Murder - EBAY is DEAD!!!

I must confess to being the same as you in trying to deter people from selling on ebay. I recognise that because they are the 'fat cat' of onlne auctions who get the majority of traffic then they are the most viable option. But if we encourage people to start buying and selling on alternative sites as well as ebay then we will hopefully send them a message that they are doing things the wrong way. In my opinion, both buyers and sellers are being shafted by ebay... all they really care about is their own profits

Oh, I should say that only by buying and selling elsewhere can we make those other sites a viable option to ebay... the exodus will take time but it has already started. The site I use (oztion.com.au) has experienced a 25% jump in membership in the last three months. From 200,000 members to 250,000 members.

I will continue to push other sites. I will continue to discourage people from buying or selling there. I used to be "ebay queen" at work.. whenever anyone had a question about it, they came to me. Now I tell them.. try loudfrog, or ecrater, or search out other alternatives. The more we can deter away.. the better. I liked your scammers guide btw. I think I have seen it before. If I remember correctly, people in the answer center refer others there a lot that have been scammed or think they are about to get scammed

Unfortunately, ebay offers the highest expectation of sale for products because of the amount of traffic they get... they are the 'fat cats' of online auctions. And you're right, the changes affect sellers much more than buyers. The only way we can send them the message that we are dissatisfied is by also listing on other sites besides them. Eventually, the reduction in choice on ebay will affect buyers too and they'll be forced to look for alternative marketplaces. Then, and only then, will those other sites offer a viable alternative. As I showed in a previous response, if you bought a product for $5 and sold it for $10 on ebay including gallery and subtitle and a customer paid via paypal you would only make $2.40 profit on the product. That's less than a 25% profit which is absolutely pathetic. 50% goes to the supplier and more than 25% goes to ebay (paypal being owned by them).

No I didn't close the store. I am trying to get it up and going again. For Christmas I made $400 with the DVD's, and that wasn't bad at all. The fees I stated were from Sept - April. I have spoken with my friend and she helps me from time to time with things on Ebay. I know more than I did before because of her. She does have brand name clothes in her store. She doesn't spend lots of money on them either. She gets bargains like after Christmas, she got about $100 of clothes (children's) for about $40 and she will make that back and profit from it. My problem is I can't get around like I want because our van is down right now. I am hoping we will have it fixed in 4 more weeks or sooner. lol Waiting on tax rebate to do it :)

The problem with stores on ebay now is that they charge a 10% final value fee on items sold... it would have been better to sell them without the store, that way the profit would have been higher. I hope you closed the store before getting charged for it since they get charged per full month so if you open a store on the 2nd you don't actually get charged for it till the end of the month. Ebay owns the monopoly on auction sites and I think that has made them very arrogant, they feel that because of it they can charge exhorbitant fees and there is no-one to gainsay them. Your friend who earns $300 per month probably has a lot of sales... or else a good profit on her items which can only happen in niche selling.

The competition from other sites will do them good... as you say, they will no longer be the only game in town. I believe their monopoly is coming to an end because of their greed. Perhaps the competition may force them to lower their fees... eventually, they've got to realise that constantly increasing fees will ultimately impact on the bottom line.

You are totally right on the niche, life and times for ebay as I see it too. Best part said.... It won't be the only game in town. ioffer.com seems to still be holding it's own. It used to be ewanted.com and I always have a hard time getting there. But all this ebay chatter forced me to go find it and I see something I will have to order over there. Oh oh I don't know about their fees for sellers either but I can say they were cheaper in the past. I see they have paypal as a option for the buyer to pay and it is international as far as many sellers/buyers from other countries. 165 I think is the number of countries it had posted on their home site. God Blesses!

I ama also having very similar problems!! I listed an item to sell of which I owned and they just went and gave me a 3 day ban for trying to sell Illegal goods!!! they didnt even check the item they didnt have the sense to email me and ask me for proof!. What other places like ebay exist? I would be interested to know :)

LOL, haven't you ever heard the saying 'the customer is always right'? Yeah, BULLSH*T... That just means that the customer can be as objectionable as they like while we have to be happy and courteous while gritting our teeth! I work as a checkout operator in a major grocery store. A number of times I've said to a customer at the end of their transaction, 'Have a lovely day' while thinking... go home and get out of my hair! Take for example easter 2007. The day before good friday. The store was frantic, all 14 registers were operating. My lunchtime arrived and there was no-one to take over so they had me close the register and go to lunch. When I came back the register was still closed and they put me back on it. As I headed for my register a man in the next queue said, very aggressively, "I can't believe this place is so busy and they have that register closed!" I called him over and served him and the whole time he was complaining about how long it took to get served. I felt like saying to him, "I'm very sorry sir... perhaps I should have skipped my lunch break just so the register could stay open you rude prick!" But I kept my irritation to myself, apologised for the delay and wished him a happy easter. Barely one week ago I had another really objectionable customer. It was saturday evening, the main shopping centre was closed. We had closed the doors leading into the main shopping centre because centre security requires it. This woman comes up and demands that the door be reopened for her alone. I explained to her that we weren't permitted to do that because of centre security and that we could be fined $50,000 if we did. I also explained that if she went out the outside door she could go in the next door and go through the centre to where her car was. But that wasn't good enough. Her response was "I don't give a damn about centre security. If you don't open that door right now I will never shop here again!" Well.. I felt like asking her for her address so that when the centre fined us we could send the fine to her... or to tell her that if she was going to abuse us that we didn't want her as a customer anyhow! However, once again I bit my tongue. The door was opened for her and she left... despite the fact that it broke the rules. Having said that though I must admit that 99% of customers are lovely. It's just the odd person who can really make your blood boil. In either of those situations, if I'd said what I wanted to say and the person complained then a reprimand would have been required. However, I suspect that the boss would have grinned and said, "consider yourself reprimanded." Because they know full well how objectionable customers can be!

