Doug - I think the boycott is more bark than bite - but, three of the sellers I have bought things from have emailed their customer base (including me) indicating things like because of some of the reliability and performance issues and the problems with customer service that they are spreading some of the business to other sites - particularly Amazon and Gold's. The messages were very similar, indicating that people are copying other people's ideas at least, from somewhere.
I went over and looked at amazon and the interesting thing is that they extend auctions if there are bids in the last few minutes - more like a real auction. As a buyer, that's a new take for me, and it doesn't let me snipe anymore, but if I were selling, I'd prefer that over the "artificially imposed" close at ebay. They also make you open an account at amazon (which I already had from buying books), which takes putting in your credit card info - I suspect sellers may be more satisfied with not worrying about as many "deadbeats" as they seem to be plagued with on ebay where all you have to have is an email address.
I also saw that they have $0.10 listings until the end of the year, and of course, although they discourage them, the allow reserves and don't apparently charge more for them.
Gold's looks all the world like someone copied ebay word-for word. They say they're not open for business yet, but the auction count is going up.
All in all, it appears that the marketplace may actually start working, and it will be interesting to see if ebay can manage itself in an even slightly-competitive environment.
Mr. K. |
