Hi fitzheuen,
I'll do my best to answer your questions. However, some of the information you're asking for is not publicly available, such as forecasted customer retention stats for 08 and 09. For publicly available financial information, please read our Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2007 Results at http://investor.ebay.com/index.cfm. Toward the end of the document, we have our forecasted growth numbers for 2008.
OK, on to the questions I can answer:
You're concerned about the wording buyers see when selecting DSRs for sellers - your buyers say they would never select "very reasonable" for anything other than free shipping. Fair enough. I'd like to see better explanations of what the DSRs mean and how buyers should utilize them - we're working on some projects to improve that already.
In looking at the sellers in the top 10% of the shipping and handling charge DSR in the US, eBay found that these sellers do not necessarily offer free shipping. Their strength appears to be in clear, upfront communication to their buyers around shipping times, charges, etc.
Every seller's situation is going to be different, and I can't speak to yours specifically. However, I do think it is possible to get high DSRs in shipping and handling charges and time, even in Canada, based on what we've seen so far.
eBay does not want to force small sellers off the site. We want fraudsters off the site, and we want to reward sellers who do a great job.
Listings are NOT going to be filtered out of search. Many factors may influence where your listing appears in search, including Listing format, time remaining, keywords, price and shipping cost, Feedback and Detailed Seller Ratings. Sellers’ listings will always be searchable on eBay regardless of the sort-order, so all sellers will pay the same Insertion Fees even if demoted in Best Match.
In terms of marketing initiatives, again - we can't lay out our marketing strategy for the next year on a public forum. However, I can tell you that eBay has run international television campaigns for the last two years and continues to invest heavily in online advertising.
Regarding stock options, Meg is retiring at the end of March, and Bill at the end of the year. Speaking personally, I would expect them to manage their finances accordingly. Options don't last forever - they have time limits on them. If I left the company tomorrow, I would have to either cash in my options or give them up - I assume Bill and Meg have to make similar choices.
We have been fighting fraud since day one on eBay. These new changes are just one more weapon in our fight against the fraudsters. Last year's Seller Non Performance Policy changes saw many high volume sellers taken off the site because they had lousy feedback. Now sellers with high shipping, lousy customer service and crappy feedback are going to have to change their ways to succeed or find somewhere else to do business. We are cheerfully waving goodbye to this revenue.
In terms of bad buyers running amok on the site, no one knows that's going to happen - it's speculation. I do not believe hoards of neg-happy buyers are going to suddenly appear on the site when the feedback changes kick in.
Sure bad buyers exist ... they exist everywhere, on every venue, on or offline. Report them. When a pattern of bad behavior is established, eBay will suspend them and the negs disappear from your record. eBay has committed to stepping up resourcing around UPIs and feedback extortion.
I think every seller needs to look at the changes from their own business' perspective and see how they can adapt to them. I imagine most sellers are doing that now. Sellers have to adjust their business models to deal with changing times.
eBay is no different. We can't stick our head in the sand and pretend Amazon or any other competitor doesn't exist. That's what we've done here and will continue to do if we want to stay in business.
Miriam
