ebaY Employee Astroturfer Busted Badgering Bloggers

At EcommerceBytes blog, it appears that once again, ebaY is resorting to sleaze tactics in attempt to control the message.

An individual going under the name of birdieman chimes in with this:

 

We’re Sold! Why eBay Staffers Love to Sell

The ebaY laughs just keep coming!

I’m not really sure who they’re trying to reach? The general public? Other employees? And why don’t any of them have 4 colored hair?

Recently, in a seller recruitment effort, ebaY wanted it’s sellers to sell out their friends’ personal confidential info for a hefty sum of $10 per referral. How much do you think ebaY gave it’s employees for appearing  in the video?

Can’t they just beam some new sellers down from Planet Remulac or somewhere now that Paypal Intergalactic opened up?

 

 

Published on Jul 8, 2013

eBay staffers discuss their favorite selling experiences, as well as tips and advice for new sellers. Meet some of our very own staff that sell on eBay – and love it. Start selling today at http://ebay.com./startselling

But the real highlight is when you see…

 

ebay’s Erez Yereslove Violating Ebay Policies?

With the new 2013 spring seller update, a thread topic appeared on ebay’s seller central forum. Right away I noticed an odd comment:

Why doesn’t Erez’s post have a pink stripe?

Followed by a pink post:

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the confusion in Erez’s post above.  His Pink ID is unfortunately malfunctioning!  We encourage you to join us in the special discussion board as we have a room full of staff here ready to answer any of your questions on our Spring 2013 Announcement (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum/March-2013-Seller/5200000027)

posted this morning.

Thank you,

Cheryl

Seller Marketing

Next, the comedy begins:

Must be a hacked account all employees of ebay when listing merchandise for sale most have a blurb in their listing saying they are a employee of ebay.. Unless they changed that rule and didn’t bother to mention it..

I’m sure anyone can make a mistake, and the mistake was quickly corrected by removing the post. We were able to dig that post from Google’s cache. You can plainly see the post had no pinkliner, yet the message was from an ebaY staffer:

Mar 19, 2013 08:16 AM

Hi paularose1952,

Thanks for your questions. We have a large staff here at eBay waiting to answer any questions you have in a special discussion board. Would love for you to join us there:

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum/March-2013-Seller/5200000027

See you there!

Erez

eBay Seller Team

And that’s where the real fun starts!

Tracking down the person’s  listings, we can see that this individual failed to post the obligatory link identifying themselves as an ebay employee in their listings. here’s a sample. Every last one I checked failed to have the link.

When eBay employees submit community content as members, not as employees, they need to identify themselves as eBay employees and state that the content reflects their personal views and isn’t written on behalf of eBay.

Also, I notice characteristics of the completed listings look like violations of duplicate listing policy,

Sellers can’t have more than one fixed price listing of an identical item at the same time.

and have a resemblance to feedback gaming or manipulation scheme, by listing several same items at 10 cents each with local pickup. Why, it’s just amazing how many of those things sold!  The practice/tactic is not unlike those of the “sleeper cells” fraudsters recently reported on.

So move over Lori Norrington!

In case you haven’t heard of Erez Yereslove, of the ebay seller team, he’s one of the people who ache when rank & file members get snubbed by not being invited to selling promos. He hates it when that happens!

I feel it’s very important for folks to realize the ebay management, who makes the rules and policies for ebay, don’t even follow those rules. That’s crooked, pure and simple.

If that sort of thing bothers you, close your accounts. Persuade others to do the same. It’s the only noise ebay understands.

 

Message from (former) eBay employee – Ebay to End Auctions?

A curious post appeared on ebaY’s Seller Central forum recently by a person representing himself to be John Delson, an ebaY employee with the Seller Development dept. Needless to say, it was quickly removed..

Auctionbytes  posted a blog regarding the issue, (where the same John Delson  person chimes in again in the comments area BTW). Ebay spokespeople issued staunch denials both there and at a board upgrade forum at ebay community forums.

Before you acknowledge or discount this as a legit message from alleged ebay employee John Delson, please consider the infamous ‘memo’ from 2008 and note how many of the things mentioned there came to pass, as well as how many similar things were then mentioned.

Here is a full page screencapture of the cached google page from that thread, reduced to 640 pixels (opens in a new tab or window).

Now the full text preserved from that cached page.

message from (former) eBay employee

Aug 24, 2011 01:20 PM

• Reply

This is John Delson, an employee for eBay, Inc.

I know this will get me fired, but I am walking out today, so it does not matter anymore.

I work in the Seller Development department .

This department handles the future of how eBay members list, how they sell, what they sell, detailed seller ratings, feedback, etc.

Just about anything you do with selling is regulated with this department.

I’ve been with eBay for over 9 years, and I am one of the longest working employees in this department.Many others have left, or have been terminated, due to being “lenient towards sellers”.

Anyway, I want to bring up some key points that were discussed at the last “work shop”.

This workshop meets for about one hour on every Wednesday. This work shop consists of several “upper level” eBay employees, and from time to time, John Donahoe, president of eBay, will stop in to make sure everything is “up to snuff” (as he puts it).

Anyway, after all the wrong doing eBay has done to sellers, what was discussed today was the final “straw that broke the camel’s back”, after posting this, I’m walking out after 9 years of putting up with eBay’s unfairness to sellers, non sense, often immoral (bordering illegal) policies that I personally have had to develop and implement into the eBay website.

The upcoming event, will be the final “nail in the coffin” for many eBay sellers, however I want to get this out here ahead of time, so you can prepare for it. This was actually going to be announced one week before being put into place.

 On October 1st, 2011, eBay, Inc, on ALL eBay country locations (.co.uk, .jp, .com, etc) will be ending the auction listing format.

