eBay, Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY)

OK, here's the deal: All you business majors sit around crunching numbers, looking at PE, Cash Return, Return ON Equity, etc., and say Ebay is a steal, and everyone should buy it. As anyone can see on this site, you all have been saying that for over a year, and the stock has continued to plunge. If you Google "Ebay sucks" or "PayPal sucks", or "immediate termination of Ebay CEO John Donahoe petition", you'll see what's REALLY going on at Ebay. The CEO is a business school idiot, making absolutely asinine changes that are taking Ebay down the tubes! He is totally out of touch with his customer base. I have been a seller on Ebay for 10 years, and am being squeezed out by ridiculous fees and being forced to use their own on line payment system, PayPal. Do all you business school majors realize Donahoe went to business school, too? FACT: PayPal is holding up payments to sellers for up to 30 days, and makes it a pain in the ass to collect YOUR money from them. RESULT: PayPal shows TONS of cash on the books. Problem is, it's not their cash they're showing you! FACT: When Donahoe changed the feedback system on Ebay, making it impossible for sellers to leave negative feedback, and nearly doubled Ebay's Final Value Fees, sellers organized a strike last Feb., which was only loosely organized in less than a month. Ebay said "We're not worried! Ebayers support our changes to "protect the community" of Ebay!" To attempt to offset the effectiveness of the boycott of sellers, they generated 100,000 FALSE DESCRIPTIONS on Ebay, and were caught at it by the press. When called on it, they claimed to be "testing the system". These are only 2 examples of the many stupid, out of touch changes made by Donahoe. Before you buy stock, or recommend buying it to someone else, do your homework! Check out those pages I quoted above to hear about ALL the changes and problems at Ebay. Don't just look at the numbers THEY'RE giving you. In a time when people should be flocking to Ebay to sell their excess belongings, they're instead going to Craigslist (which Ebay is attempting to BUY, to eliminate competition.) EBAY IS GOING DOWN THE TUBES! SELL THE CRAPPY STOCK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!

In recession times people will seek the bargains that community trading can give them. Plus Ebay is at a great price right now.

time to seel

If you have seen the inner-working of ebay you will notice that sellers are leaving in droves. This does open the door for china wholesalers but the customer base is not currently geared to these products. Tread carefully. Barely underperforms until Donahoe is removed.

Good company on sale.

Their leader is taking them to the slaughter.

I think eBay is at the bottom. Their new pricing structure seems to have added a depth to the "inventory" and did not fill it with all the junk I thought might "crap up" the system. If consignment stores are benefiting from this recession, it makes sense that people will also be selling their stuff on eBay too. And others looking for deals. Should be a decent few quarters for eBay.

Imagine a company that manages to anger a large number of those people who pay for their services.

Imagine a company who demands greater customer service from the people who pay them, than they offer those people.

Imagine a company who spends more money to advertise and sweep things under the rug, than to address the issues.

Imagine a company that is willing to waive more than $25 MILLION in fees, to demonstrate and artificially inflate listing numbers-- such as what eBay did with Buy.com. And, btw, Buy.com's Final Value Fees would have been less than $165,000 during the same time frame as the investigation took place.

Imagine a company who's stock dropped 65% in less than a year, blames it on the economy, yet, their competition enjoyed record profits!

It was not too long ago that EBay stocks were $40-50 a share; now they are $10-15. And, don't let them fool you. It has little to do with the economy, and everything to do with policy changes, and the ebay boycott. Again, this can be seen by the competition increased profits!

Just finished researching this stock. Needless to say EBAY's profitability and stock valuation are outstanding. PE, CASH RETURN, RETURN ON EQUITY, PE VERSUS HISTORIC PE.....By all these measures stock is undervalued. They will be able to whether a depression type era because they have no debt and are cash flow positive. Worst case is that they may have to exit small markets and cut overhead count. They employ a lot of people. Growth and Earnings stability are questionable in the short term. Long term prospects are great because the moat they have. Buyers looking for odd or hard to find items can find almost anything on EBAY. Contrary to what some may say their search is pretty good. EBAY will have to reduce commission fees and bring the balance back to the FORCE however between buyers and sellers. It strikes me as odd that sellers can no longer leave feedback on buyers.

