EBayers UNITE, onward and upward!
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General Discussion
Anonymous
Feb 12, 2008
Posted by
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Anonymous started this discussion on Feb 12, 2008
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Anonymous replied on Feb 13, 2008
“never in the fields of human endeavor have so few given so much for so many”
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Anonymous replied on Feb 13, 2008
http://subat.fileave.com/billcobbnazi.jpg!
This image was made by a powerseller with 10,000+ feedbacks — its really the backbone of ebay that’s fed-up this time! The ‘Cobb Nazi’ has run on the ebay discussion boards several times but they always kill those posts in short order. I hope it it shows up here. I think we should collect these protest images and post them all here permanently where ebay can’t get them!
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Anonymous replied on Feb 14, 2008
a big HELLO to my fellow SUBATER’S, gene here,looks like the discussion board is working
power to the SUBAT
LOVE THE COBB NAZI PICTURE
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Anonymous replied on Feb 14, 2008
Hi Gene! Hey Val! It’s Jul…don’t let that bag fool you! (Does this mean we all have bags now??) The troopers at the Point have attacked the bug causing problems with the comment board and it’s now fixed
-yay! They’re showing up fine for me, too -including the Cobb Nazi image. (Who remembers the “corn-Cobb” one from a few years ago? We should get that one again, with the big droopy pig ears…and someone should begin one of Donahoe too…he says we’re “noise” so he clearly deserves it.) Apparently the comment area trouble was somehow related to the anonymity feature of this campaign so to anybody who tried to post and had problems, it should be fixed now.Also, to anyone who tried to join last night but had difficulty, if still having problems message me through the Point system. If you didn’t get that far (this is trying to be a mailto link) you can e-mail directly to <a href=“mailto:”mailto:subat_forever@yahoo.com">subat_forever@yahoo.com">SUBAT, subat_forever at yahoo dot com. Signing on to the Point is easy, all they need is a contact e-mail so you can have a password, then you can join any campaign, the anonymous ones or otherwise.
The reason this is important is that FeeBay has put up a blockade between users now so we can’t respond to anyone who comes through the eBay message system anymore if the return e-mail address is hidden. Everyone must uncheck the ‘hide my e-mail’ box on the FeeBay message form. Make sense? Because if not, this (a blockade screen) is what you get when you try to reply. No “open transaction.” This is new, of course
-it prevents any reply- and just another FeeBay tactic to try to keep us from joining forces against them. But if everybody either joins the Point or e-mails to SUBAT, we’ll get everybody safely into ‘free territory,’ free of the FeeBay pink-slapping and purging going on now on the eBay boards.And Val — do you have the text of the “Free Territory” post yet?
SELLER UNITY + BUYER SOLIDARITY = POWER!
POWER TO THE SUBAT!!
Jul
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Anonymous replied on Feb 14, 2008
hey guys,gene here
i was checking into opening a new feebay ID and entered “subatnumber1” into the ID field then clicked on “check to see if this ID is available” and the green check mark came up saying that it was LOL then i tried “subatnumberone” that too came up as being available LOL
CHEERS
gene
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Martin Arondis replied on Feb 14, 2008
Hello all,
After a few error screens I’m finally here, so Lily — nany nany boo boo. I do agree with MT though, the sign-on process could be streamlined.
I like Gene’s idea of Subatnumber1, 2, etc. Someone suggested WeBayer1 last week so perhaps between the two options, if we get enough on board, we could form into battalions to attack the boards. Is Maureen here yet? (Difficult to know with the “klan hoods”…I see what was meant about the bags over the heads!) I received the note about her being banned from the UK Round Table board, but does that stretch to include the US eBay boards, too? I say it’s definitely time we make the alternate ‘subater1’ sort of eBay IDs, else we may be prevented from running $0.01 sales with the unity badge, among other things.
Let me ask as well, are the people in the other eBay campaign really in favor of a boycott by only 2000 people? Does anyone know? It seems astonishing to me. More than 2000 sellers have already quit this month alone, very quietly. A “permanent boycott” is no boycott at all. The name for that is attrition. Attrition is just about the polar opposite to strike, boycott, or direct action of any kind, precisely because it has no element of agency or will. Death is the best example of attrition. EBay has planned for those loses and has indices of attrition going back to 1996. They want rid of the “flea-market” sellers, let’s not forget. At root, it’s a question of whether or not we will allow this new form of selling, made collectively, to be taken over by a few bosses and permanently warped or annihilated for their own selfish, ephemeral profit. They have implied the ‘flea-market people’ are dirty, no good. Read: low class. There are hundreds of thousands of people who depend on eBay sales for their bread and butter. Are we an underclass? It’s not just a “hobby,” as is usually portrayed. EBay is a workers’ issue. And when they corner workers and squeeze them as eBay is doing to its sellers, there is only one thing you can do: “pray for the dead (attrition), and fight like hell for the living.” Mother Jones taught this a century ago, in a previous round of popular battles with vicious monopolies. Why haven’t we learned it yet?
