eBay is All Ready for Back to School....Huh?

Just when retailers like Target and other retailers were being admonished and criticized for their much too early "back to school" advertisements and sales...that's when eBay thought it would be a good time to put a "Shop for School" image in the header of their website.

Nice move geniuses. We're like six weeks away from the new school year, basically right in the middle of summer and consumer confidence is lacking severely in anticipation of a debt ceiling deal in congress, and eBay chooses to join the bandwagon and promote back to school shit in the middle of July.

Who shops for notebooks and pencils on eBay anyway? Those things are loss leaders (I'm assuming here, call me an ass) that major retailers price at stupid low prices to get people in the door in hopes of selling them something they don't need, won't use, and will likely cost a lot more than a 49¢ notebook.

Being the eBay masochist that I am, I typed "back to school" into the eBay search bar, with "Best Match" selected and my search returned over 5000 results with this outfit as the #1 best match.

That's right, a size 10 "outfit" with just hours to go in the auction is my "Best Match" for back to school shopping....now lest you think that this is a really hot item, it has one bid for 99¢ and the description: Great outfit for the fall.. the skort is a size 10 with adjustable waistbands and the matching hoodie jacket with zipper is also a size 10.. the outfit is from Childrens place.. will do combined shipping.. Thanks for looking!

So they spelled skirt wrong. So they didn't capitalize "Place" in the company name. So they didn't put the apostrophe in "Children's Place." So they use two periods at the end of each sentence. So they have only one crappy picture. So what. My children are home schooled, and boys, so I don't care. It's just funny that a company with around a billion dollars in profit each year would run a back to school campaign and then have this crap as the best match item for "back to school."

And then just try to find notebooks on eBay, you know, the paper kind.

O.co Says Goodbye to Marketplace

Overstock is saying goodbye to third party sellers, on July 21st O.co will shutter its marketplace for good. No more Overstock Auctions, no more Overstock stores, no more individuals selling on Overstock. While the move is likely to go unnoticed by most of the eCommerce small business community of sellers, there are those who will remember that 5 or 6 years ago, Overstock WAS going to be THE eBay Killer.

In the end Overstock was just too late into the market despite the problems that the competitors already had. For most sellers it was easier to put up with eBay's high fees, stupid rules, and lagging prices and falling sell-through rates, than it was to deal with Overstock's obscurity. Despite national advertising campaigns on the internet, TV and print ads, Overstock auctions and multi-seller marketplace failed to catch on with sellers.

News of O.co's marketplace failure made me go back and check on some of the links to third party multi-seller sites on Firemeg.com. Many have closed. Most have either given up, been forced out, or morphed into affiliate sites that though while they end up feeding what they wished to overtake, they now have steady income without all of the hassle of maintaining a network of thousands of individual sellers.

Did eBay Launch a DoS Attack Against eBaymotorssucks.com?

We received an email the other day from the owner of the www.ebaymotorssucks.com website concerning an ongoing DDoS attack against his site, one that he blames eBay Inc. for orchestrating. For those of you who don't know, and right now can't visit the site because it is down due to the attack, eBay Motors Sucks is a site that for years has been dedicated to exposing fraud on eBay; Whether this fraud be caused by unscrupulous sellers, scammers or by the corporation itself, there is little doubt in anyone's mind that eBay is wrought with fraud and has been for some time.

The site owner blames eBay for the attack. Is it reasonable to assume that eBay would do such a thing? Perhaps. If you've followed this and other eBay related blogs over the years, you know that eBay Inc. will use money, power, influence, threats and intimidation to accomplish their goals....it's a public company after all, and since employees (particularly the management) are paid in part with stock options, it is in their best interest that the company remain healthy financially. Denying fraud and hiding scams and hacking that have affected the site is to their benefit.

That said, it is also just as likely that the DDoS attack came from an unhappy scammer organization who didn't like eBaymotorssucks.com bringing to light their scams. Whether the attack was orchestrated by eBay, scammers, or another party, the fact remains that eBay Motors Sucks' website has been dedicated to exposing fraud on eBay for years....which is why it is my personal belief that eBay is not behind the attack. If I were an executive at eBay, I would be thanklessly grateful that such sites exist to expose fraud. It's much easier to pay an employee or two to peruse sites such as ebaymotorssucks.com to learn of scams and fraud, rather than pay a brigade of employees to search the site for scams - which change and morph constantly.

Anyway, eBaymotorssucks posted a video to Youtube about the incident, you can watch it and decide for yourself...