eBay's plan to force all of its users on to PayPal faces opposition from the Reserve Bank, which is considering weighing in to the issue.
 
The Central Bank has long called for buyers and sellers to have as much choice as possible in what payment systems they use and strongly opposes any moves that reduce competition in the market.
 
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is investigating whether eBay Australia's new policy of forcing all items to be paid for using PayPal, which eBay owns, or cash on delivery/pick-up, breaches trade practice and competition laws.

I keep up with the e-commerce scene, particularly in Australia, but also in the United States and elsewhere. Naturally, this means I keep up somewhat with the goings on of eBay, although I don't sell on eBay at all any more.

I must say, it appears they're more or less imploding. Their house of cards is about to fall down entirely. They're making some really stupid decisions, or they're making long-overdue decisions and implementing them in the stupidest and most knee-jerk way possible. They're alienating and pissing off EVEN MORE of their sellers. Wow, who would have thought they could manage that? (Just wait until the next fee increase which will include and even lower exposure for your goods, advertising that takes visitors off the site, and I'm not actually making that up, as there are already screen shots of the offsite advertising on eBay.)

Anyway, I just have to tell you I feel like a rat. A very smart rat. A rat who saw the ship was sinking and cleverly leapt to safety and is now developing her own e-commerce site totally apart from any other venue.

Sometimes, it's good to be a clever rat.

Okay, it's really mostly Oztion sellers, but it's searchable, and it's pretty cool (and I promised the site admin that I'd give them a link, so there it is, go check it out, okay?).

The Home Office is an extremely good read. I came across the pages in a serendipitous way, and I'm so glad I did. Excellent advice from a successful business-owing geek. I want to be like that when I grow up...

Well, I did some redesigning on the Uncommon Touch site. I'm actually quite pleased with the way it turned out. I'm using a couple of third-party tools to accomplish things, which actually beats doing it all myself. There are now two different RSS feeds there, one for items that are listed, the other for news and notes. I just thought it was a better way to organize things.

Anyway, go have a look if you're interested in webdev and geeky stuff.

EBAY faces a possible class action from disgruntled Australian sellers pushed out of business after the online auctioneer jacked up its merchant and other fees by as much as 500 per cent.
 
An online forum lists at least 250 Australian-based internet stores that have closed since the US internet auction giant hiked its fees last Monday.
 
The loss-making eBay traders could sue for unconscionable conduct under the Trade Practices Act, said trade practices barrister Neville Rochow.

eBay Gets Knocked Down

Closing bell: Brokerage downgrade sinks eBay; Nasdaq edges higher

EBay online stores closing by the hundreds

eBay Fees Push Merchants Away

eBay Slumps on Downgrade

EBay Dips on Signs of Rising Costs:

Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy downgraded the company to "Underperform" from "Market Perform" and lowered his price target for the stock to $25 from $30.

Rashtchy wrote in a note to investors that company trends "suggest a worsening picture for eBay."

EBay has made several moves this year, including increasing fees, to try to shift listings from stores _ customized seller home pages _ to regular auction listings. Core listings are more lucrative for eBay, but growth has slowed compared with stores.

"So far we have seen little positive reaction from sellers to any of eBay's initiatives over the past two quarters," wrote Rashtchy.

But sellers may not even be the issue. "We believe the core problem is with lack of activity from buyers, not sellers, and thus eBay's efforts are unlikely to bear fruit," he wrote.

To keep the machine running, "we believe eBay will be forced to spend heavily in sales and marketing or product development, or both, to bring buyers back to the site," the analyst wrote.

I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who claim to be running a professional business online and yet who have NO online presence outside of where ever it is they sell (eBay, Oztion, Yahoo, Amazon, whatever).

It's actually pretty simple to set up a weblog, and it can be done very inexpensively. I haven't set up a Blogger blog in a long time, but they've now even got a selection of templates and you can just plug one in and off you go, posting to Blogspot. No muss, no fuss. Learning curve isn't very deep at all.

And I'm not talking about hobby sellers who just want something to do and want to get rid of some random stuff around the house. I mean people who claim to be full-on professionals, who have a very high turnover and who send out dozens of items a week...

