eBay Sellers furious with eBay, plan to stop using eBay for several hours.
A couple weeks ago, online auction powerhouse eBay announced plans to adjust their fee structures, effectively taking a larger cut off the top of any proceeds going to sellers. This has outraged eBay sellers, to an extent not seen since the last time eBay raised their prices, and also every time before that. A handful of sellers have even started circulating a petition to boycott eBay entirely, a petition made significantly more comical if you imagine its subtitle reading "And this time we mean it!"
Speaking as Cracked's resident e-business expert/nonsense spouting asshat, here's my opinion on where this is going to go: nowhere. Here's why: it's
fucking eBay. Any seller who is fed up with eBay and vows to go sell their wares on another internet auction site will quickly come to a pretty critical realization: there are no other internet auction sites. Oh, I'm sure there's technically other places out there that have both an auction format and discounted goods, but let's be serious here. Buyers go to eBay because that's where the sellers are, and vice versa. There's simply no other game in town. It's a little like trying to have anal sex, except without any "of that ass stuff."
Obviously a seller that's angry enough can go and start their own web site, and hope that their customer base is dedicated enough to follow. I guess if you've established a reputation as the internet's premiere resource for Third Reich marital aids, then you might have a bit of luck with that. But for most sellers, walking away from the millions of buyers on eBay isn't an option. If we choose to unnecessarily extend the above metaphor, it would be like walking away from a really big ass sex orgy, with your ass sex needs as yet unsated.
While the issue of eBay's fee structure is a writhing, sweaty one, we mustn't forget eBay's other much maligned decision to remove the ability for sellers to leave negative feedback on buyers. This seems grossly unfair until you consider for a second the fact that the feedback rating for buyers is essentially meaningless. Any seller will be happy to sell to a buyer that has a feedback score of zero. It's essentially a risk free transaction for the seller – they don't ship the item until they've received payment. The only feedback that's ever of use on eBay is seller feedback, which if we go back to our anal sex metaphor…
…
… actually, let's just stop there.
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Chris Bucholz is a writer and a robot. His personal blog, robotmantheblog.com contains a great deal of other humor articles, all of dubious quality and taste.
A couple weeks ago, online auction powerhouse eBay announced plans to adjust their fee structures, effectively taking a larger cut off the top of any proceeds going to sellers. This has outraged eBay sellers, to an extent not seen since the last time eBay raised their prices, and also every time before that. A handful of sellers have even started circulating a petition to boycott eBay entirely, a petition made significantly more comical if you imagine its subtitle reading "And this time we mean it!"
Speaking as Cracked's resident e-business expert/nonsense spouting asshat, here's my opinion on where this is going to go: nowhere. Here's why: it's 