Now Companies Suing eBay For Giving Others Better Listings

from the give-it-up dept

Remember all those lawsuits against Google by people who didn't like how Google listed them (i.e., they felt that Google had them too far down the rankings)? Well, it appears that some similar lawsuits are being filed against eBay. One jewelry sales company, Windsor Auctions, felt that it should have been making more money via eBay and sued the company after realizing that a competitor was using tools eBay provided it to get better listings. Windsor mostly relied on a depression-era law that tried to stop big companies from engaging in predatory sales practices (using its marketing muscle to force suppliers to give it better deals). As Eric Goldman points out in the link above, the law makes almost no sense today (and it's questionable if it ever did). It certainly doesn't seem to apply to this case -- and the court has agreed, tossing out those charges, though leaving some others dealing with a implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. It's difficult to see how eBay can be at fault here for offering up tools that will help sellers, but as we've seen with all those Google cases, companies always look for someone to blame when someone beats them in the market -- and the company with the big pockets is always an easy target.

Filed Under: auctions, listings, predatory pricing
Companies: ebay, windsor auctions

Is A GoDaddy VP Bidding Against Customers In Domain Auctions?

from the very-questionable-if-true dept

Slashdot is running an interesting post, suggesting that GoDaddy's VP in charge of managing the domain auctions it runs on expired domains, has been caught participating in the auctions himself, often driving up the prices of those auctions for customers. That's one way to pump up those revenue numbers. If this is shown to be true, it seems incredibly questionable.

Filed Under: auctions, conflict of interest, domains
Companies: godaddy

Australia Tells eBay It Can't Require Auction Users Only Use PayPal

from the competition-is-good dept

Slashdot points us to the news that Australian regulators have slapped down eBay's attempt to require users to use PayPal as a payment system, noting:

"Given eBay's position as Australia's leading online marketplace, the notified conduct will substantially reduce competition to supply online payment services to users of online marketplaces more generally. The ACCC acknowledges that having PayPal as the only payment provider has the potential to deliver some benefits to users, such as increased buyer protection insurance in certain circumstances. However, the ACCC believes that consumers are in the best position to decide which payment method is most suitable for them."

eBay's plan to ban all other payment system received a ton of negative publicity when first announced, so perhaps Australia's response isn't all that surprising. However, is it really necessary for the Australian government to step in? The anger from eBay users was quite strong, and you would think that the end result would be eBay users leaving for other online e-commerce options -- and that, alone, should be enough to get eBay to reconsider this decision. eBay shouldn't need to have the Australian government tell it that restricting payment options is a dumb idea. Consumers were already doing so. And, if we go by the ACCC's own words, it supposedly "believes that consumers are in the best position to decide" which e-commerce platform is most suitable as well.

Filed Under: accc, auctions, australia, competition, payment services
Companies: ebay, paypal

Online Auctions No Longer Fun?

from the just-not-worth-the-hassle dept

Lately, whenever we post about eBay, a huge crowd of folks shows up to complain about eBay. Many of the changes that eBay has implemented over the past few years haven't gone over well -- but a Business Week article suggests something else is up also: buyers just aren't interested in the "auction" model as much as they used to be. Personally, I know that's true for me. I remember bidding on a variety of auctions on eBay, but I doubt I've done so in at least five years -- mostly because I can find whatever I'm looking for a decent price and just buy it elsewhere, without the hassle of the auction. When it first came along, the auction process was novel and fun -- and it offered up products that just couldn't be found elsewhere. But, these days, that's very rarely the case. The auction process seems like a pain and most of the products are available in a more convenient manner.

That certainly doesn't mean the end of eBay, or even the end of auctions (as Mathew Ingram notes, auctions are good for a certain class of products). And, as the original article notes, eBay's business has been shifting increasingly to fixed-price sales rather than auctions. But many people still do think of eBay as an auction site, and its biggest near-term challenge may be convincing people that it's more than that.

