Ebay set to stop Private Sellers?

grintricha

Pembroke wrote: »

I can't see the problem either, perhaps I've lead a sheltered life but I can't see how any private seller can have more than 100 items a month that they personally own and are surplus to requirements.

yup agree 100%, I'll be honest OP you come across to me as blantantly trying to get around the rules for your financial gain (want to sell summer goods in the summer meh)

Richard

piratefairy

That said, I only ever sell on clothes and shoes really, as I'm a bit of a serial shopper, and usually decide I don't like something anymore after wearing it once..Sometimes I'm suprised that a small turf-out of the wardrobe can end up being about 20 or 30 items listed before you know it.
I tend to list things once, starting at 99p, and if they don't sell on ebay after a week, I'll either stick them in the pile for my next car boot, or send to a charity shop..

RFW

bonsaichristian wrote: »

Ebay are manouvering private sellers towards being business sellers precisely so that they will leave.

This is probably the case, take the hint.
Small private sellers with 5 or 6 listings a week are good for Ebay alongside the businesses. Larger private sellers who sell too many items are largely problematic for Ebay, they offer less consumer rights to buyers and irritate business sellers who provide Ebay with the majority of their revenue.

StaffsSW

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

That's because ebay needs listings to give the illusion of traffic and success.

Very true - one of the key performance indicators given out in each quarterly statement is the number of listings.

mippy

Pembroke wrote: »

I can't see the problem either, perhaps I've lead a sheltered life but I can't see how any private seller can have more than 100 items a month that they personally own and are surplus to requirements.

Death of a relative? Weight-loss/gain? Or simply hoarding - I had to get rid of a 40sq.ft storage locker full of stuff a few years ago.

cyberbob

Free listing days seem to trigger a lot of private accounts being asked to upgrade. Specifically if they have listed a high amount then not sold much but had to relist. The general advice on the community boards is not to list much on free listing days. Which is good advice anyway as you don't sell much if you list on those days anyway due the the amount of crap that's listed

DaveAshton

One thing I have noticed a lot of since ebay started cracking down on private-businesses is the number of new business sellers opening shops, creating buy it nows for 99p, and massively inflating the postage price.

There's someone in our main category selling 4 buy it nows, all for 99p... with postage rates of £5.99 (twice), £6.99, and £12.99. These are items that can be posted for 96p (plus envelopes etc).

One of the £5.99 P+P items is pretty much identical to a £12.99 P+P item, and weighs exactly the same. The only difference? One pack's more desirable than the other because of the possible contents.


Their DSRs are going to kill them off soon enough though. 4.4 across the board, except comms which is 4.6.

babydaisy

Whenever I buy off ebay I am looking for second hand personal stuff off local sellers. You can search auctions only to avoid all the BIN stuff and I search usually by distance from me. So it is possible to avoid the volume sellers which is not what it is all about for me - I buy off Amazon or from Argos if I want new stuff. I would never buy off ebay mainly because Amazon are so good at returns and replacements within the year and you never know if that ebay seller is going to be around if your camera or whatever breaks down within the 12 months warranty period.

patman99

OK, I was exaggerating with 200 listings, but time and time again I've seen the same seller with at least 50 identical listings, albeit set to end in groups of 10 on different days.

The main point has to be that over the years fleebay has grown not through attracting customers, but by buying rivals and integrating their database into ebays. Along the way, ebay have made some real buy-out blunders (who remembers the 'Skype' fiasco?). When their business plan takes a severe kick in the share prices, they simply start imposing restrictions on their users.

By forcing private sellers to upgrade to a business account, they know that every time said seller lists an item, they make 10p. People stick with fleebay because the read that there are over 65 million users around the world. If you were to take-out all the more-than-one-account users, and those whose accounts haven't been used in over 12 months, I wonder just how many people would be left?. Maybe only 40 million, perhaps even less. That is still an impressive market place to sell in even when you take into account their fees (which of course any discerning seller adds to the postage costs).

There are now so many large businesses selling on fleebay, that even when the anti-fee-hike brigade stage a 'no listings' day, ebay doesn't even notice the minniscule drop in income from the listing fees.

They also don't mind p!55ing-off long-term business sellers who have spent years working their way towards 'Diamond Seller Status' by welcoming big retailers such as Argos onto the site with an immediate 'Diamond Seller' classification.
At the end of the day, Ebay know that for every 'whinging pleb' that desserts them for their rivals, there will be 2 'unsuspecting mugs' waiting to join in the selling frenzy.

I still look forward to the day someone releases a F/F plugin that allows a user to search ebay whilst ignoring all the Multiples & BIN's.

Brooker_Dave

patman99 wrote: »

They also don't mind p!55ing-off long-term business sellers who have spent years working their way towards 'Diamond Seller Status' by welcoming big retailers such as Argos onto the site with an immediate 'Diamond Seller' classification.
At the end of the day, Ebay know that for every 'whinging pleb' that desserts them for their rivals, there will be 2 'unsuspecting mugs' waiting to join in the selling frenzy.

What ebay always seem to forget, is that by banning thousands of users and iritating away just as many, their customer base is shrinking, and all the free/bulk listings in the world aren't going to achieve anything if theres nobody there to buy.