I just don't get it. The net is where you're selling. Doesn't it make sense to have at least SOMEWHERE that is just yours, where people can find you and what you sell via web search.... ?

So, Aussies, don't know what this whole Oztion business is about? Check out this growing list of Oztion sellers and just have a look at the incredible diversity. And that's only a handful of the thousands of sellers there! Go on, have a look. You know you want to...

Well, I've had several sales at Oztion, and have bids on a couple more items, so yay!

It's also really amazing to note that at 2pm on 20 July, the membership of Oztion was 33870 and there were 95000+ listings.

Now, at 10:30pm on 03 August, the membership at Oztion is 43344, and there are 100000+ items for sale.

During one 24 hour period that I happened to be watching, there was an increase of 1000 new members, in 24 HOURS!

So, hey, way to go, FeeBay. You've given a heck of a boost to your strongest Australian competitor, who now have considerably more money to spend on things like advertising, and never underestimate the power of word of mouth...

Someone at FeeBay should have done some research on The Rum Rebellion and The Eureka Stockade. Aussies are pretty laid back, but when you muck about with their ability to earn a living just one step to far, you've got a serious rebellion on your hands....

By the way, if you're wondering just what Australian eBay store operators are complaining about with regard to the fee increases, have a play with The FeeBayulator. It's a simple calculator that will show you the increases that FeeBay claim are "about 6%".

And just for the record, FeeBay's stocks are still in the toilet at the moment, so, for some strange reason, pissing off tens of thousands of sellers all around the world didn't help raise stock prices. Strange, isn't it?

Well, I've emptied out my eBay Store completely. Was a bit upsetting. I feel better now.

I did manage to get all of my perfumes listed on Oztion. Next, I'll start doing the sterling silver jewellery, I think. Haven't decided yet.

I also need to turn the front page of the Uncommon Touch domain into a blog. That's quite tedious to do, though, which is why I haven't done it yet. I've got the design more or less figured out. It's just a matter of putting the template in all the places it has to go and testing it all.

Oh, and we've decided that the Uncommon Touch online store is going to go on its own subdomain and be linked from the main page and other pages within the domain. That way, we can link to it from various auction sites and not be in violation of the rules (well, technically, anyway).

You'll also notice that my groovy kewl scrolling banner thingy is gone from this blog. I'm gonna miss that thing, I always liked it. Oh, well, it'll save me some money, right?

In the meantime, if you're in Australia and you'd like some genuine designer perfume for crazy mad prices, go buy some from me, okay?

eBay sellers found a creative outlet to vent their frustration over Store fee increases that were announced last week. A search on eBay for the term "fee hike" yielded more than 100 auctions protesting the rate hike, many of them humorous.

All right. So in the past few days since eBay announced its ridiculously big bite in their admitted attempt to get rid of eBay Stores (which they created and promoted wildly until they found that they were a little too successful), I've been looking at about a bazillion alternatives and thinking and reading a great deal.

eBay stocks are very low, and took a big nosedive the same day as the announcement that led to widespread revolts and discontent. Any reference to this fact on the eBay boards gets deleted immediately, of course, although all you have to do is look it up yourself.

What it comes down to is that eBay is not a trustworthy business partner. They say one thing, do another, promote something mercilessly, then yank the rug out, they put ridiculous spin on their announcements, they make totally contradictory statments, they're even sending out DIFFERENT announcements to sellers and buyers, claiming different things in each one. They've raised fees five times in five years. They'll do it again, and this time it'll be the auctions again, and yet more sellers will be pushed out, and eBay won't care.

They should care, because without trustworthy and honest sellers (the very people they're alienating) they have no buyers, unless you're in the market for counterfeits, fakes, frauds, and 99¢ trinkets from China with $30 postage.

Anyway, what this has meant to me is that I need to completely reassess my situation. This is not always a bad thing.

What I'm going to do is revamp the business site (it was never done properly to begin with) and put in my own store there, along with a blog where I can promote items I'm selling, new lines, etc.

