Thoughts.com Blogs - ARE WE BEING DUPED BY EBAY?

(originally posted on the 1st of February 2008)

I really can't see how this new feedback rule against sellers can work in practice. It's a disasterous idea which is deeply flawed. Even their favoured high volume sellers don't like it and they leave feedback automatically when it's left for them. They would lose this precious tool if this policy was implemented. Not to mention the mutual feedback withrawal option being removed as well.

It makes you think that this announcement may well be a carefully designed distraction to turn people's attention away from the other announcements which were, coincidently, made at the same time, such as the higher FVF smash and grab their making.

Others, in case anyone missed them, include the complete failure of their Ebay Express site. The UK version of which is being closed down. This was supposed to give buyers a safer, securer, and higher quality buying experience from the best ebay sellers. However, not many sellers signed up to it, most realising what an utter waste of time and money the idea was. Ebay hoped that ebay express was the future for ebay - not so. Their real customers, namely the sellers, thought otherwise. Such a disasterous failure needed to be played down covered up somehow before it had an effect on ebay's share price.

Then there's the rolling out of their paypal system for even more listing categories, forcing sellers to use it as a payment method. This I've mentioned before in a previous post. A monopolization by stealth that sellers seem to be sitting back and taking without much complaint. Even sheep aren't that placid, but there's alot of sellers that don't have the independent thought of even a sheep.

Finaly, there's the new postage search system, where bidders can search items by postage costs. This means that items with the lowest postage, or free postage gets shown first. Again, as I've mentioned in a previous post, ebay encourages free postage so sellers will increase their starting prices and so pay higher listing fees. This search tool only puts more unfair pressure on sellers to do this.

So, could it be that ebay is using this crazed feedback announcement as a distraction? Burying their bad news under a more panic-spreading disaster? If this is the case, then it is likely that they'll do a u-turn on it once the others have been forgotten. They'll use a pre-planned get out clause where they'll claim that they've listened to their sellers, who they honestly care about really! (bullshit!), and decided to reinstate feedback to the gibbering gratitude of gullable sellers. Or they'll say that the trial run of it wasn't as successful as they'd hoped. Whatever excuse they make, the distraction will have worked like a charm.

If they're that shallow as to treat their users with that kind of comtempt, playing them like cheap fiddles in this way, then that's worse than the insane policy itself.

If, however, this feedback castration policy is for real, then the fucking lunatics really have taken over the asylum!