eBay Fraud Scams exposed

The latest numbers from ComScore confirm what most eBay sellers predicted in March of this year.

eBay changes enacted this and last year will result in both Sellers and Buyers abandoning eBay for more competitive marketplaces.

Last year eBay removed the transparency and hid the bidder ID’s so a few months later all the statistics on eBay Auctions showed a major decline. There were articles published by most financial and market magazines and newspapers speculating why eBay auctions lost their luster. The answer is simple. Auctions are alive and well, just not on eBay. eBay hid bidder’s IDs so eBay customers lost confidence in the eBay auction process because they could not determine if they are bidding against a real bidder or against a shiller bidder.

Then eBay enacted slew of changes starting with increased final value fees on Auctions and Fixed price items, raising the percentage charged to the seller from 5.25% to 8.75% and later followed by yet another fee increase to 12.75% on fixed price items. Next eBay attempts to extract additional revenues from eBay sellers by forbiding them to offer checks and money orders as an allowed payment method for eBay sales. (( PayPal charges eBay seller 3.2% fee, getting paid by check/MO does not cost the seller anything.)) eBay then removed another layer of transparency in the market place by allowing buyers to leave negative feedback removing this priviledge from sellers, which in turn left sellers vulnerable to scammers or competition potentially destroying seller reputation. This in turn drove many sellers away from eBay to alternative ways of selling online. Many buyers followed the sellers to these alternative venues. One beneficiary of this seller exodus is Amazon.

The good news keeps piling up for Amazon.com today.

Internet research firm comScore says the number of unique visitors to Amazon sites from Dec. 1 to Dec. 24 — the height of the holiday shopping season — surged 7 percent from the corresponding period in 2007, to 76.2 million.

Amazon’s strong traffic numbers come at a time when overall holiday ecommerce spending was down 3 percent, according to comScore.

eBay remained the most visited retail site with 85.4 million visitors but saw a decline of 4 percent in visitors.

On 2 year comparison, Amazon traffic increased past two years in the row, while eBay traffic declined 10% from 2006 to 2007 Holiday Season and this year saw another 4% decline.

This clearly points to eBay management killing the goose that laid the golden egg, slowly but surely. They may blame the economy, recession or Uncle Bob, but the statistics on millions of users do not lie, eBay has alienated sellers, buyers, employees and stock holders alike.