Responses to eBay's "Analyst Day"

As a small seller on eBay, I try to keep my ear to the ground about how the company is going to be treating folks like me in the future. Last week eBay held their "Analyst Day", and the reports from those who know about what eBay discussed are distressing.

Small sellers are what made eBay back in the day. One statement that really stood out was “The old Ebay was sitting in people’s attics. The new Ebay is sitting in warehouses,” said Lorrie Norrington, president of marketplaces. So now it seems that all of us who sell vintage items of any sort, are no longer valuable to eBay? That seems crazy to me.

I did a little market research this morning, pretty straight forward. When I search on eBay for the keyword "vintage", a whopping 1,483,063 listings come up. I compare that to all the listings in the Computers & Networking catagory, and it has 1,342,683 items listed. Hmmmm. So I did some more. Right now there are 219,061 items listed under Antiques. And 243,552 items listed in Entertainment Memorabilia. And 2,066,462 in Collectibles!

So can someone explain why those of us who sell stuff "from our attics" are no longer valuable to eBay? Our listings don't make them money?

Other longtime sellers are upset about this as well. My bud John from ColderICE has done a big rant about the recent Analyst Day that can be found here and which is well worth the read. Should you wish to read through the entire PDF of the presentation made, you can read it here (note, it's a large file that takes time to load):

I, like other smaller sellers, do wonder sometimes just what it is that TPTB at eBay are thinking...

My letter to Auctiva today

For those of you who haven't been following the saga of the eBay auction listing site Auctiva and their infection by malware last week, see ColderIce's blog here for lots more info:

http://3rdpoblogs.com/colderice/

In summary, the listing site was infected, and sellers were affected because when a potential buyer clicked on a picture in a listing, they got the dreaded Red Screen of Death telling them that Auctiva was a Bad Site and had Big Problems (thanks Google, appreciate that a lot!) And some people were infected by trojans and other viruses! So now some buyers are saying they simply won't buy from sellers who use Auctiva, ever.

Great. I have over 750 items listed in my store/auctions, and the thought of moving them all to another venue (like InkFrog or Vendio) is daunting, to say the least. It will mean closing and relisting each item, and include additional listing fees, not to mention a horrid amount of time to implement (as if I don't already spend my life doing this stuff!)

It would seem to me that if the Powers That Be at Auctiva would just step up and admit they handled the situation poorly and apologize, a lot of the people who are angry with them would feel vindicated and somewhat placated. Not all, of course, but at least some.

So I sent this email to the folks at Customer Support today, opening a case file to do so. I'll keep you all posted as to whether I hear back from them at all. Here's the text of my email:

I am incredibly distressed by the problems you have been having over the past week. I have heard buyers state that they will NEVER buy from a seller who uses your service. I like your service, and I have no desire to have to move my 750+ store and auction listings to some other service.

But you NEED to get out there and apologize! Your lack of accepting responsibility for these problems is giving you a terrible credibility issue with eBay buyers, and that's hurting us sellers. I would like to stay with you. But you have to step up to the plate and acknowledge that you made some mistakes. I think once you do that people won't be so angry. They're mad now because you continued to act like everything was ok (telling people to ignore the red screen of death and log in anyway was a big mistake.)

I would like to hear your thoughts on what you are going to do to address the lack of trust your actions have created among the buyers, and tell me how you plan to regain that trust, so that I as a seller will want to stay with you.

Please do not send me a canned response, a real answer from a real person in authority is going to be very important here, if you wish to retain me.

Thank you for your consideration and response.

Laura Haggarty

Getting up and running with the social networking

I've been playing a lot with Twitter today, experimenting with using it to market and network. Up side, lots of people out there share my interests in things vintage and collectible. Down side, the thing is a major time sink! I mean, I could spend hours tweeting, and that's time I should be working. So the challenge is to learn to use it judiciously and in a way that will maximize the potential without it sucking me into a major black hole.

Still pondering, stay with Auctiva, or leave? Tomorrow ColderICE is doing a conference call/meeting thing to discuss it among users like me. Here's the link:

http://tinyurl.com/djrods

Will be interesting to see what's going to be said/done. Not sure they'll care what we think, but worth a try anyway.

Listing Services for eBay

This weekend there was a big kerfuffle in the Auctiva camp, as several of their servers were hacked and had malware installed that also was affecting their images. Google posted the Red Screen of Death (reporting them as being dangerous) when you tried to log in or even supersize and image that was hosted on their website, which was a big pita for sellers, as I am sure it drove some customers away. They got it all worked out by this morning, but it was a nasty time all around, with some reports of people being infected by Trojans during the initial stages.

The worst part was this happened on the weekend, as Sunday is a big listing day for a lot of types of items, especially tobacciana, which I have been working a lot with of late. I was completely unable to get things listed, which irked me no end.

I have since been looking at other listing services, including Vendio and InkFrog, but am not sure I'll make the switch. Vendio is 'way expensive, and InkFrog, even though they are a paying service, doesn't have some of the things I like about Auctiva.

I am in conversations with one of the tech guys at InkFrog now to see if they'll consider some add-ons that will do what I need to have done, we'll see how that goes. But I'm not going to take down and relist some 750+ listings unless I have a really good viable alternative, and I haven't quite found one yet.

I don't give a damn about cutesie templates, I want clean, simple, uncluttered pages. I want to be able to list my item description, TOS (terms of sale) including payment and shipping terms, I want to be able to give the usual warning about customs fees for my overseas customers, and I want to be able to include my grading system so there are no questions about how I grade my items. Sounds simple, but can be anything but.

I have no desire to mess with FTPing files. A regular old Java uploader is fine with me. I don't have any desire to have to format my info with HTML myself, my god, that went away years ago (although I did do that back in my early years on eBay in the late 90s.) I want WYSIWYG formatting, multiple images (close up ones!), adjustable layouts, and good customer support. I'd even be willing to pay Auctiva for same if they got their tech support act together. Maybe if they started charging a small fee they could hire some more IT guys? Just a thought.

Well, back to work, have lots of items to list to catch up now. Many sales to you all!