The sellers listed below are all terrible sellers. The amount of negatives they create by their poor customer service is simply atrocious. Yet, they're allowed to thrive and prosper on eBay while smaller, much better sellers get the shaft.
It really takes a LOT of work to be this bad at selling.
Member id crispmovies 98.9%
Negative 23 (1 month) 549 (6 months) 879 (1 year)
redtagmarket 99.4%
Negative 201 1849 3613
derbycitymedia 98.7%
Negative 16 342 518
moviemarz 99.3%
Negative 66 618 1254
dvdmagnetinc 98.3%
Negative 42 246 385
csdvdstop 98.6%
Negative 43 428 640
collectionstop 98.7%
Negative 48 408 606
digitaldogpounddvd 98%
Negative 22 402 555
abundatrade 98.9%
Negative 15 175 629
moviestop1 98.4%
Negative 57 361 453
Friday, June 4, 2010
eBay "store in core" and "rebalancing the marketplace".
eBay's 2010 decision to have store listings show up in core search results isn't a new strategy.
Back in 2006 eBay tested "store in core" searches, and for most store sellers, it was very successful. Successful enough that they went out and stocked up on inventory, and listed a lot of store listings. Seemed like a great plan, right? After all, even then it was clear to most with common sense that buy it now was going to be successful, and that while there was always a place for auctions, and always will be, buy it now/fixed price listings was the future.
So, why did eBay abandon this back in 2006, despite being a success?
Well, it was a success for store owners, but it didn't have much of an impact on the stock price. And one thing to understand about eBay executives, being filthy rich was never enough, they wanted to be even filthier rich.
So, since the stocks were still stagnant, that meant that they didn't have their usual ability to cash in. And along came the plan to "rebalance the marketplace".
In my opinion this was nothing but stock manipulation, and it was very successful. It was so unpopular that eBay's stock price dropped even more. And when that happened, it left many stock options "under water". And so, a few months later, the executive decided to award NEW stock options to all those who were affected. Meaning, of course, that they would profit the most. And that's exactly what happened. The rich got richer, and the eBay brain drain continued as so many executives reached such levels of personal wealth that the idea of working for living wasn't required.
Back in 2006 eBay tested "store in core" searches, and for most store sellers, it was very successful. Successful enough that they went out and stocked up on inventory, and listed a lot of store listings. Seemed like a great plan, right? After all, even then it was clear to most with common sense that buy it now was going to be successful, and that while there was always a place for auctions, and always will be, buy it now/fixed price listings was the future.
So, why did eBay abandon this back in 2006, despite being a success?
Well, it was a success for store owners, but it didn't have much of an impact on the stock price. And one thing to understand about eBay executives, being filthy rich was never enough, they wanted to be even filthier rich.
So, since the stocks were still stagnant, that meant that they didn't have their usual ability to cash in. And along came the plan to "rebalance the marketplace".
In my opinion this was nothing but stock manipulation, and it was very successful. It was so unpopular that eBay's stock price dropped even more. And when that happened, it left many stock options "under water". And so, a few months later, the executive decided to award NEW stock options to all those who were affected. Meaning, of course, that they would profit the most. And that's exactly what happened. The rich got richer, and the eBay brain drain continued as so many executives reached such levels of personal wealth that the idea of working for living wasn't required.
Crime and outsourcing & eBay. Not a good combination.
I can't remember the name of the person, but a few years ago there was a news story about an eBay member who had been shot and pistol whipped by a "seller" he had connected with through eBay.
I was intrigued by this story, and was able to find his eBay account, and the account of the criminal. And, the emails that the victim had sent to eBay.
A little background on the story. This guy had come across an amazing deal on sports cards, had bid on and bought them, only to have the seller not ship them. He was able to get his money back through Paypal. At this point he should have been happy, but when the seller again listed the items, he made contact with him for second time. The seller made up some excuse about a sick relative, and they agreed to meet to exchange the cards for cash.
Now, savvy eBay members know that if the deal sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true, and they should run away as fast as they could. Especially when it's a cash deal. Unfortunately, this member was a lot more trusting.
So, he took his wife/gf along with him, and drove to the meeting spot, which was supposedly the seller's apartment. The meeting time was in the afternoon, but the seller didn't even show up until it was dark out. They finally they made contact, and the buyer went off with his cash to meet the seller. Which is when he got robbed, pistol whipped, and shot at. Yes, he made a very bad decision, there's no doubt. Oh, and it was a substantial amount of cash, I believe in the 7 to 8 thousand dollar range.
