If you’re a business registered seller in the UK, France or Germany you may be one of the few thousand selected to be surveyed on business issues affecting you.
eBay are conducting the survey through Freshminds and want to give sellers a voice to businesses selling on their marketplace on issues that affect them. The survey poses a number of questions on themes such as Government policies, technology and business confidence, including:
- How confident do businesses feel about the next 12 months?
- Have recent recommendations by the Independent Banking Commission made it easier for businesses to access finance?
- What do businesses consider the biggest barrier to exports?
- How do businesses rate the performance of the Coalition Government in restoring economic growth?
The result of this consultation will enable eBay to identify trends and allow their business leaders to speak up on behalf of online businesses in policy discussions and in the media. eBay say that they understand this is the busiest time of year, but would really appreciate sellers receiving the questionnaire are able to find 10 to 15 minutes to participate. eBay will release findings from this consultation in 2012.
What are the biggest issues that you feel affect your business today? Is it one of the issues above, or are there other issues that affect you when sourcing products, selling overseas, obtaining finance, taxation, employment or something else? If you could get government to make one change to assist your business what would it be?
21 Responses
To be quite honest I don’t think eBay care a dot about what business sellers think. Before they attempt to present themselves as representatives of SMEs they would do better to get their own house in order.
There are many, many things eBay could do to make business safer and more productive for sellers – not least get rid of the stupid DSR / Feedback system. I for one am feed up to the back teeth with being blackmailed by buyers and CS staff that haven’t got a clue.
I would be more enthusiastic if eBay didn’t have a track record for not listening to sellers and I suspect that their motives are purely ‘What’s best for eBay shareholders’ and less what’s best for buyers and sellers.
Trust and safety – Don’t make me laugh!
Totally agree with Glenn. Given ebays attitude to sellers, the lack of trust shown by ebay towards sellers, and the systems that ebay have in place that handicap sellers, then it is laughable that ebay are involved with this!
Don’t get me wrong. I like ebay as a selling platform but it could be so much better and ebay make it hard work and harder than it needs to be for sellers.
If I recieve this survey I will complete it, but I don’t believe for one second that my answers will be used to help sellers, just the shareholders.
Sounds jaded? Well, when you have been an ebay seller for 7 years and counting, you kind of know when they’re blowing smoke up your ass.
I get that eBay will want to look after their profits and their shareholders, but am I the only person who can see that just sometimes eBay’s interests coincide with mine?
Sure they give outlets and high street retailers far too much advantage, but then I’ve not done so bad over the last seven years.
It would be great to see the key findings in 2012, especially on how businesses (especially online retailers) foresee the coming year.
One barrier to export I can think of is lack of information on gov’t guidelines, tax, etc. Although these are available in government websites they could look less complicated and I think eBay can help in this regard.
Not being a UK seller or an eBay seller any more I would not be surveyed. eBay has a long history of ‘surveys’ carefully framed to allow only the answers they want to hear. They can then honestly say ‘our sellers asked’.
My answers would be:
1. No confidence in any meaningful improvement. Will be happy if sales remain the same.
2. Unless you are buying very low cost rentable real estate no sensible business should buy a lot of stock at this time much less indebt themselves. Only buy what you can turnover fast.
3. eBay feedback policies echoed by PayPal. I will only ship custom listings overseas if buyers want PayPal but have never has a problem using Amazon Payments or Google Checkout (so far – fingers crossed)
4. Austerity does not stimulate an economy.
eBay to me has been good over the years I have been selling, yes there have been changes, Yes some I did not like, but I just got on with it.
Also my clients have seen good growth in their businesses, yes again there are challenges we are going through, but sales are all good.
ebays business is contracting and there scared. Sales are down despite the propaganda !
As for the survey, my biggest concern is ebay no longer care about small sellers.
The government make a change ? HA
ebay need to look at themselves.
Not taxes and other things related to government.
My biggest threat is the next stupid unrealistic change ebay make. !
We received this survey. At our busiest time of the year and they wanted 15mins of my time.
I think they could have chosen a more appropriate time to send.
I got the survey – and completed it!
Not sure how relevant most of it was to a very small business, it was a strange mix of big questions and little questions and lots of repetition.
I agree that eBay should do away with DSR ratings, mine are perfect but it’s been very hardwork keeping them that way and I’ve had to backdown on several obviously dodgy buyers…
Having said all that, today is the day that I incorporated my shiny new limited company – this would not have been possible if ebay didn’t exist!
I would love to run my own survey with one question.
If there was a viable alterative to eBay (similar platform and customer base) and you were given the option to change platforms would you change?
I honestly believe that sellers are desperate for a New viable platform (I don’t consider eBid to anywhere close to being viable – at the moment) and that sellers would abandon eBay in droves if such a platform was launched.
Personally I am now selling 500 less lines on eBay than at the start of the year having chosen to list those products solely on Amazon.
Yes – Less Money in the pot – BUT – less grief and that makes up for it.
Within those 500 products are several which have previously been targeted for a Vero violation but which Amazon are more than happy to list.
It is not about sellers but about buyers. The sole and single reason sellers put up with the ebay shanigans is that they have a massive pool of global buyers. There is absolutely no other reason.
Would buyers abandon eBay?
Why not create a survey for eBay buyers and find out?
Right.
So the question then surely has to be would more sellers on ebay attract even more buyers?
If so what are ebay going to do about it?
And surely we have to be talking about the specialised small and medium sized sellers who sell something different and not the run of the mill mass market type sellers who probably operate and sell the same gear in several marketplaces anyway.
Forget about government policies and politics. This is simply a diversion and should not be a factor in a focused business that wants to drive forward.
In the end, its all just “business”