FAIR SHAKE

Hi, I'm Pam. I have been boycotting since Feb. I also am trying to close my PaynotPal account with much trouble.

Hi, My name is Linda and I was a former Powerseller on eBay. I have moved my store over to Wagglepop my new home and I now have 63 FB and it may not be as busy as feebay but I'm not feeding them any more steaks!!!
I hope to meet alot of others boycotting eBay forever.
I will never look back!!!

Hi, my name is Penny and I am a veteran of the first eBay boycott--I think it was either 2004 or 2005. While I still maintain an account there, I have not listed anything on eBay since the first boycott, except occasionally a listing to draw my customers to my new online stores at Bidville, eBid, eCrater, iOffer, Old&Sold, and PlunderHere. I try to make some contributions to the Forums that will be of benefit--but I do alot of "lurking" and "learning", just reading about other Sellers' and Buyers' trials and tribulations.

I see some familiar "faces" in the new member list here, which is great!

Howdy here ( howdyfrom3wheelerworld ) and I have not listed anything for quite a while ( on any of the 3 id's I have available ). I'm actively boycotting feebay and trying to spread the word to EVERYONE.
Howdy

Hi All Boycotters!

This is Karen Danser~ luckiethree

Since I'm not all the way sure what and where to post yet, I thought I'd start here to tell you about what the worst eBay change was for me.

I was shocked one day, as I was bidding and saw my personal User ID *masked*. I was really puzzled why everyone else had one too and that they looked like mine.

When it hit me that this was no error I contacted customer service and received the automated, generic response.

Since eBay didn't give me any answers, I looked for the first time in 10 years, on the discussion board and went to "bidders" and found this thread: "POST HERE IF YOU HATE NEW ANONYMOUS BIDDER SYSTEM - LET'S SEND A MESSAGE!". I read posts and stuck myself in and out, here and there, until I was noticed by msent2 (Beth, I believe) and she said to go to seller central to SIGN THE PLEDGE _ NO SALES FEB 18-25!,
She said there's always someone there to tell people what's going on.

Right away I found out there was a not only a change, but there were massive amounts of changes that were hurting sellers. But what blew me completely away was that sweeping changes were happening all at once! Since then I've become aware of all the current changes and the probable changes still coming up. I have also better educated myself about the whole situation and gained much insight as well.

For a day or two last week I went through my emotional acting out period, after it all "hit me" and wrote some pretty weird posts. I apologize if I may have offended anyone~ Sorry~

Now, I've decided to gather facts by reading as much news on eBay as I can, browsing around the web for info and looking through eBay stock reports and much more, and I will keep doing this as much as I can. I'm reading daily and looking into ways to find information and how things work on eBay.
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I'm glad that I was "hit" so deeply by the immoral changes eBay unilaterally imposed on their very own. I was so definitely affected that I'm absolutely certain that I want nothing to do with eBay now. With the way I have been treated by eBay, with no common decency, it makes me all the more energized and to have really strong, gut feelings for my position and for the position of all the other very decent and responsible smaller sellers who have been forced into this debacle.

I have been busy looking into the eBay topic since I saw my user ID gone. I've been reading news everyday and typing in posts, meeting here today. It may be new to me but I have the gut feeling with all this righteous indignation built up in all of us as a unified group, that the bottom line will be an enormous impact on eBay.
We are on the right side and we are innocent but we have been aggressively attacked, ruining our place of business and hurting us emotionally in the gut and heart. We have strong emotion for our loss on eBay, which was very personal to us. I'm sure all of you put your heart and soul into everything you did to keep your business on eBay...

Thank you for inviting me in and I hope I will prove to be an asset in our Boycotting, work, organizing, press, or whatever there is to do to further our case and cause to make a better, fairer, honest and trustworthy online marketplace.
That's the only way to go in business. Generally business people will not succeed financially unless they have the morals to go along with it. There has to be a moral balance and that balance can be a measure of how truly stable a business is. Without that stability there will be chaos and discord. Just like what's happening to eBay right now.

Thanks to All for forming a dynamite group!! Talk to you later and God Bless~

Karen D., luckiethree

Good to read your post, Karen!

Welcome to Fair Shake all you who have just found us! I'm sorry I didn't get in here earlier to greet you--it's been a very busy couple of days.

Kelly, Darlene, Dawn, Pam, Linda, Penny, Howdy & Karen--A hearty hand-shake to each one of you!

