They've stayed remarkable true to their mission, haven't entered politics (ironic given previous CEO), and continued to offer a good service.
Since the commingling of inventory is now so prevalent at Amazon, I find myself using eBay more and more.
Maybe presently people have no major beefs with the organization.
But there have been more than enough negative actions by this company in the past including:
Suing craigslist (and losing) for breach of fiduciary duty because it wouldn't exploit its users enough. This was knowing that the shares were acquired in conflict with the ownership and mission of craigslist.
eBay tried to get inside information from Craigslist while it was secretly preparing release of Kijiji.[1]
eBay has been facilitating the sale of counterfeit items long before Amazon. Many sellers were upset by the requirement to use PayPal anded even acted to ban use of competing services.
So while the heat may be on Amazon, I would hold off on elevating eBay to some superior ethical position.
They spun Paypal off into an independent company in 2015.
Ebay is moving away from its tight integration with Paypal and has a deal with a new payment processor (Adyen) after it's current paypal deal ends in 2020. Between that and the fact that they're two public companies with separate freely traded ownership, it's hard for me to buy the argument that the spin off was "just for show".
https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-to-intermediate-pa...
The lawsuit had nothing to do with "exploiting users". It was about Newmark and Buckmaster's attempt to dilute eBay's shares. A lawsuit eBay won.
The lawsuit also involved reversing the staggered board elections craigslist put in place specifically to prevent eBay from gaining access to confidential material.
Both the share dilution and board procedural change were done in response to ebay’s surprise launch of an attempted direct competitor to craigslist.
Both sides claimed victory, and eBay did not end up influencing Craigslist in any way. So it is hard to paint it as much of a victory. [1]
And whatever you think of craigslists slow, stodgy UX and feature set, it is hard to imagine if eBay had gained control having some positive impact on the site’s destiny apart from some comparably exploitive direction.
Ebay wanted first to make money off craigslist, and failing that to get info that would allow their competing biz to do so.
[1] https://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2010/09/10/did-ebay-really...
There is something to be said for the stability of marketplace rules and ecosystem. No rules are perfect, but if the rules are stable, people eventually learn how to interpret signals and assess risk. If the rules are constantly changing, all that hard-earned customer knowledge is discarded at random intervals, because the platform vendor has silently forked/rebooted the economy into a parallel universe. Now you have sellers in the new universe and buyers in the old universe.
In a sane regulatory environment, platforms would be forced to put a version number on both the UX and ToS, so people would at least know the universe/rules have changed. As with other mandatory reporting, metrics on public notification would reduce "universe churn" and make it part of the marketing/competitive landscape.
https://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Raymond_Eric_S_The_Cathedra...
The irony is that what attracted me to Amazon in the first place was that they could mostly supply the things I used to go to eBay for, but did it better -- because Amazon held the inventory and handled returns.
If Amazon no longer does that for the things I buy, then there's no advantage to using them. It sounds like eBay will be getting more of my business back.
eBay has consistently handled disputes quickly and without hassles. Amazon has never managed that, even when they're the ones fulfilling the order.
Ebay's been good to me for nigh on 20 years, and it's not because everything is perfect quality. It's rather that, unlike Amazon, they don't try to hide and commingle differing quality items. Counterfeiting is still a problem, but giving negative feedback is still possible and it seems still encouraged in cases where it's warranted, and that makes the marketplace dynamics actually even out at scale. This is in stark comparison to Amazon, and it makes me trust eBay aggregate feedback scores much more on the whole.
I'll use Amazon for low-risk purchases, but otherwise, I'll find another retailer these days. The risk of something going awry and receiving poor after purchase support is too high.
Having used eBay since its early days, I stopped when they lost their focus on auctions and became just another platform. Now I have to bother with market research to set a fixed price - much more hassle than auctioning at zero Euros and letting the market find the optimum price (only works in liquid categories though). I understand that the mass market finds auctions bewildering and prefers fixed price... I'm still disappointed.
Selling toilet paper, or USB cables with that sort of bidding model doesn't work. I mean, prices don't need to fixed either. A dynamic bidding system of some sort (eg AdWords auctions) is definitely an interesting idea. But, to be the place where you ship for regular stuff it needs to be lower overhead for the buyer.
That's nothing against eBay's original mission. They did do (not anymore? I haven't tried in years) that job pretty well. I suspect it's still an awesome place to buy a proverbial broken radio.
Unsure if they are the best, but they have maintained their core business. Yes, they lost to amazon in the overall race, but the niche they have carved maintains itself well. I was growing concerned in the last few years they were racing to be amazon, but in the last year they have pulled back on it.
They need to update their app and website, but overall, I like their pro buyer stance on transactions. Incredibly, most of the time I am looking for something specific, ebay sellers have lower prices than amazon.
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2018&cmte=...
Their CEO also sent a somewhat political all office email after the last presidential election: https://www.vox.com/2016/11/9/13576446/ebay-ceo-memo-us-elec...
My point is just to say that "market liberalism" is a stance, not the absence of a stance.
Well, aside from forcing you to use paypal and go through their mediation process. I'll never spend a cent on ebay again, or sell there—credit cards are the only way to shield yourself from bad purchases (that and buying in person).
I think the only beef people have with eBay is how dumb their support people can be sometimes when you run into a problem.
They had skype, a kind of social network. They could have been facebook.
They had paypal they could have been the major payment processor on phones (see WeChat)
A lot of missed opportunities.
EDIT: While the above statement is correct, I'm an idiot and totally forgot that a former eBay CEO ran for governor of California and remains active in politics.