One of the funniest examples of contempt for the consumer was given to us, like God’s only Son, by someone who used to work on one of Sony’s on-line role playing games. He described his base of customers as something like “walking cash registers” or “talking dollar signs” or something like that. I’m not trying to start shit here, so I don’t have a proper cite.
However, new eBay CEO John Donahoe did refer to talk of a boycott as “nothing but noise” while discussing the changes he was implementing. There’s a bunch of crazy shit over there now, apparently fees are down at first glance, but up when you really look in detail, and sellers can’t leave negative feedback and so on and so forth. And of course, Yahoo Auctions is dead in the US, so there really aren’t a lot of other options. Personally, I don’t care if a company goes out of its way to make every last buck, but sure, I’ll bristle at condescending arrogance under any circumstance.
Mike Kennedy actually did something about it – he created www.ChaseTheChuckWagon.com, which is an auction site dedicated to video games. He’s got quite a few sections on arcade games (which is how I discovered it) but you can pick up old Atari 2600 cartridges and stuff for your Nintendo as well.
The main thing that will hit you when you visit the site is just how clean it is. Seriously, eBay is a desperate, pathetic mess. Every square inch of the screen is used by eBay to beg for more money. In-house ads. Promotions. Featured items. I don’t think enough gets made of how sick people are to be advertised to constantly – there’s no option, because eBay is the biggest at what they do, but people don’t naturally become accustomed to it. It’s ugly each and every time.
(And I will never understand how marketing wins out when it comes to where customers go after a login. The engineers would recommend that, should you click on a login for “My eBay,” you should be headed in that general direction after you enter a password and hit “submit.” Not so, says the marketing department! We should direct their eyeballs to a bulletin, or some more ads, or a notice board, or anywhere fucking else! Furthermore, we should ensure that users be forced to log in every fucking time they access the site! Think of the page impressions!
Alright, enough bitching about eBay. I don’t have to extinguish their candle to make ChaseTheChuckWagon’s burn brighter. It really is pleasing to head over there. Obviously, some more work needs to be done – when someone posts that all elusive Warlords poster, I want it pushed to my e-mail when I wake up and are most prone to impulse buying and reckless decision making. So that needs to be developed. And surely, the site should partner up with a non-FDIC-insured cartel to handle the cash transactions and, ah Christ, I’m doing it again.
There’s obviously not nearly as many items over there as there is eBay, but give it a shot. You get $5 in free seller credit when you sign up. I know that I’ll be selling copies of Cryptozookeeper there, and not on eBay, when it’s finished, as more money is going to me, which lets me ask for less. Additionally, since the site is just getting started, there are less of the truly reprehensible eBay zombies and more people who can successfully complete a transaction without drama. It’s like a movie theatre that has banned cell phones.
