Ebay as a selling platform going down the tubes?

[DiffractionLtd]

It's easy to cite myriad problems with Ebay from a seller-standpoint. Buyers are pretty much protected by ridiculous warranties. Imagine for example that you sold someone a 60 year old film camera in fair condition only to have them push a "return" button up to THREE MONTHS later because something happened to it!! This didn't happen to me, but I did almost receive a CAR ENGINE as a return instead of a camera part because of an Ebay screw-up. I now hear from a couple camera sellers they are considering going to Amazon because of the onerous demands placed on them by Ebay. If you are a buyer on Ebay, it's pretty much terrific, but a seller...I think they've evolved primarily into a platform for Chinese sellers who sell thousands of $1.00 items and who don't argue when someone claims they never got the item, they just refund the money. Also, Ebay support is getting somewhat slack, they prefer to have accounts use their "community" forums (other sellers) instead of an Ebay rep. Imagine if you had a problem with a product you just bought at a store, only to be told by the store, "call Joe Smith, he just bought one too!"

 

[Peter Jonas]

Right now in Australia eBay charges an 11.4% value based selling fee, which I find ridiculous. On top of that, their no questions asked refund policy to buyers, which encourages lots of scammers makes things even worse.

I only sell bits and pieces occasionally, and I think about it twice every time I do.

 

[jonikon]

It's easy to cite myriad problems with Ebay from a seller-standpoint. Buyers are pretty much protected by ridiculous warranties. Imagine for example that you sold someone a 60 year old film camera in fair condition only to have them push a "return" button up to THREE MONTHS later because something happened to it!! This didn't happen to me, but I did almost receive a CAR ENGINE as a return instead of a camera part because of an Ebay screw-up. I now hear from a couple camera sellers they are considering going to Amazon because of the onerous demands placed on them by Ebay. If you are a buyer on Ebay, it's pretty much terrific, but a seller...I think they've evolved primarily into a platform for Chinese sellers who sell thousands of $1.00 items and who don't argue when someone claims they never got the item, they just refund the money. Also, Ebay support is getting somewhat slack, they prefer to have accounts use their "community" forums (other sellers) instead of an Ebay rep. Imagine if you had a problem with a product you just bought at a store, only to be told by the store, "call Joe Smith, he just bought one too!"

I don’t disagree with anything you have stated. eBay was a lot of fun back in its early days, but it has totally changed for the worse. Bad sellers and bad buyers seem the majority now. Besides what you said, eBay is also used for money laundering as well. It seems like nothing is as good as it once was. Amazon has gone down hill as well with fake reviews and unethical sellers. Too late to make America great again, unfortunately.

 

[DiffractionLtd]

11.4% plus 3-4% for paypal. So, 15% or so. A lot.

 

[Peter Jonas]

11.4% plus 3-4% for paypal. So, 15% or so. A lot.

Oh yes, indeed. I should have remembered mentioning that too.

 

[RedFox88]

who buys new from there? It’s a place for used stuff no matter how they advertise to try and save that website!

 

[RedFox88]

Amazon has gone down hill as well with fake reviews and unethical sellers. Too late to make America great again, unfortunately.

You are delusional on that

--
Jon

 

[DiffractionLtd]

who buys new from there? It’s a place for used stuff no matter how they advertise to try and save that website!

Ebay's best-destiny was individuals selling used stuff with good descriptions and nothing else. If it didn't match the description, you could send it back, but NOT after owning it for months. They did that because increasing desperate brick and mortar retailers began offering ludicrous return policies in a bid to keep existing customers from migrating online. I pity someone who ends up with a mattress that was used for a couple weeks and returned by someone else!

 

[sportyaccordy]

I've sold a lot of stuff on Ebay and KEH but I think I'm done with both. I'll try my luck with forums and local ads. The 10% fee is ridiculous and offers buyers zero protection

 

[vyoufinder]

Ya, eBay is screwy. I see great sellers being kicked off, low performance ratings, etc. and then at the same time I can cite a few examples of ridiculously lenient to eBay sellers who are obvious scammers. I even reported a few. Oone example is a seller sold a lens too cheap and changed their mind, relisted it wit hthe same photo for a higher price and sold it. Others are just accounts that some hacker got a hold of. Ridiculous new deals way too good to be true but I knew I had nothing to lose with eBay guarantee.. No loss to me, I expected those.

As a buyer it's screwy too. Just bought a mic from a 0 (now -2) seller listed as new but; used, missing parts, and broken all 3 and now I'm not authorized to ask eBay to step in and help after no reply... So... Screwy for buyers and sellers.

*edit* I just tried it again and was able to ask eBay to step in and help this time. Yep. It's screwy. But I'll say eBay does protect me as a buyer. 15 years ago that was absolutely not the case, however. These days I will take a chance on anything with eBay because if it's not as described or if there's a problem, I feel extremely confident that I'll get my money back and the return shipping.

I think eBay has serious problems, no judgement options in cases of obvious frauds or good sellers being made out to be sinister thieves.. It's like they've got an old database out of control and nobody remains who knows all the coding variables of how things should make their way to an actual human for review so they're like shotgun firing at fraud and everyone suffers.

