I found this great article about eBay’s problems on the New York Times website (although it was unfortunately centered around the hypothesis that Amazon should buy eBay), along with this follow-up on Wired.

From the Wired article:

From where we’re sitting, it looks pretty chaotic. eBay’s CEO is out playing politics; one of the highest-ranking executives is publicly trashing the business; and customers are apparently planning a revolt. There are roughly 248 million registered users on eBay — and while not all of them are going to be happy, the company’s listings fell 3 percent during the first nine months of 2007, which indicates that a huge chunk of its customer base is taking its business elsewhere.

I personally have come to hate eBay. After:

• 2 of my 3 attempts to sell an old laptop were foiled (the first time, a Nigerian scammer won my auction; the second time, a Nigerian scammer hacked into the winning bidder’s account and then won my auction)…
• Spending 3 months trying to repeal the fees eBay charged me for these 3 listings…
• And spending many hours trying to just look around their clunky, confusing website to find even slightly relevant information…

I have all but given up on using them. Too bad there are no really valid competitors to put real pressure on eBay.