As part of our restructuring, we will continue to announce when we freeze out advertisers from unsavory companies. This week: eBay. Read more to see why.
We recently announced that we have ended our advertising relationship with AOL. We did so because we felt it created a conflict of interest for Verizon (which recently bought AOL) to control a significant portion of our advertising flow.
That decision may cost us money, but we stand by it, because we are moving to a more community supported position on PhoneNews.com. You’ll find more about this in the coming months.
When reviewing our advertising roster, we also are going to cease advertisements from companies we find particularly unsavory. We won’t always take equal action here – frankly, anyone can buy ads on our site via Google AdWords and other advertising partners. eBay is the second company we have decided to discontinue ad relations with. As of today, we’ve informed our advertising partners that we seek to block ads from eBay until further notice.
Why eBay? We feel their policies towards eBay sellers has become fundamentally unfair. eBay has decided, apparently, to take a customer-is-always-right policy towards buyers. But eBay still insists, legally, that they’re an auction site. They can’t have it both ways. They cannot anger sellers claiming to be a fair marketplace, and then consistently rule in the favor of buyers.
We became aware of this problem because of recent and current class action litigation. We’re coming out today in favor of such litigation – which has survived eBay’s attempts to dismiss it.
While eBay has a right to its day in court, we’re voting with our wallets and telling eBay that we feel they need to reform. We’re not telling you where to take your business – but we are sharing where we’re taking ours.
As you may know, eBay and PayPal recently became separate companies. This decision does not impact PayPal – so you will still see ads from them. The class action lawsuits linked include PayPal, mostly because PayPal was a part of eBay at the time the litigation was filed.
While unlikely, I could see this catching on. ‘Bloggers Against eBay’ could oust Donahue faster than Ichann even could.
That said, I just don’t think it will catch on. It would take big box sites to join in, and that always is hard to do.