In a note from Jordan Sweetnam, eBay SVP + GM Americas, Marni Levine has been announced as eBay VP, Seller Operations and Engagement. Jordan said that Marni will partner closely with eBay product and engineering lead Harry Temkin (VP, Seller Experience) to hold all of eBay accountable for delivering only the best end to end experience for sellers.
Jordan went on to say that Marni and her team will bring your voice into everything eBay do, reboot eBay’s engagement through events and regular touch points, and foster a strong spirit of community.
This is goods news for sellers who have recently been battling a sub-optimal roll out of Item Specifics in Q4. Someone who will hold eBay accountable and harangue them into delivering a world class platform and selling experience is what’s needed.
Jordan also spoke of challenges with Internet sales tax, a strong marketing budget used to drive buyers to your listings and a category focus to promote eBay where the marketplace can demonstrate clear value to buyers. The category focus identifies three clear areas where Jordan says eBay have a ‘Right to Win’:
- Protecting and growing our ownable selection of things you cannot find at mainstream retailers. New: from espresso machines to the exact car part; refurbished tech and tools from your favorite brands; hard to find collectibles and comics; and the magic of mainstreet, from toy stores to local artists.
- Ensuring we are differentiated in the market.
- Emphasizing that we are defined by our purpose: empowering people and creating economic opportunity.
Jordan says that they are “setting eBay up for long term success by giving you, our sellers, the tools and resources you’ve told us you need to be successful”.
“A top priority in my new role was to find the right leader for our Selling organization. Having previously worked with you, our sellers, in 2017, Marni Levine stood out as having the vision, tenacity and empathy needed for the job. As VP, Seller Operations and Engagement, Marni will partner closely with our product and engineering lead Harry Temkin (VP, Seller Experience) to hold all of eBay accountable for delivering only the best end to end experience for our sellers. Marni and her team will bring your voice into everything we do, reboot our engagement through events and regular touch points, and foster a strong spirit of community.
I’m excited about what Marni and I will do in the weeks and months to come. She is an incredible seller champion and together we are ready to tackle tough challenges. You can also count on me to continue to be honest about how I’m approaching my role. Hearing from you is one of the best parts of my job. Since I’m not always able to respond immediately, my team has been working on ways for you to “Ask Me Anything.” We’ll kick this off shortly, and I’ll make sure to address the questions that are top of mind for most of you.”
– Jordan Sweetnam, SVP + GM Americas, eBay
19 Responses
Good luck, Marni – look forward to seeing you in the UK soon.
Yawn!
Yet Another sellers champion
Well Marni, you’ll need to act fast to improve the selling experience if you want to keep me as a seller.
After 14 years selling on eBay, I’ve pretty much given up on the platform after endless glitches that cost my Company far too much time and money to correct.
This latest Item Specific fiasco was the final straw for me.
I’m currently in the process of moving the majority of my hard to find vintage clothing items over to Depop, Etsy and ASOS Marketplace and my eBay exit strategy should be complete within the next 6 months.
I’ll keep an eye on your progress though and in case you do manage to improve things, I’ll keep my eBay account open and I will be happy to return to selling on eBay once you’ve done your magic.
Hi Marni!
I’ve got some revolutionary ideas for you that might not have been discussed before at eBay –
1. Cut exorbitant seller fees
2. Fix your site glitches
3. Offer decent customer service and support to your sellers (you know- YOUR customers).
4. Actually have a search algorithm that works!
eBay is so bad lately with site glitches and ‘improvements’ to the selling page, I’ve finally had enough and I’m pushing Amazon and Etsy a lot more now and eBay is going to get the dregs.
Enough is enough, I’m sick of the way they beat their sellers with a stick and expect them to suck it up and carry on.
Seller’s champion? I’ll believe it when I see it.
Hello Marni,
Want to make me happy? STOP taking fees from my postage
Well, best of luck with this, Marni, you will need it.