He spent the weekend in hospital, and despite being in awful pain, he wrote to eBay detailing the situation, identifying the member account responsible, including the police case information, etc etc etc. He did the right thing, because he could see that this "Seller" still had items listed, and he was worried that he would do the same thing to another buyer.
So, this is where the outsourcing comes in. By this time, the Investigations department had been outsourced. I can't remember exactly, but the main bulk of the work was being done in the Phillippines.
I had come across the story a couple of months after it happened, so I was able to view the entire history of his email. The proper thing to do with such an email would have been to escalate it to a supervisor, who would then probably have escalated it to the executive and legal level. However, this email was bounced back and forth from rep to rep, dumped back into the queue multiple times, and bounced around some more until finally, more than a MONTH after sending it in, the victim got a reply. It wasn't a sympathetic reply, it didn't show concern or worry, nor did it come from the legal department. It was a stock reply that if memory serves, had absolutely nothing to do with his email at all. Or in other words, about exactly what I personally had expected coming from an outsourcing partner.
I sent the information along to my supervisor, but I never did hear if anyone at eBay cared enough to follow up with this member.
Eventually the police did catch the criminal. I wonder if the buyer still uses eBay?
I was intrigued by this story, and was able to find his eBay account, and the account of the criminal. And, the emails that the victim had sent to eBay.
A little background on the story. This guy had come across an amazing deal on sports cards, had bid on and bought them, only to have the seller not ship them. He was able to get his money back through Paypal. At this point he should have been happy, but when the seller again listed the items, he made contact with him for second time. The seller made up some excuse about a sick relative, and they agreed to meet to exchange the cards for cash.
Now, savvy eBay members know that if the deal sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true, and they should run away as fast as they could. Especially when it's a cash deal. Unfortunately, this member was a lot more trusting.
So, he took his wife/gf along with him, and drove to the meeting spot, which was supposedly the seller's apartment. The meeting time was in the afternoon, but the seller didn't even show up until it was dark out. They finally they made contact, and the buyer went off with his cash to meet the seller. Which is when he got robbed, pistol whipped, and shot at. Yes, he made a very bad decision, there's no doubt. Oh, and it was a substantial amount of cash, I believe in the 7 to 8 thousand dollar range.
He spent the weekend in hospital, and despite being in awful pain, he wrote to eBay detailing the situation, identifying the member account responsible, including the police case information, etc etc etc. He did the right thing, because he could see that this "Seller" still had items listed, and he was worried that he would do the same thing to another buyer.
So, this is where the outsourcing comes in. By this time, the Investigations department had been outsourced. I can't remember exactly, but the main bulk of the work was being done in the Phillippines.
I had come across the story a couple of months after it happened, so I was able to view the entire history of his email. The proper thing to do with such an email would have been to escalate it to a supervisor, who would then probably have escalated it to the executive and legal level. However, this email was bounced back and forth from rep to rep, dumped back into the queue multiple times, and bounced around some more until finally, more than a MONTH after sending it in, the victim got a reply. It wasn't a sympathetic reply, it didn't show concern or worry, nor did it come from the legal department. It was a stock reply that if memory serves, had absolutely nothing to do with his email at all. Or in other words, about exactly what I personally had expected coming from an outsourcing partner.
I sent the information along to my supervisor, but I never did hear if anyone at eBay cared enough to follow up with this member.
Eventually the police did catch the criminal. I wonder if the buyer still uses eBay?
Fraud on eBay and the failure of eBay to do enough to prevent it.
One of the key eBay statements was "people are basically good."
And yes, especially in the early days of eBay this was essentially true. The site was built on trust.
The problem with this is that eBay was way too slow to understand that they had become a target for crime. Listing fraud, Paypal money laundering and many other issues became a real concern on eBay.
Although eBay had, and now does use the tools to do a better job of preventing fraud, for the longest time they only worked in reaction to fraud, instead of being pro-active to stop it.
An enormous amount of the fraud perpetrated on eBay originated in Romania. Romania was a country that one had a very progressive attitude towards abortion, which was completely changed when Nicolae Ceauşescu took power. Abortions were no longer permitted, and most women were expected to be producing babies on a regular basis. Eventually what this lead to was a poor population and a lot of unwanted children, which ultimately leads to a society that relies heavily on crime. There's a lot more reading and learning that can be done on the subject, but for eBay purposes it helps to explain why so much fraud originated there.
eBay had tools that identified the IP address of an account at every stage. Sign up, log ins, bids, items listed...everything could be tracked by IP. And the one group of IPs that were literally red flagged were Romanian. Essentially ANY activity on eBay from Romania was considered suspect, and was investigated.
