ebay: Protesters Appear to Be Stepping Up Their Campaign

Last weekend, a group known as CORE – The Campaign Of Rebuffed Ebayers – organised a four day protest. Today I received a Press Release from them. I will report it in its entirety for all to see and invite comments before following up with my own opinions in a later article.

The remainder of this article is the test received from CORE:

CORE, the now ‘international’ Campaign of Rebuffed Ebayers, have reported some alarming findings following their ‘Clean up Ebay’ campaign. The protest itself involved an international 4-day boycott of eBay from 14th September to 18th September. During this period, eBay experienced a significant drop in the amount of listings displayed on their site. In categories being monitored, falls of up to 50% in the amount of auction and Buy It Now listings was evident by the end of the protest period.

The allied Clean Up Ebay (CUE) campaign aimed to report as many ‘bad listings’ as possible. It is this aspect of the protest CORE can now report some alarming findings. A spokesperson for the group said: “We reported numerous ‘bad listings’ to Ebay during CUE. Apart from the usual fee avoidance and general scams, we also found evidence of hijacked accounts and listings of counterfeit goods. In most cases it took up to 24 hours to remove offending items, if this happened at all. This demonstrates what we see as the woeful inadequacy of eBay’s ability to police their site effectively. In too many instances reported bad listings were not removed at all, and quite often, the ones that were removed reappeared within an hour.”

Ebay have predictably continued their ‘no comment’ policy regarding the protest and the Clean Up issues. We understand this has frustrated many of the journalists following the campaign who want to report a balanced view. We have seen reports saying eBay’s refusal to comment was “not generally a wise PR strategy” and another saying; “Quite frankly, I would like to hear what management has to say”. Another article released on the internet asked “Do eBay think that they can resolve issues by ignoring them?”

Despite eBay’s dismissive attitude towards the current disaffection among customers, eBay have apparently been attempting to bolster up listing numbers with some strange promotions, the most extraordinary of which was a cheap listing day for customers in India if they listed on the eBay.com US site. When India has its own eBay site, we have to question the motive for this promotion.

The CORE spokesperson continued: “What on earth are eBay playing at? One of the main gripes among eBay customers talking to us is the flooding of bad listings from the Far East. So, in a move we assume was timed to antagonize, eBay invites the population of India to use the US site.” He continued: “In our view this was just a blatant attempt to boost their auction listing totals in order to pump the figures for the benefit of Wall Street analysts. Shareholders should take a much closer look at the numbers used by analysts to measure performance”.

Now the luxury brands Louis Vuitton and Dior Couture have filed actions seeking 37million Euros against the auction giants. The CORE spokesman said; “This was bound to happen sooner or later. The amount of fake goods ranging from fashion garments, to CDs and DVDs is now off the scale, particularly since eBay opened up the Far East market. We believe it is now only a matter of time before music companies and sports brands follow suit”.

Ebay continue to claim that it is not their responsibility to police the site. However, CORE dismissed this, saying: “That is looking increasingly ridiculous. Ebay somehow manage to find resources and time to censor comments in their forums. They also ignore the positive steps taken by competitor venues to reduce and hinder scams on their sites. It is total nonsense in our view to say eBay are doing all they can to maintain the integrity of their site and earn the trust of users”.

The publicity surrounding recent protests means the group is now much more international in its make up. When asked about future protest actions, CORE said: “Our experience so far suggests eBay are not interested in improving their image or customer relations.

We are now taking advice on how else we may report suspected criminal listings if eBay’s own systems cannot, or will not, help and we intend to announce further protest action shortly.”