Is eBay Finished For Non-business Sellers?

*LoopyLaura*

Fees are ridiculous now for private sellers, they seem only interested in the big guns now

championmongo1

I've been a member since 2004 buying plenty but have only recently starting selling and find the fees are a little high. Selling around £250 worth has cost me around £50 between Ebay & the compulsory Paypal fees which seems excessive considering all they do is host a few kb of information for a maximum of 10 days for an auction for me! The Paypal charge really irks me as I'm charged to receive payment by a means they have made compulsory providing comprehensive buyer cover and very little seller cover! Although the extra footfall of eBay helps achieve higher final sales totals which nearly negates the high fees.

Thankfully I haven't had any issues with scams/non payers...yet but the first sign of that & I will close both the Ebay & Paypal (only connected with credit card for funding & savings account for withdrawels as I simply don't trust them...they are worse than the Nigerian mobile phone scammers IMHO!) accounts never to return as a buyer or seller! I'm currently looking and reading up on other places to sell as everyone seems to get burnt at least once. How is everyone else feeling towards the eBay set up at present being very pro buyer & power seller and very anti small seller? P.S. I hope this is still comprehensible as I've been on the wine since I posted off my 'sold' items today! lol!

The_Casual_Tailor

It's not as it was, that's for sure.

Smart_But_Casual

There is still good money to be made but I feel that you have to work harder to make it, which isn't bad thing IMHO as it separates the wheat from the chaff.

I do like the fact that Powersellers, myself included, have to be businesses but the fact that ebay does nothing to tackle the fakes issue is disturbing. One brand that I occasionally trade in has a fake to real ratio of about 4:1 and I've never seen a listing pulled, they use the VeRo excuse to get away with it.

Like many I'd like the option to block buyers with a single NPB strike against them and for those strikes to be clearly visible to sellers.

StaffsSW

Smart_But_Casual wrote: »

There is still good money to be made but I feel that you have to work harder to make it, which isn't bad thing IMHO as it separates the wheat from the chaff.

Couldn't agree more. eBay hasn't got the best reputation in the public eye, so the more sellers who are serious about customer service the better. The bad ones just make it worse for the rest of us.

I do like the fact that Powersellers, myself included, have to be businesses ...

Without a doubt, the best change that ebay have made in a long time, just a bit overdue.

rocketman90

In the long run i'm afraid so.
But they will prevail for a short while before either merging with another company, or becoming irrelevant.
However, for the time being they will carry on.
And why? In a word, GERMANY.

Ebay in the USA has become a byword for rip-off and naff. In the UK, the many artisans and small sellers have long been upset by Ebay's changes, and are just chumping at the bit to go elsewhere. Ebid is growing quite quickly now. (My advice to Ebid, is to merge with CQout, and at a stroke they would have an unbreakable foothold in the UK). If this were to happen, then the Ebay leviathan would start to tilt and capsize, only being held up from the final collapse by ever harder working and longer suffering Germans. In short, German stoicism.

Business at this level on the internet is all about turning points and critical mass. And Ebay is maintaining its "business as usual" face purely because of UK and German sellers who have got nowhere else to go. Had it been down to the USA market alone, Ebay would have gone bust about 2 years, such is the level of hatred for Ebay in the USA.

So, its really time to administer the coup de grace to Ebay. And the only way this can happen to everyone's satisfaction, ie, Hollywood style, with the Ebay spaceship crashing into the Pacific, is for Ebid to up their advertising in Germany, and try to create a European powerhouse auction site. If say, they managed to increase their German base by a sizeable number, and at least make Germany aware that there is an alternative, then the first crack would have made in the Ebay Fortress.
Then, once the German situation had become similar to the UK's, with Ebid as everyone's 2nd choice, then Ebid's management should open discussions with CQout.com, and discuss a merger. This would boost Ebid's auction base to well over 4 million. A number like that cannot be undone. A point of critical mass would have been passed, and Ebay will have been holed beneath the water line.

And the greatest irony would be that the biggest cheers for such an event would come from the USA. We would be able to here the Californian celebrations of Ebay's demise from Europe.

Also, Ebid need to up their advertising efforts in Australia too.

Ebid + CQout + UK + Germany + Australia = The End of Ebay.

TurkishDelight

1 and a half years....

EDIT: How exactly do these people find them?
Can't be that high up on google surely?

RFW

TurkishDelight wrote: »

1 and a half years....

EDIT: How exactly do these people find them?
Can't be that high up on google surely?

Seems like a good argument then doesn't it?
Ebay is bound to be finished as people have been posting threads for the last 7 years saying so.

Especially with the rise of Ebid and CQout, both of which have been going pretty much as long as Ebay in the UK and don't have a tenth of the business between them.

cyberbob

TurkishDelight wrote: »

1 and a half years....

EDIT: How exactly do these people find them?
Can't be that high up on google surely?

They have too much time on their hands and desperately search them out to make a point because they have more than likely been banned from ebay or had their paypal account frozen due to them not understanding the basics. If they actually spent that time learning how ebay works they may actually make a success of lot as others do,

Mr Rocketman needs to realise as RFW pointed out ebid have been going as long as ebay if they havent managed to dent ebay yet they never will.

knightstyle

Well I have bought quite a few things on Ebay recently from big and small sellers, including stuff from China and Hong Kong. No problems and considerably cheaper than other outlets. Sold a couple of things no problems. I think the original poster not wanting to give bank details is missing the point. What if a seller sells an expensive fake? How do Paypal get the money back for the buyer if the seller has used their limit on the registered credit card or closed it? I know they could do the same with their bank account but that is less likely. Fees could be more transparent and the feedback system where sellers cannot leave a neg. stinks. But I will continue to use it.