Romanians were heavily involved with account takeovers, where they through phishing emails they would steal someone's log in, log into their account, and list thousands of high ticket items that directed the potential buyer to transact outside of eBay. As many of these accounts were in the USA, they seemed to be safe to the unknowing member. However, there were no items, the account was being run from Romania, and it was all about fraud.
Despite this knowledge, and despite having the ability to actually BLOCK certain IP's, for years eBay refused to do so. They would react to the fraud and eventually remove the listings, but all it took was a brief amount of exposure for these listings to be successful.
Again, after allowing this to go on for years, finally eBay started blocking IP's that were known to be fraudulent. Although before this happened, I was amazed to read an email from an executive claiming that eBay didn't want to do this, because it could just be that the fraudster was using a web cafe in Romania, and eBay didn't want to block a potentially legit Romanian user from accessing the site. Compared to the amount of fraud on the site that came from Romania, the amount of legit Romanian members was microscopic.
Knowing first hand how incredibly stupid eBay was at dealing with issues like this, it was no surprise at all to read about the Romanian hacker who hacked into eBay's internal network.
And yes, especially in the early days of eBay this was essentially true. The site was built on trust.
The problem with this is that eBay was way too slow to understand that they had become a target for crime. Listing fraud, Paypal money laundering and many other issues became a real concern on eBay.
Although eBay had, and now does use the tools to do a better job of preventing fraud, for the longest time they only worked in reaction to fraud, instead of being pro-active to stop it.
An enormous amount of the fraud perpetrated on eBay originated in Romania. Romania was a country that one had a very progressive attitude towards abortion, which was completely changed when Nicolae Ceauşescu took power. Abortions were no longer permitted, and most women were expected to be producing babies on a regular basis. Eventually what this lead to was a poor population and a lot of unwanted children, which ultimately leads to a society that relies heavily on crime. There's a lot more reading and learning that can be done on the subject, but for eBay purposes it helps to explain why so much fraud originated there.
eBay had tools that identified the IP address of an account at every stage. Sign up, log ins, bids, items listed...everything could be tracked by IP. And the one group of IPs that were literally red flagged were Romanian. Essentially ANY activity on eBay from Romania was considered suspect, and was investigated.
Romanians were heavily involved with account takeovers, where they through phishing emails they would steal someone's log in, log into their account, and list thousands of high ticket items that directed the potential buyer to transact outside of eBay. As many of these accounts were in the USA, they seemed to be safe to the unknowing member. However, there were no items, the account was being run from Romania, and it was all about fraud.
Despite this knowledge, and despite having the ability to actually BLOCK certain IP's, for years eBay refused to do so. They would react to the fraud and eventually remove the listings, but all it took was a brief amount of exposure for these listings to be successful.
Again, after allowing this to go on for years, finally eBay started blocking IP's that were known to be fraudulent. Although before this happened, I was amazed to read an email from an executive claiming that eBay didn't want to do this, because it could just be that the fraudster was using a web cafe in Romania, and eBay didn't want to block a potentially legit Romanian user from accessing the site. Compared to the amount of fraud on the site that came from Romania, the amount of legit Romanian members was microscopic.
Knowing first hand how incredibly stupid eBay was at dealing with issues like this, it was no surprise at all to read about the Romanian hacker who hacked into eBay's internal network.
eBay and the 1 cent buy it now listing.
The 1 cent buy it now listing was one of my biggest pet peeves on eBay, and while it was finally something that was stopped, it took far too long to do so.
These listings were cesspools of fraud. I think it took 10 feedback to qualify to sell with a buy it now price. So a fraudster would create a new account and quickly buy 10 of these listings, for recipes, pictures, etc.
They would then list a pile of items for sale at buy it now prices, items they didn't have, and hopefully in the time it took for it to become apparent that they were a fraud, they'd get one or more people suckered in to sending them money. Most of the listings would direct potential buyers to contact them directly, and pay with Western Union.
If one of these 1c buy it now listings had been active for any amount of time on the site, a quick look at the bidders would show that 50% or more of them had since been suspended, and inevitably that suspension was for fraud.
Sellers whose feedback was poor would sell these items in an effort to keep their feedback high enough to stay on the site. And, as discussed earlier, employees of eBay would use these listings to build their own feedback high enough to qualify for a free trip to eBay live.
Keep in mind as well that feedback abuse such as this was always against eBay policy.