Filed Under: auctions, e-commerce, novelty
Companies: ebay

Court Says Reselling Software Is Okay

from the good-news dept

Last year, we wrote about a case filed by an eBay seller against Autodesk, claiming the company unfairly prevented him from reselling used copies of Autodesk software that he had legally purchased. Basically, every time the guy listed Autodesk software, the company would send a DMCA takedown to eBay who would take it down. Each time, the guy would send a counter claim, which Autodesk would ignore, allowing the software to go back on the site. However, with so many takedown notices, eBay banned his account for abuse -- even though he successfully responded to each claim as being false. For that, he sued Autodesk. Autodesk moved to have the court dismiss the case claiming that the seller had no right of first sale because the software was "licensed" rather than sold. If that sounds like weak semantics, you've got a point... and it appears the court agrees with you. In denying Autodesk's request to dismiss the case, the court indicates that, even though the case law covering this issue often varies, it believes that the software has been sold, not licensed, and therefore the right of first sale does exist on Autodesk's software. The case should now proceed if Autodesk doesn't quickly show up with an offer to settle the case quietly (which it might). Assuming the case does go forward, it's going to be worth watching closely, as it will have important ramifications for the right to resell software you purchased.

Filed Under: auctions, autocad, dmca, right of first sale
Companies: autodesk, ebay

Sellers Band Together To Create Their Own Naughty Buyer List For eBay

from the well-that's-one-way-to-deal-with-things dept

Back in February, you may recall that eBay announced plans to ban negative feedback from sellers to buyers. The problem was that many sellers were apparently using it as a weapon against buyers who might criticize them. That is, if you had a bad experience as a buyer, rather than fix the problems that resulted in that bad experience, the seller would simply slam you back in the buyer feedback. In other words, it had become something of a nuclear stalemate -- forcing buyers to be too afraid to leave any negative feedback for sellers. Of course, banning negative feedback on buyers seems a bit extreme as the response. And, in the comments to our post, people suggested a variety of alternatives eBay could have tried (including not letting you see the feedback someone left for you until you leave feedback for them). In the meantime, sellers who are upset about this may now have another weapon. One site has set up a system for sellers to share their own buyer "blacklists," effectively creating a large list of problem buyers. What's most interesting to me, is how this shows how the community itself responds to a change in the rules that they feel has too many negative consequences -- rather than just waiting for eBay to fix the problem.

Filed Under: auctions, feedback, ratings, sellers
Companies: ebay

Warner Brothers Shuts Down Auction For Children's Cancer Charity

from the nice-of-them dept

Reader Jonathan points us to a story that's also made the rounds on Boing Boing. Basically a blogger who apparently is somewhat well connected in the comic book/superhero world decided to get a bunch of artists he knew together to create comic character-based artwork to auction on eBay with the proceeds being sent to a children's charity who had helped out his own family at one point. The charity auction was announced, a bunch of artists signed up and created superhero-related artwork, and the auctions began on eBay. At some point, Warner Brothers, who owns the rights to many superhero characters contacted eBay to shut down a few of the auctions. This made the guy pull the rest of the auctions and get a bit nervous about whether or not he broke the law. Oddly, after all of this started getting attention Warner Brothers let one of the auctions proceed, but didn't respond to a question from the guy about letting the others move forward. In fact, in an email, Warner Brothers didn't explain its position at all.

On the whole, the legal issue is a bit murky (and it doesn't sound like anyone's making any legal threats here, so this probably won't go any further). The artwork may very well have infringed (though there are reasonable arguments for why it was not infringing as well). However, once again, this does seem like a situation where lawyers jumped ahead of what actually made sense from a business or PR standpoint. A smart company would have seen this going on and would have figured out a way to embrace it and come out of it looking like a good guy -- perhaps sponsoring the charity auction in some manner or another. But in shutting down the auctions, Warner Brothers comes off as a big legal bully who doesn't want to help kids with cancer. One more reason why legal solutions should always be looked at as a last line of defense, rather than an automatic solution.

