DailyTech - EBay and Top Seller to Celebrate Together 1M Positive Feedback

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Internet EBay and Top Seller to Celebrate Together 1M Positive Feedback
Jason Mick (Blog) - November 13, 2008 1:56 PM

39 comment(s) - last by seatoo.. on Nov 26 at 11:44 PM

No one come's close to seller Jack Sheng on eBay

The web auction site eBay has had its share of bad news late. The slowing economy has led to falling profits and investor fear that the company who defined the internet auction business could be headed downhill.

Well, for now eBay has at least one good piece of news to celebrate. Its top customer has achieved a historic mark -- 1 million positive feedback comments.

Anyone who sells stuff on eBay can receive positive, neutral, or negative feedback from customers. Good feedback lead to more business, and smart sellers go out of their way to please customers with fast shipping and good correspondence, in order to get good reviews.

Jack Sheng has been using eBay since 2000, when he and two childhood friends launched an electronics accessory company Eforcity Corp., based in Los Angeles. Now after eight years of operation, over the last two months four of the eBay user IDs belonging to Jack and his company each passed the 1 million mark for feedback.

Once only a handful of people, the company grew quickly, now employing 200. Mr. Sheng has gone from working at the company part-time when he was not at his position as a technology consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers to assuming a full-time position at the head of his company. It only took two years for him to go full-time with the business and now he has another milestone to celebrate.

Mr. Sheng is well ahead of the next highest-feedback seller, a CD and DVD retailer with about 754,000 positive feedback.

He says of the 1 million mark, "It's a great morale booster for our employees."

His advice to new eBay sellers is to seek out a niche and make it their own. He states, "If early on if we'd tried to sell electronics rather than electronics accessories, we might be out of business right now."

EBay's Chief Executive John Donahoe and other top executives plan on honoring Mr. Cheng's accomplishment at the company's San Jose, Calif., headquarters later today.

While only a number, Mr. Cheng's record stands out, much like McDonalds' iconic "99 Billion Served" slogan.

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Million

By bribud on 11/13/2008 2:13:05 PM , Rating: 5

one MILLION feedbacks.... muuaaahahahahahahaha!!!

RE: Million

By Parhel on 11/13/2008 3:34:19 PM , Rating: 1

My new goal is to be the first to reach 1 million negative feedbacks.

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RE: Million

By Diesel Donkey on 11/13/2008 5:26:15 PM , Rating: 3

That would actually be a much greater challenge.

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RE: Million

By Parhel on 11/13/2008 5:31:47 PM , Rating: 1

I know! 1 million positive feedbacks is easy. You just have to sell a lot of crap. 1 million negative would be a real challenge. After about 10,000 negatives, people might start to get a bit hesitant to buy from you.

The ultimate challenge: 1 million neutrals.

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RE: Million

By Gzus666 on 11/13/2008 5:42:51 PM , Rating: 5

quote:
The ultimate challenge: 1 million neutrals.

1 Million "Product was great, but he peed on the box" comments.

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RE: Million

By Gzus666 on 11/13/2008 5:47:46 PM , Rating: 5

"At (Fill in company name here) we strive to be the most neutral company on eBay, so we send quality products at a great price, but we pee on every box to ensure neutral feedback for your experience."

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RE: Million

By Aloonatic on 11/14/2008 3:56:57 AM , Rating: 4

"What makes a man turn neutral ... Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?" - Zapp Brannigan

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RE: Million

By xphile on 11/16/2008 10:00:11 PM , Rating: 2

"Or born with a bladder full of urine" - Pierre Omidyar

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RE: Million

By xphile on 11/16/2008 10:04:37 PM , Rating: 2

NEUTRAL "Seller sold me a toilet as new - while in good cond appears to have been used..."

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RE: Million

By martinrichards23 on 11/14/2008 4:29:34 AM , Rating: 4

If you want neutral responses, just sell everything to Switzerland.

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RE: Million

By kristof007 on 11/16/2008 7:53:07 AM , Rating: 2

Makes me want to rate this down to a zero so the actual comment itself is neutral.

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RE: Million

By Davelo on 11/13/2008 6:50:38 PM , Rating: 4

quote:
My new goal is to be the first to reach 1 million negative feedbacks.

