eBay to de-emphasize auctions, lose all distinctiveness

by Brad Linder Aug 20th 2008

Online auction site eBay has two things that make it different from every other online store. First, it's a virtual bazaar where anyone can hawk their own goods rather than a traditional storefront where a company maintains and sells its own inventory. Second, as an auction site, there's a chance that buyers will get a real bargain, or that sellers will get more than an item is worth.

For a while now, eBay has been offering sellers the option of selling items for a fixed price. This way both the buyer and the seller know exactly how much money will change hands up front. If you search eBay for pretty much any item now, you'll find a ton of "buy it now" listings amidst the sea of auctions.

But now it looks like eBay wants to change the ratio a bit, by lowering seller fees for fixed priced items. This will do three things:

Make it easier for customers to simply place an order for an item at a specified price instead of waiting a week to find out if they won an auction
Help eBay compete with the thousands of other web stores offering items for fixed prices
Kill off one of the things that really made eBay special

Now, eBay isn't really going to emphasize that last bit. But the truth is, the move sort of turns eBay into half.com (which is already owned by eBay). Sure, a few sellers might decide it's worth selling their items in auctions, hoping that some buyer will forget to comparison shop and pay way too much for an item. But if it's cheaper to just list the item for the price you hope to get, why wouldn't you? And that takes a way a bit of the excitement involved in the bidding process.

Then again, with so many people using eBay, when was the last time you really got a bargain as a buyer?

Tags: auctions, buy-it-now, ebay, half.com, paypal

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jon Niola said 2:45PM on 8-20-2008

Honestly, I don't remember the last time I went on eBay looking for a bargain. Typically if I go on eBay it is to find a rare or hard-to-find item. That is where the site really shines.

But if they want to become simply a conduit between retailers and shoppers I think they will lose a lot of what made the site so special. The whole flea market feel of the site is what makes it stand out.

James said 3:00PM on 8-20-2008

Agreed about rare items -- the last few times I've bothered with eBay it was to find something like a laptop part or a very old video game. If you can get it from Newegg or Wal-Mart, chances are you're going to get a better experience at the retail store.

strawberry said 2:48PM on 8-20-2008

Its easier to just buy it now. If you think you're getting a bargain, it probably just means you're going to get snipped.

feffrey said 3:41PM on 8-20-2008

Ebay is about the 2nd place I look for new-ish stuff and 1st place to find stuff that is old.
In the last month I have saved a ton of moeny buying stuff from ebay than newegg.
Print server for $0.99, 2.5 250 GB for $50, 2 gb ram for my old server $20, etc.

Personally I like being able to bid on an item and have the option of a buy now.
Like wait 6 days and possibly get it for $20 or buy now for $40. I try to wait for the bid, but if I need something right now I will do a buy now.

Aron T said 5:12PM on 8-20-2008

I think used items are eBay shines. If you're looking for a new item you are not going to find it cheaper than anywhere else; and depending on the item's popularity could pay more.

Used items however have a lot more fluidity to their value and for that reason a bargain is more likely to be had.

dukemang said 5:15PM on 8-20-2008

For people like me, Buy It Now is a good thing. I can quickly see if there really is a bargin and not have to deal with crooked sellers who have people on staff that just bid up the price on the "bargins" until they aren't worth it. More than once I tried to buy a broken dvd player but mysteriously the items were autobid out of my price range and not just before the auction ended. When I looked at the bid histories they were all the same two or three people.

Ebay is losing customers because they can't be confident they are not being scammed from items to business practices.

Marc Savoy said 7:25PM on 8-20-2008

eBay's de-emphasis of auctions makes about as much sense as having Google de-emphasizing search.

alex B said 11:16PM on 8-20-2008

Usualy peoples buy it now price is pretty much on par with onine retailers prices plus blown up shipping. If I had a choice between ebay and amazon, id go amazon cause its easy to return if need be. Mostly I buy on ebay for the bargain. I hardly see buy it nows as a bargain.

bob power seller said 2:58AM on 8-21-2008

Ebay shot themselves in the foot when it comes to an auction site. Like a real auction, a garage sale, or a clearance bin, shopper seek out deals. When they implemented the multi-category organization, spelling correction, automated descriptions, etc, they took the human component out of the site. This means that there are FAR FEWER deals resulting from spelling errors, miscategorizations, poor descriptions, etc. I used to surf Ebay with a dyslexic dictionary looking for deals. Those just don't exist any more... which has put a big dent in my Ebay shopping (I was a former power seller, btw). On top of that, Ebay really let the fraud get out of hand on their site. There was a time when 99% of auctions ended cleanly and items were real. Now, I would guess that big ticket items are about 30% fraud, and non-paying bidders are about 15% across the board (which is HUGE). In those situations, Ebay makes you jump through hoops to recoop your money from them (ie they profit from fraud on their site and therefore don't bother to fix it). This made it too expensive for me to continue making reasonable profit margins... and I was constantly waiting to get back large sums of money for fraud and non-paying items.

I could go on... the idiotically long and tedious listing process, the constant nickle-and-dime add-ons, etc. Frankly, whoever is running Ebay is probably also the president of a large bank since the policies seem to be the same... "Take the customers' money in any manner possible regardless of ethics or morality." Shame on Ebay for letting cumulitive bureaucratic management decisions ruin their site (and likely their future). Good thing they were smart enough to buy 25% of Craigslist... because it is the future of used/second hand items.

Barry Cleave said 8:05AM on 8-21-2008

This post made me think about my recent use of eBay and the fact that I posted about Auction inquisitor (a scam detecting tool) a while back on my blog.

I bought 3 items in the past 2 weeks after not buying anything for a while. They were all bought with "But-it-now" and I cannot remember the last time I bid for anything in a proper auction.

I suppose it is because it is easy, quick, instant gratification and if you do a little research you can be confident in the product, the price and the seller. (ie You are not likely to get scammed)
So you can see why eBay me be heading in this direction if my buying habits are fairly typical for at least part of their "audience".

Barry Cleave
ProReviewer

Anonymous said 7:42PM on 8-22-2008

I'm more concerned with Paypal than anything else. As a seller I prefer money order/personal cheque because it doesn't charge a fee and its it's a lot safer. Paypal has held money more times than i can count for no good reason and over charged fees which are nearly impossible to get back.

The new feedback policies are a disgrace. Buyers are encouraged to leave negative feedback! and Sellers cant defend themselves. I sell antiques and have a perfect rating so far. As an antique seller I need protection from irate Buyers, there are a lot of them around and taking the proactive stance of blocking ppl who have left negative feedback which is obviously retaliatory seems ridiculous.

They need competition - where is a good eBay alternative?

Michael said 11:12PM on 8-29-2008

There isn't one, until somebody makes one any way. There are some open source auction scripts that could be customized into anything you want.

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