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Tuesday 5th September
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CORE, the UK based Campaign Of Rebuffed Ebayers, has announced plans for its nextprotest action against the leading auction website. Campaign organizers are callingfor a four day  Clean Up EbayÂ' protest (CUE) from 21.00 GMT on Thursday 14thSeptember until the same time Monday 18th September 2006.
A spokesman for the group said;  This is more than just a listing strike as we arenow asking all eBayers to get involved. We are calling for both buyers and sellersto stop trading during this four day period and donate some of the time saved toreport as many of the obvious bad listings on eBay as they can. We are also askingall remaining eBay shop sellers to put their shop  on holidayÂ' for the duration theprotest .
Derived from the original Fee Protest Group which organized the high profile listingstrike in August, due to Ebay's sudden and extreme fee increase, CORE has nowattracted over 1,160 signatures to a petition in EbayÂ's discussion forums.
Their spokesman continued;  The number signing the petition in the UK has more thandoubled since our last one day action in August. This suggests customers attitudetoward eBay is still hardening. It appears the latest round of fee hikes of up to100% recently imposed by eBay served as a  tipping pointÂ' for many site customersÂ'to cry foul for a variety of reasons.Â
Complaints received by CORE have significantly broadened from the original fee hikeissue. Failings to police the site adequately for, so called, scam listings, poorcustomer services, increased fees being passed on to buyers, the flooding of thesite by users in the far east who are granted fee free access to eBay and shoplistings not being found by searches are just some of the issues that have beenhighlighted.
 This is why we are looking to bring all eBay users together by asking everyone toboycott all buying and selling activity for these four days and report as many badlistings as they can. Many users believe eBay fail to take timely action againstrule breaking listings when they are reported. We therefore trust publicitysurrounding this next phase of our protest will give eBay sufficient time to gear upresources to deal with the increased number of listing reports they will begetting.Â
To date eBay management in the UK and US has remained tight lipped about the effectsof user protests and many critics believe they are risking long term damage to theirbusiness by appearing out of touch with their customers. Protests are continuing inother European countries, the US, Canada and Australia and international cooperationbetween various protest groups is understood to be growing.
Alternative web based auction sites, while in eBays shadow at the moment, havereported increases in their auction listings of up to 35% in the past month, a factwhich shouldnÂ't have gone unnoticed by the market leaderÂ's management.END
Notes for Editors:1. CORE spokespeople can be contacted via: ebayprotestgroup@googlemail.co m2. The idea for CUE was inspired by the Clean Up The World Weekend (CUW). Now in its13th year, CUW, held in conjunction with the United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP), mobilises over 35 million volunteers from more than 100 countries annually,making it one of the largest community-based environmental campaigns in the world. More info on CUW: http://www.cleanuptheworld.org /Main.asp?Requesttype
