Yet again Ebay are controlling sellers even more

Mistymaid

... and let's just look at the Free Postage thing in a little more detail.

Say, last week I was looking for a particular book, I wasn't but there you go:

It used to be you could compare product price v P+P.
So you get one person selling the book at £1.99 and P+P at 1.99
Then you get another selling the book at .99p and P+P at 3.99

No contest, I'm still going to buy the first book. - and let's forget the subject of FEE AVOIDANCE here, shall we - it's not against any laws that I know of, just eBay regulations because they are irked they aren't getting a higher listing fee - so what, people have been trying to miminised their costs since trading began.

Now we have the situation where seller b knows he can't list his book at £4.98 because the listing fees are too much (people pay different prices for second hand goods you know, the book could have cost him more than seller a to buy) or he can afford to reduce it to £3.98.

End result: I'm sat there staring at a page of identical products at (more or less) identical prices. Know what I think - I think, crikey, it's all very 'samey,' I bet I can find this cheaper somewhere else. And last week I did - first click of the mouse.

Variety - gone.

This happened to me sooooo many times last week - sat staring at pages and pages of identical stuff, similar prices - in fact I got that bored when trying to buy an expanding file I just went to the shop.

So is 'standardising' everything such a good thing?

soolin

OscarCharliEE wrote: »

I'm just curious... has anyone checked to see if this is the same if you buy something from abroad to have them sent over here.

I'd hate to assume, but I remember a few years back when the cost to go through the channel tunnel was the same figure in £s $s & Euros...

Each of the ebay sites has it's own rules and you abide by the one you list on, not on the one where you are based. So for instance I used to list a lot on ebay.US and they had capped postage on books which I had to abide with quite a while before ebay.uk bought it in.

It is a good point though.

soolin

meknownowt wrote: »

I have just been reading through the last part of this thread trying to ignore the sniping, but the tone of good on ebay for things like free shipping and "bad sellers" be gone seems to dominate. The free shipping scam is just another hit against the small users on ebay, which I assume to you is a good thing, but do you not understand that the ebay user that is going some place else is just that a user. How many buyers do you know on ebay that do not sell or do not consider selling? I have been on there for ten year and in all that time I have met one. So as you say goodbye to those "bad sellers" which are basically the small sellers that no longer fit into ebays plans then, say goodbye to a lot of your customers, as so far ebay have done nothing to bring in new customers to replace those users that are leaving. Ebid has went over the three million mark. The two American alternatives are both over one and a half million, and it is no surprise to anyone with half a brain, which obviously would exclude ebay management, that the growing rise in sales on the alternative sites is growing with the items listed, as the users are doing what they used to do on ebay and buying from the place they sell. I don't know, if I was a seller relying on ebay at the moment, I would not be so confident, at least until I see ebay make some form of effort of marketing to bring in these new buyers, that will have to replace the lost users.

(note I am not using multi quote for a reason-honestly!)

You mention other sites and I think that is a bit of a red herring as those sites have existed for a long while and whilst some countries have quite successful general alternatives to ebay the UK unfortunately does not. We have Amazon which is brilliant for books DVDs etc, but is not of course an auction site and that is about it for anything with any power.

All the larger name auction sites that ever went into competition with ebay have folded or been taken over by ebay, th eonly real possible competitor is now ebid, which you mention, but there are no buyers, so if you are right that buyers are leaving ebay then they are not buying at all which seems strange, they are certainly not buying on ebid.

There is an ebid thread here:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=483786&highlight=ebid

Unfortunately I think I am only one of a couple of people really still bothering with it on a regular basis, and with one sale in 5 1/2 years I don't think that's where my buyers are. I do actually know where my buyers are, they are on ebay and no matter how much I send them across to ebid they will actually only buy from me on ebay.

Mistymaid

I've sold three items in the last couple of weeks on eBid. Not exactly the good old days, but then it didn't cost me much either and in the summer on eBay I could lose a fortune listing on eBay and watching items go unsold.

The rule is: it's not what you take but what you make that counts.

I think you're getting a bit confused Soolin - eBay isn't an auction site anymore either. Look at the book listings: similar prices, free postage, buyitnow.
Where's the auction?

The people who want to auction stuff are finding it isn't financially viable anymore, they come, lose money and go again.
When they come to sites like this to complain, and rightly so, they are shouted down and some stupid eBay 'rule' quoted at them. The bottom line being, whether eBay have put a rule in place or not, the system is starting to fail.

