Hello,
Recently, I have noticed a disturbing trend in ebay.in. They have started promoting a single seller on homepage and on all other promotion blocks available to them.
I think we are going back some 3-4 years back in baazee teritory. This was when there were only a few sellers with limited products. But as markets matured, baazee moved from promoting sellers to promoting products and categories. Now it seems like has come back to a full circle.
What I am referring to is the recent promotions of:
EMI promotion with seller cafegadgets.in
Nokia and Laptop promotions.
SanDisk promotion will seller jjmehta
Valentine mugs by seller hotmuggsonnet
Why is this trend disturbing?
1) Its re - introducing the trend of favorite seller. I am not saying that during baazee time there was favoritism or there will be in ebay.in. All I am saying that when such promotions are done, it gives impression that certain sellers are favored over others.
2) When promotions are done with arrangements with certain sellers, best prices may not be offered to customers. Only prices determined by manager / seller will be offered, again who would have limited knowledge of the market. In a competetive market scenario which is ebay, the market would offer much better prices.
3) When such a promotion is run, all the promotional properties are diverted to selling these products, severely affecting sales of all other categories.
4) What is the user of maintaining a PS seller status with average 99% + ratings when newbies with less than 50 ratings and less favorable ratings get all the sales.? Lets do away with the Power Seller sham!!!
5) Is it only these sellers who can offer these products at the lowest rates? Are other seller incapable of the same.?
6) There is another issue, some of these sellers have a brand name in their ebay user name. I think this would be a violation of copyrights and patents unless the owner has expressly allowed the seller to use such copyright in written format.
Other sites do run such promos, but that was what differentiated ebay from all other sites and kept sellers like me addicted to ebay. ebaY was a total level playing field, the seller with best products and prices would always make the better sale and not the seller with the most contacts.
I do not know what the rest of the community thinks of these promotions but I feel this is not the correct way, not the ebay way atleast.
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Devesh
