Reading eBay tea leaves [View all]

How bad are things at eBay? Well, I don't know, but I always postulate that companies give off signals in their publicly available behavior. So retailers will run sales, shorten hours, have too few employees, etc.

eBay has suddenly reactivated my Saved Searches to send me emails every day about what's available. Notable because for years I have been unable to activate any of them, except when they were new. So it's an indication to me that things are very slow. They're taking drastic measures to try to sell things.

Also I hear there are lots of non-paying buyers. And I notice a wealth of new sellers, all of whom don't know how to sell. THey fail to take good pics, list parts included and extras or exclude those that aren't included. Ask them a question - is the power cord included? I don't see it in the pics. They ignore you. eBay in my view is flawed. They have focused on big sellers and search engines - item specifics - instead of discipline and process. All these rules take personnel, so I assume they're still bloated too. Just my opinion, we'll see what happens.