Dawn--I hope you saw the discussion at the meeting yesterday about the need for us to have "the stories" of the people affected by this, and how eBay had once enticed so many to create an opportunity for themselves, only to heartlessly take it away now. You are NOT alone--there are so many. Even though I had not yet established a business on eBay so the financial impact to me was minimal, it is the people like yourself that made me "drop everything" and commit to helping in this effort in any way that I can. This forum was created not only to unite the individuals and groups who are Boycotting, but also to share information in helping people restructure their businesses. Be sure to look around, as there are already many helpful things here, and there will be much more in the future.

Karen--your reaction to what is happening is going to be seen more and more as these changes hit, and people begin to wonder what is happening. We are all trying to get the word out to as many as we can, and that is a big part of the goal of the media attention we are working on getting right now. I especially liked the end of what you wrote:

Thank you for inviting me in and I hope I will prove to be an asset in our Boycotting, work, organizing, press, or whatever there is to do to further our case and cause to make a better, fairer, honest and trustworthy online marketplace.
That's the only way to go in business. Generally business people will not succeed financially unless they have the morals to go along with it. There has to be a moral balance and that balance can be a measure of how truly stable a business is. Without that stability there will be chaos and discord.

LOTS of help is needed!!! Please keep checking in here at Fair Shake, and it would be a help if you (or anyone reading this) who wants to be "called on" for specific help when needed would post in this thread from yesterday's meeting: http://fairshake.freeforums.org/want-to ... -t340.html

I agree with you 100 percent about the morals. I had a successful brick and mortar store for a few years, and was happy to find that my instincts about how to run a business seemed to be correct. Building a solid reputation backed by high ethics is paramount. eBay has seemed to totally forget that simple fact. Ironically, I believe that was the intention of eBay's founder, Pierre Omidyar, but was obviously lost somewhere along the way.

Part of the inspiration for this forum was getting back those "old fashioned" values, where the idea of a human handshake and trust can be more important and BINDING than anything "put in writing" or "legally enforceable". Auction websites need to be managed to keep troublemakers at bay (lol--no pun intended, but I can't help but leave it there!!!), while providing a format that will encourage trust between buyer and seller.

I apologize for the long post (once again), but once I get started, I tend to get a little carried away. Each new person who comes along helps me to make my commitment stronger to trying to help this whole situation turn from a disaster into an effective effort of people helping people re-create what has been lost. No matter how grim things may look right now, there are so many dedicated people inspired to work hard at just that.

I hope each one of you will find information and encouragement here, and share what you learn along the way with all of us. Thank you for joining us!

FG - you guys are starting to hit on something that has been behind the scenes in all this. That was ebay's enticement of people (such as myself) to make a business using their site.

My business was just beginning, so while it set me back a few months, it has to really hurt for those folks who have spent years building their business and feedback reputation based on the promises from ebay. They are all setup to work via ebay. Now they have to change their way of business and strike out for new grounds. Rough. It is different than a company going belly up causing employees to lose jobs because this is intentional.

And what is really nuts...they are still handing out promises!

Hi FirmGrip! Thank you for your kinds words. I would be happy to share my story. I didn’t think it would help the cause very much, because many people are unsympathetic to migraine sufferers. I just learned about the Boycott a couple of weeks ago, when I went to Seller Central to find out how to prevent my Shipping DSRs from being dinged. I posted a couple of messages voicing my support, and was invited to join FairShake. I’ve been haunting this site ever since. I’m very new to the Boycott and posting in general, but I will be happy to help in anyway I can. I’ll post a longer message on want-to-be-more-involved, as soon as I can get my thoughts together.

Cabin--You are so right. And that is why Buyers, and people like myself, who have had only minimal transactions on eBay got outraged enough to lend our support. The instantaneous recognition of how WRONG this is--and what a devastating effect it is going to have on so many at a REALLY rotten time...it's awful.

BUT----there is HOPE! By joining together, we DO have an influence. I am happy to see that one of the most promising auction sites has just joined us here--OnlineAuction!! This willingness to be a PART of those of us who are trying to work together to shape the future of the online marketplace is in sharp contrast to the lack of communication from eBay, and most welcome. Also, the work on the aggregated search engines is really significant, and will do so much to level the playing field. But it is going to take a lot of effort to get the word out to the public about what is going on. The current work on the media blitz is vital in that regard. Anyone who can help with putting together valid contact information for press releases at a variety of media outlets--it would be appreciated. There is a list of some I've been working on in the Maple meeting room, but there are a couple of links here: http://fairshake.freeforums.org/media-o ... 33-15.html
that will access MANY more, for which we need to have the contact emails and addresses found. In fact I'm adding another link now, for alternative media.

