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eBay's Nation-building
— eBay maintains either partial or complete ownership of the following companies:

- Afterbuy.com
- Alando.de - now eBay Germany
- Auction.co.kr (Internet Auction Co.)
- Baazee.com - now eBay India
- CARad.com
- Craigslist.org
- Deja.com - Precision Buying service only
- EachNet.com
- Gittigidiyor.com
- Gumtree.com
- Half.com
- iBazar.com
- Kijiji.com
- Lokau.com.br
- Loquo.com
- Marktplatts.nl
- Meetup.com
- MercadoLibre.com
- Opus Forum
- PayPal
- ProStores, Inc.
- Rent.com
- Shopping.com
- Skype
- StubHub.com
- StumbleUpon.com
- Tradera AB
- Up4Sale.com (Jump, Inc.)

— eBay (or one of its subsidiaries) has had or currently has partnerships or other financial arrangements with the following organizations and companies:

- 20th Century Fox
- AfiliNet
- Alibris
- Altura
- AOL
- Baidu
- BBDO Advertising/OMD Media Agencies
- ChannelAdvisor - in conjunction with Tier 1 Asset Management
- Creative Artist Agency
- Domino's Pizza
- ELance
- FilmLoop
- FreeFlow
- General Motors Corp.
- Getting Free, Living Free Ministries - PDF web capture
- Google
- Harpo Productions (Oprah Winfrey) - Skype only
- JotSpot
- Kaboodle
- LiveWorld
- Mercedes-Benz
- MissionFish
- Mozilla Corp.
- MySpace.com - ongoing talks only
- NetSuite
- PruHealth
- Sanook
- Sears, Roebuck & Co.
- Tier 1 Asset Management
- Toyota
- TradeDoubler
- U.S. Postal Service
- ValueClick, Inc.
- Visa
- VTPRODUCTS
- Yahoo!

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

hi, I am a Chinese girl, work as a shoes seller online. I want to open an ebsy store, so that i could sell shoes shoes there, but I don't know how to open in China, because there is no PAYPAL in China. except the PAYPAL payment method ,is there any payment method in emay?

I really want to know more about it, could you please help me if you know ? If you have ebay store, and you want to sell our shoes on ebay, that is ok. I am here waiting for your email. Thank you !

Contact: Miss Hu
E-Mail: elevatingshoes@hotmail.com
          elevatingshoes@yahoo.cn
MSN: elevatingshoes@hotmail.com
Website: http://www.elevatingshoes.com
Company: 21st Century Shoes Co.,Ltd

eBays feedback changes may have caused sellers to be a little worried, however, I am noticing that a lot of sellers are turning to sites like, http://www.iripoff.com to post negative feedback for rude and negative buyers. Way to go ebay!

Who needs the eBay headache? Been there, done that. When they shifted the goal posts they lost me. Its good that OnlineAuctions & other sites are chipping away at the monopoly. I will never use eBay again but havent given up on using online auction services.

Also I would like to add that the post at the top of this page, relating to meta tags, is good stuff. I subscribe to a few newsletters like Webpronews because every now & then a useful bit of info like this pops up. A lot of SEO techniques can be learned from the newsletters & forums. My advice to anyone who does their own SEO is to milk these newsletters & forums for all they can get. Everyone has advice on this issue but now & then you strike gold. I wouldn't recommend buying any software in the hope of finding the Holy Grail. I would suggest that you read articles like the post above & try it for yourself. It takes many hours of work but soon you will notice what works & what doesn't.

...If decreasing the clickable area of an Adsense ad is the direct cause, why would a smart company like Google do such a thing? ...

To ask such a question is to show an ignorance of corporate responsibility, and healthy business model (long term) so let me help explain it to you.

By reducing the number of accidential clicks you get advertisers that get what they pay for. Anything else is is irresponsible and some might go so far as to say that knowingly allowing it to continue (with solutions available) is also unethical. 

Since advertisers  ultimately decide to halt or continue advertising campaigns based on ROI -- accidental clicks only serve to reduce the" R". Ultimately, advertisers will leave for other sources, reducing competition, reducing CPC, and reducing revenue even further for google.

Ultimately the "why did google do it" questions can only be answered one way...It's responsible and long term that is good for google.

I have not fully left eBay, yet.  But the time is coming and soon.

When they increased my listing fees by 500% a few years ago I immediately cut back on my listings and started writing a program to launch my own web site.  Since then I have limited my listings on eBay to 600 store items and no more than 3 live auctions at any time.

Almost a year ago I was finally able to launch my website, which now has over 3000 webpages of products for sale.  And it is producing 3 times the sales that eBay is producing with a cost of only about $8 per month, while eBay sucks in over half of the sale price.  Bottom line is that the website is almost 100% profit versus less than 50% on eBay.  To put in another way, I am getting 6 times more profit from my website than I am getting from eBay.

