Reflections on eBay

Why does the most popular, and easily most profitable, online auction site look so damn ugly? I considered this many times and the conclusion I've arrived at is simply that most people that use auctions sites are 1) stupid, 2)old or computer illiterate or 3) rich. eBay has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade, and for the most part, their interface hasn't changed. It is still a garbled, cluttered heap of mostly useless links intertwined with annoying third party advertisements. Their seller tools are mostly useless, and much of their software unintuitive. For example, when a seller receives a question through their messaging system, a copy is sent to the seller's email. The seller can respond via a link within the email, but for some reason, doing so doesn't mark the message as "read" in the sellers area. How can a seller respond to a question without reading it? Also, retail goods, especially electronics, can be had at prices far below the average end-auction price on eBay. By using advance searches that show completed listing prices added to shipping costs, its easy to prove that most widely available items, the Microsoft Zune for instance, sell for substantially less on major retail sites like Amazon.com or newegg.com. So why hasn't eBay addressed these concerns? It certainly isn't a lack of technical ability, but more likely a lack of motivation. They have no competition, so there is no need to streamline their site.

I'm also continually amazed by the fees charged by the site in question. They recently upped their rates even more. It costs anywhere from $2 on up to list virtually any auction and pay the purchased item commission. Realize that eBay has tens of millions of items for sale at any given time, creating extremely large economies of scale. Surely it can't cost eBay any more than 20 cents to handle the traffic and administrative overhead of any item.

The unfortunate truth is that we, as sellers and bidders, have no where to turn. Their is no other major auction site worth noting. I've been hoping for years that google would finally create their own auction site, and this idea seemed closer than ever to fruition when they launched their own payment system (which incidentally was banned by ebay).

Guess I'm just screwed for now. At least we have craigslist for local...