6 ms·

As a shopper I hate a lot of the recent shifts in their strategy. The only thing interesting enough to make me want to deal with all the hassles of eBay are the

As a shopper I hate a lot of the recent shifts in their strategy. The only thing interesting enough to make me want to deal with all the hassles of eBay are the interesting vintage or collectible one-of-a-kind items: coins, camera gear, art, etc. These things are more work to list and describe but make for an always entertaining browsing experience. I loved eBay back in the day when it was like one big never-ending garage sale. The catalogization of eBay, moving toward SKU-based product pages with sellers providing fulfillment, ends up feeling like a weird me-too version of the Amazon FBA race to the bottom. Small sellers with interesting inventory have been bled to death with ever-increasing fees and seem ready to pack up the wagon and move on to greener pastures. The featured products on the homepage have the same bland sameness as every other e-com site and as a shopper I don't feel like I have much reason to ever go there these days. Right now I'm seeing a Patriots ballcap, some men's sneakers, and a small grill. Might as well be shopping at Target.

baroffoos 8y ago
I noticed the same thing. The front page is so boring it feels like a regular stores website. I don't know about the rest of their users but I don't come to ebay to buy sunglasses or phones. I'm looking for that obscure adapter that no store in the country sells. Or that game I used to play that has long since gone out of production. I can still find that stuff but there is no way to just casually look around at the interesting bits, you have to search for it.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  I think the issue is that many people use eBay less than sites like Amazon or AliExpress where you're out to pick a product - I used to use ebay quite often for buying things like phone cases and electronics components directly from China. Now I choose AliExpress when I want it cheaper and Amazon when I want it faster. eBay has lost a lot of marketshare in this space - yes, there's business in auctioning collectibles and second hand stuff, but it's much smaller than that direct purchase market and they'd likely have to scale back the site in some respects.
- cft 8y ago
  Their front page should be just a search box.
- heyjudy 8y ago
  Maybe that signals they need to work on site UX and AI to present useful purchases in a more consistent buying experience than an atomized encyclopedia galactica that drowns the user in a paradox of choice?
- jurassic 8y ago
  I guess this is what they've needed to do to scale their revenue. A quick google search shows that eBay did about $9B in the US last year whereas Heritage Auctions, one of the premier auction sites for high-end collectibles and luxury items, only did about $900M in revenue. So there's plenty of money to be made peddling generic bullshit.
- zrobotics 8y ago
  To be fair, Amazon has 10 years of purchase history on my account, and they can't manage to put up anything on the home page that I'm interested in. Personally, I'm very much starting to doubt algorithmic recommendations for shopping sites. They work for books and music, but as Amazon has morphed into offering everything they can't recommend anything decent. I just get the same generic recommendations for products similar to my last few purchases, similar to Google advertising products that I've already searched for and bought. Adtech has promised a lot, but in my experience it hasn't delivered on most of those promises. Oddly, I find the ebay homepage more useful, since it also displays a selection of products from sellers I watch, and has figured out I have a fetish for vintage test equipment. I don't think I've ever bought anything from the Amazon homepage, but I bought at least 3 items that I saw on the eBay homepage (from sellers I watched) in the last year. This relies on active participation from the user, however, and benefits people who have used the site for a long time. And I can't kid myself, eBay can't grow selling used test equipment and motorcycle parts, but they still do the online sale of unique items better than anyone else. I do miss the 'rummage sale' aspect though, it's now nearly impossible to browse and find weird items, you have to just search for specific items rather than browse.
  - hutattedonmyarm 8y ago
    My housemate recently got a suggestion for a food processor dash button
    - ahartmetz 8y ago
      Haha, brilliant. A good example of "AI" gone wrong. I wonder whether Amazon's recommender has a flag for durable goods, and if so, how it failed.
    - dmartinez 8y ago
      Perhaps Amazon knows something about planned obsolescence that the consumer does not.
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    Yes all I get is products I have already brought - yes I have brought that RPG supplement No I am not going to buy it again why even bother sending me that email or suggesting it?
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
eBay, yeah it used to be pretty good. Which could have served as their tagline for most of the last decade. They've scared off the most interesting segment of eBay with their policies that are actively hostile to smallest sellers, and their rubber stamp appeals processes. The most interesting segment were the individuals using it for garage sales or selling grandparent's old collection and bits of Victoriana. I could, and sometimes did, spend hundreds. There's almost none left. The very few that persevere have to walk the very fine line between unacceptable listing and opening themselves to the many possible scams. They killed that niche pretty effectively. I can't imagine using it to sell ever again. Instead, there's medium scale businesses who can afford some percentage of fraud as "cost of doing business", eBay has become another OK outlet. It's an OK place for run of the mill, boring, ecommerce, especially at the cheapest end of the scale. There's now lots of businesses trying to tread those collectables niches with very overpriced listings or endless listings of old rubbish branded collectable. Surprisingly, I find I am using eBay a lot more than I did five years ago. It's the place to buy batteries, cables and other trivia under £5 with some confidence there's no forgeries like I've had on Amazon. As a saver I should perhaps be grateful, but their strategies seem to have been designed to turn me, and my peers, from thousand(s) a year customers to tens. If not intentional, surely they could and should have seen the trend years ago.
- beering 8y ago
  How do you avoid forgeries on eBay? I've seen a good proportion of the listings very obvious counterfeits or fakes (e.g. search for "2TB SD card") and you have to have some savvy to tell the difference between genuine OEM and fake OEM in some cases. I'm not sure I can guarantee always getting genuine goods, so I have avoided eBay for things where that matters.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    You can't tell before you buy. Your only hope is requesting a refund and hoping they don't ask you to ship it back. There are so many converter plugs for sale on eBay that are pretty much impossible for their size and price like USB to 3.5mm converters advertised to let you play music from a USB. Somehow I don't think they have a USB controller, DAC, FAT32 driver and mp3 decoder in a little cable sold for $0.70 free shipping.
mattsfrey 8y ago
Sorry for the plug but you might want to check out HobbyDB, tiny little local startup here in Boulder that also hosts coworking space that I rent, but they specialize in what you're talking about and compete with ebay and are significantly more reasonable.