That’s all.
Regards,Martin
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Anonymous replied on Feb 14, 2008
Wanted to report — Val, I tried that widget but it doesn’t seem to work on ebay pages(unless I’m doing it wrong). While testing it I got that security screen again for this point page too, I think related to the cobb nazi image so we should find out why thats still happening before posting anymore pictures.
Anna asked me to ask everybody if you want the little banner to say “FeBay” or FeeBay" and if it should be “they can have IT” or “they can shove IT” -? Vote?
And I vote yes, link to the MySpace page. Has someone posted in that forum yet or are we still waiting for the anonymity bug fix?
SELLER UNITY + BUYER SOLIDARITY = POWER!
CC
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Anonymous replied on Feb 14, 2008
Another thing — does everybody get that screen asking if you want to resign right after posting a comment? I almost hit the button by accident! So I personally think that’s too prominent, over-kill at this stage, isn’t it?
CC
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Anonymous replied on Feb 16, 2008
hello all gene here
looks like the page is back to normal finally,lets see if this comment will post?
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Anonymous replied on Feb 16, 2008
Hi everyone!
Yes, the bugs are fixed and the comment section is back!
So I have a question for everyone. Who knows the most about each of the competing non-FeeBay auction sites? Do we have anyone here who has used or looked at, say, eCrater or iOffer for a while, long enough to be able to contrast it with eBay.com? Can we get someone for each of them, or a few people, to sort of clue the rest of us in on our options at each place? The aim is to make a master chart of sorts, so that everyone can see which venue might be best for his/her kind of merchandise, as a temporary measure until a ‘WeBay’ can get off the ground. There’s a vast amount of info. out there, too much for any one person to digest alone. We need to pull it all together somehow and make something meaningful out of it, for all of us to use now.
The PowersellersUnite site has daily counts of items for sale , but we need something with more meat, in order to be able to project which venue is worth additional research or test sales for each seller. So we’d need a comparison for fee structure (and they’re all better than eBay!), but also what kind of traffic each one has, especially for different categories of stuff. Where is it best for a dealer in dolls to go now? Or jewelry? Oriental rugs? If we pooled our efforts everyone would have less work and a better chance of surviving this FeeBay catastrophe, long enough to unite again on a free Webay site. If we could get a feel for all this now, perhaps we could all hang together more effectively too, meaning we’d be able to stay afloat and unite again when, say, a barrage of truth-telling on the FeeBay site is called for — and of course when the ‘WeBay’ is ready, too.
Val, are you taking iOffer or no? I believe we have someone to cover Wensy and Craigslist now, too (I don’t know if she’s here yet), and I’ll take another look at Craigslist too, since I remember some of the east coast ones from their early period. (We’ve learned recently that Craigslist is now 25% owned by FeeBay Inc., though…there’s a deterrent! Apparently they’re beginning the process of wearing down the original owners even there now…a pattern that illustrates why the ownership base of a WeBay must be too broad for that to ever happen again.) Other sites…Bidville, eCrater, blujay, tazbar, eBid (US and UK), ePier, wagglepop, etc. There are at least 30 of them now.
The best case scenario would be to have a couple of people to report on each one, so that we could pool that data and create a master chart to post here. If we do the research now as a group, it’s that much more likely everyone will be able to find the temporary site to meet their needs — to survive long enough to find refuge at a free WeBay.
We could really use someone who has sold before on Bidville in particular, not just because they’re #3 in total number of items listed now, but also to understand why their listing numbers were down this past week and if it had anything to do with the FeeBay slap-in-face ploy of $0.20 cent listings the other day. Any thoughts?
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Anna Marie Malloy replied on Feb 16, 2008
Is there something up with the join-campaign form here? I’m supposed to be joined now but I’m not showing up in the #s. ?
About that comparison chart, CC told me she’s taking Etsy.com. Has anyone used or looked at Amazon lately? And does anyone know what’s best for vintage clothing/accessories? I’d definitely research whatever site seems best for vintage bags, hats, etc, and put that toward the chart since I have to do it anyway. Unless someone else has done it already?
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Martin Arondis replied on Feb 17, 2008
As to that comparison chart, I’ll take whichever venue no one else wants. But alternatives to PayPal worry me more.
The changes coming to eBay-owned PayPal are at least as heinous as the fee increases, which can be clearly seen in this article about PayPal, which explains how eBay/Paypal have skirted liability on the matter of interest during the forced 21 day hold. I strongly suggest everyone read it.
