I have been on Ebay for 10 years. I am an occasional seller. I have 100% feedback on my sales and buys. But I have less than 100 sales in that time.
Now, due to the new rules, when I sell something over a certain amount of money (I’m not sure of the exact amount), ebay/paypal keeps the money for 21 days.
Why? I am not sure, although I have read their rules. I put the tracking number in paypal. I should get the money when it’s confirmed delivered, unless the buyer has an issue. No issue. I put the tracking number in ebay. I should get the money when it’s confirmed delivered, unless the buyer has an issue. No. I put in a request to paypal to look into it, post tracking numbers, etc. No.
The only thing I apparently need is the positive feedback from (or any communication whatsoever) from the buyer. No. Three tries.
Is there an auction site that doesn’t screw people over that I can try?
I used to have an eBay store . . . until they raise their fees so high that I’d be selling things at a loss. Their reasoning was that they wanted to encourage the store owners to get back to auctions. All they accomplished was to alienate their best customers. I see they’re still doing it.
Have you called Paypal’s customer service? I had the exact same issue – customer had left positive feedback and they were still holding on to my money. So I called their customer service, pointed this out, and they released the hold.
I wound up shutting down my store on eBay anyway when they removed the Store Inventory category anyway, though.
I’ve pretty much given up on even browsing on eBay for things. It seems that they don’t want the casual seller any more, the one who’s clearing out Great Aunt Lavidia’s attic and selling off stuff that the family doesn’t want, but which I would treasure. And I hate PayPal, though I’ve got an account, I think it’s Evil.
Sometimes it seems like eBay pretty much hates its customers (that is, sellers - they’re the ones paying to use the service).
I’ve heard quite a lot of people argue that eBay wants the little individual sellers to go away and I think I believe it. I wonder if something else will mop up this market, if eBay doesn’t just destroy it by attrition.
Nothing to add but I like to dogpile on the mess ebay made of itself.
I too was finally driven away when the paypal silliness started. I don’t browse much now either, because those remaining behind are mostly selling crap from containers bought in China.
I’d like to dogpile on, too. I don’t even bother browsing any more. I used to buy books, perfume, jewelry - lots of little interesting stuff for gifts, almost every month - if I could send in a money order. I don’t WANT to deal with a paypal account. And everything I want now seems bizarrely overpriced. An old lady’s nylon chiffon scarf from the 70’s - $20??? Get stuffed, you greedy ragpickers (ok, that was uncalled for, I know. I’m sorry. For seller and buyer (which would have been me). eBay has lost me forever.
You think Paypal is bad? Try dealing with Google checkout. I could tell you things. That service is 100 times worse.
I agree eBay is no where near as fun as it was 10 years ago, before it became another forum for online shops as opposed to part time sellers.
There are no real options to eBay. What is needed is someone like Rosie O’Donnell to endorse another site. If you recall eBay really took off when Rosie found it and started talking about it, every other day on her talk show. It was eBay this and eBay that and how many great things she found.
Then the site took off.
As for the new PayPal rules, you can hardly blame them. Far too many con people got on it and abused the rules. Last time I looked there were very few cheap options to take credit cards, other than Google Checkout, which I detest.
I’m sure that eBay itself could take Visa and Mastercard and maybe even Amex without requiring a PayPal account. This way, the buyers wouldn’t have to send in a check or money order, and the sellers could rest assured that the money would be paid out. It would require delivery confirmation/insurance for many items, but hell, I never bought anything without paying for insurance anyway. Insurance is cheap. And the sellers have to pay for listing fees anyway, this way the fees could just be deducted from the payment. Also, eBay could have easily avoided the whole feedback issue if they wrote the software in such a manner so that feedback was only made public when BOTH parties gave it. That is, neither side could hold feedback hostage, and sellers who made a practice of not giving feedback at all would be hurt by their laziness.
Nothing much anymore. Depending on the item you may be able to find a specialized auction site but as a general one-stop outlet for buying and selling? It’s pretty much eBay or nothing.
And in turn, the sellers require every buyer to use PayPal. In my proposal, eBay collects the money from the buyer using a credit card, and then disperses it to the seller, probably using PayPal. So there is still some Evil involved, but only on the seller’s part.
My printer died the other day, and I was pissed because I just bought a 4-pack of ink. And of course the ink I bought doesn’t work in any new printers.
So I looked at eBay first for the exact model of my old printer. Someone had it on Buy It Now, for the same price as I bought it for 5 years ago :-/
For some reason I ended up on Amazon, and found the exact printer for $70 instead of $179. In fact, a few Marketplace sellers had it at that price.
I ordered it, got all the spiffy Amazon points on my Amazon Visa, and it arrived at my doorstep 25 hours later (three weeks before their estimated shipping date). The seller put a new box of pens in with my printer, and there were 2 ink carts in there too.
I’ll be checking Amazon Marketplace before eBay now, for buying stuff I’d normally buy with Buy It Now (which is pretty much everything anymore).
Seems to me that if eBay drives away enough private sellers (attic clearers, specialist collectors, etc.), there’ll have to be someone waiting to meet that market. Besides iffy credit, what are the barriers to serving it?