I'm also going to be selling here:

The site is the second largest in Australia, and a lot of sellers are moving there. The variety of items available is increasing constantly. Please have a look. If we can generate enough support and traffic, this site can give GreedBay a run for their money (and yes, I actually believe that, despite my inherent cynicism; I've seen it happen).

I'm also seriously considering selling at another Aussie auction site, but I haven't done any listings there yet and I don't want to start promoting them significantly until I'm sure I'm there. This is nothing against the site, mind you, just that for now I'm concentrating on Oztion and my own site.

After the fee increase takes effect in August I will NOT be able to afford to sell perfumes on eBay via the store. During the very busy times of the year (Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Christmas) I will probably be listing perfumes on eBay via auction, as I've always done.

I'll also almost certainly continue to list at least some things through auction on eBay, again, as I always have. I have a few items that are very good sellers with an excellent sell-through rate, and those are the things I'll be selling.

And in every, single package I send out I'm going to be promoting MY OWN SITE and OZTION. eBay can use me, but I can use them, too, and I intend to.

eBay are simply not a stable company, and they know less about customer service than they should. They allow all manner of fraud, fakes, counterfeits, and postage piracy, they allow overseas sellers to invade every other eBay site and overrun the place peddling cheap trinkets and outright crap. Their stocks are dismal, so dismal that they're going to have to do a huge stock buy-back to try to get some stability for the company. I think eBay is being run by morons, personally. With some real leadership and some good customer service and business sense, eBay should be thriving, but they're not. That says something right there.

I don't really care if they fail or succeed, really. If they fail. I'll bust my sides laughing, as will millions of other people. The amount of bad karma they've generated (especially with PayPal and the way PayPal like to completely screw people around) is going to be enormous when it hits. You really do reap what you sow, and they've sown a great deal of bad will and corporate greed, and I have confidence that it will eventually hurt them where it counts: in the shareholders' pocketbooks. Many a mighty corporation has failed due to poor management, greed, and bad karma. I've seen it many times. And no empire or monopoly is forever.

But, eBay aside, I have no choice but to do what I'm planning on doing. I may fail miserably, but I'm going to work at it and see how it goes. I think it's the right thing to do and that's the path I'm setting myself upon, so that's the size of that.

Not sure what I'm going to do about the scrolling Vendio banner on this blog.... I don't think it's actually generated much in the way of sales for me, really. I might replace it with a big, fat Oztion banner....

I posted this to The Perfume Blog. I may as well post it here, too:

Due to recent fee hikes by eBay, fee structures that we consider ridiculous and unwarranted, we are being forced to reconsider many things.

Foremost is our pricing. We try very hard to offer our items at good prices that are below retail and we even consider the price of the shipping when we set our prices. Now, however, eBay are going to be taking such a very large bite of the price that we will be forced to raise prices significantly or sell elsewhere.

It will no longer be viable to sell our perfumes on eBay at all, as the profit margin on them is fairly low to begin with and the many overseas sellers with false location details compete unfairly in the perfume category (or just sell fakes). Until we decide how to proceed, we will not be adding any additional inventory to our store.

We will also be preparing listings for other sites, ones that are Australian-owned and Australian-based.

Please note that this will affect ALL eBay sellers in Australia, the United States, and the UK who maintain stores, so you can look for and expect price increases across the boards, along with an increase in sellers who close their stores and/or abandon eBay entirely. (You may want to let eBay know how you feel about this.)

We recommend checking out the following Australian auction sites:

http://oztion.com.au/

http://aussiebid.com.au/

With enough support, either or both of those could give eBay a serious run for its money.

Well, I've been planning on doing this, but I finally did it. I've done up some eBay Auction Templates and logos to sell, of course, on eBay. I listed them via the U.S. site, so the prices are in USD (bigger audience and the US Dollar is fairly universally understood), and since shipping isn't a concern at all, I figured I'd do it that way. Besides, a colleague of mine in Queensland sells eBay templates that way, and I thought if it worked for her, it might work for me.

What's that? Oh, yes, of course you can go see what's there at the moment (more is on the way; I've been reworking some of my unreleased templates for just this purpose).