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Technology Stocks : eBay - Superb Internet Business Model -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LTK007 who wrote (5889)	10/23/1999 1:30:00 PM
From: LTK007	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7772

this part 2 of the same post from fearlessrick << by: fearlessrick_53 80966 of 80996 4. Their site is virtually unnavigable. The site has very poor navigation. Important areas are difficult, if not impossible to reach. They do not even have a page listing important email addresses. A no-brianer, but their lack of having such a page speaks to their lack of overall business sense. There's much more. 5. Enhancing the experience: Their "new" site design was a such flop, they don't even use it. There are so many holes in their system it's laughable. The absolute lack of a payment system for sellers (like Amazon) is a huge mistake. They bought a company called Checkpoint, back in May or June. I had experience with that company, and would not use them, so Ebay buys them, and finds out that they cannot use them - $65 million down the toilet. A simple way for sellers to accept credit cards should have been their top priority. They're way behind on that one. Overall, I think they're in big trouble. They can't manage the business properly with the people they have. All of this stems from a lack of experience. Meg and Peirre should back off and hand the company over to seasoned business people. Of course, their lack of experience lends to their not being able to identify the proper people, so I think they're stuck. They will continue to have problems over the next few years as the auction space becomes more and more splintered. At some point, Amazon, Yahoo, FairMarket and others will make significant slices into their market share. They are doomed, and mostly becuase of their own stupidity. This quarter's earnings of .01 is an absolute failure. They should have put up at least .05, but they don't have a clue. Meg and Pierre will go down in history as the biggest failures of the internet age. Just watch. I sold this stock at 136 last Thursday. Sure I missed this week's runup, but I'll be able to buy back in at 65 or less in December. I probably won't, because it will be worth only $35 in a year. Sell before the earnings are announced, or you'll get murdered in the next few weeks. Good luck. Posted: 10/23/1999 7:30 am EDT as a reply to: Msg 80965 by fearlessrick_53 View Replies to this Message >>

To: LTK007 who wrote (5889)	10/23/1999 3:52:00 PM
From: Doug Fowler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7772

I agree with a lot of what you said about eBya problems. They have been taking the site down 3 to 4 times a week, for 4 or more hours, often not announcing the "scheduled" maintenance until a few hours prior to their starting it. In addition, just when their Hot Backup is supposed to prevent system crashes of one hour, they go down for 5 hours, in what they call "unscheduled downtime". These euphemisms are an insult to our intelligence. Call a spade a spade, for goodness sake. And yes, I do not understand why eBay has failed to offer credit cards as an options to the sellers. And I certainly do not understand why eBay gets SO FAR BEHIND on updating its listings. They blame in on the extra downtime, but this process ought to be scaleable, and listing updates should be able to be processed MUCH FASTER than new listings or listings expiring. Am I missing something here. The BIG deal about this is that the most activity for listings comes within a few hours of being listed, and then in the last few hours of the auction. When eBay gets so far behind on listings, the new listings lose the advantage of those first few, crucial hours. I have had this happen to me on many occasions, and when it happens, those auctions get off to a poor start, and typically end up with poor results. The only way around this is to pay the $14.95 to have your auction featured in a category, but this is not practical for inexpensive items. The only thing I'll say about Meg Whitman is that eBay was ALREADY HUGELY successful when she joined the company and it seems like she tries to tie the hands of sellers with all these warnings about illegal software, illegal computers, illegal peripherals, etc. Despite all this, eBay is still FAR and AWAY the best place to get your best price on the Internet, whether you are a seller or a buyer. Amazon is the only other auction place online with a remote chance of catching eBay.