I think it is really interesting & I bet a few other online sites are watching this with great interest.
I know it is all happening in USA, but all the same, there could be a trickle on effect. I'd say sites such as Amazon, Etsy, Catch etc all have a stake in this. Marketplace & gumtree maybe not as much as a lot of that is private pick up arrangements.
As most of you know, I am a buyer these days, not a seller & I see a lot of the changes that ebay has introduced as being an attempt to protect customers so that buyers could have more confidence to use the site.
But if they are eventually deemed to be the seller, then I think they may seriously look at what they were talking about a few years back at one of their conferences-warehousing.
The suggestion apparently was that ebay itself could have warehousing in each capital city, sellers (or most sellers at any rate) would send their stock to a warehouse & anything sold would be boxed and posted out by ebay, all under CCTV type coverage, so that no customer could ever claim the item had not been posted. And so that things were definitely posted quickly. I guess like a sort of Amazon experience.
Be interesting to see what direction ebay heads in if they do end up being held liable as the seller. Especially interesting to see what happens to Chinese listings too. I am guessing we'd see some major changes.
