eBay Launches Dev Platform - Too Little, Too Late?
Online ecommerce giant eBay today announced "Project Echo" at the eBay developers conference, which will allow developers to create applications for sellers that will run inside the eBay Selling Manager. Previously, third party applications built for eBay via the site's API could only run off site. Project Echo, which will probably launch sometime in 2009, can be thought of in terms of Salesforce's AppExchange platform. But is better integration with third party seller tools really what eBay needs to do to keep sellers satisfied?
According to Computer World, eBay has 700,000 merchants who subscribe to their Selling Manager, and 70,000 developers currently working with their API. eBay's senior director of mobile platform and disruptive innovation, Max Mancini, described Project Echo as taking the company's app development platform to the "next level."
But what we've heard from sellers over the past couple of weeks doesn't lead us to believe that fancier selling tools will be enough to keep many of them on the site. What has sellers leaving the site is changes in policy that many sellers feel have negatively affected their ability to sell on the site, or unfairly given preferential treatment to corporate partners.
eBay has appeared to be taking steps over the past six months to transition the company toward an emphasis on fixed price selling over their traditional auction format. If sellers really are leaving the site, that spells trouble for eBay, where fewer seller options, no organized product reviews, and no "Amazon option" that offers free shipping means eBay will face difficulty attempting to compete seriously in the fixed price market.
While better integration of seller tools will certainly be a welcome change for many sellers, it by no means fixes the potentially major problem eBay is facing: the rift that has developed between management and top sellers on the site.
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eBay actually "launched its dev platform" five years ago, so your headline is inaccurate. Today's announcement was the opening of a particular tool -- Selling Manager. If you're unimpressed by this, then you're probably one of the hundreds of reporters and bloggers who writes about eBay without actually using it.
I am permanently boycotting eBay, so this announcement will have no effect on me. I'm not a seller but a buyer, but I don't like eBay's attitude and their treatment of sellers. I have found that I can get the same bargains I once got on eBay elsewhere. If eBay was the last place on earth, I would probably deal with them. Fortunately, they aren't.
I think Jeffrey is right. It just that eBay will now feature the better developers. In regards to Gene's comment, I used to use eBay all of the time, still do occasionally, and never had a problem with them. Most of my 300+ transactions were as a seller.
I just want to say that I was defrauded (and atleast six other buyers from the seller) on a purchase on eBay. Paypal and ebay did nothing to either punish the seller or to refund my money. If you absolutely must use ebay use your credit card to make payment because credit card companies will at least protect you against fraud.
Dan
I was also ripped off several times on eBay and although they profess buyer protection through Payapl, I was made aware of the cold, hard fact that they didn't care about the general consumer and they protect frauduent sellers as long as they are ripping victims off for less than $25 per purchase. I filed several legitimate complaints against sellers where I had documented proof I tried for months to resolve the transaction directly with the seller. One guy I bought two CD's from for $22 claimed he shipped the items when I first questioned him, then he said he "forgot to ship them" almost a month later. After three months, I filed the Paypal complaint.
The end result ... My 5 year old Paypal account with over 300 transactions and $50K in purchases was revoked. I never even sold anything on eBay or took money through Paypal. All I did was buy and I got banned for filing legit complaints.
Ebay is causing sellers to leave in droves, with the new policy changes and tens of thousands are upset and will be protesting at Ebay Live 2008, this week.
The changes are idiotic. Sellers can no longer leave negative or neutral feedback, even if a buyer bids, wins your item, ingores your emails and doesn't pay. What right do they have to leave any feedback, if no transaction has taken place? We have sellers, bidding on competitors items and ruining their feedback, just to get a boost, on their own items.
Ebay went in a retroactively turned all neutrals, to negatives. Neutral, means just that, how can ebay call it negative. They give new discounts to people with good ratings, but they knock them down first, with the neutral change, that many can't even meet the requirements.
That is not the worst of it. We have thousands and thousands of sellers, who have closed their stores and we KNOW that the listing count should be going down. But, we have uncovered the source of the listing counts and I can't see it being anything, but fraud.
The seller BUY or Buy.com was taken on by ebay, right at the time ebay KNEW they were going to lose sellers. They are using buy.com, to pad the listings, to make it look like the count is up, when it really isn't. We have found thousands upon thousands of fake listings, that have no description and you can't even buy them. I found them ending tens of thousands of listings, saying they are no longer available for sale and immediately relisting them. Most likely to keep the sell through rate up and then relisting them, to up the listing count 2 fold.
Isn't this making the stockholders think that listings are up, when they really aren't? We have all the proof documented. I even have it documented of when I was talking to Ebay Live Help and asking them about all the ads, being ended early and it immediately stopped, when they found out that we knew about it.
Please help us in exposing them, for what they are trying to pull.
Thank You
I have been selling for 9 years on Ebay and I am DONE. The feedback rating is a LIE - the dashboard is based on unrealistic customer satisfaction rating. The best retail store in town would not qualify under Ebay's dashboard rating. Ebay is NOT HONEST with the buyers when they do go to rate the sellers. ALL OF THIS IS done to ALLOW PAYPAL TO HOLD YOUR MONEY. How much INTEREST would Ebay make in 21 Days HOLDING EVERYONE'S MONEY or maybe they are going on 21 day FLOAT HOLDING OUR MONEY TO SHOW HIGHER PROFITS. Who knows what those greedy so & so's are up to. FIRE THE ENTIRE BUNCH OR WE ARE OUT.
In Australia the accc.gov.au has given notice of revoking Paypals attempt to pull the wool over Australian sellers (and buyers) and the Au government by bring in Paypal only (and direct pickup) as the only payment options.
Not going to happen , however ebay is carrying on as though it will by bullying buyers and sellers to signup/accept Paypal .
They are going to lose bigtime in Australia. Their attempt at world wide domination of online payments has been halted for now .
I've joined the Global Ebay Boycott. I and ebayers from around the world, have no intention of allowing ebay to ruin our businesses and reputations, while, among other deceitful practices, ebay:
plays games with the stockmarket
forces ebayers to offer Paypal & bans safer payment options
steals sellers' right be honest in their feedback
hides sellers listings in "Best Match", while deceitfully promoting ebay's choices to buyers
pads their own listing numbers
raises prices for lowered service
hides ebayers years of trading history
charges sellers for listings, then places other advertisements on those listings to draw customers away
allows buyers, who have NOT PAID, to trash sellers feedback percentages and Detailed Seller Ratings
allows Paypal (owned by ebay) to withhold sellers' funds for 21 or more days at the sole discretion of Paypal
gives free or severely discounted listings to businesses, such as buy.com, in order for those entities to directly compete with full-fee paying, long standing ebayers.
claims to be just a venue, while dictating every aspect of sellers' businesses: shipping costs, feedback allowed, payment methods, blocking sellers access to sellers own funds, removal of funds WITHOUT sellers expressed consent on individual transactions, wording in listing descriptions & titles, STEALS sellers items by requiring some unhappy buyers to send their fake designer items to Liquidity Services, a company which SELLS items to the public see:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=2010982228&forumID=143&x#2010982228