More Ebay stupidity

Discussion in 'Third Party Sales & Auctions' started by Led9, Aug 23, 2014.

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  1. SoundAdvice

    SoundAdvice Senior Member

    Location:
    Vancouver
    Anymore anecdotal evidence from others
     
  2. Led9

    Led9 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Allentown, PA
    I agree 100%. Ebay started as a simple bridge between buyers and sellers and now it has morphed into a controlling monster eating its own tail.
     
    DaleH likes this.
  3. murphywmm

    murphywmm Senior Member

    I can't remember the last time I bought a LP off ebay. I just use discogs.com.
     
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  4. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    You're closer to getting it right on this post! Back when ebay started I used it for selling. Problems were rife then but at least a seller could protect themselves because their money was in their hands - not paypal. (acknowledged; conversely this could be 'the' problem for a buyer). What turned me off of ebay was having items de-listed because an anonymous ebay 'expert' asserted they were fake. There was no appeal - ebay also refused to give out any information on their 'experts.' The trade I was involved in was close enough that many of us knew other sellers reputations, as we'd been in contact with each other (both in person and through mail) over the decades, long before there was an internet. One of the ethical & more prestigious dealers had the same problems - authentic historical items being declared fake by the anonymous ebay expert(s). This dealer undertook an impressive investigation to uncover these so-called experts. Turns out the primary ebay expert responsible for ebay delisting was a moderately well known faker who had been banned from historical & collecting organizations. Having been exposed and shunned previously and with diminishing venues to peddle his fakes, he exploited the ebay system and its privacy rules. The crazy thing was, despite all this information being available, he continued to operate on it for some time. The kicker here was that his exposure came years after I stopped listing, I later recognized his name as someone who had contacted me 'back-line' after a delisting, pretending to be an interested ebay buyer and wanting the item - what did I want for it? Watching blatantly fake stuff go for huge final prices, while authentic stuff was getting delisted, was excruciating. I lost respect for the institution.

    A friend of mine who dealt in commodities and precious metals also ran into constant problems from internal ebay 'experts' to the point he had to hire an attorney and former IRS employee (now in private practice) to step in and deal with ebay. My buddy is a very dedicated type and eventually got in touch with a senior ebay manager which eventually turned into a friendly relationship over some months. As she let down her guard she related that many rules were designed to weed out the outlier and second hand sellers in favor of bulk / mass distributors. The 'collecting' fields are far more prone to disagreements and draw on ebay personnel and resources, while collecting far less in fees. Far better to have a single Chinese firm list 1,000 newly manufactured items priced at 599.00 each, with low return & dispute rates, than a 100 sellers peddling a 100 used items priced at 1.99 to 99.99 with a much higher rate of dissatisfaction and disputes. The manager related ebays goals were more akin to becoming an online big box store than a worldwide personal flea market.
     
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  5. muffmasterh

    muffmasterh Forum Resident

    Location:
    East London U.K
    yes it may be, not certain but it may be....
     
  6. muffmasterh

    muffmasterh Forum Resident

    Location:
    East London U.K
    i have said already one of the things ebay needs to do is seperate the new from the second hand and tailor their rules accordingly, these are two distinct business models and should be treated accordingly....
     
  7. Led9

    Led9 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Allentown, PA
    Not a bad idea. I think the downward spiral began when Ebay started taking a higher percentage from the sale and asking less to list items, as well as set prices. Now it costs virtually nothing for most sellers to list items so it's a free-for-all of hugely overpriced used items and worthless garbage. If you're going to tell a person they can list hundreds of common $5 LP's for free you're allowing Ebay to be filled with 90% crap. And that's exactly what it's become. Will they see the error of their ways and reverse course? I doubt it. Let's keep turning the screw the wrong way until it breaks!
     
  8. muffmasterh

    muffmasterh Forum Resident

    Location:
    East London U.K
    yes and it co-incides with ebay moving away from a mainly used second hand non business seller site to the more corporate business seller selling new goods, ebay saw moving away from you average Joe was the way forward for them and thats fine if it works for ebay but at the same time they could still easily operate two systems, one for used one for new.....it would just depend on how its declared, would be easy....
     
  9. DaleH

    DaleH Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeast
    I agree the move seemed ill advised to me. I really doubt it increased their bottom line. I think the largest factor is the recession though. I think there is just a lot less disposable income to buy toys on ebay now and their attempts to prop up the bottom line are self defeating.
     
  10. SoundAdvice

    SoundAdvice Senior Member

    Location:
    Vancouver
    [​IMG]

    Percentage of sales seems the same since 2007. Paypal fees(?) are now huge for them. Could use with an updated graph.
     
