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July 14, 2008
The end of an era on eBay?
Everybody knows eBay the online store where you can get anything from a power supply for a laptop to a Doctor Who scarf.
Well it looks like eBay has decided to shift away from the standard auction model pairing with buy.com to offer Amazon like products and services in a big store style format. This hasn't pleased the small seller that was the eBay bread and butter for years:
To accommodate Buy.com and other large sellers in the future, eBay last month announced a new "Diamond" level for its power sellers. Unlike its other classes of sellers, which pay eBay fees to list each item and share a percentage of each sale, Diamond sellers can negotiate their own fee arrangements with eBay.Details of eBay's deal with Buy.com are being kept private, though it appears from the sheer number of Buy.com listings flooding the site that Buy.com is not paying listing fees.
That has enraged many sellers, who have uncorked a wave of vitriol on eBay's community forums about this and other changes. Many believe that eBay has violated the sacred tenet of the "level playing field," which its founder, Pierre Omidyar, established as one of the company's basic principles.
I guess the day of the little man on the net may be fading, well there is always craigslist.
Posted by Peter at July 14, 2008 01:41 PM