As eBay is discovering through rapidly dropping sales – we pretty much loathe eBay.

The current feeling of the general public towards eBay is the result of extraordinary arrogant customer relations since about 2000. Note that I did not use the word ‘service,’ and this should be a warning to all companies who go that through that tipping point of irreversible sales trends after years and years of poor customer service and basically go down a cascading waterfall of dropping sales.

6) Sucking Up to Wall Street

The most obvious example is the continual raising of fees. eBay just presumed people would have no where else to go. When eBay needed to hit the numbers WS wanted, they would just raise fees. Sure, no one likes to pay more for something but eBay doesn’t really seem to consider that they needed both SELLERS and BUYERS … they raised fees for no real reason other than they wanted to show WS they could grow the business year after year. But like a mall landlord, the more sellers you drive away, the more buyers you drive away.

5) “You Are Wrong.”

Unlike some places that believe a customer is always right or even mostly right, eBay is the exact opposite. Whether you have a complaint of any kind – YOU ARE WRONG is their basic attitude. Honestly, I think it’s staffed with ex-DMV employees and instead of trying to resolve the problem, they treat you as if you’re wasting their time. For sellers who have auctions pulled or some other problem – HOW DARE YOU EVEN QUESTION US? We’re eBay! … To buyers who complain about fraud or some other problem, they want you to self-resolve it until 45 days has passed and the they claim the statute of limitations is up … or most dispute are mediated by paypal now who is just as poor at it as eBay … unless you answer their replies immediately, they close the matter – saying you never responded. Of course, otherwise, it might be called customer service. Why is Amazon eating eBay’s lunch? Amazon listens to customers and responds – I’m not saying they are perfect but it’s 100% better than the attitude of you are wrong to contact us – go through 10 screens – maybe you’re just too stupid to find the solution in our poorly designed database – maybe you will just give up because we know you’re wrong and we, eBay is right so why bother even trying.

4) Site Hasn’t Be Updated for 6 Years

There have been some minor upgrades to eBay but it is essentially the same as it was in 2000 – for buyers, not really well designed and for sellers – so much time wasted trying to post objects for sale. Sometime in 2004, the ENTIRE site should’ve been redesigned for easier buying and selling but hey, again, what do they care about customer service. Yes, last year they updated some elements of it but still not enough. It required a real re-design to make it more customer friendly but nope, that would require real work and really listening and caring about its customers – instead, it’s more of – here’s what we’re changing – take it and like it! The internet user of 1999 is not the internet user of 2009 … hello!

3) The End Result?

After you navigate through the still not-very informative list view of auctions, you have a complete hodge podge of information and design – from idiots who can’t spell or take a photo to save their life to the all the info but not very informative because info is trapped in a long paragraph. For sellers, there needs to be more checklists that then get represented into icons or something easy to grasp for the buyer … of course, there should still be room to tell a story if necessary but let’s take a random thing like a video game that will probably sell for $20 or less, there should be a series of checkmarks on ONE page that perhaps gets translated into graphical icons? If it’s New? Sealed? Never Opened?, you don’t need to load a picture, do you? That should be in a database like Amazon’s pages. or for something like a videogame – if it’s opened … Box like new, scuff marks, damaged, etc? All just checkbox territory … the seller can add pictures if they want but for many things sealed in box … as it is right now, it takes just as long to read through to determine that …

2) Adults

eBay seems to spend an inordinate amount of time rejecting auctions. Grow up. If I have a PayPal account, I’m an adult. Grow up already and stop pretending you’re ‘better than us.’ Just offer a fair warning you’re entering an adult area … it’s like their cutoff on Playboy magazine auctions – everything before some random cutoff date is “erotica” but afterwards it’s “porn?” WTF? Nude magazines of stars are not okay but the R-rated movie that it’s lifted from is okay to sell? Okay, I’m not saying there should be no barriers but it’s the internet and not a storefront by an elementary school … or that any corporation who complains about an auction means a takedown – damn the individual seller? Again, it’s that sort of attitude that a random corporate lawyer should have more say than your actual customers?

1) The Shipping Debacle

Yes, the post office has raised rates but in conjunction with your higher fees, the only way for sellers to make money is to jack up postage costs because they are not counted towards the auction final fee – now, most auctions under $10 are not worth buying because EVERYTHING costs $8 to ship (well, according to the sellers) … Yes, 50% of this problem is anything in a box pretty much costs a minimum of $5 to mail nowadays but it doesn’t help when a huge percentage of sellers will charge you for a box and then ship you something in an unpadded envelope that they clearly paid about $2 in postage (envelopes can go first class mail). There are no obvious solutions to fixing this but the problem is that 75% of everything under $10 is really @$20 with shipping so how many sales are you losing this way? There are lots of things that I would buy if shipping were not an additional 80-100% markup after the final auction price with shipping.

As an end result, after 10 years, eBay represents online auction but it’s looking more and more like a carny where customers are treated as potential suckers and sellers as thieves – or man, it’d be a great business if they haven’t have to deal with buyers and sellers always whining. Never mind that 98% of it that eBay brings it upon themselves. First, attitude adjustment in customer service is needed. The key to the business is bringing in MORE SELLERS not in seeing how how of fees you can collect immediately. eBay has lost that sense of purpose. That is your mission statement.

A Place for Sellers.

(NOT how many fees that can be collected).

After you accomplish this part – then buyers will return. There are logistic issues to resolve such as redesigning the auction pages from top to bottom and the shipping issue but the key is the mission statement confusion that eBay thinks it is and what it really should be.

But it’s a lesson for all businesses, when you get so focused on jacking up prices – but at some point, it hits a tipping point and you can NEVER recover because you’ve ticked off everyone. Right now, the problem is eBay is down to two kinds of sellers. Desperate people willing to pay any price and Bargain Hunters. The middle ground is gone. So, there is the appearance of excitement as 10 people will drive prices high but then afterwards, just bargain hunters waiting for it to drop 90% …

Interestingly enough, this might impact the governor’s race here in Cali – Meg Whitman who ran eBay for many years is running for governor … wonder if she can win as a Republican after ticking off small businesses who tried to make a go on eBay.