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Thread: I didn't think eBay could get any worse!

  1. #1
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    Thumbs down I didn't think eBay could get any worse!

    As you make or may not know, eBay has just announced some drastic changes to their rules and fees.

    Here is a quote from another forum about the new eBay changes:

    "Right now, the Ebay marketing machine is billing these changes as "fee reductions" and that is what the media initally reported because they way the changes were announced were quite deceptive. But, for those of you who aren't really super active on Ebay and are wondering what all the changes entail, a summary of them follows.

    First, they are reducing the listing fee by 5 cents and making Gallery free. On the surface this looks great and this is how they are marketing the change - as a "fee reduction". However, if you read the fine print you'll find that they are slyly raising Final Value Fees (The fee the seller pays when the item sells at auction) by as much as 33% to 66% for some sellers. The percentage of increase differs by seller because all sellers sell items with different values and the Final Value Fee is based on the dollar amount of the item. So we save a nickel to list an item, but pay 33% more after the auction is over. This first part of the changes, while quite disgusting, IS bearable.

    Second, they are removing the ability for sellers to leave feedback for buyers. Now, Ebay has always been successful on the basis of both buyer and seller being able to rate each other based on the success of a single transaction. They are removing this for sellers. This is very scarey for the seller population because as sellers, we already are held hostage by what we call "Feedback Extortionist Buyers". These are the buyers that buy something in an auction and then send an email that says "You send me the item free or I will leave you a negative and ruin your Ebay reputation!". While people like this are quite few and far between, they do exist. I've got over 792 transactions and I've come across 4 difficult buyers who no matter what I couldn't please them. I managed to scrape by without a negative because they were booted from Ebay, but the point of the matter is that while most buyers are wonderful, these psycho types of buyers DO exist. Now with this new feedback system, ONE rogue buyer (and even my selling competition) could ruin my reputation very easily. Even if I provided a 100% perfect transaction and the item was received the very same day and all was perfect with the world, that one person could ruin me if they wanted to. All they would need to do is buy 5 or 10 items from me and leave five feedbacks separately - because each and every negative will count against the seller. This would mean the end of my store and my business on Ebay over one rogue buyer. Why? Read the next section.

    Third, as if one and two weren't bad enough, if a seller has below a 95% satisfaction rating on Ebay, Ebay will not display your auctions in the search engine. For example, if I sell 20 items one month and 1 of them has a neutral or negative left for it by a buyer (deserved or not), I can no longer list auctions on Ebay and have them be seen in the search engine. Yes, thats right. I can list, Ebay will take my money, but all of my auctions will be on page 857 of the listing and never be seen by any buyers. So once I get one negative, it is virtually impossible to recover from that by selling additional items becuase non of my items will be seen to be purchased by another buyer later. Its a no win situation for a seller.

    Fourth, as if all of this wasn't the most horrific thing you've ever heard, they're making changes to Pay Pal - which is the method most people use to accept payment over Ebay. From now on, if you have less than 100 feedback and you sell an item Pay Pal will not give you your money for 21 (TWENTY ONE DAYS!). Yes, you read that right. Say, Susie sells a 50 dollar item and the buyer pays through Pay Pal. Susie is then forced to ship the item FREE without any payment. After 21 days has passed, THEN Pay Pal will forward Susie her money. This folks is just horrible. Do you know anywhere else on the planet where you can demand that someone selling you an item give you the item FREE and ship it to you FREE while you hold on to your money for 21 entire days? I sure don't. On top of this "under 100 feedback" thing, again if I have less than a 95% rating or get one negative or get one neutral - again - Pay Pal will hold my money for 21 days. Imagine how must interest Pay Pal and Ebay will accumulate on billions of dollars being held in 21 day incriments - yet another disguesting way for them to squeeze MORE money out of the system.

    Fifth, they instituted "Seller Rewards". Essentially, if you meet certain criteria as a seller you can earn 15% credit on your account. The catch is that you have to sell 1,000 dollars or more on your account every month and have to have a 4.8 rating on all your "stars". I feel that these guidelines are impossible to reach and that they were designed to be impossible to reach on purpose so that Ebay, yet again, would not have to actually pay out the discounts. To give you an example of how hard these are to reach, out of Ebay's top 500 Powersellers (These people are the creme of the crop on Ebay and make lilke $100,000 a month on Ebay)...anyway out of tje top 500 of them, only SEVEN qualify for the 15% discount. SEVEN.

