eBay gathering puts highs, lows on full display

More than 700 eBay staff lined the exhibit hall to greet attendees with whooping, hollering and applause as they strolled in for the Saturday night gala

You’ve got to hand it to eBay’s leaders They know how to play the crowd. The San Jose, California, company dispatched more than 10 per cent of its 6,500 employees to the convention centre to give 10,000 conference-goers a chance to connect with those who mind their auctions behind the computer screen.

It announced some new services for dealers, including a deal with GE Consumer Finance allowing sellers to offer installment credit to auction buyers through PayPal, eBay’s electronic payment service.

Also unveiled was the software to help the 8,000 independent developers who create programmes for eBay.

Whitman said eBay had coughed up $11 million over the past year to fight fraud, including a new toolbar users could download to make sure they were transacting with eBay, rather than with a spoof site in Russia.

Yet eBay is experiencing other kinds of growing pains as it turns nine years old this year. Those, too, were on display as staffers fielded questions and complaints from the crowd of mostly sellers.

Dealers groused about a new billing system that went haywire two months ago, presenting many bills twice. Others fumed that eBay was too quick to take down auctions when any well-known manufacturer complained about how its brand name appeared in items listed for sale. Still others said it was time eBay gave its high-volume dealers a break on auction fees, which have risen over the years.

But Whitman rejected that idea, vowing that eBay would continue charging every dealer the same rates, no matter how much they sold. She conceded it runs counter to traditional business, where high-volume buyers often got price breaks, but she made clear the online marketplace was wedded to providing ‘‘a level playing field for pricing.’’

Whitman said eBay would stick to that strategy even though one of its greatest challenges had been balancing the needs of small and large businesses as they auctioned goods side by side.

She and others acknowledged, though, that eBay’s roots lay more with the mom-and-pop entrepreneurs who helped create the Internet auction juggernaut. The site had grown so massive, Whitman said, that it handled more daily trading traffic than the Nasdaq Stock Market.