Dawn---anyone who has ever had a TRUE migraine does NOT dismiss them!!!! I'll let you take your guess about me. Interestingly, ANOTHER of the Fair Shake Administrators also suffers from them, so you can count on complete understanding here. They can be completely incapacitating for some people, especially if they hit frequently. Again and again, I am seeing industrious people who have found a way to circumvent their difficult situations by creating an online business. The good news is, we have those same industrious people working together NOW, to take matters into hand. What has happened is still terrible, and will have a horrible effect on a lot of people. But we've got to try to pull together our resources, and influence the marketplace for the better. And we WILL---one way or another.

Cappnonymous,
I can't say thank you enough for exposing the truth about eBay and the padding of the listings and all of the other video's you have done on You tube!
God Bless~~~Linda

Definately a thank you to CAPP!!! I think those were some of the first YouTube videos I had seen. (Ok...I am behind the times in this regard.)

Also...migraines are often connected to allergies...which were my stopping point. Had to give up my "job" because they were incapacitating. Started on ebay last year just to help make ends meet. Now I am wanting to do online full time because I love it. But it also allows me to have down days without some boss tearing my hide for it. I was in the ER Sun. night and worthless Mon. because of an allergic reaction that couldn't be contained.

I would think migraines would be the same...non-predictable and incapacitating! Hard to impossible to think and even function while dealing with them. So ... full sympathy and empathy here!!!

gladhand wrote:Hello all, my name is gladhand and I'm happy to be here. Welcome all to FAIR SHAKE!

Heres a Frappr Map link to place your pin and show just how many we are.!
http://www.frappr.com/?a=constellation_ ... 7440513566
http://www.frappr.com/?a=constellation_ ... 7440513566

Hello Fair Shakers!

I have already seen a fair few names that I recognise so it's good to see some familiar faces.

I am one of the admins at www.pheebay.com which is another online auction news and forum community that was born out of previous "unrest" at eBay back in the days of 5% Final Value Fees!! We too organised boycotts in the past, principally surrounding the "Hide & Hike" policy for eBay Stores back in 2006. The policy that according to Bill Cobb & Meg Whitman was going to "restore the magic on eBay", "rebalance the eBay marketplace" and "increase core listings".

Our boycott then proved about as effective as any return of the magic, market rebalancing and increase in core listings for eBay!!!

Since those days we have changed our shape and constitution somewhat and now prefer to focus more on the positive promotion of the myriad of alternative sites rather than follow a single subject anti-eBay path which is already well catered for. While we often have many criticisms of the 800Lb parasite, we appreciate the vast majority of online auction users are still at eBay and it can be counter-productive to deter those people from taking part in our community.

The admin team at Pheebay comprises of four people now - Myself in England, 0ctavias0fferings in Scotland, Alter Ego in the US (East) and Passion Vine House in the US (West). Current traffic splits about 55% US to 45% UK.

We publish regular industry related news and opinion articles on our home page and will be reporting and commenting on the boycott that has started today.

I'd like to say a big thank you to the Fair Shakers that have been coming over to Pheebay to keep us updated and inviting us to get involved here in order to display a united front and I congratulate and applaud you on your efforts to date. I hope together we can do a little bit more to promote the alternative point of view and help increase competition within the auction venue marketplace meaning eBay will have to behave more competitively.

OK, so that's my introduction and "hello" over with. You now know who I am so now I'm off to do some reading here to see what's being said....

Sunray (Graham)

Well, Sunray, I finally stumbled in here after reading and responding to several of your posts elsewhere!

I'll not be so long-winded here, but I do want to thank you for your words of encouragement and let you and others know how happy we are to have you here. Thank you for providing information about how PheeBay is structured. We hope to provide a place here to "explain" ourselves a bit better in the near future, but we are still evolving so quickly that as soon as we post it, it would probably be outdated. We are adding new moderators, and developing new forums here which we hope to launch soon.

I admire your solidly built forum and administrative structure spanning regions and countries. I'm sure there is a great deal to learn from your success and the beautiful Pheebay website. We are most pleased to have the Pheebay forum represented here by another of its administrators.

Thank you for joining us!