So why should they reduce fees? I think they should reduce fees because their moat comes from being the place where you can find anything. From the seller's perspective lots of eyes make it easy to sell hard to sell products. So Volume begets Volume. With a slow economy lowering commission fees is like giving the tax payers a tax break. This should increase sale transactions. Remember their moat comes from sales transactions. I think right now it is critical for EBAY to do this even though the stock price and immediate earnings could take a hit. So here are three solid reasons they should bypass current earnings for future earnings by reducing fees:

1) Volume begets volume. Moat will increase relative to competition.

2) Will enable their sellers to cut prices making EBAY a place where shoppers can still get a good deal.

3) Profit margin relief for their sellers. You don't want EBAY to shrink 20% because 20% of their sellers are forced out of business in a slow economy. This would allow small start up competition to potentially gain a foot hold.

Personally I can't stand paypal. As a casual shopper its a hindrance. On the otherhand I buy 5-10 things a year from EBAY. Its really a great website to comparison shop and to find items that would normally (without EBAY) be impossible to find.

I read some of the complaints from other posters about EBAY. So i did a test. My 4 year old's (Easter Bunny present) from two years ago broke. I've tried but I can't fix it. So I though maybe EBAY will have it. Someone else bought this so I had no idea what to type. I started with Easter Bunny "lets go to the hop". Nothing hit. Then I tried Singing Easter Bunny. Only one came up but there was a picture of the 2006 Hallmark Easter Buddy..... You would never find that item on any other internet site

Bottom line. EBay is a really great company with a moat that no one else can reproduce. Company is finanically strong and extremely profitable. Company will make money next year too. Stock is priced for a worst case scenario which is unlikely to happen. They have made and will make more mistakes but their moat will allow them to correct things and keep the good ideas. They are profitable and will be even in the downturn. Ebay was selling for current prices back in 1998 or 1999. So I'm buying. Its my chance to finally buy a rule breaker who is also a blue chip company at a value stock price. Can't be beat.

I love this stock; Great value, Cash, Cash, and a great market plan.

Down hard in hard times, people will stretch their dollar as far as they can. eBay is the safest way to do that online.

They invented the online auction, and still have it well implemented.

eBay will ride the Christmas rally and because other retailers will do better than expected. Christmas consumer spending will surprise to the upside. Year over Year real-wages for the number of people employed has been rising and is up 1.5% over last year.

Zero debt, great margins, and ridiculously low P/E relative to it's historical average, $3 billion in cash on hand, all lead me to think it's time to hop on profit making machine. In these current economic times, people will be looking for a bargain if they're in the buying mood, and/or selling some of their non-essentials to raise cash. In either case eBay wins. I'd normally stay away from this stock, but at these prices and this economy, I think it's too good a value to pass up.

Its eBay!

Ebay's service paypal equls pure profit for this company, even though recent changes to its online auction site makes it a whole lot less appealing to both its buyers and sellers than it was a few years ago.

One of the best value stocks out there. PEG under 1. P/S and P/E are terrific and beat competitors (and just trash some of them - see yahoo), they have made some brilliant acquisitions lately and they are flushed with cash in a recession with good cash flow. This is a great stock that is way undervalued given all the indexes and comparisons to their industry. Buy it and wait for the market to adjust.

Two words - PayPal and Skype. This company solves problems for people. Everyone keeps saying they overpay for acquisitions, and EBay keeps proving them wrong.

Ebay is losing users.

My feedback is 100% (with 112 POSITIVE transactions) and I was recently blocked from selling on Ebay because my average user shipping score is a 4.0 out of 5.0.

To me, a 4.0 is a B-, which is good, just not perfect. I ship all my items the day of or after the auction ends, and always use 2 day fedex shipping.

I am now banned from selling, and many others are experiencing the same problem. Get out of this stock as fast as you can.