Posted By:
MWEarlier today, I received the following e-mail:
<<Hi,
First, I am writing you because you, like me, are a high volume seller on eBay who regularly pays $19.95 for category featuring. In a nutshell, eBay made a change to the way category featured items are listed yesterday. You have one of these ending today. I dare you to find it from the category listing pages. Basically, this is turning an average of 200 hits on the ending day into an average of 3 hits, which is no different from items that are not featured!!!! Some benefit for $19.95.
The official eBay line on this change is the following (from an email I received, and the announcement page) "We feel that this will increase exposure for a single featured item by spreading out the featured auctions within the category listings." This is just not true. The numbers of hits I posted above are based on staying up all last night and working all day today looking at 1000s of featured items, and comparing the final day hits to the number of hits I used to receive on a final day category featured auction.
We must convince eBay to change back to the original system. To this end, I am suggesting an immediate boycott of category featured items. Do not feature any items within category until eBay changes this back. This will help in 2 ways. First, you won't waste the $19.95 as there is currently NO BENEFIT to purchasing this. Second, I am hoping that eBay will get the message that they are hurting their best customers, us, the ones who are paying them most of their auction fees! I know they have been receiving many complaints, but this might push them over the edge to change back.
To make sure eBay knows that we are doing this, I ask that you send an email to 2 locations, the eBay powersellers help, and investor relations. I have provided the email addresses and an email below. Be sure to fill your eBay name into the email. Just copy the powerseller address into the "to" box, and the investor relations address into the cc: box. Make sure the subject box says "CATEGORY FEATURED BOYCOTT" Even if the eBay help people don't care, I sure think the people at investor relations would want to know that their largest customers are irritated. Also, forward this email to any eBay powersellers that you deal with and encourage them to also boycott category featured items and forward the paragraph below to the two email addresses I will give you. Let eBay know that they are putting us out of business and that we will spend our money elsewhere if they don't give us the service we are paying for!
Forward email to:
powerseller@ebay.com
investor_relations@ebay.com
email:
Dear eBay:
I am a high volume seller, my eBay name is ________ and I do not like the change you have made to the way category featured items are listed. To this end, I am boycotting category featured selling since it does not provide me any benefit. Please change back to the old method of listing featured auctions for the whole day first!!!
Sincerely, >>
I have not looked extensively at eBay listings, but according to the recent eBay announcements, this appears to be true.
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