eBay
eBay buyers and sellers are boycotting the auction site from Feb. 18-25.
According to CNN, eBay’s new CEO John Donahoe announced several changes including fee hikes and changes to the feedback structure. The three main changes, which are raising seller fees, allowing PayPal to hold a seller’s money for up to 21 days and deleting negative feedback for buyers, are scheduled to begin Feb. 20.
“Why would you have positive feedback if you can’t have negative feedback?” said Lisa Lee, administrative support for the Glomerata. “You have to have something to go by.”
Lisa is also an eBay member and buyer.
“As a buyer, I have 100 percent positive feedback,” she said. “If they take the negative away, how would people know if I have done something wrong?”
Derek Page, a senior in management information systems, has been an eBay member and seller since 2000.
Page says he pays for food and some other expenses working part time on eBay.
“I’m just really upset about the changes eBay has planned,” Page said. “This time eBay has gone too far.”
Page said when you add the 60-70 percent increase in fees to PayPal’s cut, there’s a final value fee of over 10 percent.
“I expect fee increases every once in a while,” Page said, “but this is the second increase in two years, and the amount is astronomical.”
Rebecca Burslem, a freshman in interior design, is a frequent eBay shopper. She says she thinks this change will affect the number of sellers.
“It makes it more difficult for people like me who like to buy on eBay,” Burslem said.
Burslem said she is concerned with the new CEO’s tactics.
“eBay has been successful in the past,” Burslem said. “He shouldn’t change something that’s already working.”
There are hundreds of boycott materials circulating the Internet, including YouTube videos, posts on eBay’s discussion forum and several groups on MySpace and Facebook. The YouTube video titled “Feb 18-25th 2008: Worldwide eBay Strike” has had 95,770 views and 1,017 comments.
Many people are going to alternative auction sites.
According to CNN, OnlineAuction.com said approximately 7,500 sellers have joined since eBay announced their new policies. People have also turned to sites like Amazon, iOffer and eBid.
The changes seem to be favoring the large companies and hurting the small sellers. According to TicketNews.com, eBay announced they will “significantly lower the fee to list items on the site for U.S. sellers, in an effort to get sellers to list more items, but the company will charge more once an item is sold.”
Also, according to News 14 Carolina, “All third-party sellers must now have a true business location and formal store hours.”
