The Future Of Stamp Selling On Ebay

I wish ebay would just leave the things that work alone. I know they can't as they are like a toddler with a new toy - how can I break it?

I'm not going with this new payment system for as long as I can. I predict a seller revolt. We're tired of of "updates" like chasing TRS with the ever changing goal posts, the GSP and the Guaranteed Delivery. It's all utter bunk.

ebay hasn't even come up with a good replacement for TurboLister. I still use it as it works (for now).

Done with rant.

Hi Battle,
It is not ebay that changes, it is the world. Internet devices change, operating systems change, browsers change, and markets change. Any company that refuses to change dies quickly, especially technology companies. The technology product saleable window is between 6 and 10 months. It typically takes 3 - 6 months to develop and test a technology product. So the challenge is to predict where the technology product market will be about 12-24 months before anyone else. I did this for about 15-20 years and I can tell you it is high risk, high stress, and very difficult.

These issues are the same reasons our hobby lags so far behind the rest of the technology world. By the time a philatelic organization or company decides to do something 'new' it is already nearly obsolete. You cannot target today's technology for a new product, you have to predict the future. For example, the last APS website was obsolete by the time it was finally completed because no one understood the need for a responsive web design and development took so long. Ditto for a lot of the philatelic companies attempts at technology.

It takes a very, very good technology vision.
Don

Well ebay does not have that vision.

ebay is an amazing technology company. Few people understand what it takes to be able to index and make searchable millions of listing almost instantly (well, they add a new listing to their indexes within 15-30 seconds). It is truly incredible. And their shareholders and Wall Street can vouch for their ability to make money.

Of course everyone loves to hate ebay which is fine; there are plenty of other things to dislike.
Don

It may be a technology company but if it can't relate to the average American customer who wants to buy and sell then they are leaving the door open for a new online system that could steal away some of their business .

Why can't Hipstamp have a decent interface and they just sell stamps? It would take a lot to get the big sellers and their followers to move.

Agreed. It is hard to invest in technology when your income is based upon a large quantity of low value items; the ROI calculations are not feasible.
Don

I would like to support another site like eBid or Hipstamp etc for selling stamps I think all stamp sellers would have to be behind the move to the site. But I don't see it happening as some will still accept the new payment system others won't. By 2020 or earlier every seller will be opted in to the new payment system like it or hate it. Speaking of ebay changing stuff as of this morning its all seller hub. The old myeBay which I was using is now gone. In paid and awaiting shipment they no longer show me the value in USA dollars. And they no longer add up the total of sales. I was using that for accounting now I have to do that manually. They just can't stop changing stuff.

Don,

While ebay's core technology is truly amazing, it is also where the best and brightest want to work. The seller interface is used by a minority of ebay users and not at all by the largest or most efficient sellers. When changes are needed, ebay sends in the farm team including new recruits who have little memory of features baked into the old interface or why they were needed. As a result, new web pages often leave out or hide the most basic or essential functions needed by sellers. With little information to go on and no credible method for sellers to report bugs, developers at ebay goes home every night happy and oblivious to their shortcomings.

Not more than a week ago ebay hijacked the URL for the "My ebay All Selling" page and replaced it without notice with the lame "Active Selling" page that hides or omits almost everything needed by sellers monitoring auctions.

Clark

ebay does stuff without warning like hijacking the old myeBay page. I find this very frustrating!

Clark,
Understood. But imagine version control at a place like ebay with thousands of developers. If they do it like Microsoft there are many, many departments or teams and each is working on a different part of the code base. At 5PM each day, everyone has to check-in the local version they have been working on that day. All the code gets compiled and this often requires merging code from disparate groups into the same ball of code (in other words, this requires human intervention). Then periodically the larger compiled code base gets assigned to a large group of testers.

Now consider that the testers have to test across thousands of combinations of devices, operating systems, and browser (plus all kinds of older versions of each). It is a monumental effort just to test. And consider that many of these upgrades will break existing code and pages. So how do you implement an upgrade when there are millions of existing pages without breaking lots of stuff? How do you only upgrade some pages but not others?

And lastly, they have an incredible number of production servers across the entire earth. Many of these divisions run separate code bases yet they are supposed to retain the same 'look and feel' and basic functionality across all servers.

My experience only includes managing group software project with 25-50 concurrent software engineers in different locations. We used very high dollar revisions control software and it was still quite an effort. I am in awe that there are not more issues than we see.
Don

If they could only put in 1/1000 of the effort to weed out shysters.

I'm with Don, and am amazed with what happens and can be done on ebay! My collection is probably 50 times bigger than if there was no ebay (or similar ease of buying site). The biggest problem I have with it all is too many stamps I really want, are just to easy to get with just a click, and not enough time or $ to back up my desires!

Don,

I am not concerned with the quality of site revisions. My concern is with the design. Why do features, commonly used by sellers go missing? It is not that ebay lacks software developers. It is more likely that they lack an overall vision for growth or lack competent system engineers who can convert visions to workable designs.

The scary scenario is that ebay has some vision of dumbing down the site and with the intent of making it "easier" to sell, but, frustrating sellers wanting to track events related to their account. How many sellers can write their own tools using the ever-changing ebay API?

It was so difficult to reconcile PayPal transaction logs that I wondered if small amounts of money were being stolen. As it turned out accounts could be balanced. But ebay? How many sellers carefully check their invoices. What will it be like when ebay is managing the money? I suppose someone would notice if a few pennies disappeared here or there. Would anyone listen? Is ebay destined to be the next Wells Fargo?

Clark

ebay can't even get the total figure for daily sales in the awaiting shipment section added up at the bottom of the screen. You trust them with all the finances to? Further my pre saved feedback comments that were stored are now all gone due to changes. What happens when changes they make & site glitches causes loss of seller funds?