundits saw eBay as the favorite because it did not carry the risk of inventory.  Regardless Amazon was innovative like eBay was once but now, they don't come up with anything original.  They are not innovative . They just copy Walmart, Amazon, whoever.  It's a pretty weak business model.
Maybe some sellers will be vying for the ''buy box'' but it will be for household items, personal items like shampoo, seasonal items for the seasons and holidays and probably clothes.  Clothes are the hardest because sizing is inconsistent from one brand to the next.  eBay should have more product reviews in this category so buyers can get an idea about the sizing etc Yes like Amazon does that is very visible.  It's a consumer friendly feature.  We shall see how they end up promoting the buy box.   I am assuming it will be only for mega  sellers.