eBay Boycott Appears to Have Some Effect

Angry eBayers, peeved that the option to ding bad purchasers with negative feedback have been stripped from them (among other gripes), launched a boycott on February 18th in an attempt to get eBay's attention and get the policy reversed. To everyone's surprise, that boycott looks like it might be having some effect.

According to medved.net, which keeps a running tally of the number of auctions running at any given time on the site, total listings have plummeted from 14.5 million on Monday to about 12.7 million (see chart above) as of the time of this posting. (eBay doesn't offer this information publicly.) That's significant (representing a 14 percent drop), especially since typical eBay listings begin to ramp up on Wednesdays and on toward the weekend instead of heading south.

That said, auction listings are subject to myriad vagaries: There's just no telling what might be affecting listings on a day to day basis, but such a steep drop like this doesn't happen often. Total listings, however, are still well up over the year's January 4 low of 11 million, which is historically the lowest things get until May arrives, bringing with it summer auction doldrums as sellers head out on vacation. It will likely take a sustained drop in sales for eBay to take notice of the boycott and concede a policy change. For its part, eBay has said the boycott "hasn't had an impact" and that it was "too early to speculate" on whether the boycott would have any long-term effect.

Meanwhile, angry eBayers are stepping up the action. Many are calling for a second week of boycotts, starting February 25. Their goal: Get total listings to bottom out below 10 million. We shall see.