Comment: Ebay risks alienating its sellers

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 6 Feb 2008 at 08:52

Ebay might have the online auction market sewn up, but if it carries on treating its sellers with the contempt it's currently displaying, they might well arrive at the conclusion that they're the ones being stitched up.

Last week the auction house put its sellers' backs up after hiking up its commission fees - or making "bold changes aimed at improving the overall customer experience" as Ebay preferred to call it.

In a classic case of giving with one hand and taking with the other, the site reduced the cost of listing items, while simultaneously increasing its cut on goods sold.

Ebay claimed "sellers prefer this structure, as it lowers their risk if an item doesn't sell." But as one disgruntled Ebay seller put it: "We call it Ebay math, it's a different math than most other people's math."

Now the site is proposing to penalise its sellers once more by effectively gagging them. Soon sellers will no longer be able to provide negative feedback on the people who buy their goods: no more comments about late payments, bounced cheques or stolen credit cards. Sellers will simply be refused the chance to speak.

Buyers, meanwhile, can continue to rate the sellers as they wish, skewing the whole feedback process wildly in favour of the party handing over the cash, rather than the goods.

Ebay says many buyers fear leaving negative comments about sellers through fear of retaliation. So Ebay's incredulous answer is to effectively silence sellers, rather than investigate vendors who descend into tit-for-tat?

The auction house says it will step up efforts to track down rogue sellers, but Ebay's record on tackling fraud is hardly encouraging. A leaked police email revealed Ebay has "a big problem" with hijacked account scams being run from across the UK, while jewellery company Tiffany and Co recently branded Ebay a "the proverbial rat's nest" of fake goods.

Ebay might not want its sellers' negative feedback made public, but for how long can the auction house keep up the illusion that everything is rosy on its site?