eBay Hints at Changes to Shipping during Town Hall

by: lancecorp

I dislike the offers to buyers option. Buyers know they can contact a seller anytime with an offer. To send offers to buyers pretty much to me means that the seller knows they are charging too much for an item and are desperate to make a sale and then the buyer thinks they can continue negotiations for an even lower price.

We have the option to put BO on listings already for negotiations. I've tried the send offer to buyer numerous times with no takers and will no longer use it. I really believe that many of these watchers are other sellers like myself who are watching the item like I do to see how much it sells so I can reference the listing when I list a similar item.

I watched the whole Town Hall and expected to get answers to many questions - instead they left everything open ended with no definitive answers to the questions sellers asked.

by: FeelingFroggy

Typical hot air wind blowing from the Ivory Tower. Who really cares about best offer. Most of the offers are made by bottom feeders trying to get a hundred dollar item for 10 cents. They are disgusting and should be banned. Just try going into WalMart or Penneys and try making them an offer.

by: Geetar

I hope this in not enabled if you do not have "make an offer"

I dont want this. My price is my price. If it is too high, dont buy it. My prices are more than reasonable. I dont need more work in the form of extra buyer correspondence.

I had this make an offer feature on a few of my items on Reverb by mistake. Basically what you get is all the have nothing to do morons out there saying to themselves, eh.. might as well try. A complete and total time waster.

Increasingly over the past few years buyers, and prospective buyers expect a fast response to messages they send you. Gone are the days of answering messages once a day. So I dont need more of that having to respond to these morons.

by: Geetar

Again, another of example of ebay showing they are doing something, for the sake of showing they are doing something. All the while completely ignoring the real things that need change.

YES EBAY. This make an offer change will be the one thing that will enable you to explode, bring more buyers and sellers, and in fact enable you to grow your business at twice the rate of Amazon. Long live the spring seller make an offer update.

by: Number 6

''eBay will add what it called a ''heavy browse'' component. In cases where a buyer clicks a seller's item more than 3 times, the seller will be able to extend them an offer.''

Strikes me as utter desperation for closing a sale at any cost.  

Here's where we arrive at after eBay spent years bullying sellers with endless new hoops to jump through, photo restrictions, selling limits, hidden in search unless offering free shipping, pay more for 'promoted listings', forced GTC money-grab, higher fees if 'too many' returns (which eBay encourages now and decides what 'too many is' - classic USSR era model, we say you're guilty, so you are, now off to the Gulag you go), ridiculous convulted DSR parameters, rip-off SNAD/returns with forced return shipping...so much more...all basically pushing any sane seller away to start listing elsewhere, get to work on that website finally, and/or at least start an escape plan before managed payemnts is forced on all.

Not having achieved whatever objective there was behind all that, if there was one (what was it, exactly?  Going to war with your customers/sellers, why was that?  I've never been able to figure that out), sales and lack of real growth continue to plummet compared with the growth of others in the ecommerce sector.  

eBay's now in the process of selling off all its more profitable bits to prop up the share price for the lucky few and management who have share options.  Soon the larder will be empty.  

So, what self-destructive pathway shall we go down next?  

Oh, I know, let's start bullying and almost spamming not really even potential buyers, the tyre kickers who spend all day on eBay looking at things but don't buy - that'll work...they'll drive away even more non-buyers.

eBay took full advantage of its dominant position whereby there were too many sellers and not enough buyers in ecommerce, treating even its best sellers like 'noise' - why it actually did this, considering the sellers are eBay's actual customers, not the buyers, has always baffled me.

But now the shoe is on the other foot, there's still more sellers than buyers, but for the kind of good, reliable sellers eBay has spent nearly a decade kicking around as 'noise', there's way more potential market places to sell on than there ever there was, Mercari, Facebook, Amazon, Bonanza, Etsy, Reverb, Audiogon, etc. etc. not even to mention how easy it is to set up your own website via Shopify, etc...eBay now finds that sellers now have far more options about where to list and sell on when eBay is clearly failing enormously to bring in actual buying customers, at exactly the same moment eBay's overall fees are at their highest (they'll be a full 25 cents extra each item when managed payments is enforced on all).

As far as I can see, a seller's job is to list, ship promptly and provide great customer service to the buyer..and eBay's job is to bring in customers in return for which it takes various fees...but that's clearly broken down in recent times, and all eBay is capable of doing is gouging endless fees from sellers without providing any increase in buyers, now it is about to pester its buyer base and annoy them so they 'buy' something - what a failed business model that always is.

The simple fact is, eBay does not know how to get more buyers to make purchases on its site other than 'buying them/bribing them' with coupons and offers, which, as we've noticed, since they have stopped, our sales have declined considerably.

How a once great buyer/seller website that accounted for some 90% of our online sales, and without any doing on our part, has declined to less than one third of our sales compared to other sites, is truly sad to be honest.

by: NoMoreEbay

Here's a novel idea for Best Offer. List it at the price you want. If it doesn't sell, reduce the price.

Yeah. The whole thing is nothing but desperation.  

by: industrystones

Change, change, change, update, revamp . . . . Re-institute, alter  - adjust, modify, change, change,  . . . .

These invalids are STILL incapable of understanding THIS is what killed their company and will be the reason for its inevitable demise into obscurity.

by: NoMoreEbay

This is from the latest update "Seller protection changes for “Item not received” claims filed through eBay Money Back Guarantee"

https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/
2020-spring/service.html

Looks like ebay is getting closer to completely removing INR seller protections. Instead of increasing protections from the single protection left on the site, they are making it even harder on sellers. And here Sweetnam was promising more protections. You bad boy.

In other news. They are increasing seller protections for BLOCKED BUYERS. Wow! Now when a seller blocks a buyer and that buyer circumvents the system and hurts the seller, ebay may actually recognize it and do something. Way to go ebay!

I hope this lying POS company ends up in the International toilet where they belong.

by: sellerchick

They need to allow sellers to set the delivery estimates for shipping methods and display all shipping methods to all buyers. This nonsense of only displaying the "cheapest" methods based on unrealistic delivery times needs to stop! Buyers know that first class will not arrive in 2-3 days and so many times customers contact me to offer priority and expedited. All I can do is tell them I can't control what shipping methods ebay displays and to just hope for the best.  And then during holidays, the rates magically get too long! It will show 10 days for one state away!

by: Whatever

Wow - tough crowd today - don't hold back guys - tell it like it is and rightly so - problem is NO ONE at eBay gives a crap anymore - their just wading out their existence much like the sellers are. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Factor in the fact that trumpetts false economy - corona virus and buyers have no money - eBay barking up the wrong tree if they expect to salvage this mess. I really do think it's gone too far now. Happy I created my own venue because my sales are down 200% over last year and I actually thought last year wasn't great.

Tightening the belt and getting ready for the crash. My competitors have scaled back their pricing to simply try to recover their initial cost.  Not quite there yet for me but I could see it happening.

Sad state of affairs and everyone's comments however harsh are totally justified.

by: Opalie

This is what happens when your target buyer demographic is those who "have more time than money".

by: CanBrit

I was asked under one of my ID's to answer a questionnaire today and then at the end would I allow someone to contact me to talk about it further. Hahahahahaha

Silly little wabbit.....Tricks are for kids?????