eBay is becoming impossible for the frugal…
What brought this on you ask? Just the latest in eBay’s new policies for the sellers.
To begin with eBay has always been a stopping point when I’ve been looking for something… be it clothes or anything else.
If for no other reason than it gave me a feel (or used to anyway) for what an item should actually be sold/bought for in the marketplace as well as a place to find hard-to-find-tchotchkes if you’re a collector of oddball things.
However eBay and its captive subsidiary PayPal have instituted a whole bunch of new policies on the sellers in an Ultra-Greedy attempt to increase eBay’s revenue that IMO (and that of MANY others) is sending them down an increasingly slippery slope to their own Financial Armageddon.
First thing they did was REQUIRE all sellers to accept PayPal. They collect a percentage for processing the transaction just like any merchant account at a bank.
Second thing they have but a 21 DAY HOLD on a Seller withdrawing money EVEN ON CASH BANK WITHDRAWAL TRANSACTIONS… thus they keep the merchants money and all the interest they can get from it in the holding accounts for 3 weeks…. the seller must FINANCE the cost of inventory and shipping and all other expenses involved in running their small business until PayPal releases their funds… thus starting bids have to be higher on eBay and the cycle of higher fees continues.
Third they raised the “listing fees” and “final value fees” to the sellers except for very large volume sellers… generally other large businesses with tens of thousands of listings… it is now no longer a level playing field like a regular auction house where everyone pays the same percentage as a “sale fee”.
Fourth they changed the way the search engine displays results (my BIGGEST gripe)… instead of everything by “time ending soonest” the default is now called “Best Match”… in my experience this means two things… those listings from a “volume seller” with generally the highest priced show up first… thus if you buy one of them eBay collects higher “final value fees”… to bypass this you must go to the Advance Search and change the criteria… another annoying step. This process also penalizes small sellers by not letting their items be viewed… so they don’t sell and SURPRISE get re-listed for a second listing fee.
Fifth they are pressuring all the sellers to offer “Free Shipping” (and we all know there is No Such Thing)… this means the opening bid price has to be high enough to cover the shipping… the consequence being eBay gets higher listing fees and THE SHIPPING IS NOW SUBJECT TO “FINAL VALUE FEES” when the item sells when before Shipping Fees were exempt… so on a $10 shipping charge eBay pockets about $0.50.
And the Latest Idiocy is sellers can no longer list any other forms of Payment in the Terms Of Sale other than PayPal and come the middle of January BUYERS will not have any other option to pay for items they buy except through PayPal… I, as a buyer, will no longer have the option of sending a Check or Money Order and the seller will not be able to close out the auction unless the sale is completed through PayPal so PayPal can get its cut of the sale as well as eBay.
In other words eBay/PayPal is out to take as much of a cut from the transaction as possible from BOTH ends. According to many posts on the eBay discussion boards the combined take is approaching 20-25% of the sale price.
What this means for those of us Frugal types is instead of being a place to acquire bargains, eBay is becoming just another Retail Store… albeit on the Internet… the sellers might just as well have a brick and mortar store if the selling overhead is that high.
Many of the merchants have already or are in the process of migrating to other auction websites. What this means for me? I will have a harder time locating things I want and Price Research is going to take longer. Now, what about you?
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
Thanks! Terrific coverage of a lot of ebay/Paypal’s ills, but it would devour far too much time to cover all of what’s wrong with ebay due to Whitman & Donahoe’s “Disruptive Innovation” scheme against ebay & Paypal users.
Our responses to those destructive changes culminate in the mass exodus of FABULOUS ex-ebayers from the site and from using (ebay-owned) Paypal.
Another response includes the petition to FIRE DONAHOE! Found by searching the internet for,
” Ebay Stockholders and Sellers Calling For Immediate Termination of John Donohoe CEO Petition” (found at petitiononline)
After reading & signing the petition, PLEASE pass the petition info on to others.
I’ve never actually purchased anything off of eBay because I just haven’t been able to figure it out. IMO, it’s not a very user-friendly site.
Are there other auction sites? I’m a clueless ebayer.
I was just about to list some stuff on eBay, so this was very timely.
Several of your items fill me with dismay, but I’m perfectly fine, in fact, with the need to go through PayPal. In my RL job, as a bookstore clerk, I’ve witnessed scams involving money drafts (you wouldn’t think it was possible, but it is) — ergo, I understand why eBay is protecting themselves by ruling out that payment method. Likewise, as an eBay seller, I would never take personal cheques anyway, because there’s too much possibility for fraud.
I’ve read other stories of PayPal being less-than great, but they protected me when one of my purchases turned out to be a bootleg from HongKong, instead of a box DVD set from Montreal, and I’m grateful.
I’m a bit worried about the shipping costs nonsense, though. I’m gonna put my stuff up on Thursday; I guess I’ll see how it shakes out.
Yeah, they introduced several of these measures on the UK site a few months back.
I did have a storefront at £6 a month where I could list my comics collection for selling off, and only pay 3p per listing for each item in the store. Comics are a very niche item, so I was just about covering the cost of the store, most months. With the hike in fees, I’d be paying ebay way more than I could ever sell.
I’m currently on the lookout for a better site to sell at, whether auction or not. No luck so far 🙁 But perhaps the number of people looking for an alternative will give a new auction company or listing site the impetus to become a real competitor, who knows?
A big worry here: eBay owns a 25% share in Craigslist. Right now they charge fees just for job listings in certain cities (last I heard it was San Fran, NYC and Boston) and, unfortunately, Erotic Services (I say unfortunately because I’m a Therapeutic advertiser, and all of the hookers are now spamming “my” board). So yes, eBay is killing their own baby, and we have plenty of reason to worry about what they’ll ruin next.
I guess I won’t ever use ebay again! Somehow I earned a lifetime ban from paypal, I think someone broke into my account or something. I know I never did anything wrong but if I try to use paypal it will block the transaction. I have to use a card in Mr M’s name if I need to use paypal for anything.