This, and rising listing fees, have left some eBay users grumbling that eBay cares more about the bottom line than the community. On auction message boards, eBay users have complained about increased fees and growing competition from big businesses. IBM, Sun Microsystems, the US Postal Service, the National Football League and the Oregon state government are among eBay's registered users. Rosie O'Donnell is a member, as is Utah's governor, Michael O. Leavitt.
"I'm an eBay addict," said Leavitt, in an interview in his office. He has bought things wholesale with his sons and then auctioned them one by one on eBay. "We were spending a fair amount of energy on this," he said.
He has even used his eBay credentials to his state's advantage. When eBay had narrowed down the finalists for its customer service center to three western cities including Salt Lake City, Leavitt called Meg Whitman, chief executive of eBay, and told her to see how many of the other governors had eBay accounts. His interest made a difference, eBay said. The customer service center opened in 1999 in Draper, a nearby suburb, and it now has 500 employees. EBay users even have their own status symbol: not wealth or beauty or fame, but feedback from other users, which is protected jealously. Different standings are rewarded with colored stars. Currently, more than a dozen users have achieved the highest status, a shooting star that represents at least 10,000 positive comments.
"It is definitely a pride issue," said Mark Lee, who said he had never received negative feedback. Lee said he had bent over backwards to protect his rating, to the point of buying back products when he found he had inadvertently sold something he didn't have.
Lee said that selling on eBay was also an art. "Presenting an item is a delicate balance between being sophisticated yet appealing to buyers' bargain-hunting instinct," he said. "Also, there's color coordination. When I sell photos, the color of the background affects the price. When I have brighter colors, I have less bids. When I used more neutral tones that complemented the photo, the number of bids tripled for the same photo.
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