[tp3z4u]

Ex eBay employee here. Don't buy or sell on eBay. It's not that no-one there cares, I certainly did, it is that no-one in power cares. The corporate culture is toxic. I worked in bad buyer experience and building algorithms to fix this is trivial. It happens a lot so there is a lot of data and the patterns are simple. The problem is that every fix costs eBay a discernible amount money.

We did customer analysis to show that existing customers were leaving faster than new ones were coming in. Usually people have one bad experience and never come back. They still didn't care and given their culture they will never care until their stock plummets or a real competitor comes along.

[themihai]

But they already have a real competitor: Amazon

[tp3z4u]

Not yet and not really.

[candiodari]

Can you elaborate a bit on that ? It seems from afar that both Amazon and Ebay are crashing into eachother.

Amazon, for it's side, is opening up to sellers. From secondhand sellers to etsy type products getting listed on Amazon. It's focus is different: getting many producers/middlemen to list the same products.

Ebay is working to get part of the logistics, payment, etc. in house. Ebay used to be just a listing site. But then payment came into ebay (with a hefty fee raise I might add), and now we see the focus on ebay to classify things the way Amazon does. You're seeing that when you sell something on ebay. Ebay will ask "is it like this ?" and then ask a few questions to determine the exact product.

Seems like both companies are evolving toward the same middle ground.

[tp3z4u]

It's a big nuanced topic but I'll elaborate a bit more.

Amazon has bigger fish to fry than eBay. Amazon can always focus on second hand market place later while leveraging their infrastructure to ensure a win. My bet is that they will take a long time to get around to it. In the meantime phone based and social based have a pretty good shot at competing. This will also take a long time.

eBays efforts to take on Amazon at being Amazon is a total waste of what little focus they have. Like Yahoo, one of the best perks of eBay is that it's hard to get fired. It's very relaxed and people are quite comfortable - why risk an easy / safe job by taking a risk doing something innovative. After a while innovative people get jack of it and leave and all you're left is the lazy and incompetent. There are pockets of excellence within eBay but they're getting smaller. There was a potential for a turnaround when the stock price was $10 but at $30+ no-one is interested.