In 2007 I started using eBay to sell unwanted and duplicate DVDs, CDs, books, and old computer games, as well as a few other odds and ends. I wasn’t looking to do anything but make a few bucks on stuff that I otherwise probably would have just donated or tossed away, although I ended up doing pretty good with a few things.
I had pretty much cleared myself out of salable merchandise before eBay changed their pricing and rating structure, and I’m not sure I’d want to try to do it again under the current rules. I have bought a few things over the past year, but I’ve found like Lynn said that trying to find particular items it more difficult, with most of the sellers being stores now.
I can no longer find any deals on eBay. I think it’s mostly used now to launder money
I used to by CDs but I almost never find one there I can’t find cheaper elsewhere, unless it is a very rare CD.
Amazon is quicker but I often find when I order a CD the seller doesn’t have it.
I am glad they got rid of seller feedback for the number of times I got burned by sellers. I can’t tell you the number of times I won an auction and the seller simply refused to sell it to me, because it wasn’t high enough. The thing was, what could you do? Leave bad feedback and get a lie made up about you.
If you take a moment and look through a seller’s feedback you can quickly tell a bad buyer.
I live in Chicago and our mail is horrible so it’s nice to be able to get your money back when the post office screws up and loses the package. Remember insurance protects the SELLER not the buyer. So the seller can refund my money and file to get his money back form the PO for the item they lost.
I think with eBay and the PBS show Antiques Roadshow, people think their garbage is worth millions. You used to be able to get really fun deals. Now it’s like one big dollar store. OK that’s fine if you live in a place where there are no dollar stores, but to live off eBay you have to be able to profit from shipping & handling or have an extremely unique item
I sold a bunch of stuff on ebay a few months ago. You can charge postage - however, when you’re listing an item they suggest that you do not. Perhaps that’s where the confusion lies.
I sold garage sale type items and started the bids at one cent, but charged postage and handling (i.e. the price of the mailing envelope).
Also, I was contacted by buyers who wanted to use some form of payment other than paypal. I agreed and the transaction was complete - no problem. So that can happen now too.
I had an ebay store until about early 2004, in the beginning the store fees were reasonable and your store inventory came up in the main search-box but the fees kept creeping higher and higher and ebay changed the search-deal to where you have to include store inventory as a criteria and folks just don’t.
All of my profits went to fees and crap, ebay was making more from my store than I was so I closed it.
Now I buy only but I only buy antiques and rare stuff (mostly British bike parts) and I don’t buy NEARLY as much as I used to.
Ebay was a brilliant idea and in the beginning the execution was great, but big business got involved and screwed it all up (by “maximizing profits” and forgetting who was there in the beginning).
There has never been any real good competition for ebay but ebay has pissed enough folks off that they have opened the door for competition, now it’s out there.
There are a few things that eBay has changed in shipping charges. I know that with CDs you can’t charge more then $3, as I look for CDs mostly and see a lot of them overseas that say shipping to the US will be more then $3. I think the $3 is BS as it costs at least a buck for an envelope and more then $2 to ship.
I also don’t like the newer search as it always brings up stuff that people have paid extra for and not ending soonest. The search also will just change words if it doesn’t find enough. I was looking for a CD last night with the word “love” in it and it kept changing it to “live”. I’ve pretty much stopped using eBay at all.
This exactly. The whole appeal of eBay as a buyer was getting a great deal on something. Now that the smaller sellers have been crowded out it’s just a collection of stores. Worse, at least if I buy from Amazon I feel like I’m buying from a secure entity as opposed to out the back of a white van. I hardly search eBay AT ALL before purchasing something anymore.
One happening was interesting. Some guy listed something like 300 little phone covers for .99, Free Shipping. Shit, I figured what the hell. So auction check to see the other auctions, this "bidder" passed up about 50 completely identical items for .99 to pay $1.04 for the one I bid on. So I look to see who it was, maybe I could see if this guy is shill bidding, “Due to privacy concerns, we do not release the name of the current high bidder.” Oh really?
