ebay bad to even stupider

this could explain a few things....



http://www.ebaysucks.com/

Guess I'll just stick to the Black market, GS classifieds, Amazon and craigslist. I have only ever bought 1 thing on ebay actually. Never liked it much.

Not sure about everything in that article (don't know enough to know), but some of it is definitely true.  Charging final value fees on shipping charges  really ticks me off--why should ebay take more of my money just because the item is going to Australia or Norway?  I actually complained about it just yesterday, not that I expect it to have any impact.

I also get the sense that ebay, as the writer suggests, is focusing much more on high volume sellers than on little guys.  Makes ebay less interesting to me as a buyer, & less inviting to me as a seller. 

Sounds like a load of bull to me. Far to well worded. Not that I am supporting eBay, I hate the place, but I guess I am just an old cynic and something does not ring true.

Cheers

Ian

Like anything else. Once it is established and in demand, the terms and conditions are slowly altered to maximise their profit. You hand over your ass to them if you want to sell there. As well as their final bid value charges on shipping, paypal charge on shipping also pisses me off but this is no different than the credit card. So you bump your shipping charges a bit to compensate.

I have no idea whether any of the stated claims are true but I'm not sure I understand the fuss?  If you don't like ebay's policies stop selling there - that's what I did.  It's not like they are stealing babies or something so why all the outrage?

I reserve the right to buy things there to feed my electronic parts habit...

Cheers,
Ruairi

Some things can only be sold for a reasonable price at eBay these days, but I've stopped selling everything else there at least a year ago. They should apply anti-trust legislation to eBay and bust it. And some other quasi-monopolists in the online market, too. Don't get me started about eBay subsidiary Paypal...

hodad said:

I also get the sense that ebay, as the writer suggests, is focusing much more on high volume sellers than on little guys. 

Click to expand...

I worked a conference where an Ebay VP stated as much.  They think they are competing with Amazon for retail sales.  More like the Big Lots of online retail.  They would like to see private auction die; auction is a relatively small part of the bottom line now. 

I guess they will push it along ,
shipping already makes allot of thing past
the price of sellable [ with a profit ]
Thanks for everything ebay

It is possible though, to use them for a bit of free
advertising - list one item sell the rest off bay

All I know is ebay used to have reasonable fees. Now its insane, and they have so many "gimmicks". Plus everyone on ebay uses paypal - which is all fine and great, works smoothly on the outside, but then you realize that each place takes a chunk out of your money.

On one hand I love it because it opens up the marketplace for anyone to sell anything on the other hand it sucks cause it has no real competition to keep its feels reasonable.

I mean they charge you to list things - then charge you more once it sells!

I sold a tube guitar rack thing last year - sold for 150$ something ebay and paypal ended up taking about 35$ when it was all said and done....
Really? I think a small fee of course is needed but come on. They don't even do the work its all a machine.

I love ebay for what it has brought to the market. Access to things which one would never have had access to before.

Costs? That's what competition is for.

emrr said:

hodad said:

I also get the sense that ebay, as the writer suggests, is focusing much more on high volume sellers than on little guys.  

Click to expand...

I worked a conference where an Ebay VP stated as much.  They think they are competing with Amazon for retail sales.  More like the Big Lots of online retail.  They would like to see private auction die; auction is a relatively small part of the bottom line now.

Click to expand...

Smaller and smaller,actually...  By curiosity I just run a search in the "Vintage Electronics" sub category and found about 110.000 results , by narrowing the search to "Auctions Only" in the same category the results dropped to about 13.000  which is less than 12% true private auctions. I guess than in less specific categories this figure will be much smaller. Obviously, eBay is trying pushing small private sellers out of the game...    

...which means there is a hole in the market for a service that is what eBay USED TO be.

Will such a service rise up? Hmmmm, many eBay clones have tried and failed.

So what's the key to being successful as a service that provides an eBay auction experience during its "golden years" (which I would say is circa 2002)?

What should change about eBay? What should stay the same?

I think it all comes down to advertising...The good thing about buying/selling on ebay is you know that you are reaching the widest audience and seeing the most complete list of auction goods.  I've never used any of these other action sites, because they do look a little seedy or I never had the confidence that there were enough people using it.

Ebay spent tons of money on advertising, their layout is good. They instill confidence....will another company come up and cater more to the individual/small business? I sure hope so!!

Skylar said:

...which means there is a hole in the market for a service that is what eBay USED TO be.

Will such a service rise up? Hmmmm, many eBay clones have tried and failed.

Click to expand...

Turkish "Gitti - Gidiyor" (Gone-Going) was very succesful and rival to E-bay. Of course E-bay bought them.

I'm told that Yahoo Auctions is the dominant marketplace in Japan, and eBay is an afterthought.

The article's tone did seem a bit dramatic but I'm inclined to believe the direction proposed is accurate.  Growth and progress of big business always moves like that.  Just like WalMart.

Use it as a big free directory for the time being.  Contacts for the future.  Focus on trust and keeping your word for future business endeavors.

If the smaller pro audio/vintage audio sellers are forced off and something else comes along to take it's place who knows.  My guess is that it will be worse (>>>>$$) than what's going on now.  Same game.


. . . read it like a boxscore.