    And finally, when all these changes were announced, the Ebay sellers went ballistic. The response from Ebay management? We were told that our complaints and nager and frustration and tears were - and I quote - "NOISE!". Yes, we are nothing but "noise" to the Ebay management, yet they are making million dollar salaries off of us.
    "


    To me, it sounds like eBay is trying to get rid of "the little guy" sellers. Its going to make it very difficult and less worthwhile for the average person to make a couple bucks on eBay selling stuff they don't need anymore, instead of throwing it out. I made the decision a while ago about eBay, and how I won't sell on eBay unless I can make at least $50. Otherwise, its not worth all the fees and your time going to the post office.

    I've been using eBay since the early days when you could buy pirated software, human body parts, guns, etc. And while most of the changes made to eBay over the years were generally ok (aside from the continually growing cut they take), this news makes me want to boycott using eBay all together.

    Bart

  2. #2
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    If all that it true, and eBayers get fed up enough, I'd say it will only be a matter of time before some other enterprising person offers an alternative to eBay. I can easily envision a mass exodus to a new buyers and sellers medium, leaving the great-white eBay powersellers and eBay management to try to syphon only off each other.

    Greed should be a four-letter word.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Y33TREKker View Post
    If all that it true, and eBayers get fed up enough, I'd say it will only be a matter of time before some other enterprising person offers an alternative to eBay. I can easily envision a mass exodus to a new buyers and sellers medium, leaving the great-white eBay powersellers and eBay management to try to syphon only off each other.

    Greed should be a four-letter word.
    Yeah, I'm not 100% positive that all of the above is 100% true, but I am pretty sure it is. Ebay sent out a newsletter last week, and I skimmed through it and the above was basically the jist.

    Craigslist is great for local stuff, but there will be a need for a new global garage sale that eBay once was.

    And you know, I can understand they want to make more money or whatever, but I REALLY don't understand the fact that sellers cannot leave feedback for buyers anymore. That makes no sense. There are so many dead beat bidders out there, and they need to be called out.

    Bart

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    ONLINEAUCTION.COM already exists and I think there are more online auction options out there than you think. None are as big as Wal-Mart, I mean eBay, but you can still get some good deals.
    Sent from my "two hands on a keyboard"

  5. #5
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    Yea... I have been using Ebay and Half.com for awhile... I hadn't had the need to use it for a few months and I just recently got back on to sell a few coats. It cost me over $5 just to list the coats with 3 -5 photos. I couldn't believe how fast their prices went up. And now all this is happening. I don't think I will be using Ebay as a seller anymore. But since the buyers have the upper hand... "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" sounds about right...
    ~*~Cece~*~
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  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by VXIRONwoMAN View Post
    Yea... I have been using Ebay and Half.com for awhile... I hadn't had the need to use it for a few months and I just recently got back on to sell a few coats. It cost me over $5 just to list the coats with 3 -5 photos. I couldn't believe how fast their prices went up. And now all this is happening. I don't think I will be using Ebay as a seller anymore. But since the buyers have the upper hand... "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" sounds about right...
    Yeah, buying on eBay has always been ok. Ebay has always sided with the buyer, and for the most part, this has always been good, since there are so many scammers and loosers selling garbage out there (especially when electronics are concerned). The problem is, that eBay has continually nailed the seller to wall, and paypal has done the same. I have been a buyer on eBay about 90%, and a seller about 10%, but the 10% experience with selling has left me wondering if selling little things not that often is even worth my time. Big sellers who move a lot of product can afford to deal with all the extra costs, but for me, if I want to sell something and it goes for $20, by the time eBay and paypal fees are taken out, is your time really worth the $14 you are left with? Not so much, imho. I need to clear $50 in my pocket to make it sorta worthwhile. And now, with these new rules, selling on eBay for the little guy is going to be even less appealing. I am lucky, because I got in early, and I have over 500 positive feedbacks, and I have only had one negative from some looser who couldn't figure out how to use his computer, and lashed out at me for no reason. But anyway, if sellers have no recourse against buyers who fail to pay, or turn out to be scammers themselves, why sell on eBay? I think eBay is going to have some sort of internal process for sellers to report bad buyers, but other sellers will never know if they can't see seller left feedback.

    I will definitely check out the other auction sites.

    Bart

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    100% agree with nfpgasmask. Feel like beating them with a bat sometimes.

