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ebaY - A Solution NOW!!!

ebaY A Workable Solution
Revised 9 Nov 2002
24 Jan 2002

Petitions and Boycotts are frequently mentioned as methods to get ebaY to pay attention to some problem. Unfortunately, petitions do less than nothing, and it would take millions of signatures before the media would even look at it as being interesting enough for them to do a story on. Boycotts are even less effective.

So what can folks do? How can the problems users have with ebaY, get enough of ebaY's attention so that they are willing to really address them? TAG feels the only solution is to break the ebaY monopoly and develop some real competition. There are lots of reasons why we think this is the way to go, but that will take another editorial.

So what can we all do NOW to get ebaY to fix their problems - the unstable glitchey site, the very poor customer service, the excessive fees in the face of poor service, a poor economy and dropping prices to sellers?

Here is a plan....
Go list 10 items on another site, such as sellyouritem.com or ioffer.com or any site you are happy with. Get two of your auction buddies to do the same, and then each of those people should get two others to do the same and so on and so on. If everyone did this, you could move millions of auctions in about two weeks. In two weeks!!! Think how fast ebaY, and ALL the online sites would become user friendly and responsive if this happened.

All it takes is 120,000 sellers to list 25 items each on other auction sites and in a few days watch the ebaY fees drop like a rock, the site instability problems get solved immediately and intelligent support back on the site! That is the only kind of action ebaY will understand and the only kind of action guaranteed to work. Make it ten items each and it will take a few days more !!! An easy simple and elegant solution that would work NOW. Talk to two auction buddies and get started today!

Anyone reading this can start it. Email your former buyers and tell them you are going to be listing 10 or 25 of your auctions on sellyouritem.com or ioffer.com, or some other site . Give them an incentive to come bid on your items there. Email every seller you have done business with, including those who you got started on ebaY. Ask them to list 10-25 items on sellyouritem.com or ioffer.com. Ask them to ask two of the sellers they know to do the same. Can you see how fast this would spread?

There are plenty of good sites who would be thrilled to see their listings grow. Many of them have no listing fees, and even provide easy to use utilities to import your auctions from ebaY, so this switch can be done VERY easily. Even if you don't want to move auctions, at least think about doing your relists on another site. You can leave the relist on the alternate site for a couple of weeks and if it doesn't sell move it back to ebaY within the 30 day relist period. MAKE AN EFFORT - the sellers can change the industry almost overnight - because the buyers follow the sellers.

We really can do this, working in small groups and just influencing two people each to move 10 auctions each. No need for a boycott, keep listing on ebaY if you must, but work together to take the online auction and trading industry back into the hands of the users! -TAG

Update 27 Jan -
Some folks have construed what we have said as meaning we want folks to run back to ebaY once ebaY has received the incentive to make a correction in the exploitive direction they have headed in . This is NOT where TAG is going with this idea. We want to see several viable auction and trading sites available to the users of the OAI/OTI. Competition amongst the service providers is healthy - for them and for the users. Once the monopoly is broken, the mindset of the using community will also change, and sellers will more easily sell on various sites, and buyers will follow their interests. Tools for navigating this more fragmented, and therefore more usable industry are already in place, (meta search engines, management and marketing tools that work across multiple sites) and they will just get better. With the breaking of the ebaY monopoly, the power to influence the decisions the service providers make will be back in the hands of the users. If the user is unhappy with the service provided, they will have options to move their business elsewhere. The result will be better for everyone involved in person to person trading.