Filed Under: artwork, auctions, charity, super heroes
Companies: ebay, warner brothers

eBay Exec Explains How Not Using PayPal Is Like Dealing Heroin...

from the work-on-those-analogies-a-bit dept

Down in Australia, eBay has apparently decided to require sellers to use eBay-owned PayPal for electronic transactions, blocking out a number of other solution providers in the space. Understandably, this has upset a bunch of eBay customers who, for whatever reason, prefer other payment solutions (often because they've had bad experiences with PayPal). eBay's Australian execs, to their credit, decided to hold a "town hall" meeting to discuss the changed proposal -- and it didn't go particularly well, from the sound of it (thanks to an anonymous reader for sending that in). Apparently, the booing and hissing started early (well, late, because the eBay team opened the doors quite late) and things just spiraled downhill from there. But the key point of ridiculousness was when regional VP Simon Smith explained the reasoning as follows: "We're not allowing people to offer unsafe choices, just like in this democracy you can't go out and buy heroin on the streets." Now, you can understand what he was saying... but, clearly, there's a bit of a difference between using a non-PayPal electronic payments solution and dealing heroin. And, of course, if this were really about "protecting" buyers and sellers, then shouldn't eBay at least offer a path for third party providers to become "certified" as being safe?

Filed Under: auctions, australia, paypal
Companies: ebay, paypal

eBay Bans Auctions Of Digital Goods

from the another-market-mucked-up-by-digital-goods dept

We've pointed out more than a few times how digital goods muck up traditional markets that are based on the concept of scarcity, and it appears that eBay has come to the same conclusion. It's now banned the direct sale of purely digital goods from either its auctions or its direct sales offerings. Instead, those who want to sell digital goods need to put up a classified ad on the site, rather than a transactional platform. The basic reason has to do with the (wouldn't you know it?) infinitely reproduceable nature of digital goods. That allows eBay sellers to list the same product many, many, many times over, since they have an infinite supply. This practice is screwing up listings and (more importantly) is being used to manipulate feedback ratings, and so eBay has done away with it.

Filed Under: auctions, digital goods
Companies: ebay

Can Dropping Fees Revitalize eBay?

from the time-to-reinvent dept

Over the past few months, more and more people have been noticing that eBay seems to have stagnated. Sure, it's been making plenty of money and still gets a ton of traffic, but it's not growing as fast as people would like, and there are numerous signs that it's starting to plateau. With Meg Whitman stepping down and John Donahue stepping up to the CEO position, the company has now announced lower fees and "tightened" seller standards to try to cut down on the rampant fraud that has managed to scare off many potential eBay buyers. Amusingly, this lowered fee comes just a day after new research hyped up how much eBay was saving people. The researchers behind the report suggested that, if the economy does go into a real recession, eBay should benefit as people switch to eBay searching for bargains. If that were truly the case, though, then it would seem eBay wouldn't have to be cutting fees.

The real problem may simply be that eBay is too constrained by its own success. It's attempts at branching out with things like Skype and StumbleUpon certainly haven't done much to help eBay, as the eagerly prayed-for synergies turned out to not exist. eBay's own attempts at revitalizing its core business have been equally pointless. So, it seems like something of a desperation play to lower fees, but it's difficult to see it having much of an impact. Certainly, it will make eBay sellers happier, but the transaction fees aren't the barrier eBay is facing in staying relevant. In fact, eBay itself should know this. When Yahoo tried to compete with eBay, it's key selling point was lower transaction costs for sellers, and that didn't do much to attract users.

eBay finds itself in a tough position. If it changes anything in its core business too drastically, it risks alienating those who helped bring the company to its current position. But, not changing will continue the stagnation process and certainly make the hole it needs to dig itself out of that much deeper. In figuring out a new path, it may want to take a few lessons from Amazon, which has been successfully reinventing itself from the inside with its web services offerings, while still striving to keep its core userbase satisfied. Amazon recognized that it could expand into a non-competing business that leveraged its strengths. While some might say that's what eBay tried to do with Skype, that was an acquisition, rather than a ground up offering, and it's still never been clearly explained what synergies there are between the two. In contrast, Amazon's web services offering clearly builds on its experience managing large scale backend operations, as well as its ability to handle a massive number of transactions. eBay probably should be trying to become the "Kinkos" of the web -- a small business's ideal partner -- but has yet to figure out how to do so.

Update: As noted in the comments and elsewhere, this isn't so much a cut in rates as a change in rates. For many sellers, the fees will actually be higher.

Filed Under: auctions, fees, growth
Companies: ebay