  8. #8
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    I'm wondering if all these additional fees are the reason for the overall rise in shipping charges I've been witnessing on eBay lately. As with any business, increased operating costs generally get passed on to the customer, so eBay sellers seem to doing the same, just in a sort of backhanded way.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Y33TREKker View Post
    I'm wondering if all these additional fees are the reason for the overall rise in shipping charges I've been witnessing on eBay lately. As with any business, increased operating costs generally get passed on to the customer, so eBay sellers seem to doing the same, just in a sort of backhanded way.
    That makes sense to me - I know eBay has rules in place that made it illegal to over-charge for shipping. It still happens though. Navigator tried charging for handling and what not by including it in the shipping price. Several people here got pissed off about that. Can't blame either person (buyer or seller) for their actions if that is the case. Not much of an option for the seller otherwise.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by nfpgasmask View Post
    And you know, I can understand they want to make more money or whatever, but I REALLY don't understand the fact that sellers cannot leave feedback for buyers anymore. That makes no sense. There are so many dead beat bidders out there, and they need to be called out.
    The problem was that there are deadbeat sellers out there, but buyers were afraid to call THEM out. Sellers have excessive power to destroy a buyer's rating in retaliation. I only have ONE neutral feedback, and that's because I gave a neutral to someone who scammed me with an item description. (I think "works!" means that it includes the wall-wart.) A ding against me is 1/70th of my feedback. I'm lucky that mine is high enough that it didn't bring my percentage down. The guy I dinged? 1/5300th of his feedback. My feedback meant nothing to him.

    So, yeah... ebay feedback is totally broken, but taking it away is NOT the way to fix it. I do approve of the Detailed Seller Ratings that they put in May of 2007, though.

  11. #11
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    Post eBay woes

    When I was bored I used to get on ebay and buy a lot of things that I really didn't need... old books, collectibles, etc. But I always told myself, I could just turn around and place them back on eBay when required (after I read books, etc.)

    This churning of stuff help me build up 1500+ feedback... and most of the time I made a modest profit because I provided good photos and well-written descriptions. And I threw away my buying mistakes <grin>.

    Now the market has changed; and it is no longer any fun. There appears to be fewer people buying unique items, and because of bad seller experiences in the past, they are reluctant to buy again from any seller.

    The general public refer to "eBay" as a single entity. It now has evolved into a singular source with a shared reputation.

    I often thought I could retire earlier and run a small eBay business on the side. That ship has sailed.

    Sure there dozens of other online bidding sites with different payment models (Yahoo auctions are free, for example) but eBay was a cultural icon for many years and I think it is just imploding now because of greed.

    Perhaps the old fashioned "flea market" where you get out in the sunshine and barter face to face wasn't so bad, afterall.

    Cheers,

    Mark

  12. #12
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    I helped create a company that provided tools for eBay sellers - I left it last year and it's since been acquired by what used to be our biggest competitor. The market and marketplace has been changing for some time. The old experience has certainly changed. I've found myself still buying from eBay but rarely sell - most of my online purchases are made on Amazon (best general prices, usually free shipping and no tax). I also end up buying a lot off Craigslist from local sellers - especially good for heaving items like tools and equipment. I seem to sell more on "Trade" forums than anywhere.

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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by reptiles View Post
    Sure there dozens of other online bidding sites with different payment models (Yahoo auctions are free, for example) but eBay was a cultural icon for many years and I think it is just imploding now because of greed.
    That's the problem. Sure there are other online auction sites that are doing similar things, but the problem is, the user base is so small and so limited compared to eBay, its really pointless. You're not going to find a WWII Army Dog Gas Mask on ONLINEAUCTION.com, but you might on eBay.

    There is a "comfort" people have (or had) with eBay. Meaning, there is (was) a certain trust that ebay buyers had, that is being lost. For another site to not only gain the user base, but to also gain the trust, could take years, or never happen at all.

    In 1998 when I used to do a eBay search for "gas mask" I might get 20 items. Today, I can easily do the same search and yield well over 500 items. Somewhere in the middle of 1998 and today, it was great. Hundreds of sellers from all over the world cleaning out their basements and attics, and I was there grabbing stuff up. Now, eBay is oversaturated with liquidation type stuff and the real quality is gone. And now, with these new rules, they might has well just merge with Amazon and just do regular fixed price sales. Like you said, the whole face to face, garage sale mentality is just about gone. I guess its just a sign of the times, but it really sucks for collectors and little guys like me, who liked it because I could find good, genuine items. Now its just boat loads of repetitive garbage, peddled by huge sellers who could care less about individuals and feedback. Imploding, it is.

    Bart

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