WebProNews

1)  Ebay raised fees by a whopping 64% (some report a 66.5% increase) on all sellers, except 7 powersellers in the U.S., who qualify for the misleading 15% discount (those seven sellers are only qualified for a discount for 30 days, then will be re-evaluated).  This issue was raised, but not addressed, at the ecommerce forum with the future CEO, Donahoe in attendance.  These fee increases only stand to hurt the buyers of ebay, hurt the sellers chance of profit and success and will put more money into the deep pockets of ebay and paypal (owned by ebay).

2)  Ebay is taking away ALL sellers' right to give honest feedback for all buyers.  Buyers will have two choices.  Leave a positive feedback or nothing.  Future sellers will have no way of knowing if a potential buyer has a history of abusing the system or other sellers.

3.) A second rating system for sellers has also been forced upon them, along with the feedback ratings. The new DSR scoring system is geared toward lowering sellers' ratings, by having buyers score sellers on such things as shipping time.  Quite often shipping time has more often to do with the carrier than it has with the seller, but the seller is being ranked for this.   Also scored on the DSR rating system is shipping and handling prices.  On a five star DSR rating system, 100% feedback rated sellers, giving free shipping, are being rated as low as 4.5 stars for their shipping prices.  Anything below 4.8 DSR rating prevents powersellers from recieving the unattainable 15% discount (powersellers are also the only ebayers offered this near impossible discount). 

4) Paypal (owned by ebay) announced March 14th, a new amendment to their user agreement stating Paypal, at it's "SOLE DESCRETION", may place a hold on ANY ebayer's funds, if Paypal (ebay) "BELIEVES" a transaction "MAY" be risky AND for an undetermined amount of time.  (Read it yourself, it's now part of their user agrrement = amend. 10.4)

5) "Best Match" was created for the purpose of ebay placing their "picks" to be positioned at the front of these searches, which ebay states are their high volume sellers, which offer new items.  All others listings will be buried in the back pages of these searches, greatly reducing the possibility of buyers finding those auctions.

6.) Incoming CEO, Donahoe, alientated himself from a huge population of sellers by saying he wants ebay out of the "FLEA MARKET" arena and called our concerns and complaints, "NOISE."

7) All of a sudden, ebay's offering free stores to try to boost their own dropping numbers.

8) Ebay's been caught red-handed padding their own number of auctions listed by placing upwards of a million fake auctions onto their own auction site (search the facts reported in the news).   Ebay did not acknowledge these fake bids until they became public knowledge.  When first admittimg their knowledge about these auctions, Ebay claimed they were glitches in the system.  When that didn't satisfy the mounting questions, ebay then proclaimed they were tests.  These bogus auctions appearances coincided with the first wave of the 2008 ebay boycott.  One of these fakes, alone, had an impossible user ID, 0 feedback and 35,000 auctions listed with no possible way to bid them.  These ghost auctions raised the reported numbers of auctions listed at that time by an alarming number.  It is reported that these fake auctions are still re-appearing on ebay's auctions.

9) Though buyers and sellers,alike, have been begging ebay for years to strengthen their security issues, ebay has recently begun hiding bidder's user IDs, which only serves to make shill bidding (fake bids to increase the price that honest bidders will have to pay) easier for dishonest ebayers. The fact remains that ebay DOES make a higher profit when shill bidding occurs.

10) Now ebay's firing 15,000 employees, as announced by ebay spokesperson, jose mallabo on March 20th.  Mallabo stated, "It's more of a streamling, particlarly on the customer service front." Donahoe and Ebay's spokespeople have continually proclaimed that their new "restructuring" policies are to help rebuild buyer confidence, yet ebay is firing 70 employees in their customer service department.  Finding scammers and removing them from the ebay auction site has been a request that is of greatest of importance to all honest ebayers, buyers and sellers.  These requests have not been dealt with in a satisfactory manner.  Now, ebay has announced it is removing 70 employees who are employed to help ebayers with such complaints.

Are we ebayers mad?  You bet we are and we are still united and growing in huge numbers for the May 1st boycott which coincides with many new ebay "restructuring" policies.  Though the official beginning date for the BOYCOTT against ebay is May 1st, an enormous number of ebayers (buyers & sellers) have already begun their boycotts.  Look at the statistics for how rapidly other internet auction and sale sites have grown in membersips since ebay began announcing these outragous changes and the beginning of the boycott .

Here is just a sampling of the sites organized for ebayers in the united effort to educate the public and have our voices heard.  This list does not include the enormous number of blogs, posts and videos full of ebayers fleeing ebay auctions (search ebay boycott and you'll discover we are strong and we are united):

powersellersunite.com

thepoint.com/campaigns/subat

pheeby.com

accknowl.com

forums.delphi.forums.com/boycott

myspace.com/boycott

strikebay.com

ebaybycott.info

sqidoo.com/willyoujointheebayboycott