From ‘digital utopia’ to ‘boring uncle’: The slow demise of eBay

It started out as a friendly online auction site but eBay’s transformation into a giant marketplace has sucked a lot of the joy out of it

Like a digital rite of passage, most people can remember their first eBay experience. The sweaty palms as the auction countdown moved towards zero, and the sense of euphoria when this time, finally, you weren’t bid-sniped on that bargain at the last second. 
Or, of course, the frankly addictive ping of an alert when people started outbidding each other on that unloved heirloom of yours that was gathering dust in the attic. Even the interactions between buyers and sellers seem like a different time, as total strangers thanked each other, discussed the best means of collection and even formed valuable relationships.
Timothy Brickwood, a retired headteacher from Norwich, remembers an eBay art dealer who would send him gifts in the package along with the work itself. “There was a really lovely sense of trust,” he says. “His parcels genuinely helped me through lockdown.”
But has this kind of social selling – like social media itself – curdled somewhat as the whole experience becomes increasingly corporate and commercialised? Certainly, eBay is now labyrinthine – and not just because there are 2.1 billion live listings at any one time. The last time eBay published their ratios, in 2018, 80 per cent of those listings were for new products. 
Put simply, eBay isn’t as fun as it used to be. It’s less an auction site now, more an online marketplace – in fact, it’s second only to Amazon in that category. Meanwhile, competition (and profit) in the rapidly growing pre-loved sector from fashion sites such as Vinted and Depop is clearly beginning to concern it.
The underlying financials certainly don’t suggest eBay is losing its way, but it was telling that earlier this month such competition led the company to scrap the fees private sellers have to pay in the UK. Something is clearly afoot.
Chayne Sanderson, a civil servant from Hull, agrees that the commercialisation of eBay has taken some of the joy out of it. She’s been using the site regularly since kitting out her first home and starting her family – her son is now studying for his GCSEs. 
“eBay has changed a lot since I first used it,” she says. “It’s still an auction site in some ways, it just feels more like a fixed-price buying site in the main now, selling a lot of products from overseas. The jumble sale feel has gone.”
Sanderson still uses it, at least, but her supposition is right; incredibly for a site which began life as AuctionWeb in 1995, the last time eBay published such information, six years ago, only 12 per cent of items listed were actual auctions. 
Meanwhile, since the end of its relationship with PayPal in 2021, sellers have to navigate an internal payment system which is about to change to eBay Balance – moving towards a kind of eBay currency with which you can buy items on the site using the proceeds of your sales. You can choose to withdraw funds but the intention seems clear: to keep the money in the eBay ecosystem.
The QR code system for collections, meanwhile, appears to be a move in the right direction for buyer and seller protections but some report that it’s unnecessarily complex.
Serena Davies, an editor from London, certainly thinks the original charm of eBay has been slowly eroded, replaced by a more corporate and impersonal experience. 
“It almost felt like a digital utopia to begin with,” she says. “A place where anyone could buy or sell almost anything and fostering a sense of community and trust between amateur traders.”
When Davies’ family was moving house in 2006, they were able to offload bulky items like the family piano and dining room table with ease. “It just felt really nice that these family heirlooms found their market, and you could have this lovely exchange with someone – particularly when they came to collect them in person,” she remembers.
“But it was really interesting that when we moved house again this year, I just couldn’t sell much at all through eBay. I had to go through a third party shop just to shift them.”
So what is going on? Has eBay just become too big, too unwieldy and too user unfriendly for its own good?
Kate Hardcastle MBE is a global expert in consumer engagement and a business advisor. She thinks rapidly changing consumer attitudes and expectations mean big organisations are always playing catch-up. 
“Just like we experienced with Aldi and Lidl, the snobbery factor has now gone with bargains, there’s no shame in revealing you bought something in the re-commerce market,” she says. “It’s now become a sexier place, and that’s a problem for eBay in some ways because it’s become a bit like your boring uncle. 
“If you look at something like Vinted; it’s selling cool stuff, it’s easy to upload items, easy to sell them and there are no sellers’ fees – whereas eBay has become quite complicated and expensive. No wonder it’s wanting to fight back.”
Hardcastle points out that it’s eBay’s very status as a trusted site with customer support structures and protections which is making it less agile when competing with the likes of Vinted. 
“Young people are literally using Vinted as a modus operandi to get affordable clothes for the weekend,” she explains. “For them, you can’t make it a fee-heavy, three day process to get anything bought and sold; it needs to be instant – even though it must be said eBay really does do things properly and in the right way.”
Indeed, anecdotally, the response to intrigued “where-did-you-get-that-from” conversations in school playgrounds on pick-up are now proudly answered by a loud “Vinted”. 
Social media advertising and e-commerce expert Valentina Nadalini, founder of VN Creative Media, has definitely noticed the smaller online marketplaces are benefiting from brand association in this way. 
“The successful re-commerce strategies are leaning heavily on loyal fanbases, brand advocates and a sense of belonging and identity,” she says. “And this kind of personalisation leaves faceless and emotionless marketplaces struggling to adapt, flex and pivot to new business models.”
Interestingly, eBay UK general manager Kirsty Keoghan does seem to recognise that eBay will have to adapt and evolve. 
“The reason why we removed fees for private sellers is because we heard that fees and ease of selling were a barrier for people, and we wanted to make it as easy as possible for someone to clear out their wardrobe, their garage or sell something they no longer wanted,” she says. 
Keoghan confirms that when eBay removed private sellers’ fees in Germany, having previously trailed such a scheme in its clothing category, its users became far more active.
“If you are an active seller on the site, you then buy twice as much too,” she explains. 
“So what we’re trying to do is grow the ecosystem of people engaging, selling and buying, while taking away some of the pain points. Making sure that both buyers and sellers are protected, that the whole process is transparent and that there’s no hidden agenda.”
Keoghan also contends that the company is staying true to its original ethos, with 40 per cent of eBay’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) still coming from either refurbished or pre-loved goods.
“We’re like the OG of selling pre-loved items,” she smiles. “But things have changed over the years, and lots of our newer customers in particular just don’t want to wait for an auction. They do want it [the item] now. So we’ve just made sure we give them the choice.” 
So in that sense, eBay might not be what it once was, but neither is the wider online marketplace. Vinted, after all, isn’t an auction site either.
In fact, eBay’s recent re-commerce report revealed that 86 per cent of respondents had purchased pre owned goods in the last 12 months. They might no longer be via auction in the main, but it certainly proves that the market is as healthy – if not as fun – as ever. 
“I think it just goes to show where the UK customer mindset is moving, and that perceptions of buying second hand are changing into something cool,” says Keoghan. “That’s a great thing, I think, for people’s pockets, and the planet.”