March 08 - Exhibition of eBay Boycott Art

Visitors may be aware that eBay has been subjected to a boycott by some of its sellers over concerns about fee increases from February 20, 2008 and other proposed changes.

I felt that the illustrations used by some of the sellers were worthy of an exhibition in their own right - so here are a selection!

The aim of the boycott was to reduce selling, buying, and watching for a period to impact eBay income. Some sellers said they were actively seeking alternative auction outlets.
While only an occasional eBay seller I have some sympathy.

My personal view is that eBay spends too much money fiddling with needless bell and whistle modifications to the system which are confusing to regular users.

Thus every now and again their fiddling messes up my regular search routines.

eBay could have maintained the simpler structure of two or three years ago, saving money and improving profits.

Thus they would not have needed to keep increasing their charges.

The particular villain is seen by many sellers as the new CEO John Donahoe and issue is taken by many with his claim; "Our sellers prefer the new structure" which is seen by many sellers as a patently untrue statement.

Sellers are using the eBay seller discussion board to record their frustration and displeasure which caused them to proceed with the boycott.

Some of them have posted pictures expressing their displeasure on the eBay noticeboard.

Time will tell whether the boycott has any success, but here are examples of images posted on the discussion board, some of which are quite clever.

There are already close to 30,000 posts and the detailed comments by sellers can be read at SIGN THE PLEDGE _ NO SALES FEB 18-25!

It has since been noticeable that eBay has since had a number of cheap listing days, perhaps to try and counter this criticism.















The following are the three stages of eBay as seen by one eBay protester; firstly as an active fleamarket, secondly after the changes and thirdly in the future.


1 THIS WAS YOUR EBAY:










2THIS IS YOUR EBAY WITH THE EXECS ON WHAT, DRUGS??











3 THIS IS EBAY AFTER MAY 1ST 2008