New eBay Policy Has Users Go Goodwill Hunting By Kevin Tyerman AuctionBytes.com
August 10, 2003
What is the value of Goodwill? Businesses, both small and large, are sold every day, and the better established they are, the more that goodwill increases the value of the business. Goodwill is a very important part of trading in any community.
Imagine for a moment, if eBay were told that they must change their trading name and all URLs on their auction site by next January. The outcry from not only eBay, but also their customers, would be mighty. eBay's goodwill would seriously be impacted, and all of the users would have to change how they do business with this corporation to some extent. But this is what eBay is now asking of its oldest customers. eBay has given until next January for active users with email address IDs to change their eBay trading name, or eBay will change it for them. Inactive email address IDs will be changed this month by eBay. (See news story at http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y03/m08/i01/s01.)
For some time, eBay has disallowed new ID registrations from registering with email address IDs, so this move mostly affects long established and experienced users. The reason given for this change in policy is to protect these experienced users from the scam emails that encourage users to sign in on bogus sites with the intention of harvesting passwords and hijacking eBay accounts to run fraudulent auctions. The fact is though, that even people who have never registered on eBay and/or PayPal receive these bogus emails. After more than 12 months of saturation of these emails, experienced users are not the ones who will now take the bait, whilst users who have never had email address IDs are also being scammed or hijacked.
In mid June, eBay changed their system (without pre-announcement), so that email addresses would not work when searching for sellers. Supposedly this was to stop email harvesters from verifying email addresses, but now, the "Request User ID" link will still confirm the email is used on eBay, but it will not give the User ID or allow buyers to find seller lists.
Since this change in the system, I have spoken to two people that were disappointed that many sellers have either left eBay, or been banned! These buyers have obviously bookmarked the seller list using the seller's email address (probably so that they would not lose the list if the seller changed IDs). Both buyers deleted the bookmarks to the sellers that they thought had left and are not aware of their current active User ID. So, currently, contrary to eBay's given reason for this change in policy, an email address can be verified, but buyers can no longer find the sellers that they previously trusted.
Meanwhile, those sellers who currently trade using their email address are faced with additional dilemmas. The "best" and "easiest to remember" ID names were taken long ago, when eBay first introduced User IDs. At that time, many sellers decided that it was better to continue using an established email address ID, an ID that is now being banned.
It is going to be difficult to find an appropriate ID that will easily be remembered by buyers, and they will be losing a trading name that many have established as trustworthy over 5 or 6 years. Semi-regular buyers who don't look at their selling list within thirty days of these sellers changing their ID will lose the selling lists of these sellers. Any regular buyers who do not retain the seller ID to memory and do not update their bookmark will also lose the selling lists of sellers that they support and trust.
The options for these sellers, though, is limited. If they contact previous buyers to let them know that their ID has changed and that their bookmark should be updated, they run the risk of being banned by eBay for spamming. Currently eBay's link policy does allow a single email link, so it is possible to include your previous eBay ID (and even use it as an email link) once in your auctions without violating email policy. (This is odd, since it negates the stated reason for the change in policy, as email harvesters will still be able to harvest the email addresses.)
Some theorize that eBay is trying to reduce direct contact between sellers and buyers. If they are correct, then this policy is also likely to change in the foreseeable future, making it impossible to advise those viewing your auctions what your previous seller ID was.
In any case, the goodwill and brand/tradename recognition that many of eBay's longest and most faithful clients have built up over several years has now been lost through a policy change. The reason given for the policy change will not be negated as long as lists of email addresses are commercially traded on the Internet. And given that most of the long term sellers are now very aware of the scam emails, eBay is only undermining the long term goodwill of these eBay businesses whilst not really offering the protection for which they claim this policy was introduced.
What is the value of Goodwill? For long term faithful eBay traders, not very much, it would appear.
About the author:
Kevin Tyerman has been selling on eBay since January 1998. Prior to that Kevin, an auctioneer, had a small real-time auction business based in Sydney Australia. Kevin now resides in Albury, Australia - a regional country city.
