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EBay joined forces with Autotrader to build a Rolls Royce. But eBayers feel like they're driving an Edsel.
"Did you ever read the book The Peter Principle? " Caryl, an eBay dealer who goes by the name Rapparts, asks rhetorically. "Ebay is a perfect example. They have grown, and grown, and have reached their level of incompetence."
Caryl is not the only one who feels this way. The "Car Chat" bulletin board on eBay, the online auction giant, has been abuzz with disgruntled buyers and sellers since the new site, eBay Motors, came online.
Complaints have ranged from too-small fonts and poor layout and design, to limited search functions and incompatibility with popular seller-tools such as Mr. Lister software. Some users have boycotted eBay all-together.
But no one foresaw such an uproar back in March, when Atlanta-based AutoTrader.com, the world's largest used car marketplace, and San Jose, CA-based eBay unveiled plans to create the Internet's largest auction-style arena to buy and sell used cars. The co-branded site, www.ebay-autotrader.com, was launched and could be reached directly and through the eBay and AutoTrader.com Web sites and also through the URL ebaymotors.com.
The union makes sense on many fronts: Combine monetary and labor forces, blend in widely-known brand names, and create some economies of scale, while bringing together two of the largest online groups of buyers and sellers interested in one thing, cars, into one place: the biggest online auto dealing forum.
- "The site itself is doing very, very well," said eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove. "The number of listings continues to grow, and at this stage in the game, items contained within the automobile category are now accounting for 20-25% of eBay [dollar] sales," he added. But the car commotion has not gone unnoticed
- how could it? EBay users are known as a vocal group when something goes right and especially when something goes
wrong.
"eBay Motors is a very unfortunate error on eBay's behalf," according to Bob L., an eBay member using the name Rrubin.
In broad terms, users might not have minded the eBay-AutoTrader Union if Auto Trader's format, values, ideals and influence hadn't worked its way into the collector car and parts section. The straight-on buying and selling of cars on AutoTrader has a proven, successful track record. But the close-knit community of avid collectors appears to have thrived on the eBay community model, something the dissenters claim is lost entirely on the new site.
Point by point, members have complained that the layout is difficult to understand, the new groupings of categories don't make sense from a car perspective, and that navigation is slower and more cumbersome because of it.
Searching the new site, many say, is limiting, in that it does not allow cross-referencing with the main eBay site. (The company claims that the eBay Motors search difficulties are one of the top priorities to fix, along with alleviating other points of customer dissatisfaction.) Image hosting services, available on eBay, are not there for sellers on eBay Motors.
But eBay is known as a responsive company. Actually, the entire automotive category on eBay.com came about through user requests. Between January and February 1999, eBay started to notice that users were listing an increasing number of used cars, trucks, motorcycles, parts and car collectibles. The company set out to create a corner of their already-large auction site just for autos and automobilia with the help of eBay users.
"Any time we undertake a new initiative, a great percentage of that is coming from our users," Pursglove said. Directions for the initiatives come from customer support, feedback, email, ongoing informal focus groups, then formal focus groups, he said, citing the current changes as well as past ones, such as the fee structures surrounding reserve
auctions.
To keep pace with user demands (and complaints) about eBay Motors, eBay has hosted formal and informal focus groups, involved core members of the car community, and has implemented a number of changes to eBay Motors, including fonts, background colors and compliance with Mr. Lister upload software.
"They're really honest," Pursglove said of the ongoing feedback. "They want to see the site succeed because they want to succeed." As for the boycott? Between 35 and 40 members have organized and participated, and some of them adamantly continue their action, not listing or buying, they say, on eBay as a whole. But many others are realistic about what harm or good a boycott may do.
"This is like 100 people saying they will never drive a Chevrolet again and expecting Chevy to notice. They wouldn't," Rrubin said. "Same with eBay."
But he may be selling the boycott short. EBay has noticed. "From time to time, it's clear that we get a little out of sync with our users," Pursglove said. But that's not unlike any business. What's different about eBay, Pursglove added, "is that we know immediately when things are off."
Seasoned eBay users speculate that the association with Auto Trader was likely the greatest influence on the design of eBay Motors, stating that it has a very "Auto Trader" feel and function. That may soon change as well.
"There's a new home page in the works that will look a lot more like eBay dot com," Pursglove said. "We pride ourselves in keeping a close ear to the community, so when we face a change and challenge such as this, we really listen and move."
But that still doesn't do much to assuage the tense situation between car dealers and the dot com.
"They need car people on staff at San Jose, not more MBA's from Auto Trader," one eBay user said. "The heat is not letting up."
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