Oh, and moosuk... if you want to find some alternatives to ebay you can check out my blog at http://www.I-hate-ebay.blogspot.com

The change to feedback only occurs on May 1, 2008. Apparently they did it to encourage buyers. Apparently, we sellers are making buyers afraid to give us a negative rating for fear of retaliatory negative feedback. Humph... like we're any more likely than a buyer to do something like that. We're the ones expected to have the communication skills (and rightly so I might add, to do business you need good communication skills). We're the ones who suffer the majority of scam transactions... but our power is being stripped from us. So effectively, all ebay users who only ever buy products will have a 100% feedback rating regardless of how many times they've screwed sellers. While we have to put up with negative ratings that are frequently unjustified.

I think they really need to do something to get people back... one of the best things would be to actually lower their fees.. no lowering fees on one thing and increasing them somewhere else. They are getting so much profit it is obscene... Tell you what, I would love to be a shareholder of that site. But I think I'd be considering selling about now... before share prices started dropping dramatically. If I had the money I would buy in to one of the smaller sites now, if they had public shares that is.

There are plenty of alternatives out there if you want to look. I sometimes list classifieds on http://www.craigslist.org They are completely free to list, your listing stays active for 45 days and there are no fees when the item sells either. Alternatively, you can check out one of my blogs at http://www.I-hate-ebay.blogspot.com There are several alternative sites listed on that page... including whether they charge listing fees etc.

Oh, as a buyer you can still leave negative feedback... that particular right has only been stripped from sellers. Which means anybody that never sells on ebay will always have a 100% feedback rating regardless of how many sellers they've screwed. The only option sellers have is not to leave feedback at all... it's either positive feedback or none at all. Despite the fact that it's mainly sellers who get scammed it would appear that we don't deserve any protection... nor can we warn other sellers away from bad customers. I think the best thing that ebay could do to renew trust is to reduce their fees (or scrap either listing fees or final value fees). Remove the requirement of paypal on all listings and allow sellers to give negative feedback. Those changes would go a long way to renewing trust... especially the reduction of fees.

That seller did the wrong thing. If you were the winning bidder at the end of the auction then legally the item had to go to you.. not some person who offered them more money for it. If anything like that ever happens again on any site you need to report it. Had you reported it to ebay they would have penalised the seller... perhaps even closing their account.

Oh, I think the adrenaline rush of trying to win is one of the fun things with auction sites. I don't let it get out of control though. If I'm bidding on something I set my maximum price and won't go above it. Sometimes I'll place a lower than maximum bid then update later if the price goes over it. Say for example the Coca Cola bomber jacket that I bought for my partner (they are a collectors item that you can't buy in store...they're actually a part of staff uniform). I was willing to pay $80 for it... but my initial maximum bid was only $60. Only when I was outbid did I bother to increase it, and then right at the end. I changed my maximum bid to $80 about 2 minutes before it closed... ended up paying $75.50 since the previous high bidder had placed a maximum bid of $75

Yes, that's the site that I moved to about 12 months ago. It's a lot slower on the sales than ebay is but at least there are no listing fees so I'm not throwing my money down the drain on listings that sell nothing. The funny thing is that yesterday I received an email from ebay. They are running a competition. To win you have to list items. It would appear they are feeling the bite of sellers dropping off and trying to get them back.

This is very true, there are other alternatives to Ebay. I never thought I could sell my craft items on Ebay and consistently turn a profit, so I sell on Etsy. I already know what the fees will be when I list, because it's a store and my price is already set, no bidding. When my hubby sells on Ebay, it's sports memorabilia and there is probably no better place than Ebay for him. He knows the collectors are there looking for what he's selling and he only sells what he knows there is a strong market for. I do buy quite a bit of supplies on Ebay. The sellers for some of my specific supplies sell only on Ebay, and I enjoy seeing if I can can buy at bargain prices! Plus I get cash back from Ebay when I win an auction, so it does make sense for me to continue to shop there. If the specific sellers I buy from moved on, I would follow them, though.

Or test products at real stores then buy the items cheaply online I've got some alternatives already though... and they will improve as buyers move away from ebay.

Someone else who is very cynical about ebay I see. Yes, the only winners on Ebay are ebay themselves... and like you say Paypal supplies to icing to the cake. Buyers get a good deal though of course sellers increase prices just to cover ebay and paypal fees so even buyers end up getting shafted. But the sellers are the main ones to be shafted. At one stage I was trying to get an ebay business off the ground and was making about $200 a month... but losing $80-$100 of that in ebay and paypal fees... not to mention when I got scammed by buyers (I lost about $500 through scammers alone) Reason fees ended up being so high is for relisting fees, low profits in the first place... for example I might have a car dvd player that I could get for $200. I'd be forced to list it at $225 buy it now just to compete with all the other sellers and I'd lose about $17 of that in listing, final value and paypal fees.... earning me a grand total of $8. After a while it just p*ssed me off and I gave up on it. It's alright if you have a nice niche... like comic books for example. If you have the time to travel around to all the second hand stores and grab all their old comic books it can be a lovely little niche. Often people don't realise the value of things they throw away like that. You can pick up an old comic for $1 and sell it for $50-$100 on ebay... if it's one that the collectors are wanting. One of the most popular types of comics are the old war comics. I've seen comic books go for well over $250... because there's a bunch of collectors that all want it are willing to enter a bidding war to get it. But not all comics like that will sell for a high price... it's a case of trial and error. Even so, I wouldn't sell them on ebay... I would go elsewhere to avoid ebays fees.