Think about it, how often do you find yourself looking for a new place to shop or buy things? Maybe you’ve switched car insurance companies, gas stations, or some other business? Chances are, if the business had cared for you properly, you would still be in their tribe – doing business with them.
At one time, I sold holsters on Ebay – paying them approximately $1000 per month in fees - but not any longer. Why? Ebay didn’t really want me to be in their tribe of sellers. Here’s how it happened. At first, I thought there was a mix-up. After all, I hadn’t changed anything about my listings or my business for several months – yet many of my listings were suddenly canceled.
Desperate to find out the problem – I was told my pictures were in violation of Ebay rules. What? I had been using these pictures for a couple of years, and they were pictures just like the other Ebay sellers were using. It was bad enough that Ebay had changed the rules – but wouldn’t it have been nice of them to send me a polite email – alerting me that I would need to make some changes – maybe even give me a certain amount of time to implement those changes?
Well, it was easy to see – Ebay didn’t want me in their tribe anymore. They no longer cared whether or not I was an Ebay seller. I was heartbroken. It would have been much simpler if they had sent me an email – alerting me that they didn’t want me any longer. Why go through all of that abuse – simply to push me out of their tribe? To this day, I suppose I’ll never know why they didn’t want me around. I guess the $12,000 per year I was paying them didn’t matter to them either……
The story does have a good ending. After being pushed out of the Ebay sellers’ tribe, I started my own retail holster store. Not only am I saving $1000 per month – my sales have grown substantially. Now I’m in a new tribe, the independent online retail tribe. They treat me much better than Ebay did anyway.
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