After nearly 20 years on eBay, I am scaling down and will only keep my account open for “bits and pieces” I just want to clear sooner or later, rather than my rare, very saleable (elsewhere, now), expensive stock.
I have had enough of banging my head off the brick wall that eBay has become, and also of being insulted by CS reps telling me silly stuff like “this (late October, early November) is a very quiet time of the year”, and “Yes, I think maybe one or two other people have mentioned that their sales are down”.
In common with other posters, I will, of course keep an eye on eBay, to see if anything improves, but I strongly suspect that it has reached the stage that there are so many glitches and failed fixes, so much that is not working properly, that the site cannot now be fixed.
I would be delighted to be proved wrong, but I really will not be holding my breath!
hey marni let me make customer service and refund decisions
if you want to make me happy
stop treating me as a snot nosed kid pulling on mums apron strings,
give me some credibility and respect
for my years of knowledge experience , my top rated seller badge ,my 100% 5 star performance
MY tens of thousands positive feedback
Sort out the checkout problems. Get rid of the confusion with the basket and enable buyers to have one option to buy, enabling them to add multiple items without incurring full postage on each one.
And stop making money off the back of these problems by not refunding fvf when sellers refund overpaid postage to buyers.
1 …Allow buyers to search on 1st postage
2…clearly display chinese or foreign sellers
3..get rid of chinese sellers. How can you promote a site for shopping experience when they are running on 30 negatives per 100 sales. How many of those buyers are lost to Amazon
1.. all the things mentioned above.
2.. hire some good UX guys. The current design and form is like trying to navigate a labirynth of death.
3.. stop breaking things.
4.. impove the messages system. It’s 2019 and not 1999……..
5… stop breaking things all time. I’m software developer myself and I would be fired within a week if I were (or my team) release software of that “quality”.
Good luck.
While the site does work, and work well – there is always room for improvement.
Ive been selling on ebay for at least 10 year, I could rely on profits going up if I put the work in. It now seems the search alogrithms are just not working. I have items that have sold 2000 per item over the years and they are now sitting at the bottom of the search. Some items dont even appear at all when I search for their title. I hear that sellers are being told to relist as new listings are promoted to the top. I hear about a botched item sepcifics roll out. I have no idea whats happening. I have had some crazy conversations about items for sale. ebay removed craft knife blades due to safety concerns but continues to say its fine to sell stanley knife blades for example. eBay reminds me of the big Utitlities companies in the early 2000’s. Very hard to get any sense out of anyone at the call centres. No one seems to know what they are talking about. Then the chinese sellers, I know my UK competitors, its a friendly contest with them. We all know each others listings and try and outwit each other, its fine and its fun even. Now I have to contend with maybe 50 or 100 chinese listings for each of the items the small group of uk shops sell. They somehow get ebay to show their address as “UK” or “London” etc. They pay no import duty, all shipping is sent through dodgy tax free warehouses around the major airports. It’s not a good situation. I pray this new manager understands that for ebay to make money they need satisfied sellers and satisfied customers. Something that wont be achieved by hiding items that sell well and have good feedback, reducing the sales of UK small sellers and companies and instead promoting Chinese sellers who fiddle the system and sell poor quality goods.
Changing subject-
#Ebay now considers items left in porches – wheely bins etc – as unsafe – & will favour with the buyer in items “not delivered cases” .
In the past -items left in secure places were found in the sellers favour.
Anybody besides me had any Experiences (Hermes was the courier)
I am looking to leave as well. 5 items have been left in paid in 6 months. I can’t file for an unpaid item through the app, and instead have to find a computer to use. I didn’t even know that until today, so I have cancelled and relisted 2 items valued at over 1000.00 without any punishment to the non paying buyers. I tried to leave negative, non emotional, feedback for another non paying buyer and there is no option so it is automatically positive. They monitor our messages like children, but cannot monitor and sort feedback even though they took away the seller’s option. They just want to sugar coat any problems for buyers. They force us to shut up and carry on at our expense. I am hoping for a good alternative, because I am pretty much done with customer service. I don’t believe they will change.