The Fall Of EbaY

Does Ebay Begin Its Fall Now Or Later ?
Submitted by user1 on Wed, 02/27/2008 - 09:44.
Is Ebay Starting To Suck Air

By Rudy Gentry at masterTHEweb

We Have Been Selling On Ebay Going On 6 Years.
It used to be fun and profitable. You Could Clean out
all your unwanted household nick nacks, unwanted clothing,
Old bird cages,
And Those gifts I never found a use for.

We ended up making a nice little business out of a certain
niche, In witch we have managed to run up to close to 1000
Sales.
And It Used To Be Fun.

We would go out as a family and look for our special products
Within Our Niche, Of Which the topic I am saving for another article.

Anyway it used to be fun. That Was Way back then.
This is now and now is quite different
Nowadays on Ebay selling is not so enjoyable for us and ill tell
you why.
Now I don't want to come across as a whiner
Because No body knows better than I do we can just quit any time.
And that day is probably and sadly getting closer.

There was a time we could go to second hand stores, And We could
find our niche products for anywhere from 5 dollars a piece
up to about maybe 11 dollars a piece .

Bring Them home clean them up
do any necessary repairs, Put On Our listing ,Sell the item
usauly For Around 20 -30 bucks a shot. People were happy to get the items.

And They Would Leave Good Feedback,

After we paid 4 or 5 dollars
To Ship them their goods.

And We have a good formula , We can actually buy sell and ship
around 100 items a week with our system, That was back in the good old days
Seems people were alot friendlier back then And Products were still
Pretty affordable.

But With success everybody wants their
Piece of the action, Ebay Fees have gone up, What used to cost
4 dollars to ship now costs 7 dollars to ship.
Our products that we used to purchase for from about 4-11 dollars
on the used market,
We now pay about from 8 dollars to 16 dollars sometimes.
Because the second hand stores , That Pay Their Employees the same wages they
made 5 years ago,
Except probably now without health insurance.
Have decided to put their prices about 25% below retail .
Just low enough to still bring in the sales, if not as fast.

And Shipping Has just about doubled in the last 5 years.

I Know it sounds like I Am whining and crying in my beer.
But I don't want to sound that way, Its just a true picture of
the current state of the situation.

Back to the sales on Ebay At this current time, And I mean
literally as we speak. We have 10 finished auctions on Ebay
Finished are the ones waiting for shipping,

Today is Sunday
or I Would be shipping right now instead of writing. Except
7 of those auctions are not paid for. And keep in mind we have
our policies on Ebay just like every other seller, Ours states

Please pay within 3 days of the end of the sale. Witch
I don't think is unreasonable, Really pretty flexible not just
anywhere you can buy something and pay 3 days latter, Let
alone interest free.

But anyway Of those 7 unpaid auctions
4 are past the 3 day mark. 3 of them are past the seven day mark,
Two of them are past 10 days. Now this is where it gets sticky
Our money is tied up,

We cannot reinvest the money
that we have sitting waiting to be paid for. And we have already been
Charged by Ebay for the sale of the items. And We will be charged again
When and if we have to resale them.

Although If You can prove that a buyer
Skipped out on paying for a auction Ebay Will credit you for the final
sales price % that they charge.

After all you never even got that money.
Thats not all Ebay charges for though, They Also charge A Listing
fee, You Don t get that part back.

Some of these buyers do actually have some hardships,
Over the years we have heard just about every story sad and funny
that you can think of, And we try to work with anyone, That Is
Anyone that will communicate with us, But some People will not even
answer our emails, At This time we have over 350.00 dollars
Tied up in unpaid auctions,

I Want to put this in perspective. We
are not some mega power
seller our whole weekly budget , Thats
our operating funds for the whole week are less than 500 .00 dollars
For Our Ebay business.

But At this point its sucking some serious air.

And people think nothing about holding you hostage like this .
And its getting to be more and more common, For Us to be upside down
With This Ebay business.

Now if I read these new rules the right way. (,I hope i`m wrong )

Starting in May Ebay is going to make it impossible for the sellers
To leave A bad feedback for any buyer ? But buyers can go on and hold hostage any seller they want?
By with holding payments, And threatening to leave bad feedback on the seller
if they complain about late payments.

That means a new or irresponsible buyer can effectively ruin any seller they choose,
even sellers that have been around alot longer than us.
Please tell me this is not going to happen, But Thats the way I Thought
I read it. I seemed a bit confusing, And I cannot believe

Ebay Is Going to
just throw away that many long time sellers.?
Because I do know we will not be able to stay. These Buyers Already treat
the sellers bad. I Cannot imagine what it will be like when
You are totally un protected.

To Make matters worse, Ebay is now suspending sellers that get to many
Buyers that don't pay for their auctions Yes you read that right.

Ebay is suspending accounts of long standing honest sellers who
get too many nonpaying buyers, This is Insanity,
Go Check out this link if you don't want to believe me
SUSPENDED/

Maybe Now you can start to see the frustration ,That has come out of the Ebay
selling experience for alot of long time sellers. I Guess adapting to change
is hard for some. I really miss the good old Ebay.

But move over because more change is on the way .
With Ebay changing the top C.E.O. Real soon.
I hate to think it can only get worse.
Like I said Sadly we are about done with Ebay
I Guess it was good while it lasted