  11. DaleH

    DaleH Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeast
    Interesting. You can see the recession.
     
  12. DaleH

    DaleH Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeast
    I would be interested to see revenue growth in marketplace (final value fees?) since the huge increase. The marketplace performance is not recovering at all on that chart. So the corporate droids are thinking "hey if I just raise my price 30% I'll make a lot more money".:D
     
  13. SoundAdvice

    SoundAdvice Senior Member

    Location:
    Vancouver
    Paypal is now 38% of their business when years earlier it was closer to 10%
     
  14. DaleH

    DaleH Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeast
    That doesn't make the marketplace any better though. I require paypal for sales on this forum. I just about live on paypal and use the MasterCard for everything.
     
  15. Djoel

    Djoel Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    I recently got screwed royally selling an AV gear over the bay, flat fee of 25 shipping on a heavy device, the unit arrived with some nasty dents courtesy of UPS. All in it's original box, packing materials was included.
    The buyer open a claim faster than I can say WHAT! I think going after UPS would have been the way to go, he panic or something!
    With ebay cookie cutter response I was left with returning almost half the cost of the device, 3% PayPal, 10% Ebay fees, and the cost of shipping I might have just toss the unit in the garbage!

    With ebay cookie cutter response I was left with returning almost half the cost of the device, 3% PayPal, 10% Ebay fees, and the cost of shipping I might have just toss the unit in the garbage!
    You sell on Ebay you'll always take a hit with fees, cost and or aggravation.

    No bueno

    Djoel
     
  16. Jrr

    Jrr Forum Resident

    True I'm sure, but they need sellers too. This is going to chase many away. I will never understand why a company puts out a successful product, ebay in this case, it works pretty well and then grows, and then they futz around with it and ruin the service or product. Nothing is ever good enough in this country!
     
    muffmasterh likes this.
  17. muffmasterh

    muffmasterh Forum Resident

    Location:
    East London U.K
    i agree totally why do people have to change things...
     
  18. lennonfan1

    lennonfan1 Senior Member

    Location:
    baltimore maryland
    I joined ebay in '97 and loved it, now I loathe it.
    I don't plan on selling on it anymore, I have 100% positive fb but now with the 5 star system, every time someone gives you a 1 or 2 star review it is held against you to the point of why even bother with the fb at all! So someone overseas gets a damaged package, or a shipment delayed, of course you get a one star even after you've made good on it, but no! That is not good enough! You have to pay financially and now ebay will make you pay even more by placing restrictions on your account, all over something you couldn't control.
    My latest gas and electric bill has the same micro managing going on....you aren't saving as much energy as your neighbors! Now how the F do they know how many live here, stay here all day when other neighbors may have 1 resident, some may have oil heat and not gas/electric, etc. ...it's insane!

    F both of 'em. :)
     
  19. bcbassboy

    bcbassboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC
    I don't understand all the fuss. It's easy to take eBay to task, which is well deserved as they are run by a bunch of number crunchers and algorithms out of touch with actual buyers who do pay dearly in fees. That being said, maybe it's time for sellers to actually describe their items accurately, no? There are so many vinyl sellers who just put a blanket VG+ on everything and then just hope the buyer doesn't want to bother with refuting that description. Remember, this new policy only applies to discrepancies in the description. Why would a buyer bother with buying an album and then just sending it back for fun? They're not actually getting 'free' money or anything like that. And if they ARE doing it for fun they should be reported and banned from eBay. I guess I'll just have to wait and see until it happens to me but it comes down to what recourse do I have as a seller to 'prove' my description is accurate? From reading the new policy it sounds more like it's for items that are shipped that are totally incorrect...like buying a copy of Kiss Dynasty and getting a Destroyer in the sleeve. That makes sense.
     
  20. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    The bold I added above is where you're mistaken.

    Try this on, you sell a C$40 record to England, it's a double LP with gatefold cover and weighs just less than 2 pounds and it costs C$36 to send, which the customer says he will pay. When it gets there he keeps it for 10 days after delivery, then opens a case and says that there is noise on side 4 which was not in the description and it is thus Significantly Not as Described. Your choices as a seller at this point are

    a) He gets all his money back, C$76 out of your pocket and he gets the record for free or
    b) He gets all his money back as above and you pay for the return of the record. You pay the original C$36 it cost to send there and the $33 it costs to send back and hope that he sends back the same record you sent him.

    Oh, and your seller "recourse" as to whether or not it's as described, or if you get a 2 lb. bag of sand when he "returns" it? None. They will always side with the buyer.
     
    druboogie and bcbassboy like this.
  21. bcbassboy

    bcbassboy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vancouver, BC
    Yeah, you're right. I've been thinking of switching to Discogs...maybe it's time.
     
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