It is begining to look like a host of serious problems are starting to stack up for eBay.
- Russell Beattie: eBay overrun by scammers and identity thieves
- TechCrunch: Skype's 36+ hour outage
- Allen Stern: PayPal subscription service down - for a week!
With eBay's three main products almost turning into de-facto monopolies in their marketplaces, eBay really need to get a handle on their apparently crufty systems and their appalling customer service. PayPal and eBay have long had a reputation for poor slow customer service, my assumption is that the current business strategy is to maximise profits whilst heavily reducing any investments in staffing, development, and infrastructure. This strategy appears now to be severely hampering day to day operations. Perhaps this is a consequence of the execs leaving PayPal and Skype last year, or maybe that was just part of whole cost-paring scenario.
It may be that my judgement is wrong, but I will try to avoid using any eBay services until they can do a better job. It looks like Craigslist can do a better job selling items, and I've always preferred standards-based VoIP products - SIP works fine for me. However, I've yet to find really good alternatives to PayPal, the concept of digital gold appeals to my inner anarchist, but the realities seem far too shady for my liking. Suggestions?
