E-NNOYED WITH EBAY! ______________________________ ALL HAS NOT been well in the land of eBay since Checkout was unveiled on Oct. 22. Bulletin boards maintained by eBay are filled with angry posts lambasting the online auction service for the new payment policy. The words monopolistic, anti-American, and class action lawsuits are being bandied about by some of the more frustrated sellers. Others are simply threatening to stop selling on the service. For its part, eBay maintains to the angry throngs that it's just being responsive to the other crucial half of the equation that makes the service a success: The buyers, who have said in the past that they're confused about how to close a sale. Checkout,they maintain, makes it easier. For those who have never used eBay before, some background: When you are the successful bidder for an item on eBay, you're sent an e-mail that tells you so, and instructs you to correspond with the seller about the various ways you can pay for your purchase. The payment methods include a good old-fashioned snail mailed check, credit card (if the seller accepts it,) a popular form of digital cash called PayPal, and more recently, a competitor to PayPal called Billpoint, which happens to have been created by eBay. In essence, says eBay, the introduction of the new Checkout policy, which promotes the use of Billpoint, is similar to a store announcing it will accept a new type of credit card. The difference, say the sellers, is that eBay owns that credit card, and is all but forcing buyers and sellers to use it as the de facto standard. Not only does eBay make a cut on every transaction conducted on the site (sellers pay a percentage of the sale), but now, sellers complain, eBay will also get get a fee when Billpoint is used. Sellers say that while eBay maintains that the use of Checkout/Billpoint is optional, it is being promoted in a way that makes it hard, if not impossible, for customers to avoid. eBay is intermediating in a place where they hadn't been before, cry the sellers, by interjecting itself in the closing phase of a deal between buyer and seller. One eBay seller who deals in stamps and stamp-related items, Bob Patkin of Georgetown, Mass., posted this message to an eBay complaint board. "We try to list over 1,000 item per week but have literally stopped listing since Checkout has come about. We have many customers that buy up to 20 items at a time and Checkout requires me to send 20 invoices to one person. I have my own system that allows me to send multiple item invoices in seconds. We have avoided checkout but it has caused great confusion in some of our best customers. eBay please get rid of this option or make it our choice. If this does not happen we will be forced to stop using eBay." ______________________________ INTRIGUE AND CONSPIRACY: ______________________________ The brouhaha illustrates that eBay isn't a giant homegrown yard sale anymore. Started by a man whose girlfriend wanted to find a way online to aid and abet her Pez collection hobby, eBay is now a place where thousands of people literally run virtual small businesses. Their livelihood is dependent on the policies eBay imposes, not to mention the tremendous traffic it enjoys. Among the other complaints being levied against eBay is that the service is favoring high-volume sellers like Disney by not putting the same Checkout feature on its auctions. Many of these people feel the ultimate goal of eBay is to rid itself of the mom and pop sellers who built the service into the multi-billion dollar business it is today. Not so, maintains Kevin Pursglove, the eBay spokesman, who says the mom and pop sellers to this day make up the lion's share of listings on the service. The great majority of transactions are still done by fairly small to medium sized businesses, accounting for 80 percent of the listings on eBay, he said. As for the outpouring of dissent on eBay's boards, Pursglove said part of the problem is that users often respond badly to change. People go on the board with grand conspiracy theories, he said. It's very clear for any user to see that the various services are optional. That sort of argument, many of the sellers maintain, is not unlike another assertion made in a celebrated antitrust case. I think this is very similar to what Microsoft did to Netscape, writes ShopCindys, a seller based in the Pacific Northwest. ______________________________ PAYPAL VS. BILLPOINT: ______________________________ A spokesman for Billpoint rival Paypal said the company has heard from many buyers and sellers that the new eBay policy is confusing. We've certainly heard from many sellers that this is clearly designed to increase the use of Billpoint, said Vince Sollitto of Paypal (which in September filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission stating its intention to take the company public.) They're questioning the definition of the word optional. More than one in four eBay auctions use Paypal as their settlement means, said Sollitto, while under 5 percent use eBay's Billpoint. It certainly appears that they're attempting to devise ways to tilt the playing field. You do have to wonder why? The answer is that online auctions are big business. With gross sales of $2.35 billion in the third quarter, eBay is not only the leader in online auctions, but an undisputed success story in a sea of drowned dot-coms. The passion of its community has been evidenced in the past, said Pursglove, when other features and services were introduced and met with ire. The creation or introduction of any new service is designed to do what? Designed to help people buy and sell, said Pursglove. We have to be consistent in our willingness to work with buyers and sellers to improve the service.
