On Wednesday night, eBay released its results for the final quarter of 2014 and the whole of 2014. We’ve gathered together some links that explore the earnings and some of the announcements. We published ebay’s own top-level info graphic on the night.
And there are more headlines. eBay is to shed 7% of staff, a total of 2400. eBay Enterprise is due to be spun off as well as PayPal and there are new appointments to the board.
Forbes has an excellent summary called “eBay Announces Plans To Shed Jobs, Units In Q4 Earnings Report“.
As always, we recommend Scot Wingo of Channel Advisor for his digest of results from the perspective of a seller.
Reuters looks more closely at the eBay Enterprise sale: eBay may sell enterprise unit ahead of PayPal split.
The job cuts attracted the most headlines. Here the BBC take a sober look at the 2400 job losses that may occur as early as this quarter.
Quartz have published this piece about Carl Icahn’s role and power at eBay in recent months in a provocatively titled piece: The eBay you grew up with is dead. Cause of death: Carl Icahn
Happy reading!
23 Responses
“Auctions were a pain point, down 14%”
eBay are once again neglecting their USP of auction format, it’s what eBay’s core surely is; no-one else does this format as effectively and they are letting it die, bizarre. Forbes seemed to not mention the dismal marketplace performance; the jump in share price could be argued are the vultures circling for the split and not due to performance of the company, which when paypal results are stripped away, was not good. An interesting 12 months ahead, that’s for sure.
I’m not surprised to be honest that they are dropping sales. eBay had a unique business but chose to just copy Amazon in every minute detail, even though their USP( the auctions, the startups, the attention to detail from sellers), demographic sellers, demographic buyers and target market are completely different.
eBay ignores these factors and the second-hand market at it’s peril and chooses to exacerbate low sales by compounding the negative factors further
SMH
EBays USP is no longer auctions,.while it does have them. Now it’s leading foot is ‘international’ bargains.
(Namely from sellers who don’t pay VAT.)
Hard to feel sorry for the 2,400 staff getting fired as most are usless anyway so I guess its no real loss. Hopefully it will include the Customer Service Rottweiler bytches in Dublin. You all know who you are!
I mean cmon, isn’t it odd how any time a seller calls you get shit service that takes hours and then if they do agree to help, they still screw it up and you have to call again. And again. And again. And again… CS? Really?
Whats worse is none of the CS reps actually ever sell on eBay (I always ask this question during the call and after 6 years its a 100% no). And if you try to save calling frequently by having a few issues to deal with in one call, no chance. If very lucky one of your issues will get sorted. Whats worse is some of the CS reps don’t think twice about mis-leading or lying to you. Buyers however get treated like gold.
IMO they are a bunch of dumb ass Policy Monkeys that are totally clueless and don’t really care. IE total idiots – so good riddance to 2400. Maybe some will stop and think about what Customer Service means. For anyone whos a bit slow, the clue is in the second word!
Long live The Revolution!! 🙂
One further point after reading the linked articles: How can eBay be saddled with 5 Billion of debt? All they do is print money via running a shitty website.
Could it be that someone mortaged the company to the hilt, wrote themselves a huge check, and is now selling the garbage and getting out? Hmmmm, I wonder who that might be….
Long live The Revolution!! 🙂
Ebay has been a continuing pain for me for some time. I regret the loss of volume sales but don’t miss the high fees, low profit margins, and rotten customers. My business is a real struggle at the moment but I can see survival on other sites.
There was a time when a lightweight package of any size could be shipped for under £1. Maybe ebay are to blame for mismanaging their site but a 300% price hike for shipping lightweight goods over a 3-4 year period does not help. And to compound this shipping price hike ebay implementing fee charging on shipping has not helped either.
Any UK seller selling low value goods under £10 say has hurt bad in the last few years.
Don’t you just love the ebay community spirit nowadays lol
The attitudes and the love displayed has so so changed over the last 10 years lol …..its not as if ebay can rebrand and shrug it off lol
Sellers have long memories. Constantly raping them with higher fees every year coupled with scandalous treatment compared to Buyers, it’s not a surprise Sellers are looking elsewhere, or even giving up.
The worst fee by far, fees on Postage !! And of course its going to affect Auctions. As a typical scenario, you list an auction for .99p, and you offer Royal Mail next day delivery. The customer knows it costs £7, but why would the Seller not add another £1 on top to cover Ebays and Paypals fees. Even before the sale is complete, the Buyer has got the hump because they think the Postage is higher than it should be.
Everyone knows that postage is free lol