So, to anyone with common sense, these listings were bad for eBay. They created a lot of extra work for customer support, but far more importantly they created a lot of bad feeling amongst those people who were ripped off.
Now, you would think that this would be obvious, and that having these listings banned permanently would be a logical outcome. Yet, despite the best efforts of Brian Burke, and despite the efforts of some reps like myself who took it upon ourselves to police these listings, the Business Unit wouldn't permit them to be banned. See, they only took into consideration the income from those listings, and they decided that there was enough income from the listings that banning them would be bad for business. It took YEARS, and I mean YEARS, before anyone could break through this wall of idiocy to explain the negative aspects and the amount of man hours that went into working on these issues.
Eventually these listings were banned, but not before they did an amazing amount of damage to eBay's repuation. And not to forget, they did a lot of damage to eBay member's wallets.
These listings were cesspools of fraud. I think it took 10 feedback to qualify to sell with a buy it now price. So a fraudster would create a new account and quickly buy 10 of these listings, for recipes, pictures, etc.
They would then list a pile of items for sale at buy it now prices, items they didn't have, and hopefully in the time it took for it to become apparent that they were a fraud, they'd get one or more people suckered in to sending them money. Most of the listings would direct potential buyers to contact them directly, and pay with Western Union.
If one of these 1c buy it now listings had been active for any amount of time on the site, a quick look at the bidders would show that 50% or more of them had since been suspended, and inevitably that suspension was for fraud.
Sellers whose feedback was poor would sell these items in an effort to keep their feedback high enough to stay on the site. And, as discussed earlier, employees of eBay would use these listings to build their own feedback high enough to qualify for a free trip to eBay live.
Keep in mind as well that feedback abuse such as this was always against eBay policy.
So, to anyone with common sense, these listings were bad for eBay. They created a lot of extra work for customer support, but far more importantly they created a lot of bad feeling amongst those people who were ripped off.
Now, you would think that this would be obvious, and that having these listings banned permanently would be a logical outcome. Yet, despite the best efforts of Brian Burke, and despite the efforts of some reps like myself who took it upon ourselves to police these listings, the Business Unit wouldn't permit them to be banned. See, they only took into consideration the income from those listings, and they decided that there was enough income from the listings that banning them would be bad for business. It took YEARS, and I mean YEARS, before anyone could break through this wall of idiocy to explain the negative aspects and the amount of man hours that went into working on these issues.
Eventually these listings were banned, but not before they did an amazing amount of damage to eBay's repuation. And not to forget, they did a lot of damage to eBay member's wallets.
eBay and the Virginia Tech shooter.
A little known fact about the Virginia Tech shooter is that he bought a lot of gun related items from eBay.
Little known mainly because eBay completely wiped his account within a day of the shootings. Removed it from the database entirely.
I briefly viewed his feedback before the account was removed, and while he didn't buy the gun on eBay, just about everything else came from the site.
Little known mainly because eBay completely wiped his account within a day of the shootings. Removed it from the database entirely.
I briefly viewed his feedback before the account was removed, and while he didn't buy the gun on eBay, just about everything else came from the site.
The infamous Bill Cobb email, and the terrible issues it caused with Customer Support.
Some of you will remember the Feb 2005 email from Bill Cobb.
For those that don't, he ended it with the following:
"eBay has never stopped listening to our users and we never will. I know many of you already have Meg's e-mail address and frequently send her messages about things you care about. I hope you will do the same with me. My e-mail address is billcobb@ebay.com. I promise I'll read every e-mail. And most of all, I'll listen.
Sincerely,
Bill Cobb President eBay North America "
Bill Cobb was one of the worst things that ever happened to eBay, and this email pretty much summed up his complete lack of understanding of what eBay was about.
Immediately after sending this email out, his inbox was FLOODED with messages. Tens of thousands of messages. And this created an immediate problem. Clearly Bill Cobb couldn't really read all of these messages. In fact, many questioned if he could read at all.
So, this is what happened. One of the major CS centers in North America was directed to handle the volume. First, the entire QA (quality assurance) team was taken away from their tasks of making sure that the reps were doing their jobs properly, and they were tasked with answering what became known as the Cobb queue.
Not only did this take away the QA for the center, they were instructed that they could not use any of the pre-formatted email replies that existed in the database. And, they were given carte blanche to take whatever time was required to answer all of the concerns in an email.