I no longer find eBay attractive. Postage of items to Canada is much to expensive, and often Canadian sellers charge more to mail objects to Canada than to the US, so you can’t win.
For many years, I bought lots of books and a few other items through eBay, rare or out-of-print books mainly. No more.
I hope nobody on this board has shares because I think it’s going to sink soon.
Yeah, the change I know is that they limit what you can charge for shipping based on what you’re selling. I tried selling some stuff (think it was a book, can’t recall, been a year or two), and the Ebay Seller process refused to let me list more than $3 for shipping, yet the post office listed shipping as $4.95. Part of their philosophy to control excessive shipping charges because, I guess, if you see that someone is demanding $20 for shipping, it’s a crime against humanity to bid on another auction where shipping is less.
I think that a lot of people did, in fact, charge $20 or more for stuff that could be shipped for a dollar. Even when I was browsing eBay frequently, it was a pain to remember that I HAD to check the shipping. I think that if the sellers had to list a total price (item plus shipping) in larger digits than the current price of the item alone, then this would have cleared up a lot of confusion…and it would also have frustrated those sellers who charged excessive shipping.
I’m sorry: I wrote that in a rush. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is that free postage must be offered as a first option on certain items. From ebay.co.uk
(I apologise for not showing a direct link, but that is from My eBay, and would reveal my personal details.)
eBay US requires no such thing, so it must be UK only. eBay US does have “max shipping costs” for certain categories to combat the evil sellers that would charge $20 shipping for an item that only weighs a few ounces. But even those can be overridden if you tell eBay exactly how much the item weighs. Then shipping will be charged accordingly.
This is what got me over my eBay addiction, too. I hate looking up a certain brand or designer and having to click through six pages of the exact same product to find one original item.
I think, as has been said, the biggest change has been in its tone. It’s no longer the place where Joe Public set up his stall, and if you liked the look of something, you bid for it. Due to the vagaries of auctions, a buyer might pick up a bargain, and a seller might be paid over the odds. There were problems and inconsistencies in all sorts of areas, but, basically, it was a fun place to do business, with bargains to be had, and profit to be made.
eBay has tried to make the whole process more professional, and in doing so, has sucked the life out of it. It’s no longer a street corner or a marketplace. It really has become a sort of Amazon. And I think Amazon does Amazon better than eBay.
I recently sold on eBay and I was actually impressed at how low the fees were. Admittedly I may just have been remembering them as worse than they were, but it seems like eBay is doing a lot to try to get sellers in, including five auctions with no insertion fees a month and other discounts.
I wish eBay wasn’t so overrun, but then I started buying on it back when it was Auctionweb. Now everyone thinks they can make big bucks selling old toys and things and jack up the prices.
I’ve always thought Paypal was great if you’re honest. If you’re not you’re likely to get screwed. Admittedly if you have jerk-ass buyer they’re more likely to be on their side, but I figure that as one of the costs of doing business.
YMMV, and all that, especially since I haven’t had money to really use eBay in about a year.
Not all negative feedback left by sellers was retaliatory, was it? I acknowledge that retaliatory negs were a problem, but will you acknowledge that there were circumstances in which negs were appropriate?
Ebay/Paypal holds payments in some circumstances - I think it’s meant to be like escrow, but I’m not sure it works very well.
Detailed seller ratings, with consequences such as demotion of your items in searches and suspension of payment if your DSR drops too low. Not sure how big a problem this is now, but when it first came out, it was poorly explained - when you leave the ratings, you were given the impression that 3 stars was ‘OK/acceptable’, whereas in terms of what those ratings do, anything less than a 5 means something was below standard.
So I look to see who it was, maybe I could see if this guy is shill bidding, “Due to privacy concerns, we do not release the name of the current high bidder.” Oh really?