After October 1st, 2011, all auctions will cease to exist on eBay, in favor of Donahoe’s plan (more on this later).

 As you many know, we at eBay implemented a 9% final value fee on shipping costs.

Our official statement was released to the public stating it was done to prevent excessive shipping charges.

In reality, eBay was suffering profit losses, and this fee was a must in order to keep a positive income.

We understood that this would make a few sellers upset, this is why we also announced a new fee structure, and gave sellers 50 free auction listings.

This was done in order to keep our company looking untarnished for investors of eBay shares. We wanted to make more money from sellers, but keep them on here at the same time.

 Many of you may wonder why eBay allowed numerous sellers from China to list on the eBay.com website.

 We did this because:

-. Not only can buyers from china purchase things from eBay China, buyers can now purchase things from china all over the world. China is a largest seller, and allowing them more search exposure would increase our fee income, and increase our GMV.

 – It undersells sellers from other countries, and allows China to be the leader in sells for eBay.

 Now you may be wondering why John Donahoe wants to get rid of auction format.

Here are some of the reasons that were mentioned at today’s workshop:

 – When buyers bid, they are not purchasing unless they win.

– The more buyers purchasing, the higher our fee profit is from sales.

– Time wasted bidding, is time that could be used for buying.

So there you have it, from the words of John Donahoe himself.

 There will be another update released in February 22nd, 2012, that will get rid of small and medium volume sales.

 eBay is tired of small sellers, because:

 -They can’t self sustain themselves, and tie up our customer support system.

– They often list junk, we don’t want to look like a flea market.

– They make us fees, but not enough for it to be worth them on our trading platform, due to all the issues they have.

 On February 22nd, any one selling on the eBay website, will have to have at least 7,500 items in stock and ready for shipment.

-This number may increase.

– Sellers will have to submit proof of inventory, any documents proving they own the inventory, and (maybe) pictures of inventory.

– This will not apply to sellers who currently sell at least 5,000 items a month, since their selling volume is generally enough to satisfy our per-seller fee goal.

 Well, that’s all I have to say, its been a unpleasant 9 years at eBay, and I hope all sellers reading this will take proper measures to ensure their success on eBay.

 Thank you for your time, and good bye:

John Delson

Employee, eBay, Inc.

Sellers Development Department.

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eBay Exec Lorrie Norrington Steps Down

From the official statement at the ebay ink site and elsewhere:

“Lorrie has led eBay Marketplaces through significant fundamental change as we drive a multiyear turnaround strategy to enhance the shopping experience for buyers and sellers and evolve eBay as a global ecommerce and mobile commerce leader,” said eBay Inc. President and CEO John Donahoe. “For personal family reasons, Lorrie made a decision to do what’s best for eBay and for her family, and I respect that. I wish her the very best and thank her for many contributions to our company and our nearly 92 million active eBay users.”

I think we all know that the ‘family time’ excuse could well be a euphemism for ‘other’ things, whatever they may be. Maybe it’s just me but something about the phrasing of that may tell us something; He mentions doing ‘what’s best for ebay’ ahead of ‘her family’

Now from the article at Huffingtonpost.com

RBC Capital Markets analyst Stephen Ju said that Norrington’s sudden departure is not a good thing for eBay.

Remaining executives including Donahoe will have more work running marketplaces for the time being – and that’s if eBay’s explanation for her departure is taken at face value.

“The other interpretation is that she might be held responsible for what the management team admitted will be a slower turnaround than they originally thought,” Ju said.

At any rate, Ms Norrington didn’t seem to me to be enhancing ebay’s prestige too much. I feel, she shall be remembered by users chiefly for her misconduct; the epic shoes and honesty fail, and repeated disregard for the very policies she created and oversaw, as well as for her potty-mouth.

I’m really only left wondering who is next?

Oh the Horror!

Chop! Chop!

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Lorrie Norrington Steps In “IT” at ebay Live

I first learned of this situation reading a post at auctionbytes blog, “Disconnect at eBay as It Moves toward Amazonification” on 06-21-2008

“During the keynote session, Lorrie Norrington spoke about cherishing small sellers like Denise from good-dog-jack, and relayed her experience of buying a pair of shoes on eBay and then selling them to a buyer in France. It would appear they still want those eBay-like experiences, but on an Amazon-like platform.”

It has been revealed that Ms Norrington lied- either in the body of her listing, or else at the speech where she tried to use her shoe sale to talk about “Trust” at ebay Live! 2008 in Chicago.

It is also obvious that she failed to disclose her status as an ebay employee. Further, it is clear that she was a deadbeat bidder on at least one occasion, having earned a negative feedback for that.

Anyway, this was also posted about on ebay forums, where they deleted that post in record time, but not fast enough. It made it into a couple more threads and to auctionbytes before it could be buried. Yet we know that ebay tried to bury that. It also went “POOF” from the cache at google in the blink of an aye. Very strange indeed.

Here is the original listing url:
Tod’s Women’s Loafers New in Box Size 7.5 (EU Size 3)

screencap of that listing

The discussion at ebay forums where I found the screencaps used in the video.

Screencap of that thread

The feedback profile 200 results page of ebay member westie0721 (148)
screencapture of that 200 results page

screencap (Note that I use Firefox browser with Greasemonkey extension and ‘ebay Hacks’ script, which adds 2 new tabs to feedback page and opens toolhause negs in a new frame on the same page.
(You may also note that ebay feedback only goes back so far now, depriving users of the entire profile BTW.

here is the Toolhaus.org feedback received page

Screencap of another discussion of the issue on ebay forums
Ebay employee has auction and doesn’t identify them as employee?

I really don’t have much more to say about this.
I think the video says IT all. ;p

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