eBay takes write-down on Skype and changes team
Back in 2005, it was pretty clear that eBay had ‘jumped the shark’ with the big Skype acquisition that was going to bring internet calling to eBay and reduce friction in transactions.

Well, today eBay announced that they are going to pay $530m of the $1.7b earn-out and take a $900m one-time charge on the decreased value of the Skype asset they paid a whopping $2.6b for back in 05….

eBay Fraud - 15 ways to avoid
As eBay’s user growth has slowed, I’ve been getting lots of questions from sellers, wall st. and other folks in the eBay ecosystem asking why I think buyers are not activating or de-activating. Like anyone in the eBay ecosystem, I travel a good bit and meet lots of online shoppers in my travels. I always like to ask if they buy/sell on eBay and then dig in based on their answers. In the last 2-3 years, the overwhelming number of people I’ve talked to fall into two camps:

1. eBay is too time consuming, I’d rather shop from amazon or somewhere vs. bidding.
2. I used to buy on eBay until…

And then the … after until turns into a sad story that runs the spectrum from a bad seller/item experience all the way to out-right fraud…..

Neutrals are now negatives in TnS policies…
Many great sellers are getting suspended/managed out of the marketplace because without notice, eBay is considering NEUTRALS to be essentially NEGATIVES In early June, in an obscure message board (not the announcement board). eBay via a TnS employee called “Policy Steve” (post 17) revealed that:

* eBay has found that the bottom 1% of sellers are responsible for 35% of buyer complaints (makes sense, but note that this kind of abstraction will tend to catch larger sellers vs. smaller sellers just by the nature of absolute numbers. If I sell 5k items/month, I’m bound to have 50 negatives that would take a smaller seller a lifetime to hit).
* eBay is actively suspending/limiting the sellers that fall into this category.
* When making the “Bad Boys” determination eBay is using this calculation:

“If more than 5% of a seller’s buyers are dissatisfied, as measured by negative and neutral Feedback left or Item Not Received complaints during a 90 day period, the seller is in violation of the Seller Non-Performance policy.” …

eBay takes write-down on Skype and changes team
Back in 2005, it was pretty clear that eBay had ‘jumped the shark’ with the big Skype acquisition that was going to bring internet calling to eBay and reduce friction in transactions.

Well, today eBay announced that they are going to pay $530m of the $1.7b earn-out and take a $900m one-time charge on the decreased value of the Skype asset they paid a whopping $2.6b for back in 05….

eBay Fraud - 15 ways to avoid
As eBay’s user growth has slowed, I’ve been getting lots of questions from sellers, wall st. and other folks in the eBay ecosystem asking why I think buyers are not activating or de-activating. Like anyone in the eBay ecosystem, I travel a good bit and meet lots of online shoppers in my travels. I always like to ask if they buy/sell on eBay and then dig in based on their answers. In the last 2-3 years, the overwhelming number of people I’ve talked to fall into two camps:

1. eBay is too time consuming, I’d rather shop from amazon or somewhere vs. bidding.
2. I used to buy on eBay until…

And then the … after until turns into a sad story that runs the spectrum from a bad seller/item experience all the way to out-right fraud…..

Neutrals are now negatives in TnS policies…
Many great sellers are getting suspended/managed out of the marketplace because without notice, eBay is considering NEUTRALS to be essentially NEGATIVES In early June, in an obscure message board (not the announcement board). eBay via a TnS employee called “Policy Steve” (post 17) revealed that:

* eBay has found that the bottom 1% of sellers are responsible for 35% of buyer complaints (makes sense, but note that this kind of abstraction will tend to catch larger sellers vs. smaller sellers just by the nature of absolute numbers. If I sell 5k items/month, I’m bound to have 50 negatives that would take a smaller seller a lifetime to hit).
* eBay is actively suspending/limiting the sellers that fall into this category.
* When making the “Bad Boys” determination eBay is using this calculation:

“If more than 5% of a seller’s buyers are dissatisfied, as measured by negative and neutral Feedback left or Item Not Received complaints during a 90 day period, the seller is in violation of the Seller Non-Performance policy.” …