I have been using Ebay since it's early days and have had a mixture of pleasant and troubling experiences along the way. The main problem I have found is in the general control element that they squeeze into their system at every opportunity - it's a tactic I greatly dislike.. Now they have taken that to a new level!
Since Ebay temporarily owned Skype and both of them are mentioned in many of the leaked documents from Edward Snowden and Wikileaks in the context of them having been compromised and manipulated covertly by 'secret services' - it is clear that these companies are certainly not just another website/service.. Could they be more of a problem for humanity than a help?
Financial Constriction
When I first used Ebay a long time ago - the payment options were considerably free-er than they are today - there was no enforcing of using Paypal as a main payment method and as I recall, the fees taken were smaller than they are today too. Today it is quite a challenge to not use Paypal when buying and selling on Ebay and both of them take a percentage cut of the deal. There's definitely no cryptocurrency allowed in their transactions - which is a red flag when it comes to assessing their intentions financially, since that would be the most cost effective form of transaction for users (but a loss in profits for Ebay).
Ebay and Paypal do offer some services in exchange for their financial constriction though, such as guaranteeing buyers and sellers against fraud by keeping fees in Escrow until conflicts are resolved. This, though, brings another problem..
Corporate Police
When you transact through Ebay and a problem arises, you are at the mercy of Ebay - since you have effectively signed away the outcome of the conflict to their arbitration team. Generally, they appear to be pretty good NOW - although in the early years it was quite common for them to make terrible decisions. The problem here is that they have a feel of being a kind of 'big brother' entity that decides outcomes of deals which ordinarily would only involve the parties involved in the trade directly. This too is another red flag as to the intentions involved or at least to the potentiality for exploitation within the Ebay world.
Policing Ebay?
Who exactly is monitoring Ebay to make sure that they aren't scamming everyone? I appreciate that they make multiple billions of dollars anyway, but that doesn't mean that they are above the possibility of running extra scams behind the scenes. For example, they could quite easily create fake profiles on Ebay to artificially boost up auction prices where the highest bidder has put in a higher maximum bid than the current bidding is up to. The Ebay auto-voting system means that I can put a maximum bid of $100 for an item that is currently on a bid price of $10 and if competing users come and place their own bids that are higher than $10, then my bid will automatically be increased to ensure I continue to bid the highest, up to a limit of $100. This leaves a window for fake profiles to be used to increase the overall price that items sell at - which also ensures extra profit for Ebay. How do I know they aren't doing that? I can't know that and I have no idea if anyone is ever checking for such activity - but even if they were, it would not be difficult for them to be bought off and silenced!
The Most Sinister Yet? Control of OFFLINE Communication!?
So today I received a notification from Ebay, informing me that their terms of service have changed and that I should review them. They are making clear that they really, really don't want users to communicate with each other outside of a very narrow band of acceptable topics. Their intent, they say, is to ensure transactions initiated via Ebay are completed within Ebay and so they don't 'lose' profits. So, for example, if I list an item and you bid on it - you shouldn't be able to speak to me and arrange to buy the item offline, away from the Internet entirely - circumventing Ebay's payment system and fees.
In some sense this desire on Ebay's team is justified, since they have put resources into 'bringing together buyers and sellers', so their fees should be paid as they set out in their terms. However, the practicalities of this are where this gets creepy.
Users of Ebay may already have noticed that it can be difficult to send an email address to other users via Ebay's messaging system - sometimes Ebay's systems will censor your message and strip out any communication information. Their 'Global Shipping Program' already means that a lot of items get sold on Ebay without the seller even seeing the buyer's address. If this were to continue in the future, we may see a time where no seller ever sees a buyer's address - meaning that ebay has total control of the buying/selling situation and all of the data/information regarding the trading!
Their new policy is worded as follows:
users are not permitted to complete outside of eBay any sales transactions with each other arising from items listed on the eBay platform. Offers to buy and sell or communicate outside of eBay constitute policy violations and may be subject to a range of actions including limits on buying and selling privileges as well as the application of final value fees for such transactions, the application of fees for the introduction of a seller to a buyer and the recovery of expenses for policy monitoring and enforcement. The same can result from sharing or requesting contact information with the intention to trade outside of eBay.
They also specifically state that the following are not allowed by them:
Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay
Posting or displaying contact information in a listing, including email, phone number, and mailing address, without the permission of eBay or except as required by law.
Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who found the item on eBay.
among others.
So, in short - if I sell something on Ebay and meet someone through their service, I am obliged by them to ONLY ever sell items to that person via Ebay and never outside of Ebay!? e.g. I sell some shoes to someone on ebay and get their home details and phone number along the way. In the course of communicating with them, I become friends with them and we discuss our love of clothing. I create a life long customer through friendly communication - just as I would in my own offline shop - and now Ebay claims that I am prohibited from trading with them unless all transactions are run through Ebay?
Is this just another example of shoddy wording in a terms of use document? Or is it an absurd attempt at controlling the world in just one more way?
I am fairly sure that various constitutional documents in some nations will nullify any claim on this type of clause, but none the less - there it is anyway!
What are the alternatives to Ebay?
I have looked several times for auction sites that might be better than Ebay but have never found one. I presume that this is because it is a major task to draw away significant amounts of users from Ebay and the thought is too intimidating for many who might have tried. Maybe this latest set of controlling policies, along with their failure to adopt cryptocurrency will open the door for a real competitor, what do you think?
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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