The only problem is... for rare items, eBay probably has it if anyone does.

--
Your focus is your reality

 

[PerfectMark]

We use eBay at work to sell servers after they have been used for a few years. We have been finding recently that if we do an auction, other people selling similar items will create fake accounts and win our auctions. They then cancel/close their accounts so we have to waste time re-listing. They give us our fees back, but some times we are finding we have to re-list items multiple times before we actually get a legitimate buyer.

Having spoken to eBay, there is nothing you can do about it and they have no plans to do anything about it ether.

So I suspect that the first company to come a long with a decent replacement to eBay will probably take over the market very quickly. Just like Google did when it launched with it's simple search engine in the late 90s.

 

[fishy wishy]

We use eBay at work to sell servers after they have been used for a few years. We have been finding recently that if we do an auction, other people selling similar items will create fake accounts and win our auctions. They then cancel/close their accounts so we have to waste time re-listing. They give us our fees back, but some times we are finding we have to re-list items multiple times before we actually get a legitimate buyer.

I've seen things like that, 0 feedback buyers or near enough that come out of nowhere to win an item that gets relisted. I figured it was sharp practice on the part of the seller to pump the listing price up. I did report it but didn't check back on the shill account.

But I can see if it's easy to get an ebay account how this might be abused by competitors.

If ebay insisted on passport ID like AirBNB it might get better?

 

[J Peters]

Agreed. I used to used it a lot as a seller. No more. On top of all the other issues they got wise to people charging massive amounts for postage and very little for the actual item (which people were doing to reduce the %age rake off which eBay take). Now they've gone too much the other way. You list a book for sale and it says "OK, for books the most postage you can charge is £1.60". The last book I sold was a 800-page tome and cost £8 or something to post, but you can't override the £1.60 cap.

I've mostly started using other sites and doing sales locally.

 

[ZodiacPhoto]

who buys new from there? It’s a place for used stuff no matter how they advertise to try and save that website!

There is stuff on Ebay you simply can't get from anywhere else.

And as a buyer, you are protected.

I just lost / forgot my small and light tripod in the park.

I opted to buy a Leofoto LS-224C from Ebay Chinese seller instead. It has great reviews, and it is NOT available in USA from anywhere else. I could order it from a store in Europe, but it would cost me about 50% more with European prices, currency conversion, and shipping.

 

[ZodiacPhoto]

Amazon has gone down hill as well with fake reviews and unethical sellers.

I never tried to sell on Amazon - is the process straightforward? Is it safe for sellers against buyer's scam?

 

[abe4652]

11.4% plus 3-4% for paypal. So, 15% or so. A lot.

Oh yes, indeed. I should have remembered mentioning that too.

Am I imagining, or wasn't it in the early days not a fee based on a percentage of dollar value of sales?

 

[onlyfreeman]

If anyone is interested in selling on eBay is there anything they can do to minimise the risk?

 

[Mark_A]

I have never bought from ebay, I can't be the only one

I buy used from businesses that give me 6 months warranty and or a no question return policy.

I don't think I would trust a private seller.

Mark_A

 

[Flat Earther]

It's easy to cite myriad problems with Ebay from a seller-standpoint. Buyers are pretty much protected by ridiculous warranties. Imagine for example that you sold someone a 60 year old film camera in fair condition only to have them push a "return" button up to THREE MONTHS later because something happened to it!! This didn't happen to me, but I did almost receive a CAR ENGINE as a return instead of a camera part because of an Ebay screw-up. I now hear from a couple camera sellers they are considering going to Amazon because of the onerous demands placed on them by Ebay. If you are a buyer on Ebay, it's pretty much terrific, but a seller...I think they've evolved primarily into a platform for Chinese sellers who sell thousands of $1.00 items and who don't argue when someone claims they never got the item, they just refund the money. Also, Ebay support is getting somewhat slack, they prefer to have accounts use their "community" forums (other sellers) instead of an Ebay rep. Imagine if you had a problem with a product you just bought at a store, only to be told by the store, "call Joe Smith, he just bought one too!"

Yep, I bought one item off of ebay that was clearly misrepresented by the Chinese seller. They key feature that he claimed his product had, clearly did not have it. When I told the seller "Hey, you lied." His reply is "Sorry mister, is it ok if we give you a partial refund?" Chinese sellers are so dishonest, it's in their culture and their blood to misrepresent a product, violate intellectual property, and then apologize after getting caught red handed.

 

[abe4652]

If anyone is interested in selling on eBay is there anything they can do to minimise the risk?

No one has ever fully satisfactorily explained to me why, if I am a buyer of a camera, say a D850, and I buy a used one on ebay, I can't just tell ebay after I get the camera that I got a big rock, and get my money back.

And no, it's not a satisfactory answer to the honest seller that even though he lost a whole camera, that one particular buyer probably won't be able to do that again (and even that's only a "probably).

I have no idea what ebay "investigations" consist of, but even if they were to hire a major firm such as Kroll, and spend thousands of dollars (Note: This is merely a hallucinogens dream), they still couldn't go back in time to the day I received the package.