You have my vote. I already don't like you. ;)

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RE: Million

By Yawgm0th on 11/13/2008 11:54:14 PM , Rating: 5

Instead of office chair package contained bobcat. Would not buy from again.

http://www.xkcd.com/325/

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Good seller

By Brandon Hill

(blog) on 11/13/2008 2:11:10 PM , Rating: 5

I've bought quite a bit of stuff from Eforcity over the years for me and my family. Batteries, phone car/wall chargers, USB sync cables, Wii remote batteries/chargers, etc. They always seem to have cheap prices and I've never once had a problem with them as far as shipping or product quality goes.

RE: Good seller

By g35fan on 11/13/2008 3:05:34 PM , Rating: 2

yea they have great deals on HDMI cables.

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RE: Good seller

By FreeTard on 11/14/2008 10:02:09 AM , Rating: 4

Seriously?

Everybody knows you have to have Monster Cables. They have this special manufacturing process that provides 1000x better sound. Jeez, don't you listen to the Best Buy people?

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RE: Good seller

By Taft12 on 11/13/2008 4:07:15 PM , Rating: 3

I guess what you're saying is "A+++++++++++++ SELLER WOULD DO BUSINESS AGAIN"

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RE: Good seller

By arazok on 11/13/2008 4:38:56 PM , Rating: 2

AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN!

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RE: Good seller

By ggordonliddy on 11/13/2008 6:46:15 PM , Rating: 4

> A+++++++++++++

Needs at least one more "+" before he gets my business. Anything less sounds very fishy.

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RE: Good seller

By nugundam93 on 11/17/2008 3:06:13 AM , Rating: 2

hahahahaha or a positive feedback like "great seller! if i were in jail and needed to pick up a bar of soap from the floor, i'd have him cover my back" or something.

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Just goes to show...

By Spivonious on 11/13/2008 3:04:54 PM , Rating: 3

Ebay really isn't what is used to be. It's been taken over by companies that couldn't care less if fees get raised or policies are changed.

After a few successful sales on Craigslist, I think I'll go there first in the future.

RE: Just goes to show...

By kinnoch on 11/13/2008 3:21:28 PM , Rating: 3

Large companies who couldn't care less about rate hikes?

Eforcity is shipping 25k-30k items per day (www.ebayinkblog.com). If final value feels increase by 20 cents, thats $5000 of extra fees a day or ~$2 million per year. It seems like they would care about ebays policies if other sites, like amazon, start offering a more competitive advantage.

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RE: Just goes to show...

By Spivonious on 11/13/2008 3:30:22 PM , Rating: 1

That is a valid point, but I think large companies can absorb those extra costs more than the individual.

If I sell a $5 item, and then have to pay $2-$3 of that to Ebay/Paypal, why sell the item only to make $2?

If I sell 20,000 $5 items, I still make $40,000.

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RE: Just goes to show...

By derwin on 11/13/2008 3:54:10 PM , Rating: 1

How do you even know the company is operating at a 2 million dollar profit margin?

Just because they deal with larger sums of money does not make them made of money.

If they lost 2 million dollars a year, I would not be surprised if they went out of business (and quickly).

"If I sell a $5 item, and then have to pay $2-$3 of that to Ebay/Paypal, why sell the item only to make $2?

If I sell 20,000 $5 items, I still make $40,000."

What if you have to pay 3 dollars to get the item in the first place? How do you sell something for $5 if you pay 3 to get it, and 3 to sell it? You actually just lost $20,000 I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like good business to me.

The markup people make on reselling items is not nearly as large as people think. (Perhaps once you account for regional and local distributers, corporate, manufacturing, and everything else, the price of the product has balloned, but that is not a very large hike at any one spot.)

"I think large companies can absorb those extra costs more than the individual."
Don't assume that. Do you have one hard piece of evidence to prove that? Or is that just anti-corporatocratic propoganda?

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RE: Just goes to show...

By consumerwhore on 11/14/2008 1:49:10 PM , Rating: 3

quote:
[...] that couldn't care less [...]

Holy Mother of God! Somebody used the expression "couldn't care less" correctly on the Internet. Stop the press! DailyTech, here's your next Top Story!

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"come's close"?

By ggordonliddy on 11/13/2008 6:44:27 PM , Rating: 5

What does "come's close" mean? With the apostrophe, it can only have a sexual meaning.

RE: "come's close"?

By tjr508 on 11/13/2008 7:30:04 PM , Rating: 2

I thought the same thing. Nobody's is even close.

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Why have one million,

By drunkenmastermind on 11/13/2008 6:51:56 PM , Rating: 2

when you could have one...thousand...feedbacks?...I don't know feedbacks.

