Updates: Executive Shake Up at eBay US
We’re hearing that there’s been a shake up at eBay at the top management level. Philipp Justus Senior Vice President, eBay Europe will be transferring to eBay Corporate headquarters in San Jose, California to head up US Business reporting in to high profile eBay veteran Bill Cobb from January.
Rumours broke late on Friday when German blogs responded to an eBay.de press release announcing the move. Although no official eBay US source has confirmed the rumours, it’s expected Bill Cobb will retain overall control of the North American business which also includes eBay Canada.
“Justus has done great work over the last seven years to build our business in Germany and more recently throughout Europe. I am therefore delighted that Philipp is moving to our Ebay headquarters in San José, and I am convinced that he will have a equally strong influence in his new role,” said Meg Whitman, eBay’s President.
Executive changes have blighted eBay’s reputation with Wall Street this year. In particular, Jeff Jordan’s departure in the summer spooked analysts. Apparently this is not the only change in senior corporate management and we expect more news from eBay in the next few days. So far a successor for Justus in Europe has yet to be appointed.
13 Responses
Just for clarification: Philipp Justus is not to take over Bill Cobb´s job. He will be in charge for the eBay auction platform in the US and report to Bill Cobb.
Just for clarification: Philipp Justus is not to take over Bill Cobb´s job. He will be in charge for the eBay auction business in the US and report to Bill Cobb.
Wall Street was very right to be spooked. Justus has now instituted a Seller Non-Performance Policy that will kill eBay auctions. Small sellers are at the mercy of a single buyer whose one negative could punt them off the site. Even buyers who get kicked off by eBay are still counted against a seller. There is no reason or logic to the policy at all. Sellers will be forced to never sell to new buyers or those who have ever given negative or nuetral feedback, or gotten it. Sellers will be forced to only sell new items, nothing used that could get a condition complaint (we got nuked because of the condition of an item sold as “absolutely an as-is item.”) There is no appeal process. Selling limits do not conform to what is stated by eBay.
We were invited today to become an eBay Powerseller. Unfortunately we seem not to be allowed to list a single item for sale.
How will eBay profit from chasing away all of their sellers and making it impossible for new buyers to purchase anything? Justus must have a huge short position on ebay stocks.
I haven’t seen a good promotion for Ebay sellers all summer. It is too expensive to list higher end items and starting items at 9.99 and only saving $.05 after you purchase GALLERY for $.35 is a joke.
What happened to the $.10 days? What happened to $.20 days?
I won’t be listing my 1000 items until a better promo comes along.
I AM IN DISBELIEF THAT THE NEW SELLER POLICIES ARE EVEN BEING CONSIDERED AS GOOD BUSINESS PRACTICES.
IT IS NOT SENSIBLE TO CREATE A UNBALANCED MARKET PLACE WHERE THE BUYER (OR THE SELLER) IS ALWAYS RIGHT.
THAT IN MY OPINION IS DEFINED AS SUBTERFUGE. NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD MAKE SUCH BAD DECISIONS CONCERNING POLICY CHANGES THAT CREATE AND PROMOTE SUCH DISHARMONY WITHIN EBAY.
THE NEWLY APPOINTED GERMAN BORN PHILLIPP JUSTUS NEEDS TO GO BACK TO HIS OWN HEMISPHERE AND TAKE HIS “BRILLIANT” TAKE OVER STRATEGY WITH HIM.HE IS NOT DOING ANY THING CONSTRUCTIVE TO EBAY NORTH AMERICA OR OUR ECONOMY.
EBAY DECISION MAKERS SHOULD REREAD THE EBAY EXECUTIVE ETHICS GUIDELINES AGAIN OR AT LEAST BE HELD TO THEM.
Hello all,
We are a victim of this nightmare ebay has started. Below is a letter to ebay appealing our suspension. (Partially edited for name and such) It explains thee whole story of how we were screwed. After being a Power Seller and a member since 2001; not to mention spending anywhere from $700 – $ 1000.00 per month in ebay fees and the way our nightmare happened; none of this was ever considered. It was black and white except that was not black and white. We have been treated by the people we talked to at ebay like the scum of the earth. Our questions never answered directly. Just sent us links to their policies. They told us to get the people that left negative and neutral feedback to withdraw there feedback. We did what we could and some did not comply. Ebay told us then you will stay suspended if they don’t withdraw it.
There must be something that can be done do to get them to lighten up a bit. If things were done maliciously to the customer, I can see it taking some sort of action, but my GOD this was a mistake.
