With the changing of the guard at eBay over the last month, Meg Whitman out as CEO, John Donahoe in as new CEO, it was inevitable that things were going to change. That is always what happens when a new sheriff rolls into town, they have to make their own mark on the company. Sometimes it is a positive mark, other times it is a negative mark.

John Donahoe wasted no time in making his mark on the company by making changes to user feedback, listing fees and service charges. Boy, I bet if he had a crystal ball when he made those decisions he surely would have stayed clear of them. The general response from their user base and the press has been extremely negative. Users are furious that they can no longer leave negative feedback (the sellers cannot leave negative feedback for the buyers), they are furious that now their service charges have increased as a result of the decrease in the listing fee pricing structure changes. So basically eBay took some of th cost off the front end and tacked it onto the back end, not a smart move, users are not dummies, they know what you have done. So to make good on this, eBay has slashed the listing prices in their media category (after all, you are talking about items that generally run around $10.00, so the listing fees should have been nominal to begin with), but this clearly did not cut the mustard for a make good.

So, as if all of this was not bad enough, some of the power users got together and organized a boycott. This has happened before and did not seem to have any negative effect, but this time it may be a little different. A Fortune Small Business article is reporting that eBay is seeing a 3% downturn in listings this week as a result of the boycott (caveat this with that they cannot determine with 100% certainty that it is a direct result, but reset assured it is having some effect). Something like this happening to a company the size of eBay could have the potential to cause a minor disruption in their day to day business, but if you are a small startup fighting to gain and retain your users, something like this could prove disastrous.

When things are not broke, you should not try to fix them. Even though every new CEO wants to make his mark on the company, perhaps they should learn a lesson from Mr. Donahoe and not mess with the users. If they are not clamoring for things to be fixed/changed, then let things ride. Like I said previously, you should take user feedback with a grain of salt, but in this case, the users were not asking for a change, so let a sleeping dog lay. Perhaps this boycott and onslaught of negative coverage for eBay may open the door for other players to step in and pick up some of their castaways.