“eBay is a Global Marketplace bring buyers and sellers together” has been a corner-stone of the eBay system since the site was founded, but last February the UK and the US became two nations seperated by more than a common language and a big puddle.

When UK sellers raised a cacophony of complaints about plummeting traffic and sales during the first quarter of last year, the then Head of Search & Finding stated he didn’t know why.  Within a few weeks he was blaming Google for changing their algorithms, then came clean with an announcement that trans-Atlantic visibility had been chopped due to the UK flooding the US marketplace on Cheap Listing days.

A few months after the chop, that same eBay executive, who became Head of Trust and Safety, finally admitted that he’d been instrumental in the trans-Atlantic visibility cut (and had therefore been lying to eBay’s paying customers all along) – so much for Trust, and the Safety of Seller’s rights under False and Misleading Advertising laws.  Even up to March this year, he was still making inaccurate & seller-infuriating comments regarding cross-border visibility; statements that got him shot down in eBay discussion boards, and the shooters banned from using those boards again.

Throughout that saga, myself and others continually cautioned that the prolongued and pointless “testing”, and the placebos of limited-category visibility re-introductions, were just the sweetening of the bitter pill – that sellers would have to pay for trans-Atlantic (and other cross border) visibility being returned, in the manner being used on eBay India. 

This was confirmed at the end of March by Stephanie Tilenius, Head of Global Marketplace Operations, after I “outed” the fee by stealth introduced onto eBay Canada.

Now, eBay UK are the first to rush this increase in fees to market, with Friday’s announcement that it will be introduced from tomorrow (20th May) – not a lot of time to upgrade your listings … if you’re the type of seller that likes lining eBay’s coffers.

Ed