baroffoos 8y ago

I noticed the same thing. The front page is so boring it feels like a regular stores website. I don't know about the rest of their users but I don't come to ebay to buy sunglasses or phones. I'm looking for that obscure adapter that no store in the country sells. Or that game I used to play that has long since gone out of production. I can still find that stuff but there is no way to just casually look around at the interesting bits, you have to search for it.

shittyadmin 8y ago
I think the issue is that many people use eBay less than sites like Amazon or AliExpress where you're out to pick a product - I used to use ebay quite often for buying things like phone cases and electronics components directly from China. Now I choose AliExpress when I want it cheaper and Amazon when I want it faster. eBay has lost a lot of marketshare in this space - yes, there's business in auctioning collectibles and second hand stuff, but it's much smaller than that direct purchase market and they'd likely have to scale back the site in some respects.
cft 8y ago
Their front page should be just a search box.
heyjudy 8y ago
Maybe that signals they need to work on site UX and AI to present useful purchases in a more consistent buying experience than an atomized encyclopedia galactica that drowns the user in a paradox of choice?
jurassic 8y ago
I guess this is what they've needed to do to scale their revenue. A quick google search shows that eBay did about $9B in the US last year whereas Heritage Auctions, one of the premier auction sites for high-end collectibles and luxury items, only did about $900M in revenue. So there's plenty of money to be made peddling generic bullshit.
zrobotics 8y ago
To be fair, Amazon has 10 years of purchase history on my account, and they can't manage to put up anything on the home page that I'm interested in. Personally, I'm very much starting to doubt algorithmic recommendations for shopping sites. They work for books and music, but as Amazon has morphed into offering everything they can't recommend anything decent. I just get the same generic recommendations for products similar to my last few purchases, similar to Google advertising products that I've already searched for and bought. Adtech has promised a lot, but in my experience it hasn't delivered on most of those promises. Oddly, I find the ebay homepage more useful, since it also displays a selection of products from sellers I watch, and has figured out I have a fetish for vintage test equipment. I don't think I've ever bought anything from the Amazon homepage, but I bought at least 3 items that I saw on the eBay homepage (from sellers I watched) in the last year. This relies on active participation from the user, however, and benefits people who have used the site for a long time. And I can't kid myself, eBay can't grow selling used test equipment and motorcycle parts, but they still do the online sale of unique items better than anyone else. I do miss the 'rummage sale' aspect though, it's now nearly impossible to browse and find weird items, you have to just search for specific items rather than browse.
- hutattedonmyarm 8y ago
  My housemate recently got a suggestion for a food processor dash button
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    Haha, brilliant. A good example of "AI" gone wrong. I wonder whether Amazon's recommender has a flag for durable goods, and if so, how it failed.
  - dmartinez 8y ago
    Perhaps Amazon knows something about planned obsolescence that the consumer does not.
- C1sc0cat 8y ago
  Yes all I get is products I have already brought - yes I have brought that RPG supplement No I am not going to buy it again why even bother sending me that email or suggesting it?

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

eBay, yeah it used to be pretty good. Which could have served as their tagline for most of the last decade. They've scared off the most interesting segment of eBay with their policies that are actively hostile to smallest sellers, and their rubber stamp appeals processes. The most interesting segment were the individuals using it for garage sales or selling grandparent's old collection and bits of Victoriana. I could, and sometimes did, spend hundreds. There's almost none left. The very few that persevere have to walk the very fine line between unacceptable listing and opening themselves to the many possible scams. They killed that niche pretty effectively. I can't imagine using it to sell ever again. Instead, there's medium scale businesses who can afford some percentage of fraud as "cost of doing business", eBay has become another OK outlet. It's an OK place for run of the mill, boring, ecommerce, especially at the cheapest end of the scale. There's now lots of businesses trying to tread those collectables niches with very overpriced listings or endless listings of old rubbish branded collectable. Surprisingly, I find I am using eBay a lot more than I did five years ago. It's the place to buy batteries, cables and other trivia under £5 with some confidence there's no forgeries like I've had on Amazon. As a saver I should perhaps be grateful, but their strategies seem to have been designed to turn me, and my peers, from thousand(s) a year customers to tens. If not intentional, surely they could and should have seen the trend years ago.

beering 8y ago
How do you avoid forgeries on eBay? I've seen a good proportion of the listings very obvious counterfeits or fakes (e.g. search for "2TB SD card") and you have to have some savvy to tell the difference between genuine OEM and fake OEM in some cases. I'm not sure I can guarantee always getting genuine goods, so I have avoided eBay for things where that matters.
- ndnxhs 8y ago
  You can't tell before you buy. Your only hope is requesting a refund and hoping they don't ask you to ship it back. There are so many converter plugs for sale on eBay that are pretty much impossible for their size and price like USB to 3.5mm converters advertised to let you play music from a USB. Somehow I don't think they have a USB controller, DAC, FAT32 driver and mp3 decoder in a little cable sold for $0.70 free shipping.

mattsfrey 8y ago

Sorry for the plug but you might want to check out HobbyDB, tiny little local startup here in Boulder that also hosts coworking space that I rent, but they specialize in what you're talking about and compete with ebay and are significantly more reasonable.