Naturally, eBay is on the way out.  When I get 5000 webpages up (in about 3 months), I will be gone from eBay entirely.  Why should I give them over half of my profit?  Especially when my friend Google indexes my pages so well that most searches for my products put me on page one?

I, for one, do not like the way eBay is headed.  So, my solution is to go it alone with my own website.  And it is working.

It can for anyone else as long as you can get the exposure needed to bring in the customers.  For my type of products (mostly limited demand items often in short supply), exposure means massive amounts of webpages - enough so that no matter what items my customers are looking for they can find my site, even if I do not have those items listed.

Complaining about eBay does no good.  Deciding to divorce yourself from them is the only way that you can win.  You just need to have a good plan in place to guide you in the direction you want to go.

Will eBay notice that I am gone?  Not hardly.  I am just a tiny invisible ripple in their ocean.  But by going the direction that I am going, I am the ONLY occupant of my tiny lake.  A lake that I am defining.  A lake in which my competitors will probably never be able to be anything more than a tiny invisible ripple.

So, for those of you that don't like eBay, get out there and do something about it.  You can do it.  It can be done.  Ween yourself from eBay now before eBay forces you out with nothing.  eBay will never notice you leaving and you can save all of those atrocious fees, not to say anything about all the headaches they give you constantly.

Been on eBay since 1996 and will buy a few things from time to time but will never sell again on there.

Most of my business has gone to http://www.Plunderhere.com which is a nice eBay alternative site with real customer support.

All I have to say is that I fell into eBays web and was almost swallowed by the monsterous spider. This current debacle of eBays opened my eyes and I learned my lesson well. I have freed myself from the web and will now concentrate on making money the old fashion way. Through my own brick and morter store (32 years in business), and the stores website. I am not here to brag up the store so I won't be leaving a link to it's website like so many others posting here have. I am just stating what is fact: Just like the way people really don't need Wal-Mart people really can survive and prosper without eBay. Start thinking outside the box people and build your own dream.

Good that eBay is again doing what is doing!  I bet 99% of the people complainting here were the ones that bashed me on ebay forums every time I complained when eBay did something unfair before.  You people are cult followers.  You deserve what is happening to you and a half!  Yesterday you were up, now you are down and rightly so.  You helped make ebay the monster that it is now!  TAKE IT!  TAKE IT!  TAKE IT!  like the glitter girl in American Idol.  Only thing is that you won't be "victorious"!  LOL!

The next boycott is already being organised starting May 1st. Many people who joined the protest last week have already moved their items to alternative auction sites or have simply stopped selling on eBay.

The action IS being co-ordinated at the following two places:

http://forums.delphiforums.com/boycottebay/start

http://www.myspace.com/boycottebay

BOYCOTT VICTORIOUSLY!

eBay act with all the arrogance of a monopoly and I hope they pay the price.

I have not used eBay for nearly a year and a half now. I run a small enterprise, and found that having a website on Google that is well seen, is more valuable than having anything on eBay.  People, you don't need eBay. 

I have deliberately boycotted them for all this time, although I could not see how it would work.

The reason?

I was treated like a criminal by eBay like others. Why? Because like many others I sold low value eBooks which they said unduly influenced by feedback rating.

This despite the fact that I asked them before I considered selling ebooks  about the legitimacy of the feedback system which gives credit to high volume, low value sales, rather than high value sales.

I did question this. So all I did was work the system legitimately and got kicked out.  I see no crime in improving my feedback rating like many others by supplementing high value items with low value items.

After all, nobody has to give positive feedback.

They were not interested in responding to me then. Only interested when they get on their high horse about a  low value ebooks when it suited them.

The feedback system has and is a joke.  It encourages tit for tat customers and tit for tat sellers. 

eBay as always does not see the full picture.  The system is being abused by sellers AND customers.  Not just sellers.

Now the system is set heavily in favour of buyers, I know what I would be doing if I were still on eBay.  Leaving.

Let eBay deal with the sellers they want, those who put up unwanted Christmas present or unwanted items from the attic.

They are not interested in traders peddling their wares on eBay. 

eBay is the sort of organisation that when you tell them (as I did many times) about the sale of illicit, black market DVDs, they do NOTHING about it.  I know. I have investigated it in my day job as national newspaper journalist.

eBay are a great example of why monopolies should NEVER be allowed to exist.  EVER.

The Ebay environment has changed a lot in the last 1-2 years.  There seems to be far fewer quality buyers in the last few months of selling... my times haven't even met reserve.

I've begun to wonder if team Ebay bidding on items to pump action coming in just below reserve, but then the items don''t sell out.  This is now a continuous pattern of not meeting reserve, whereas in the past these items would have sold.

Who knows, maybe its other traders just playing the game too.  At any rate, I'm ready to just chuck it on Ebay, because they just keep collecting fees on items not selling.  Its becoming a waste of my time and money. I watch other bigger ticket items too... same thing happening with them.

Good News

Many ebay refugees have gathered at onlineauction.com.  Great deals right now, and millions of auctions up and running.