eBay accuses Amazon of poaching independent sellers for its market

Competition between third-party vendor markets is becoming increasingly fierce and eBay has now blamed Amazon for poaching its own independent sellers through its own messaging system, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Yesterday, eBay sent Amazon a stoppage after the company discovered that more than 50 Amazon sales representatives had sent more than 1,000 messages to eBay sellers to convince them to switch to the Amazon market.

"We can confirm that we have discovered an illegal and worrisome ploy on the part of Amazon aimed at asking eBay sellers to move to the Amazon platform," said eBay WSJ in a report. "We have asked Amazon to end its illegal activity and take appropriate action, if necessary, to protect eBay."

Strong competition for third-party sellers results from both a general shift in retail and e-commerce and the growing importance of catering for small independent businesses that achieve the majority, if not all, of their online sales. Increasingly, consumers buy items directly from sellers through markets like Amazon and eBay. This is because companies have discovered that they can take off more easily by launching complete projects exclusively online.

These companies are sometimes funded through crowdfunding campaigns, often designed specifically for direct sales through manufacturing relationships in China – China's consumer electronics brand Anker built its business on Amazon Marketplace – or needed equipment to produce items such as jewelry or jewelry. clothes, at home and then sell it on a platform like Etsy.

In turn, technology companies have designed their respective platforms to be as accommodating as possible to the sellers, because of the more lucrative reduction that these platforms receive from every sale, from the WSJ Notes. eBay is no longer a place where people sell old collectibles or rare collectibles, but a place where businesses can thrive by selling new or used goods. Amazon has also built its Marketplace as a growing arm of its retail business, where it can bill sellers for shipping, marketing and other aspects of the operation.

In this case, however, it seems that Amazon has resorted to a tasty tactic – tactics very similar to a controversial poaching campaign by Uber against Lyft a few years ago – with vendors turning away from the company. 39, one of his competitors. According to the report, Amazon's sales representatives used tricks to bypass eBay's detection methods, including putting dashes between each letter of the word "Amazon" and spelling out email addresses and other contact information in order to avoid alert eBay was trying to take a conversation outside of its messaging platform. Amazon said to the WSJ she was investigating the allegations, but did not comment further on the allegations.