UK CORE eBay sellers propose more protests

Andy Merrett Websites
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eBay sellers that last month organised an eBay protest / virtual walkout have decided to step up their action against the online auction giant who they believe is treating them unfairly and is also swamped by junk listings.

The UK CORE (Campaign Of Rebuffed Ebayers) propose 4 days of action from next Thursday at 9pm. They’ll boycott all buying and selling activity and instead target and report bad listings. Members are angry about scam listings, poor customer service, increased fees passed on to buyers, and the flooding of the site by Far Eastern users who they claim are getting fee-free listings. Oh, and shop listings not being prominently listed – the cause of the first protests.

So, not much then.

“Clean up eBay” is a bigger protest that CORE say is brought about because eBay fail to police their site properly.

There seem to be plenty of groups and petitions in circulation at present. Web User reports that CORE has attracted over 1,160 online signatures, whereas the price change petition has attracted 27,587 signatures. There’s also a Power Sellers Unite website.

Whether this is going to make any difference to how eBay runs remains to be seen. It’s a worthy protest (at least for a tech cause) but still represents a drop in the ocean of the millions of users and transactions on eBay.

(Via Web User)

Andy Merrett
For latest tech stories go to TechDigest.tv

5 comments

  • Due to Ebay’s unfair policies, it is not only the sellers who are suffering but the buyers as well.

    The buyers are unable to see items sold by bona fide sellers and often end up getting a raw deal.

    EBay has to listen to both buyers and sellers and rectify the situation otherwise a lot of the sellers could face financial ruin

  • I’ve been trading on ebay for 6 years. The atmosphere has never been so bad as it is now. The ‘love’ for ebay has evapourated. Like many others, I’ve become heavily dependant on ebay for my income but the latest fee hikes and the growing trend towards an overblown and badly policed site, has massively hit my business. So I’m doing the same as many others, I’ve started trading on other sites such as tazbar and ebid and am about to launch my own web shop. At the same time I’m running down my presence on ebay to an absolute minimum.
    The worm has turned. As a community we are completely fed up with this degrading treament from the greedbay fatcats. My shop will be on ‘Holiday’ from 14th September until 18th September.
    Viva la CORE

  • Ebay said the protest, a few weeks ago was just a few vocal protesters, sounds more like a massive crowd than a few. The trouble seems to be that ebay is suffering from an acute deafness problem.

    The alternative auction sites like eBid and even new kid on the block Tazbar.com will soon be punishing ebay for its arrogant stance.

  • Ebay are trying to make shop owners, who provide a service especially
    for housebound people who cannot get to shops, obsolete. They areonly interested in high profits. Many shop owners themselves are disabled, unemployed, or carers looking after children, disabled or elderly people, They are trying to earn a living, selling on Ebay so that they are not a drain on the state, and ebay is pulling the rug from
    underneath their feet, charging so much in listing fees and commision that it is impossible to make even a small wage.

  • ebay are bound to try to play this down, but the evidence speaks for itself. The price increase and reduced visibility for store listings was supposed to encourage sellers to list more on core (auction) format. The number of core listings has fallen instead of rising as ebay wanted, from 15 million down to 13 million. This figure will fluctuate wildly especially when ebay try to counter the drop with cheap listing days, however they cannot hide the underlying trend. Other venues are gaining ground on ebay.

    Some stock market analysts have seen through the ebay spin and have predicted more problems to come. It has been said that the problems stem from lack of buyer activity, not from sellers listing trends and these measures will not succeed.

    ebay have encouraged sellers to open stores and now they have let us all down badly, going back on original promises. No wonder sellers throughout the World are taking legal action against them! No wonder sellers are ramping down their total ebay ‘presence’ or going one step further and leaving the site.

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