this morning, as managing director Simon Smith steps down. Mr Smith joined eBay in 2000 and has presided over eBay.com.au’s growth to five million visitors a month, though he’ll probably be best remembered by Australian eBay users for the PayPal-only fiasco earlier this year, when the company was forced to rescind its policy banning any other payment methods. Mr Smith is replaced by Deborah Sharkey, who has been with the company for five years and has worked in several areas of the business.
So far, a fairly typical “we changed MD” notification, except for the rather odd and grumpy little quote from Simon Smith in the middle of the AB post:
In a public statement today, Simon said: “I’ve enjoyed eight exciting years at eBay and, given that recent changes to the organisation are now complete, it seems an appropriate time for me to move on.”
Outgoing MDs are usually full of eloquent praise for their colleagues and the company, tinged with a little regret, so we have to wonder exactly what those changes at eBay Australia might be.
We’d like to wish Simon Smith the very best of luck in whatever he does next, and remind him to always finish on a song:
7 Responses
I just love that Muppets number. Brilliant.
Farewell Simon Smith: you’re one of the good guys.
dw
Regardless of who pays the fees, or who is now abusing the (broken) feedback system, or DSRs, or eBay’s latest “restraint on competition” attempt: the mandating of the offering of PayPal by sellers, or their failed attempt in Australia to mandate the [i]exclusive[/i] use of PayPal, etc, etc, etc, the fact is neither eBay nor its sellers can survive without the confidence of buyers, and the recent application, generally, of “hidden bidders”, particularly in conjunction with the [i]absolutely[/i] anonymous alias (“Bidder [i]N[/i]”) suffered by users in Australia, UK, Ireland and the Philippines, which serves no other purpose that to hide from view the shill bidding that is undoubtedly now running rampant, is not going to improve that confidence anytime in the near future.
Having said that, I think that most of us appreciate that the people currently in control of eBay are a bunch of unprincipled, disingenuous, (and possibly stupid) corporate snakes; it’s very difficult to keep track of such snakes as they slither through the undergrowth; and that “spinning” forked tongue doesn’t help any either!
A lengthy detailed criticism of the eBay snake’s devious actions starts at
https://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6499794#6499794
when will ebay au be changing its buy it now / shop structure in line with the changes in the UK and .com etc,
I used to love listing on the AU site but now it is too expensive
Philip Cohen: can I suggest in 2009 that you find a new link to peddle round the net? The old one is boring now.
we dont care if all the snakes on Medusas bonce are running ebay ,
it makes us money,
Can I be the corporate snake from The Jungle Book with the crazy eyes?
Can we trust in you, Jamie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s46SgIBpQ-Q