3BrNBBRz4UYdo+!~~60_7.JPG "chameleon54"){kind=avatar}
@the_dutchess_of_dork wrote:The whole dishonest buyer / seller dichotomy is artificial. The fact is some people are dishonest ... they may be buyers; they may be sellers; they may be both. There will always be ways to rort the system. But at least buyers can seek redress through PayPal when they encounter a dodgy seller.
I can't understand ebay's slavish commitment to the buyer experience, at the expense of sellers. Sure, without buyers there is no ebay ... but without sellers there are no buyers, thus, no ebay. In addition, ebay derives all its income from sellers.
The "we can't inspect the item, therefore, we will refund the buyer" makes zero sense. If they admit they have no access to the item, how can they make a judgment either way?
The concerns of buyers should not diminished but be fair to sellers too. I'm not sure what the answer is. Certainly, I think a seller's reputation and previous history should be relevant in a dispute. It's unlikely a seller with years of honest trading will suddenly go rogue.
Whilst I totally disagree with the way the money back gaurantee works ( or doesnt work....
) I can understand ebays logic.
The company is struggling to maintain any sort of presence in the online market against more succesful established companies and new entrants. It is only growing sales by several % per year and basically has more sellers than buyers. Because it has so many people wanting to sell goods, compared to buyers, it is sacrificing sellers in a desperate bid to try to retain buyers and retain some sort of presence in the market.
If it cant keep the few buyers it has, it will start actually going backwards, its share price will drop dramatically and it could start a landslide, all downhill into oblivian. Basically the company is fighting for its survival after a string of very poor management decisions have damaged the company.
The biggest failure has been to move away from the used and collector market to the brand name mega mall and $2 Chinese shop model. When the company was focussed on private sellers of unusual and used items it had a total market dominance that no-one else could come close too. Once it changed focus to new brand name items and Chinese carp, it faced intense online market competition from other competitors who have proven to be more nimble and effective in the online space.
@chameleon54 wrote:Whilst I totally disagree with the way the money back gaurantee works ( or doesnt work....
The company is struggling to maintain any sort of presence in the online market against more succesful established companies and new entrants. It is only growing sales by several % per year and basically has more sellers than buyers. Because it has so many people wanting to sell goods, compared to buyers, it is sacrificing sellers in a desperate bid to try to retain buyers and retain some sort of presence in the market.
If it cant keep the few buyers it has, it will start actually going backwards, its share price will drop dramatically and it could start a landslide, all downhill into oblivian. Basically the company is fighting for its survival after a string of very poor management decisions have damaged the company.
The biggest failure has been to move away from the used and collector market to the brand name mega mall and $2 Chinese shop model. When the company was focussed on private sellers of unusual and used items it had a total market dominance that no-one else could come close too. Once it changed focus to new brand name items and Chinese carp, it faced intense online market competition from other competitors who have proven to be more nimble and effective in the online space.
I can understand what you're saying, and it could well be what eBay are thinking / doing, but the logic is flawed IMHO.
Is there really such thing as "too many sellers"? Or is it more that eBay don't categorise and display the resulting listings in a way that's congruent with how buyers want to view and shop while on the site? And that they don't do anything about the sellers bending or breaking the other rules (to manipulate and / or swamp search results)?
To my mind, if eBay were genuinely comitted to retaining buyers, they'd to look at what turns them away from the site, other than having a bad purchase experience with a seller. I stuggle constantly to understand why they don't have a greater focus on the more simple user experience aspects, they continually say they are trying to eliminate things that discourage buyers from shopping here, but what do they think the following things do?
Doing nothing about those manipulating variation listings with cheap, unrelated items to game search results
Doing nothing about those misrepresenting item locations
Doing nothing about those (either with the same or multiple accounts) creating scores of identical listings for the same product
Lack of genuine fraud prevention (eg "policing" of scam listings is primarily done post-sale)
Lack of preferred search refinements
Cart & Payment issues (this deserves a sub-list)
Not being able to combine BIN items while using mobile apps (the thing they say is taking over shopping)
Postage discounts not applying in the cart or during checkout, or applying on one service but not others (like if express is offered)
Orders / Payments being rejected inexplicably
Implementing immediate payment required on listings and forcing buyers who want to purchase multiples to pay separately as the 'add to cart' button also disappears
Lack of clarification re: MBG policies, contradictory and/or changing policies, failure to uphold policies (in cases where they should have been)
Convoluted and frustrating help pages, with unannounced policy changes happening on a continual basis
A message system and policies that thwart communication and sucessful sales
A message system that fails, but alerts no one to said failure (in email systems, usually if a message doesn't go through, the sender is alerted, rather than allowed to think they're being ignored).
Complete denial of the existence of these issues
And those are just the major, ongoing ones.
People will tread the path of least resistance, and every single one of those issues is a barrier on the path.
I find myself wondering if perhaps one day, I'll be contacted by a buyer who is experiencing difficulty in purchasing an item, and will have to respond thusly:
"Ok, wow, it's awesome you were able to find my listing. It's been a long time 🙂 So, to purchase X item, make sure it's exactly 12pm and that it's not raining (if it is raining, the process is a bit more complicated but I can walk you through that if needed). Open up the listing in one tab, and then another random item from my store in another tab - if you can't find any other items, click this [link] and it should take you to one. Now, this is important - add the random item to the cart first, then go back to the listing for the item you do want to buy and add that to the cart. Switch back to the tab with the random item, and click 'save for later' to remove it, then go back to the other tab and refresh the page. This should get the postage to show up and allow the 'Proceed to checkout' button to work.
"Once you click that, click on "change address", even if it is displaying the address you want the item to be sent to, re-enter the details and confirm (if you don't do this, the postage amount will disappear and you'll have to start again). Once that is done, you can proceed as normal to PayPal, but try to ensure the previous actions have taken at least 7 minutes, otherwise the system will be a bit overwhelmed and reject your payment.
"I should see your order and payment come through in 2-3 days, at which point I will already be late in sending the package, so don't forget to take advantage of eBay's offer and get your money back. Thanks for shopping with me and have a nice day. 🙂 "
