You’ve probably heard that Ebay is about to enforce the use of it’s wholly owned payment service “Paypal” on every Ebay transaction.
The blogosphere and government regulatory bodies are up in arms about this. As they should be. In fact the ACCC (Competitive regulator in Australia) has just made a draft ruling blocking the move as Anti-competitive. Although Ebay claims it ‘significantly enhances protection of buyers and sellers against fraud” – which it may well do.
Here’s the thing Ebay – you’re clearly using monopoly power to force people to use a service you own, to extract more revenue. And your customers know this.
Startup blog says – Ebay should be true to the launch platform of being open, transparent, a market where users decide, what to pay and how to pay.
Never let the arrogance of success change how you treat those who made you successful in the first place.
Hammer Time.
What tricks and gimicks are next? Is there a rabbit in eBays hat? Is this a marketing or business arrangement experiment, or is this a very disturbing and sinister version of company value manipulation? Is there going to be yet another secretary document shredding investigation?
It may appear suspicious that eBay would form a business arrangement with Buy.com at the same time as the implementation of the controversial reputation and revenue damaging feedback policies.
Whether or not management is “padding the numbers”, (with questionable Buy listings), in a veiled attempt to keep up appearances, allowing time for new empowered buyers to gather is debatable. Whether or not there is a solid case against eBay for the Better Business Bureau, the FTC, the SEC, the Attorney General or a class action lawsuit, or even a criminal prosecution is a matter to be very seriously pondered. Whether or not John Donohoe will ever face justice, whether or not these policies constitute a criminal act, whether anyone is liable for irreparable harm is yet to be determined.
Seemingly beyond an attempt to “cook the books”, these combined policy decisions may appear to be the opposite of a “pump and dump” investment scheme, – a “bear attack”- (an attempt to drive down the value of company stock,) and bears close scrutiny.
If this is not a clumsily masterminded conspiracy, or misleading and deceptive practices, or some attempt to monopolize certain category sales for under the table profit, then what is it?
Is leadership on the line with an attempt to defraud investors while the company poses to repurchase an announced 1.9 billion dollars worth of company stock, and is this going to become headline news?
If there comes an announcement at the Live! convention of the cancellation of the questionable Buy.com agreement, if there is a sudden rollback of the feedback policies all this will just be coincidence and management comes out smelling like a rose, right?
Wrong.
When the gavel drops, company reputation, member trust and potential revenue have been wasted. The rising global flood of competition grows, steadily eroding this pathetic sand castle.
Obviously at the very least, these decisions will be the focus of investigation and study by students of economics and law, by business law specialists and by media now and for many years to come.
Until proper member safeguards are adopted, from the perspective of countless users, eBay company reputation is no better than that of their worst member.
google this to find it: froliky
Ebay might have a monopoly, however if they infuriate enough Australians with this sort of 3rd line forcing they may lose their popularity to a local solution such as Trading post auctions
I wanted to thank you for linking to my post about how I found the eBay/PayPal combination a stone wall in terms of sheltering a fraudster by refusing my requests for information to recover the moneys I was taken for.
After your article and the link were posted it was less than a day before eBay made a “special one-off” reimbusement of the remaining funds I was out.
They did not mention recovering the lost funds nor did they disclose why I was denied the information I requested to privately seek recovery from the seller.
Regardless I thank you for your post, as this was long considered a dead issue and a lesson learnt at this end.
73
Steve
K9ZW
http://k9zw.wordpress.com/
Reading your comments and that of many others, I am convinced these actions by eBay are designed to drive the stock down for them to do a buy back.
Its the only thing that makes sense, nothing else does.
Something like that would not be allowed to go on in Australia, ASIC (Australia Security Investment Commission) would investigate this behaviour rigorously.
Maybe the USA regulators should start do do so. ( If they have not been bought off )