Have eBay lost the plot?

I too have had positive experiences early on with purchasing and even selling on Ebay, however fraud and bad service put me off.

The level of fraudulent or purposely mis-described goods, allowed by Ebay to be foisted upon unsuspecting buyers made the whole experience tedious. for every genuine item one had to trawl through 50 fake items, which clearly were fakes and were listed in flagrant violation of Ebay's (alleged) policy.

Just look in antiques.

The hijacked accounts selling non-existent goods, the poor customer service, the support staff with IQ's approaching that of a mung bean working from scripts carefully designed to dismiss complaints, rather than address them, the total lack of fraud protection especially when using Paypal and the steadily rising fees are just the tip of the iceberg.

I could go on and on.

It is clear that management doesn't have a clue.

Ebay can only survive so long with constant churn (even though there's 'one born every minute') but eventually they'll run out of customers.

I challenge them to provide numbers:

Did Ebay put fake listings up to pad the listings? (be very careful how you answer that one - they'll probably call them 'test' listings).

How many 'inactive' members are there?

How many 'suspended' members are there?

How many 'duplicate' members are there? (originally they did not allow multiple identities  until they needed some new 'members' for the annual report).

How many reported frauds? (not investigated frauds, just reported).

It's definitely been hijacked and lead down the garden path - I believe  towards the dung heap. Watch their share price tank. I'm not the only one with this view.

Personally I know of several thousand in fraud losses from just a handful of friends. I know you can buy a million $2 widgets and all is ok, because who wants to steal $2. As soon as you get into the big ticket items it's a different ball game. One you eventually lose.

It's only a personal view but I advise anyone I meet to stay away from Ebay, both in a personal and professional capacity.

Fair question Peter. I've noticed eBay behaving like "big business" for quite some time now - from the people they've been hiring to the way they deal with the media.

When they tried to mandate PayPal as the only payment option for Australian eBayer's they crossed a line with many people. Despite the overwhelming number of compaints made by users about the proposal eBay only backed down when local regulators threatened to step in.

I find it surprising that a company that makes an effort to blog, and has traditionally been very effective at communicating with customers has slipped so easily in to behaving badly - especially when the groundswell does such a good job of telling them what is and isn't a good idea.