It quickly became apparent that the QA team couldn't deal with the volume, nor did they have enough knowledge of the various issues to properly answer these concerns. So, more reps were drafted into answering these emails. Now keep in mind, a large number of these emails were about issues that had happened YEARS before, issues that couldn't even be dealt with anymore, but, because Bill had promised, they all got replied to. Naturally, with the caveat that they were being answered "on behalf of Bill Cobb".
So, for the first month or so, a lot of overtime was offered to help deal with the normal emails queues, which had naturally become slightly backlogged. This worked alright for a bit, then, with the 1st quarter coming to a close, all overtime was stopped. Which meant that because the Cobb emails were the #1 priority, many important email queues were allowed to backlog. Queues like the Banned Items reports, which quickly ended up more than a month behind. A queue which dealt with user reports of stuff like guns and drugs and other bad things not allowed on the site. Great idea Bill!
Myself being appalled at the idiocy, I sent an email to the internal eBay sites "Ask an Exec" feature, asking why overtime had been cut off when such important queues were being ignored, and such things as listings for guns were being ignored. Naturally, this created a massive shitstorm, because the person in charge of dealing with those emails forwarded it to every single executive in the company. My supervisor got crapped on, as did I. However, many Supervisors would say that off the record, they thought the Cobb email was a complete mistake.
Amazingly, this queue continued on for a long time. And at first, because the answers had to be free-handed, there were no metrics or stats kept for the reps working them. And reps, when given a license to waste as much time as possible without getting in trouble for it, took all the time they could. Not to mention that the overall quality of CS dropped because there was no more QA team to monitor the work being done!
Yes, this was Bill Cobb at his very worst. A man who had no clue what he was doing. Yet, he walked away from eBay with millions of dollars from his stock options.
For those that don't, he ended it with the following:
"eBay has never stopped listening to our users and we never will. I know many of you already have Meg's e-mail address and frequently send her messages about things you care about. I hope you will do the same with me. My e-mail address is billcobb@ebay.com. I promise I'll read every e-mail. And most of all, I'll listen.
Sincerely,
Bill Cobb President eBay North America "
Bill Cobb was one of the worst things that ever happened to eBay, and this email pretty much summed up his complete lack of understanding of what eBay was about.
Immediately after sending this email out, his inbox was FLOODED with messages. Tens of thousands of messages. And this created an immediate problem. Clearly Bill Cobb couldn't really read all of these messages. In fact, many questioned if he could read at all.
So, this is what happened. One of the major CS centers in North America was directed to handle the volume. First, the entire QA (quality assurance) team was taken away from their tasks of making sure that the reps were doing their jobs properly, and they were tasked with answering what became known as the Cobb queue.
Not only did this take away the QA for the center, they were instructed that they could not use any of the pre-formatted email replies that existed in the database. And, they were given carte blanche to take whatever time was required to answer all of the concerns in an email.
It quickly became apparent that the QA team couldn't deal with the volume, nor did they have enough knowledge of the various issues to properly answer these concerns. So, more reps were drafted into answering these emails. Now keep in mind, a large number of these emails were about issues that had happened YEARS before, issues that couldn't even be dealt with anymore, but, because Bill had promised, they all got replied to. Naturally, with the caveat that they were being answered "on behalf of Bill Cobb".
So, for the first month or so, a lot of overtime was offered to help deal with the normal emails queues, which had naturally become slightly backlogged. This worked alright for a bit, then, with the 1st quarter coming to a close, all overtime was stopped. Which meant that because the Cobb emails were the #1 priority, many important email queues were allowed to backlog. Queues like the Banned Items reports, which quickly ended up more than a month behind. A queue which dealt with user reports of stuff like guns and drugs and other bad things not allowed on the site. Great idea Bill!
Myself being appalled at the idiocy, I sent an email to the internal eBay sites "Ask an Exec" feature, asking why overtime had been cut off when such important queues were being ignored, and such things as listings for guns were being ignored. Naturally, this created a massive shitstorm, because the person in charge of dealing with those emails forwarded it to every single executive in the company. My supervisor got crapped on, as did I. However, many Supervisors would say that off the record, they thought the Cobb email was a complete mistake.
Amazingly, this queue continued on for a long time. And at first, because the answers had to be free-handed, there were no metrics or stats kept for the reps working them. And reps, when given a license to waste as much time as possible without getting in trouble for it, took all the time they could. Not to mention that the overall quality of CS dropped because there was no more QA team to monitor the work being done!
Yes, this was Bill Cobb at his very worst. A man who had no clue what he was doing. Yet, he walked away from eBay with millions of dollars from his stock options.
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