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New (stupid) eBay Announcement...
 

eBay's Operation Catalog Flies Under the Radar
By: Ina Steiner
Sat Sept 6 2008 21:29:36

eBay announced a Diamond-level PowerSeller tier in June, and as I blogged in mid-August, more companies will be joining Buy.com and be allowed to list on the site for free. Now I'm hearing that eBay is introducing a pilot program next month in which a number of manufacturer and big-box retailer catalogs will be launched to eBay. Third-party vendors will work with these sellers to get them onto the eBay platform - no small feat given the quantity of product SKUs in their catalogs.

These Diamond PowerSellers will be given special privileges. Commission (FVF) fees will be negotiated individually, and it's my understanding that participants in this pilot will not be charged listing fees, nor will they have to meet eBay's seller standards during the 90-day pilot program, which I've dubbed Operation Catalog.

The potential Gross Merchandise Volume of these sellers is enormous, and it fills out eBay's product line and helps it move toward providing a more uniform buying experience on the site, or so it hopes.

The flood of inventory onto the site in October could have a major impact on certain sellers in categories affected. As I write in tomorrow's editorial in AuctionBytes-Update, not only will some sellers find themselves competing with the manufacturer of the product they sell, but that competitor is getting free listings and better exposure.

If Operation Catalog does roll out in October as expected, sellers will find themselves going up against competition they never knew existed, with no time to adjust their selling strategy during the all-important holiday shopping season.


Link to the story:
AuctionBytes Blog by Ina Steiner

It looks like eBay is going to be the eBay killer!
How is this going to distinguish them from Amazon.com?

I think they are changing their name to eBazon.... LOL
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Has anyone looked up Buy.com's ebay account (BUY) on Toolhaus Negative/Neutral Feedback

Here it is:
Negative/Neutral Feedback received by Buy

Recent Feedback Ratings (last 12 months)
.............1 month.......6 months..........12 months
Positive.....52939..........192458...............2 17047
Neutral.........242...............912............. ....1082
Negative.......227...............883.............. ....947

well...
 

well, we all know that's where they wanted to head back around January when they got the new CEO. I just wonder how long it will take for them to figure it out and go back, or something else to pop up to fill the market for non-huge sellers.

"Something else" sites have already popped up. I don't know how welcome the Sellers will feel after being stung by the eBay DSR ratings/suspensions. They might just jump ship to the other auction sites.

I think meg whitman jumped ship just in time to save her soul from going to hell. Donahue is definitely tearing apart legit businesses and families with these changes he is doing just to put cash in his pocket. Its just horrible at the things ebay is doing. Why are they trying to mimic amazon? Amazon will just crush them and donahue can go and hang himself or get a job at the local wendys.

Do you really think that Donahue is thinking this up all on his own?
Meg is still on the board. These moves have probably been in place for a long while before this information was EVER released to the public.

The thing is:
* Big companies can't sneak on after being suspended
* If I owned a big company, I'd sell only outside of eBay because eBay is too much of a hassle to sell on. Then again maybe ebay is making the big companies immune to a lot of stuff that gets other people's listings taken down. eBay might even delete most of their bad feedback and DSRs, too. I've seen some power sellers about to do things like list their terms in their listing in text in a picture and change the picture after the sale and eBay just lets people like that continue, but I once said in a bunch of listings, "we do not accept cash mailed to us" and ebay removed hundreds of my listings all because of the phrase "accept cash mailed to us" and eBay refuses to admit error on it, too.

Big companies don't need eBay at all. eBay starts causing them trouble and they leave and eBay loses millions.

I can see the only reason that eBay is doing this crap is because their base listing numbers have dropped and they have to increase their listings for their stock-holder reports.
This decline started back in Jan when they started their dumb crap.
Their listings went down & their stock went down.
So they are having to pull in big box sellers to up their listing counts.
Where Amazon listings have increased.... Hummmm