Internet Auction Blog

I posted about Gozbay.com a while back and said it looked “somewhat promising”… I admit I didn’t follow up with it much, other than an occassional search. However, now when you visit their website you are greeted with this message:

Hello GozBay Members,

As everyone has noticed GozBay.com has been off line for the past 6 days due to a series of issues affecting both hardware and software components of our auction site. In June of 2008, GozBay converted to a dedicated server to meet the tremendous demands of our exploding member base. This greatly increased our operational cost but I believed the expense was necessary for our continued success. We’ve been working at a hyper pace to meet the demand of our members and keep costs low.  In this environment testing and redundancy suffers and as we now know the possibility for serious issues are increased.

On Thursday November 30th 2008 initial errors were flagged and by Friday it was determined that a combination of software, OS and hardware issues were corrupting the integrity of the GozBay auction database.  A team of support professionals and myself spent days trying to minimize the damage to the operating system and salvage the integrity of our data tables.  It seemed that there were too many variables all occurring simultaneously to recover without loss of data.  OS and Hard drives had to be replaced. Live backups on the server were unreachable and when archive backups were evaluated it was discovered that backups were not occurring as intended and were unreliable.

Yes, the perfect storm, initially intermittent hardware failure corrupting data tables for days prior or longer corrupting current backups with archive backups not running as expected.  The team managing our server was unable to recover and also had not completed a total backup of the server.  All this comes several weeks short of a planned disaster recovery and penetration test scheduled for January 2009.

It is important to note that no Member information was compromised.  The end result was the loss of all auctions on the site that are unrecoverable in any form.  The majority of the Membership information, about 95%, was recovered from a remote backup from a short time ago.
Members who registered after August 2008 will need to re- register.  I realize this may shake the support of some Members and I can only hope that things will be taken in perspective both in terms of the cause as well as the relative infancy of the site.  Of course the lessons learned will only strengthen us for the future.  Your support is needed now more then ever.

These last few days were spent tracking down the issues and making attempts to salvage what could be salvaged.  I have also had numerous meetings with Jeff not only to assure his continued support and re-up of his efforts but also to formulate a carefully considered action plan.
Jeff’s scope of work for the site will expand significantly to expedite the re-launch.  The site will continue to be down for a brief time while Jeff and I and the support team work on the re-launch that will not only be faster but also safer and more user friendly with greater functionality and vastly expanded categories.  Other prior issues raised will be addressed at the same time or are already non-issues and there will also be significant user level testing prior to re-launch.

In respect to the hosting of the site we will improve all aspects of redundancy and backups along with disaster recovery testing and off site management to insure we’re never walking down this path again.

Cost? Many of you have asked about when we’re going to start charging and getting greedy. We’ll never be greedy! I may need to ask members for financial support sometime after you see the new site, posting a Web Advertisement on the site would be fantastic if you want to help.  We do plan to implement a structured fee program to create income as the site grows to cover our costs.  All VIP members will remain free for life, you’re the marketing team and you’ll be paid by no fees for life unless you choose to help out with a Web Advertisement.  Please!   It’s extremely important for you to understand that we need to be financially sound and as we become a larger delivery channel of auctions we plan to cover our cost from advertising and minor fees. I’m telling you this because I want you to know that with your support GozBay will be here to stay as an extremely low cost alternative for your business.

I understand that you’re a member of GozBay.com because you were looking for a great auction site.  We are a great auction alternative.   Please know, it’s not about becoming wealthy and taking your hard earned cash. I’ve spent plenty of my own money and huge amounts of time on GozBay.  I love this business and the excitement it creates for all of us. I enjoy building something that benefits all of us who enjoy the community.  I’m kindly asking you to stick with me, continue to support me while I get our community back on line, faster, safer and at a lower cost than any other for the functionality.

Thanks,

Zach

Man, I hope they get back up and running soon. I really want a new eBay to emerge from somewhere.

eBay continues to make really ignorant decisions. John Donahoe is an idiot. Yes, I know he went to Dartmouth and Stanford, but he must not have ever learned the saying “don’t fix what isn’t broke.” John Donahoe, you are an idiot. Starting in October, eBay will begin limiting what a seller can charge for Shipping & Handling. They will start in the “media” categories. The most a seller will be able to charge is $4.00 for shipping an item.

I often sell vintage record albums. The albums measure 12″x12″ inches in size. I buy specially cut-out cardboard to use as packaging material. I buy oversized bubble mailers to ship most record albums, or even specially sized cardboard boxes for more expensive record albums. Plus my postage and time, I will lose money by shipping these record albums for $4.00.

The US Postal Service allows for “media mail” to weigh as much as 70lbs! I also often sell large collections of books which weigh nearly 50lbs. These CANNOT be shipped for only $4.00 as eBay insists. So what are we supposed to do? eBay tells us to use the shipping calculator to charge actual shipping costs. Ridiculous. So sellers aren’t supposed to be compensated for their time and packing materials? Only shipping costs?

I know, I know, eBay says to raise my starting price. Are you kidding? I start all my auctions at 99 cents. If I start my auctions higher, eBay charges more. This is all a ploy by eBay to capture more of our money, and they think sellers are too stupid to realize it.

Let eBay know how you feel!
http://pages.ebay.com/townhall/

Next Town Hall - Friday September 19 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM PST

Please join us for our next Town Hall audio event with Stephanie Tilenius, SVP & GM of North America Marketplaces.

Date: Friday September 19th from 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM PST

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Some girl named Angela from eBay wanted to take 3 minutes of my time to tell me about the upcoming changes to ebay that will “benefit” sellers. Yeah, right.

She starts off by telling me some garbage about having search options set to “ending soonest” would yield the best results. I told her, ok, but eBay has it set to default to “Best Match”. Her response was “Yes, it defaults to Best Match, but you can change that.” I told her, why are you telling me this as a seller? You should be telling our BUYERS that information. I already know I can change my search option, but newbie buyers do NOT know this.

Then she wanted to tell me how the new changes to eBay’s “Buy-It-Now” costs will benefit me as an eBay Store owner. She says I can now send some of my store items over to “Buy-It-Now” for only 35 cents for 30 days! Guess what. I can already list items in my eBay Store for 30 days and it only costs 5-7 cents. Sure, it would get more visibility if I listed the items as “Buy-It-Now”, but it’s also going to make my eBay Store nearly invisible.

At one point in the conversation, she said something about me needing to modify my listings. I told her I have 500+ listings in my eBay store and I’ll be damned if I spend time modifying each one. She said I don’t *have* to but that I might *need* to. WTF?

Sadly, eBay is the only viable game in town right now, and until someone does something to compete with eBay and attract buyers & sellers, eBay can do whatever it wants.