Tazbar the Ebay Wannabee - What Has Gone Wrong?

Readers may recall I was one of the first people to offer an independent Tazbar review on Associated Comment last year. But revisiting the site in recent months, and especially during the past 24 hours, has proved a most depressing experience for me.

In the past few months the site has suffered severe periods of down time where new visitors were greeted by the dreaded 404 message. This seemed to start shortly after Lee Markham vanished unexpectedly from the site management. Lee's 'gardening leave' was quickly noticed and questioned by users as he was effectively the sole public face of Tazbar at that time, but little explanation was offered by management. But then some 'site improvements' began unexpectedly and effectively destroyed the funky and unique look of the site that I originally applauded and most users seemed to love.

Yesterday, after considerable baiting from Tazbar users in their forums (who clearly knew about some backroom events), Chairman Glenn James made what I consider to be an almost draconian style announcement removing some forums and effectively trying to ban critical comment by site users. Whilst it finally confirmed what many suspected, that Lee Markham was no longer part of the Tazbar set up, it came across to me that Mr James was trying to blame users for the woes the site now appears to be suffering.

Now I understand Mr James and his son Tim own Tazbar and, as such, can do whatever they like. But I am left wondering if customer relations means anything to them? Don't they feel auction sellers deserve to be pre-warned about major changes to the site they trust their inventory to?

As if this 'announcement' was not enough, Mr James also turned his attention to one of the largest vendors on Tazbar since its launch who goes by the name 'Ronny' on the site. Ronny, I understand, has been one of the sellers pushing for answers from Tazbar management for some time He has published the full wording of the email in this forum thread.

According to the view of many Tazbar users, this aggressive and threatening email is totally unwarranted. Ronny has indeed asked questions and expressed frustration at being ignored. However the rules of the Tazbar forums specifically encourage free speech - even critical of Tazbar - provided it wasn't employing foul language etc. I sincerely hope Mr James has the sense to show his corporate lawyer the wording of his own forum rules before spending too much money and Ronny has kept a copy of the forum rules before they change!

In truth I feel very let down by this situation at Tazbar and I am left speculating what the underlying problems might be? Ask experienced bank managers and the most common reason they believe ventures fail in their early years is 'bad management'. Is this what we are witnessing at Tazbar now? Should sellers invest their time, effort and trust in Tazbar to market their wares now?

To my eyes a lot of money was spent advertising the site early on when the site would not have appealed very much to casual browsers attracted by the adverts. Continuing reports I have of poor sell through rates make me think there is little, if any, return being seen on the expensive TV advertising and sports sponsorship they did. So perhaps there are financial pressures behind the erratic site changes, management team changes and site owners coming across to me as unapproachable and dictatorial now?

It is always sad to return to a site that previously earned your praise to find things have deteriorated badly but, as I write, this is now my opinion of Tazbar.

The author is a moderator at Pheebay Forums, the place to discuss eBay and similar online auction websites.