eBay store owners voice concerns
Many eBay Power Sellers are upset at what they perceive as a lack of support from eBay and are moving their business to competitors like Amazon
Follow @infoworldWhen Sandy Scarce began selling apparel on eBay three years ago, she planned to use the company's marketplace as her only sales channel, but today, deeply discouraged, she is moving away from it.
Upset at what she perceives as misdirected policies and clunky services from eBay, Scarce opened up her own online store this week. She's also moving inventory to a rival marketplace from Amazon.com, whose operation and sales climate she finds superior.
"I'm transitioning away from eBay," said Scarce, ranked as an eBay Silver PowerSeller, which means her Sandy's Closet eBay store generates between $3,000 and $9,999 in average monthly sales and provides a high level of service.
Among her chief complaints is an effort announced by eBay in July of last year to prioritize its core auction listings over its stores' inventory, which she said has hurt her sales.
"If you're not an eBay auction seller, eBay doesn't want you on their site. eBay has disadvantaged store owners over the last year to drive them away," Scarce said.
To boost traditional listings, eBay began marketing them more aggressively, increased their exposure on the eBay Express specialty site, and raised store listing fees.
"As an eBay store owner, this hasn't been a good development for me," Scarce said. "They're hiding store owners and their merchandise, making it harder for buyers to find them."
She is also disappointed with the tools and applications eBay provides to sellers, many of which she considers clunky, and with the performance of the site, which she finds has deteriorated in terms of response times and availability.
Scarce is not alone. On Thursday, as eBay kicked off its annual eBay Live conference for merchants in Boston, the Professional eBay Sellers Alliance (PESA) posted a scathing paper on its Web site, blasting eBay for what the group considers a significant deterioration of the marketplace.
"The eBay marketplace has continued to degrade, and the current state is unhealthy," reads the paper.
In the document, PESA, which includes many large eBay merchants, says the buyer experience on eBay leaves a lot to be desired and blames eBay for failing to address this issue and make the necessary investments to fix the problems. PESA is concerned that the eBay marketplace will fall into "a permanent decline."
PESA considers as major problems eBay's search functionality, which it rates as subpar, and a lack of incentives for merchants that provide superior service. PESA also faults eBay for failing to fully leverage for the marketplace companies it has acquired, such as Skype and Shopping.com.
In eBay's defense, eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said the company is in the midst of a "multiquarter" effort to improve the buyer experience on the marketplace.
For example, eBay is actively laboring to improve its search capabilities with an effort it calls Finding 2.0. Some of those enhancements are already being tested with small groups of buyers and will be rolled out to all users progressively this year, he said.
