It doesn’t seem that long ago when this little auction site first hit the internet news. Suddenly auctioning off your old stuff, was very easy, but this seems to have seriously changed in the last few months, and most of the blame can be laid at eBay’s door in my opinion.
eBay buying out PayPal a few years ago, was once looked at as a good move by the average eBayer, but eBay have since started to abuse the dominance of their positions. Unless you sell a car, it is now compulsory to offer PayPal on EVERY sale, ostensibly to protect buyers. This of course means that eBay collect two sets off fees. When they tried to make users of eBay in Australia, only offer PayPal there was such an outcry that they had to do a serious back pedal which would have made Gordon Brown green with envy. The problem with PayPal of course is that for low value items it can actually take too much out of the sale to make it worthwhile, and also for a seller to follow the rules they must use fully trackable postal services, which again raise the costs.
The other thing that eBay has done in recent months is remove the ability for sellers to rate buyers. Now if a seller gets messed about by a buyer, they have no recourse, whereas buyers can leave whatever feedback they like. Or they can leave positive feedback, and downmark on the seller ratings, thereby giving the seller a low value, which supposedly results in lower preference in search results.
I don’t know whether it’s just a coincidence but since they introduced the PayPal required, I haven’t received one cheque or postal order, and my costs have doubled. I’ve also in 600+ transactions never had a non payer, but since the beginning of June, I’ve had 7, which is also about the time they introduced feedback restrictions on sellers.
I liked eBay. The idea of a place to get rid of old books, computer games was wonderful, but I’m now wary of selling anything of high value on there in case I get ripped off, and just as wary about selling low value items in case it sells at a very low price, which incurs heavy fees if they pay by PayPal. You daren’t add a small amount on the postage and packaging costs to cover this event, in case you get a low star rating for postal costs.
So is eBay determined to kill of the auction seller, forcing everyone to become powersellers with shops?
One Comment
Craig
I’ve been selling on eBay for many years now, from the early days, in fact I remember the .co.uk site starting up and you paid no fees initially !
They do seem to be ruining the site and have been for some time.
The Paypal side of things falls foul of anti-competition laws in my opinion, indeed you mention Australia, their High Court has just ruled it illegal !
I can take cards myself and nobody has ever bothered with Paypal in any number but now eBay thrust Paypal at the buyer when an auction ends virtually insisting they “click here” and make payment etc etc.
I too have seen a rise in PP payments (which cost me nearly twice as much as taking a card myself)
You also mention shops Craig, well I’ve just shut mine !
Why ?
Because they have set out to reduce shop item visibility so much every day buyers never see them !
I believe eBay are struggling, many of the professional booksellers I know no longer list on there and we all used to be Powersellers, and I mean the old grade Powerseller not the lowered bar version. That must be endemic across all categories. I remember paying £100s of a month in fees which they’ve now lost.
If you want proof of how they are struggling look at the amount of contextual advertising they are running.
Rule number 1 of running a retail site NEVER put adverts on it !
I particularly hate the Google Adsense ads at the bottom of the books pages - they redirect buyers to abebooks etc and appear before the “next page” of results links and the eBay Shop results.
That is a complete disgrace - by paying fees we hire that space and visibility and should not see potential customers effectively being sent to another site just to earn eBay 5c a click !
Sorry to rant on but I used to be able to make a living on eBay alone - wouldn’t keep me in toilet paper now ! (analogy intended)
Cheers
Rod