Noteworthy are the lines: …PayPal has sole discretion over whether to freeze funds;
While PayPal offers interest-bearing accounts, debit cards, and other trappings traditionally associated with banks, it legally isn’t one. PayPal is classified as a “deposit broker”…, and
…PayPal’s operations lie outside of U.S. federal banking regulations.
I’ve seen some people claiming on the web lately that PayPal can’t actually institute the proposed 21-day hold because it’s illegal, therefore it’s not a real issue. This is untrue. If we continue to use their service
-which will soon become mandatory for all new sellers- they can, and they will, institute the proposed changes.If you had an early PayPal account, you’ll remember getting $50 in 2004, when PayPal settled out of court for $9,250,000, ending the class action suit (Comb, Toher & Resnick) filed against them in ‘02. The key to this is that in settling, they maintained their denial of any wrong-doing. What had they been accused of doing? Overzealously and illegally freezing users’ funds and collecting on the float, the interest. Why did they settle? Because they knew they would lose in court and that would mean a ruling preventing them from continuing this practice into the future. Just as they are now about to do formally.
How can they get away with this? First, by not technically being a bank (rather a conduit), therefore not subject to the regulatory codes governing banks. Second, by forcing all who use their service to waive any rights they might have had in agreeing to their extraordinarily unethical (substantively, procedurally unconscionable) Terms of Service Agreement. In particular states with overriding regulation preventing such wholesale waiving of rights, a person is minimally protected. But otherwise, PayPal can and will do as it likes, holding eBay sellers by the throat. Even using PayPal outside of any eBay transaction (which is still possible) is not as risky or ill-advised as continuing as an eBay seller, accepting payments via PayPal. If you thought “feedback extortion” was a problem, try real extortion. PayPal freezes are lifted, remember, when the buyer says then can be.
If we are to make a comparison chart of competing auction venues, I suggest we make a similar one for payment services, as eBay/PayPal has become absolutely predatory and should be abandoned immediately.
Regards,
Martin
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Anonymous replied on Feb 18, 2008
I am new at this so I hope I’m doing this right! Here goes: I have been reading all the posts and comments about eBay or “FeeBay” and I agree wholeheartedly. I am not a power seller, but I have been selling for 5 years…2 years strong…and up until now I have 100% feedback. I did not get this by threatening my customers; I’ve worked hard (nights, weekends, etc) to keep my customers happy. BUT, every once in awhile I get the miserable one that no matter what I do, I cannot please them. So now I must be afraid after every sale that any customer can rip me apart…just because they want to! It stinks!!!
I’ve also read in the other posts about other less popular sites (eCrater, uBid, Bidville, etc). Problem for me is my sales do not “fit” those kind of sites. I sell custom printed items and eBay has been my “website” so to speak. If I leave them, I loose $2K per month with nowhere else to go.
So, I’ve joined here in hopes that as a collective body we can force eBay’s hand! Either that or maybe locate somewhere else to peddle my goods :-)
Thanks for listening,
ME
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Henry Smith replied on Feb 18, 2008
Hello!
I’ve been buying and selling on FEEbay since 2000. Started out as a buyer and evolved into a seller/buyer. I’m just a small seller who does this as hobby. Keeps me out of trouble, as I like to tell my wife. She agrees :-D
I’m very pleased to lend my support to such a worthy cause. Anything I can do to help bring about WeBay, a site devoted to the users of that site and one that is not driven by corporate values, just let me know.
Just a thought, but I feel the Feb 18-25 boycott is too short. It needs to evolve into a general strike. Only with a prolonged loss of our business (revenue) will ebay take notice.
Hank
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Anonymous replied on Feb 18, 2008
I was using eBay as a business venue, which is now not only going to cost a lot more, the inmates are running the asylum and the sheriff has been run out of Dodge. The feedback changes alone scream incompetence. When buyers start leaving negatives just because they can and because a lot of people are just plain mean, I will be done for good, and so will a lot of other people. Maybe then there will be a change. eBay has shot itself in both feet, now it’s a matter of how long they can continue to dance. If they don’t take away the private auction option, I will be resorting to that. I have a lot of happy repeat buyers, I will add them all to a list and they will be cool. If someone wants to bid who isn’t on the list, they’ll have to wait until I check all the feedback they have left for sellers. No negative, no insanity, they can bid. Otherwise I’m gone.
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Anonymous replied on Feb 18, 2008
I agree with HenryS that the Feb 18-25 boycott is too short. Also I wasn’t clear on when to start-stop listings. I agree that It needs to evolve into a general strike. Only with a prolonged loss of our business (revenue) will ebay take notice.
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Laila Scott replied on Feb 18, 2008
Hi,
If all of you could join our boycott pages on myspace.com it would be appreciated. Lots of great pages and members info. If anyone needs help creating an account etc. just let me know I can help.
Thanks
Laila
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