RE: Why have one million,

By SuckRaven on 11/13/2008 11:38:00 PM , Rating: 3

All I can say is...WOW. The gramatical skills, or at the very least the editing on this site has gone down faster than the DOW in the past three days.

quote:
No one come's close to seller Jack Sheng on eBay

come's ??? wtf...

Next up, the first sentence...

quote:
The web auction site eBay has had its share of bad news late.

I guess this is better than having it early. ;-)

??? as of late ??? maybe... who knows.........who cares?

Next up...

somewhere along the course of the article Mr. Shang got identity thefted, and is masquerading as Mr. Cheng...

I'm sure there are others...c'mon guys, seriously this is painful.

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eBay?

By ggordonliddy on 11/13/2008 6:50:22 PM , Rating: 2

What is this "eBay" you speak of?

It's over....

By fliguy84 on 11/14/2008 11:33:13 AM , Rating: 2

It's over 9000 feedbacks!!

Hooray for editors

By meatycheesyboy on 11/16/2008 3:18:49 PM , Rating: 2

OK, I know I'm late on this one but...

quote:
No one come's close to seller Jack Sheng on eBay

quote:
Jack Sheng has been using eBay since 2000, when he and two childhood friends launched an electronics accessory company Eforcity Corp., based in Los Angeles. Now after eight years of operation, over the last two months four of the eBay user IDs belonging to Jack and his company each passed the 1 million mark for feedback.

quote:
Mr. Sheng is well ahead of the next highest-feedback seller, a CD and DVD retailer with about 754,000 positive feedback.

quote:
EBay's Chief Executive John Donahoe and other top executives plan on honoring Mr. Cheng's accomplishment at the company's San Jose, Calif., headquarters later today.

quote:
While only a number, Mr. Cheng's record stands out, much like McDonalds' iconic "99 Billion Served" slogan.

So, what's the guys name?

Wow

By ablecluster on 11/17/2008 9:35:58 AM , Rating: 2

Holy smokes man! One Million positive feedbacks? Wow, that is truly amazing.

Jess
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com

The Mysterious Mr. Cheng

By seatoo on 11/26/2008 11:44:13 PM , Rating: 2

Why is Mr. Cheng & Co. not selling through his own website?
What the hell does he need eBay for?
And why is he not the eBay head of chief by now?
What the hell is going on?

And what does this prove?

By Motoman on 11/13/08, Rating: -1

RE: And what does this prove?

By kinnoch on 11/13/08, Rating: 0

RE: And what does this prove?

By cmdrdredd on 11/13/2008 4:54:03 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
I don't believe the original point was to be able to save money on items, but more of a service where anyone could sell anything on a level playing field. I think the bulk of the initial items listed were either used or niche items. Since then ebay seems to have evolved to a site where you can get just about anything used or new.

Except that Ebay is extremely hostile to certain product markets which keeps me away for good. For example, you can't sell Firearm parts on ebay anymore. They take your listing down. You can't buy barrels and other misc gun parts. So much for selling everything eh? Oh and there are NO laws against internet sales, state to state sales, and shipping of parts. The only part of a gun that has any stipulations is the lower receiver or frame which has the serial number engraved. In that case you have to ship it to an Federal Firearms Licensee using UPS or FedEx. Those shippers require you to ship it overnight and insure it. You can't use the post office unless you have an FFFL yourself. Why do I even mention this? Simple, it's perfectly legal and simple to sell firearms and accessories online. Ebay just happens to be so vehemently anti-gun that they refuse to allow the listings.

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RE: And what does this prove?

By Drexial on 11/13/2008 2:44:20 PM , Rating: 2

Wait you mean people on eBay are making money? RUN TO THE PRESS NOW, this must be made public there will be riots.

/sarcasm

There are more reasons then just one to go to one place or another. There is cost savings and service. Given that this place passed the 1 million positive feed back, we can assume they have good service.

Given that they built a business this successful on eBay, they must have reasonable prices.

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RE: And what does this prove?

By CSMR on 11/13/2008 3:04:17 PM , Rating: 2

Not necessarily. They don't have to pay to run a network of stores.

There are other advantages on ebay than price. The main advantage is convenience and range of markets.
Convenience: once you are set up, bidding and paying is easy. Compare with buying outside e-bay: often you need to register and fill in account details when purchasing.
Range of markets: all sorts of goods, new and used, including obscure markets. It is a one stop shop.

That said I think there is room for a similar company to compete with ebay on price (charges).

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"A lot of people pay zero for the cellphone ... That's what it's worth." -- Apple Chief Operating Officer Timothy Cook