Source: The Contra Costa Times
Fee increases, complaints of slowing sales and growing concerns about fraud and other issues have tested the patience of many eBay loyalists.
At the same time, other opportunities for selling goods online, from niche auction sites to Amazon‘s merchants program to simply setting up a Web site and buying ads on Google, are putting competitive pressure on the San Jose company and its flock of sellers.
A steep fee increase announced in January raised the monthly cost for store owners by 50 percent and the commissions they pay on sales by as much as 60 percent. Those hikes sparked unusually strong anger among users. It also unmasked problems in the way the company communicated with users.
The article does offer some positive points, such as the fact that eBay is still growing strong and more and more people are turning eBay into their permanent jobs, even developing their own products for sale on the site.