eBay brand poisoning
In the article eBay: pro-choice, but only when it suits the writer brought up an interesting point when he said:
“… and certainly hasn’t done much to neutralise the increasing toxicity of the eBay brand.
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!, I thought. eBay Brand is becoming increasingly toxic. What caused this? Major Media finally noticed and begun publishing news of too many years with too many complaints by eBay customers who were ripped off, cheated, scammed and simply ignored by eBay management.
Then I found another article by the same Author: eBay trashed its brand for sake of profits he wrote earlier.
Randy Smythe published this Article: eBay death of thousand cuts in February 2008
warning about management’s questionable decisions and changing marketplace conditions.
eBay’s managemen IS aware they are losing marketshare, as eBay’s spokesman Griff mentioned just a few days ago at eBay Live! 2008:
“
Griff: We had to make these changes because, without buyers, there will be no eBay in two years.
“Bullshit!” someone says.
“No bullshit,” he responds; “absolutely true. The rate of decline in the growth of buyers…it was ripe for buyers going other places, and if the momentum starts, eBay is over.”
“
But unfortunately it appears that solutions offered by eBay top brass are still in the spirit of money grabbing, uncompetitive, monopolistic strategy which permiates everything eBay has done for the past 5 years. Thus eBay continues to be perceived as a marketplace full of fakes, cheats, scammers, stolen goods headed by the type of management who will close their eyes to the crimes perpetrated on their website (since they derive revenues from such crimes) till they get sued out of millions and forced by courts to make the venue safer.
Just before I completed publishing this, another news source appeared with the same observation: Sydney Morning Herald published just one hour ago: eBay pays the price for PayPal debacle
It’s hard to imagine anyone doing more damage to eBay’s reputation than the auction giant has done to itself over the past few months.
Finally bowing to public (and potential legal) pressure, eBay last week announced it has scrapped plans to force its members onto the PayPal payment system, which it owns, by excluding all other payment options except cash on delivery.
Everyone from the Reserve Bank to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission could see it was anti-competitive and monopolistic. EBay insisted it was for the protection of the buyers and sellers. My only surprise was that it could maintain this public stance with a straight face.
Update: 7/12/2008 Here is a link to eBay Brand discussion from 2005. So three years later time has shown that many of the industry experts were right three years ago.