The thought of having to take that temporary beating should be enough to scare any investor with 1/2 a brain away from EBAY. EBAY isn't even an interesting speculation anymore.
Well considering I have a whole brain, let me ask you what makes QCOM with a 400 PE a good buy? or PMCS, or BRCM, so many had lousy reports, no visibility, slowing growth and revenue.
How would you like to be a QCOM investor with your future depending on Communist CHINA???
I took a bet that EBAY will NOT hit your projected numbers in 10 weeks, that's all, simple as that.
EBAY was 30/31 when Naz made low of year.
Invest? Me??? Not a chance, look what happened to all those poor investors out there.
No one knows the future, but I believe if EBAY's management team stays in place, the future is a bright one for this unique company. I heard all the same things about AOL when it was EBAY's age.
The postal service?? Whodathunk??
EBAY is everywhere:
PluggedIn: U.S. Postal Service becomes an eBay customer
By Andrea Orr
PALO ALTO, Calif., April 24 (Reuters) - Neither snow nor
rain nor gloom of night can keep the U.S. Post Office from
delivering parcels to their destination.
But when the recipient has moved and left no forwarding
address, the Post Office sends the package to the same place
millions of individuals go to unload their unwanted stuff:
eBay.
The wildly popular Internet auction site eBay Inc.
is certainly not best known for the business it operates as a
clearinghouse for wayward packages. In fact many of the site's
most ardent users are unaware of this curious little service,
where shoppers can bid on things that started out as birthday
gifts and care packages -- anything from books and videos to
extra-large men's underwear and "Body By Jake" exercise
machines.
But for several months the Post Office has been expanding
its presence on eBay, and bidders are gradually discovering it
as a place that offers even better bargains than on other parts
of the site, and a voyeuristic glimpse inside some brown paper
packages to boot.
"A number of items that are mailed every day have improper
addresses on them; perhaps the recipient has moved on, or is
using a fake name," explained Dan Coy, senior manager of
business development at eBay.
It's unusual that both the shipping address and the return
address are wrong, but not unheard of. And with the massive
volume of mail the Post Office processes every day, that leaves
a lot of homeless packages.
33 BRAS, ANYONE?
The postal service was not available to discuss its
arrangement with eBay, but explains on the eBay site that it
entered the partnership to make these undeliverable items
available to a larger audience. The concept is not really all
that new, since the Post Office has traditionally held public
auctions offline for its undeliverable packages.
And while it may sound odd to those who still think of eBay
as a place to bid on Beanie Babies, the postal service site on
eBay is actually indicative of the company's massive shift in
recent years from a place that connected individual buyers and
sellers, to one where big businesses sell heavy equipment like
machinery and process bulk orders. A number of retailers now
use eBay to liquidate unsold merchandise.
Since the Post Office often auctions off package contents
as they were originally sent, visitors can find some odd
quantities and product assortments. Three pairs of women's
shoes, size 7; 33 assorted bras, size 34; or a hodgepodge
package of 10 plates, six bowls, four cups, a candle and a mop,
to name a few of the recent listings.
On some smaller items, the post office will occasionally
combine the contents of multiple packages. So on eBay today,
you can bid on a random assortment of "approximately 212 CD's"
(who's counting?), new and used, both schmaltz and explicit
lyrics, and possibly a few duplicates. A wild card, yes, but
who knows? Maybe a bargain anyway. As that auction wound down,
the top bid was $599, or a little less than $3 per CD.
As eBay tells it, its unusual arrangement with the U.S.
Post Office was conceived two years ago, when Chief Executive
Meg Whitman was delivering an address to the National Press
Club in Washington, D.C.
A senior Post Office official, curious about the company
that had brought about a spike in packages being sent through
the mail, approached Whitman to discuss building a closer
relationship.
SOME RETAILERS SAY POST OFFICE NEEDS TO TRY HARDER
As in its offline auctions, the Post Office insists it is
not trying to make some easy money from other people's
carelessness or sloppy handwriting. It says it exhausts every
possible lead before it puts the parcels up for sale.
But some manufacturers who have seen their items up for
sale by the Post Office on eBay, are not convinced.
"That's probably debatable," said Paul Schneider, vice
president of operations at Taste of Home Books, a Greendale,
Wisconsin company that operates a mail-order cookbook business,
and has been distressed to see the Post Office selling many of
the books it was supposed to deliver.
"We don't like it," said Schneider, who admits his company
uses labels that sometimes come off during shipping. "We've
contacted the Post Office. If the label becomes detached, we
think they should open up the package and do a little
investigative work."
Some other companies whose products are available in large
quantities on the Post Office's part of the site, also suggest
that eBay may be using the arrangement to profit twice from the
same transaction.
One merchant that specializes in "Precious Moments
Collectibles," ceramic knickknacks that are popular all over
eBay, said he suspects some of the items the Post Office is
selling, were originally sent through the mail by another eBay
customer, who inadvertently got the buyer's address wrong.
However, Dan Coy of eBay said it is not always an accident
that packages end up as the property of the U.S. Postal
Service. Companies that ship small, easily damaged merchandise
like books sometimes do not want to resell returned goods, so
they just forfeit them to the Post Office, Coy said.
"For some of these companies, the return volume coming back
to them is so great that they will not bother with the returns
process," said Coy. He declined to name any such companies that
had agreed to forfeit their merchandise in this way.
Amazon.com Inc said it, for one, takes back all
the merchandise that is returned. Even if it discovers some
items are too damaged to resell, it prefers to make that
determination on a case-by-case basis.
Ditto Buy.com Inc , another Internet retailer,
which said it would rather make what money it can on all its
merchandise, even when it is damaged. Why let the Post Office
make a sale on eBay when the profits could be yours? Buy.com
said that when it receives returns that are not fit to be
resold, it sells them on eBay.
"EBay is much more efficient than traditional liquidators,"
said Tom Forrester, director of operations at Buy.com.
((andrea.orr@reuters.com, Palo Alto newsroom, (650)
461-3400))
(Reuters 12:39 AM ET 04/25/2001) |