And for all the people who like to quote eBay 'rules' here's something Chairman Mao once said, "If you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
Great saying - if you want to live in Communist China and live your life while somebody squeezes your privates.

soolin

Mistymaid wrote: »

I've sold three items in the last couple of weeks on eBid. Not exactly the good old days, but then it didn't cost me much either and in the summer on eBay I could lose a fortune listing on eBay and watching items go unsold.

The rule is: it's not what you take but what you make that counts.

I think you're getting a bit confused Soolin - eBay isn't an auction site anymore either. Look at the book listings: similar prices, free postage, buyitnow.
Where's the auction?

The people who want to auction stuff are finding it isn't financially viable anymore, they come, lose money and go again.
When they come to sites like this to complain, and rightly so, they are shouted down and some stupid eBay 'rule' quoted at them. The bottom line being, whether eBay have put a rule in place or not, the system is starting to fail.

And for all the people who like to quote eBay 'rules' here's something Chairman Mao once said, "If you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
Great saying - if you want to live in Communist China and live your life while somebody squeezes your privates.

I actually prefer to live in a capitalist society where it is survival of the fittest really, even though that is politically incorrect now. Whilst I can continue to make money on ebay it works for me.That is pure capitalism and Mao would not approve.

Mao was of course (as you say) a communist and their doctrine should be that personal ownership and property is theft, so I am sure he would not approve of a site that allowed us to compete against those who may be weaker as sellers if we chose to do so.

Also I'm not sure about your analogy about ebay not being an auction site anymore? Yes there are lots of BIN auctions but there are also untold millions of books being sold to the highest bidder in open competition, surely that is the purest meaning of an auction?

Mistymaid

I prefer to live in a capitalist society where there is competition allowed - not eBay buying up other sites and closing them.

I also prefer to see competition on a 'so-called' auction site, not one where sellers pricing is controlled by the landlord.

I also prefer to see competition regarding payments - not one where you are forced to use the landlords bank.

I also prefer to live in a capitialist society where 'the right to reply' is fair and equitable (like the law of this country states) not one where one party is allowed to leave a negative and the other side isn't.

I also prefer to live in a capitalist society where people are allowed to think for themselves and not leave bland statements such as 'it's their ball game, if you don't like it, leave.' Of course those self same people have not been brainwashed at all.

If you think eBay run their system according to a free and fair democratic principle, then perhaps you are looking in the wrong place.

As for ebay auctions - yeah, right .... it's just like it used to be.

And you're wrong. When it comes to eBay, Chairman Mao would have been proud.

Mistymaid

... and besides which, since when was this a case of 'survival of the fittest?'

What's difficult about buying wholesale products, putting a mark up on them and putting them on eBay where the P+P is 'free'

Where's the competition, where are fit ones, who is using their brains, their business acumen?

All you end up with is competing on price - the point is ...?

By making it too expensive for other sellers to sell or putting in place regulations that make it difficult or impossible for some users to comply with (I, for instance, sometimes can't meet eBay's guidelines on dispatch and delivery times) you are just excluding people from the market place. What's the point of that if you want to be 'the fittest?'

What you're actually doing when you proudly boast 'survival of the fittest' is simply excluding certain sections of the competition and in turn, excluding potential buyers.
So what.

Yeah, if you've got a shop on the high street I can see the point, but the point to eBay is variety, exclude that and you're stuffed. It's like shooting yourself in the foot.

Mistymaid

... and another thing:
To all the people who shout down other folk and go and tell them to sell elsewhere if they don't like it - how many times have you heard people say they leave money in their PP account and just make another purchase with it?

So how many people have you basically told not to do this? Not only the ones on site but the ones that are just reading the threads?
How many people, indirectly, have you deterred from buying off eBay by telling them to go away?

Just how smart are you?

soolin

Mistymaid wrote: »

... and another thing:
To all the people who shout down other folk and go and tell them to sell elsewhere if they don't like it - how many times have you heard people say they leave money in their PP account and just make another purchase with it?

So how many people have you basically told not to do this? Not only the ones on site but the ones that are just reading the threads?
How many people, indirectly, have you deterred from buying off eBay by telling them to go away?

Just how smart are you?

Smart enough to be able to sell when apparently other people can't manage a profit anymore.

Mistymaid

Thank you Soolin, for just proving to most of the readers on this thread, how absolutely stupid and ignorant you are.

I honestly couldn't have done better myself.