Back in February, we covered the first major seller strike on eBay, in which a large group of eBay’s PowerSellers launched a week-long boycott of the site in an effort to have their voices heard. The sellers, who were unhappy with recent changes to listing prices and other policies, claimed some success and even USA Today reported a 13% drop in sales. However, eBay denied the boycott had any impact whatsoever on their business. This time the boycott will involve both eBay buyers and sellers, and, unlike the first, no end date has been set.
The boycotters still have many unresolved issues regarding the changes that have been taking place on the site, the most radical being a change to the feedback system which prevents sellers from being able to leave negative or neutral feedback.
In addition to the feedback changes, the other items being protested include issues with DSRs (Detailed Seller Ratings), the minimum 21-Day PayPal hold for risky sellers and risky categories, fee increases, another other policy changes. A good summary of all the issues can be found here.
On eBay, there are severalongoingdiscussionthreadssurrounding the boycott, which began today. Some sellers are saying they won’t boycott because they can’t lose the business, but others say they won’t just boycott, they will just take their business elsewhere for good.
Boycotters continue to use social media to spread their message – the unofficial MySpace page, for example, has 738 friends as of today. New YouTubevideoshaveappeared as well.
It’s too soon to tell whether this second boycott will have any impact on eBay either, but it may come down to whether eBay can withstand the loss of these major PowerSellers, rumored to be in the hundreds. With a site as massive as eBay, it’s likely that they can.
