From a poster on an online blog:
by: shabbychick Sun Sep 7 16:19:39 2014
The Ebay War on Sellers
And, as if in a dream, suddenly I saw how it all went down at the brainstorming session in the war room.
CEO 1 “you know have a problem here …all these “trusted sellers” are getting 20% off fees. You know how bad this cuts into our bottom line?”So we have to find a way to turn these trusted sellers into untrustworthy people overnight”
CEO 2 “ Hey the USPS is notoriously unrealiable.. How bout we blame all their snafus on the sellers?”
CEO 1 “Good one! It’s done! “
CEO 3 “And you know how buyers at Walmart try such wild stuff with returns that they have had to clamp down on serial returners and buyers who use a product and try to return it? Well,we could carry “The customer is always right” to the absurd extreme to mean literally “always right”. Like they return a rock in a return package for a 19th century tea pot. Ding! Seller loses tea pot, money, and TRS. That’ll keep them hopping. And it all counts for us as GMV so it’s a win win for us”
CEO 1 “Great! And we could even go a step further….if the buyer even moves the slightest bit toward questioning the veracity of a seller…say they send an email asking about when to expect the item, or whether this shade of green will go with their eyes..Ding! That can be a sign of a defective seller. Goodbye 20% . Hello stock appreciation“
CEO 2 “I even see us going so far as to make these guys that think they’re a big deal shipping in 24 hours have to upload tracking within 1 hour to avoid some other penalty we can dream up later. Like “buyer can cancel sale if they fail to upload tracking in one hour. Maybe that’s going too far even for us. Naw”
Ceo 3 “But won’t a lot of sellers who never were TRS be hurt in the process?”
CEO 1 “Meh, call it collateral damage.
(Expressions of glee all around the big oak conference table)
CEO 2 “But we have to do it all with no warning so as to keep them off balance. And as new sellers stream in they won’t question policies cause they will just assume it’s always been this way.
CEO 3 “Hey, what about our Chinese sellers. They’ll have defect rates off the charts”
CEO 1 “You're being silly. Like we’ve never cooked the books before? “
Jung talked about these “Psychopaths in Suits” The Emptied Soul or some such thing."
