Meg Whitman, the boss of eBay and person who guided them from humble beginnings in 1998 to become the giant they are today is to retire as a result of their ‘poor’ performance in Q4 2007, the Guardian reports.
The company’s profits for the three months to December jumped by 53% to $531m (£271m). But its guidance on its prospects for the year fell short of analysts’ expectations, prompting concern about a slowdown in the volume of merchandise put up for sale on the site.
What sort of World do we live in where a 53% increase in profits leading to £271 million can be considered failure?
If however eBay are looking at ways to increase the number of items listed on their auction site, I have a few ideas.
Firstly, allow people to list PS2 games if you don’t have a PayPal account. You currently must have PayPal and offer it as a payment option when listing PS2 games. I presume this is the same for other video game formats.
Secondly stop charging people FOUR times when they list items on eBay and accept payment through PayPal. I’ve already ranted about this before, so if eBay is serious they should take note. Charging me a listing fee, a final sale fee, a PayPal transfer fee and a PayPal withdrawal fee when I sell a DVD for 99p is not going to tempt me to do it again.
Darren Jamieson, aka MrDaz, is the Technical Director and co-founder of Engage Web and has been working online in a career spanning two decades. His first website was built in 1998 and is still live today.
