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The impact of the eBay seller boycott comes down to a they said/they said kind of argument. Sellers claim a multi-million listing downturn during the boycott week, while the company claims it had no effect.

At one point, sellers boycotting eBay due to an increase in Final Value fees claimed a drop to 12 million listings would represent a victory. One third party count at DealsCart found a low of some 13.5 million listings on one day last week.

eBay shrugged off the boycott without comment, other than to claim the action had no effect. We don’t see that as being completely true, since thanks to the Internet this boycott received significant attention leading into its run.

Ultimately it played out in the way we believed it would. EBay isn’t going to shift out of a volume-driven model it wants to engage, by rewarding bigger sellers with generous fee discounts.

There could be a Wal-Mart way of thinking in place at eBay’s San Jose HQ. The world’s largest retailer makes a lot of money in volume at its brick and mortar stores. For eBay to gain a similar bottom line, they have to scale upwards.

Many of our readers generously commented on our earlier thoughts about the start of the boycott. One commenter claimed the boycott had the desired outcome:

I’m technically not in the boycott, because even if eBay changes the rules, I’m not coming back. I have abandoned the account and when the 180 mandnatory waiting days have passed, it will dissappear. That’s $50-$80 per month they’ve lost out on and I wasn’t that active of a seller. To our boycott delight, many of the sellers that are leaving eBay are the kilobuck powersellers. THAT is what will hurt eBay the most.

Another commenter embraced those departures:

Goodbye boycotters, and good riddance. I’ll enjoy taking your customers.

And yet another commenter suggested the fee increase would go toward offsetting outgoing CEO Meg Whitman’s ill-fated purchase of Skype. Zing!

We were impressed at the number of people who cited how they bootstrapped their ecommerce sites after departing eBay, not to mention the number of suggestions for online auction alternatives. They voted with their feet and substantial action in response to conditions at eBay they found less than desirable.

Boycotts come and go whenever eBay makes a change. We said it before and we’ll say it again: eBay saw minimal impact from the latest one. Faced with another boycott, eBay dropped its listing fees with a one-day special in advance.

Think about that for a second. Boycotters threatened to deprive eBay of business. EBay responded by giving up fee income on top of whatever impact the boycott could generate. If that didn’t reinforce the message of eBay’s shift in strategy, nothing else will.

What if eBay found itself lacking in sellers offering items? Some sellers have suggested this would be the way to get the online marketplace’s attention.

Classified Intelligence picked up on the buzz around eBay forums after the company announced several changes to their policies. The buzz did not resemble a pleasant hum so much as an angry hive of swarming things with stingers:

A strike by sellers was proposed on EBay’s community forum soon after the announcement, and so far, almost 4,000 responses — most in agreement — have been posted. The proposed dates are Feb.18 to 25; the strike would involve sellers not posting any items for sale during that week.

The call to strike passed beyond eBay’s forums. CI said sellers posted items on national news blogs and local Craigslist sites to advertise the strike. Some sellers may pull money out of PayPal during that week, while smaller sellers may find themselves solicited by enterprising classifieds competitors seeking their business.

One particularly large company could milk such a strategy on a broader scale. Amazon.com Auctions is well-positioned to advertise its points of difference to disgruntled eBay sellers during the strike week.

eBay maintains issues were occurring that slowed down trade when buyers left unflattering comments about sellers who then hit back with their own comments. Beginning in May sellers will no longer be able to leave negative comments about buyers.

 Sellers are not happy with the move saying it leaves them unprotected from a problem customer and there is little they can do when a sale goes bad. They also point out a double standard because eBay allows buyers to leave negative comments about sellers.

eBay argues that problem buyers can be reported by the seller and that it will review the complaint and possibly remove the buyer. The company says the change is to "improve the overall customer experience."

Chris Norton writes on his blog," eBay is an online community, it’s a social site and once the community becomes one-sided, it becomes biased towards the buyer."

"I am all for customer relations but eBay’s customers are the sellers too and if this change means we get treated badly and abused further by small minded individuals looking for an easy discount – I think we may see eBay slip into decline."
 

Humanity has its flaws and foibles, but no one should underestimate the ability of the common person to find the easier route to profits when given a set of choices. If that ability could be distilled and sold by the gallon, the oil industry really would go the way of the dinosaur.

In the updated seller policies, eBay mentions Detailed Seller Ratings (DSR) a few times. The better one’s DSR, the better the discounts a seller could enjoy on Final Value fees for an auction.

Ina Steiner’s excellent AuctionBytes blog recently demonstrated how a seller can find a simpler way to make more money on eBay despite giving up the best available DSR-based discount, based on her chat with Steve Grossberg of the non-profit trade group, Internet Merchants Association:

If you are a PowerSeller and all four of your detailed seller ratings (DSRs) for the past 30 day period are 4.6 or higher, you qualify for a 5% discount on Final Value Fees

If you are a PowerSeller and all four of your detailed seller ratings (DSRs) for the past 30 day period are 4.8 or higher, you qualify for a 15% discount on Final Value Fees

Steve used an example of a seller who might push to get 4.8 DSRs and save $200/month with the new discount. He said that seller might instead raise his shipping and handling fee by 50 cents – forgoing the 4.8 rating (which is hard to attain anyway in the S&H DSR), and make an extra $1,200.

Work harder and make less? That doesn’t make much sense in any context. It looks like eBay may be tweaking these concepts again in the future.

Starting February 20th, eBay rolls out changes to several aspects of the business for sellers. Bill Cobb, president, eBay North America, said a trio of price reductions take place on that date.

Sellers will see less expensive insertion fees for auction and fixed price sales. Cobb also said eBay will adjust some final value fees too.

Long-time demands for the Gallery feature to be free finally received an answer, as Cobb announced that change will take place. Sellers had paid an extra fee to have thumbnail images appear alongside their auctions in lists of search results for their items.

eBay also plans to introduce a tiered pricing scheme for Featured Plus. That service gives listings additional prominent placement, for an extra price. The change should make it more appealing to sellers.

Cobb also noted another significant change for sellers, this time regarding visibility to search engines. "We will decrease listings exposure in search for the relatively small number of sellers who have a high buyer dissatisfaction rate and low DSRs over the last 30 days, especially for charging excessive shipping and handling," he said.

Sellers on eBay left billions of dollars on the table by not putting a higher price on their wares. A pair of University of Maryland statisticians discovered in their research what some eBay sellers have complained about: buyers are cheap.

Buying behavior in 2003 showed the thrifty shoppers saved $7 billion, according to Reuters. Researchers Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli projected the numbers through 2007, where buyers may have saved some $19 billion in their shopping.

Though that sounds ominous for sellers, the researchers believe sellers benefit from the market liquidity of eBay.

It appears the savings come when an auction ends, and the winning bid exceeded the second place bidder by an increment in price. If the winner did not pay the full amount he was willing to pay, the difference becomes what the researchers call a consumer surplus.

That doesn’t help salve seller complaints from the past, where bargain hunters sniff at prices they find too expensive. Coupled with seller fee increases, some of the more frustrated sellers opted to head to competitors like Amazon.com or the now-defunct Yahoo Auctions.

Others set up e-commerce sites and spent money on contextual search advertising to find customers. Those sellers may have cause to look at eBay again, as CEO Meg Whitman’s retirement could spur changes, including adoption of volume pricing that sellers have wanted for years.

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