Thursday, December 20, 2007
EBay wants to ditch the ‘fleamarket’ feel
John Donahoe, a muckety-muck over at Ebay, wants to do a major overhaul to the site so that it can shed the fleamarket stink eBay has developed lately.
I wish him the best of luck with that.
EBay used to be a great place to go to find stuff. It used to be a place where people went to unload their stuff to other people that wanted their stuff. Stuff was always sold in the timed auction format. You knew exactly how long something would remain up for auction. You could bid on stuff you wanted and then wait to see if you were the high bidder. It was actually a lot of fun.
Something happened to eBay a long the way. It became less of an auction site and more of a place for professional junk peddlers to sell their crap. They don’t use the auction format. They list things using a set sale price.
In other words, a fleamarket.
If John Donahoe truly wants to clear the fleamarket stink from eBay, he will find a way to clear the merchants and their eBay storefronts from the site. Return it to the timed auction format where regular people go to bid on stuff from other regular people.
Like I stated earlier, I wish him the best of luck with that.
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I don’t see that happening any time soon. I think, once eBay started doing the whole ’set price’ thing, it really went downhill. Make it an even ground for everyone to compete at, I say.
It’s been a long time since eBay was actually any good. I can remember how much fun it was to look for stuff. Now it’s just s cesspool of crap.
Yeah well, I really only look for old comics and books, really. But I do get depressed when everything is just a set price; it makes it harder to get a great deal on something.
Even when you do find something halfway decent, it usually has inflated shipping costs tacked on. I used to do a lot of buying on eBay. Now, not so much.