Throughout its life, eBay has pointedly claimed it “only provides a venue” for the exchange of goods. Typically they’ve taken this corporate libertarian stance when they don’t want to enforce unctuous trade restrictions that would cost too much to implement. They back off of the purity stance when threatened with real boycotts and lawsuits: no porn, no teacher’s copies of textbooks, no bad words in auction listings.

It is, after all, a company.

Alas, clearly also a company whose margins are dwindling, so they’re passing along all the costs to the sellers. Today, just as Barbara and I have spent hours sorting Avon collectibles to sell for her mother on consignment, we’re presented with an announcement that (a) fees are going up for eBay stores, (b) the mysterious database “Item Specifics” plague that has destroyed 90% of the ability of buyers to browse is “identified as a problem and will soon be addressed”, and (c) without having fixed said problem, they’re soliciting thousands of listings from their less attentive customers by offering a cheap-listing day.

Please Mr. Google, give us something better.