To whom it may concern:
We are writing you regarding this suspension for non-performance. Considering we have not been able to sell anything on ebay, it is considerably difficult to improve our record if we can not sell anything. However, the other problem that started this whole thing out (which has been acknowledged by ebay, which included a refund of our postings.) was that by error all of our records that was in our inventory since 1990 was mistakenly uploaded. Though we wanted to remove everything as fast as we could we were not able to since we were waiting for the person at ebay to let us know what we needed to do. In the mean time to try and deal with this onslaught of orders and questions and phone calls, we had three people in the office leave the company at the same time. To try and cover all this we were working 12 and 13 hours a day to cover them all. We also tried to fulfill any order we could. If it was not in stock we then tried our best to see if we could get it. If we could get it and at or around the price that it was sold for we had it shipped to them. If we could not we gave the customer a choice. We first explained what had happened and apologized for any inconvenience. We offered them either a substitute or a refund. In some cases if we were able to buy them the item was more then the customer paid in which case we offered the customer the option of paying the difference. Like any company that runs out of stock and then re-buys stock at a higher price the cost has to be raised. We finally got an answer from ebay on what we needed to do. ebay gave us a refund, and we removed all remaining listings that were uploaded in error. We had taken off around 1200 items prior to that as well. We had a total of almost 10,000 items posted and only 3,000 in stock. Just as we got everything situated and ready to get back to normal we get the e-mail regarding a restriction was being placed on our account. What a surprise! We still can not believe ebay is doing this considering and knowing all of what has happened. We tried to talk with ebay about this when it happened and it seems like all of a sudden no one knows what we are talking about. We decided to be very humble and get things straight. We then started immediately printing and sending via the U.S. Post Office coupons for 10% off any sale up $1000.00. We paid for each stamp and envelope and hand wrote every envelope that was sent out. We sent them to all the customers that were affected by this mishap. After that we started asking customers that left negative or neutral feedback to mutually withdraw their feedback through the ebay mutual feedback withdrawal feature. Only a couple complied. We did at least put a lot of effort into trying to rectify things as best we could. We then started to leave feedback I told our webmaster to leave positive feedback for ALL transactions no matter if they gave us negative feedback or not. We were going to keep our word that we would leave positive feedback. We did that. That I believe now brings us up to date. As you can see, we have tried everything within our power to take of our customers. As far as we know, everything is set. We have made all things right with our customers, we have corrected all of our listing problems on this end, and we are ready to begin selling on ebay again.
Sincerely
Randy
Internet Sales Department Manager
U.S. Computer Exchange
If anyone ever needs to end multiple auction listings quickly, you can use the Auction Bomber at Vrane.com. Get them ended first and worry about the eBay fees later: as Randy has unfortunately found out, they may be the least of your worries.
If you need to end any large number of listings fast you can also use ebay’s file exchange, no need to give out passwords to any third party. A qucik download of all current listings, edit in excel and upload the file. i’ve done exactly what Randy did only on a smaller scale before, around 800 listings, took less than 5 minutes to end all the listings, most of which was editing time in excel.
A plea for help on the powerseller board would have got you the help you needed.
I can see why eBay had difficulty in taking what you were saying seriously, Yes we’ve all done stupid things, but to let listings run knowing that a large percentage of items could never be obtained was madness, as Sue says, end them first and worry about the fees later.
… with the proviso that when you’re panicking is a very bad time to try to figure out FE: I’d stick with Vrane if you’re not already familiar with how File Exchange works. I’ve been using Vrane’s website since 2001 and am perfectly happy with their security.
Sue, File Exchange despite the rumours isn’t rocket science, I’ll be first to admit spreadsheets not a strong point of mine, but even i manage the basics with ease. 🙂
It takes three columns to stop a listing, Action, Item number and the code number for the reason it’s being ended. A simple cut and past of the item numbers from the download of live listings, a qucik fill down in a couple of columns and upload it.
It’s one of ebay’s best tools and is mind-blowingly powerful and quick, i would suggest any seller who lists thousands of listings should become familiar with the basics at least.
Richard it’s a great tool, but when you’re panicing and are faced with a manual for a tool which is an 82 page .pdf compared with a simple web utility which is a enter user name and password and poof….. your listings are gone, I know which I’d choose 😉
Richard: FE is indeed a fantastic tool, BUT when you first start to use it, it is not intuitive. As Chris says, a simple web utility where you have to enter your ID and tick the listings you want to cancel, has to be preferable. And, as I said, if you are panicking about having listed a vast amount of stock you don’t have, your priority has to be ending the listings, not learning about a useful new tool which may aid you in the future.
We were starting to remove them, but then eBay told us they were going to look into giving us a credit and they wanted our inventory list. We did not know if they wanted us to continue removing the items while they looked at the information we sent them or what. It took them 2 weeks to get back with us. We tried calling and e-mailing them many times. When they did get back with us they told us to remove the items and that they are giving us a credit for the upload mistake. We thought we were all set to go when we got a full restriction on our account. Anyway, you read the rest in my on post. How can this be fair? Is there anything that we can do? Because we could not bring up our rating in the 30 days of restriction, they suspended us. As I posted in the last post, how can you bring up your rating if you do not sell or buy? What if as in our case all the stuff, we did do to try and do right by all of our customers that were affected fails and they don’t want to withdraw feedback? According eBay then you are just screwed. Not fair for a mistake. There has to be someone that can reverse this and not look at this as black and white. To whom can we talk? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Randy