Adios Ebay!

I've sold a very few items over the last severeal years but am mainly a buyer. I had a Paypal account at one time that I closed because I don't agree with their policies. I refuse to open a new account, so I won't be buying anything from ebay once the Paypal only rule goes into effect.

I've been on ebay since August 1997; in fact I was one of the first 300 people to sign on, so I've seen the whole show. Recently I've stated to a number of ebay sellers that I'd NEVER pay for ANYTHING via PayPal because of ebay's shift from a friendly garage-sale atmosphere to a we're-going-to-nick-you-for-all-we-can situation, for both buyers and sellers, and they all agreed. It's one thing to make an honest profit through providing a wanted service, quite another to blackmail both sellers and buyers to maximize profits.

So ... after January 15, no USPS money orders? Buh-bye, ebay.

I've always been a buyer, and have used ebay to get stuff I could never find anywhere else. It still is a garage sale for what I'm looking for, and sometimes still has garage sale pricing, but over the years more and more people have started looking for the same stuff I'm after.

Mandatory PayPal really ticked me off, though. I refuse to give them linkage to a bank account to get "Verified", and dropped off buying for a while. But the appealing stuff is still there, and I came back after signing up for their credit card.

"If you list a coin in two categories, not only do you pay 2 insertion fees and pay for the pictures twice but you pay 2 final value fees! Why? It will only be sold ONCE!"

You got to be kidding. Thats obsurd. Thanks for the heads up! For what little I sell there it does seem seller unfriendly with the fees and ratings schedule to promote lower s/h. They actually intimidate you for a low s/h rating by threatening the search results. pffffttt!nlp

I don't blame anyone for leaving eBay--I have been tapering considerably and concentrating only on cherry-picking what I can, and like ichirensha using ebay as just one of many price gauges.

It's incredibly easy to bash both ebay and PayPal. Sadly ebay has gone from online 'happening' to megaconglomerate in the 10 years since I joined. All the good feeling I had built up in the first few years is now gone.

I can't speak about buying and selling anything other than coins. If you look at the listings, anywhere from 3-5% are listed as replicas or copies. In the areas I like to look, the numbers of listed and unlisted fakes is much higher. This is just one problem among many that ebay has done nothing about, no matter how many times I complain.

You know, when you get a response to a complaint about a coin listing on ebay, they take pains to note that ebay is not staffed by experts. This, to me, is the biggest problem of all. ebay needs to make itself better by appealing to the average person with things to sell and with money to spend on their collection, not the subcorporate resellers that clutter the site with crap. The acquisition of PayPal has allowed ebay to distance itself further from responsibility by padding the fee total and creating a larger cushion of risk capital. All of the bad things I thought would happen when ebay acquired PayPal have happened--and then some.

Like I said, it's easy to bash eBay--but that doesn't mean ebay doesn't deserve it. I've thought for years that ebay would have to start getting the message sooner or later, but nothing I've seen recently has led me to believe that change will occur until well past too late.

My ebay buying and selling has also dwindled this past year. I had three auctions end recently in which I lost money due to the fees. I charged the buyer less than what it cost me to ship the item, because I was so worried about being neg'd on shipping costs.

I am really interested in trying alternative venues for buying and selling.

And I, too, have noticed a decrease in reasonably-priced items. Many have reserves or high starting bids, some still have very high shipping. There really isn't a lot of bargains anymore. I have to search and search to find the bargains, and most of them end higher than I want to pay. So I haven't been searching as much.

Really sorry to hear all that. I've been an eBayer for 10 years, buying and selling. I liked the small potatoes aspect of it selling some stuff without the big expense of a storefront or ebay store. I've tried to eat the fees but sales are slow enough now. I too may bid them adieu. Where does a little guy sell in a friendly atmosphere ?

I'm still selling on ebay, but it's more of a challenge than it's ever been. With regard to the mandatory PayPal thing, they must have some sort of software that scans the seller's payment instructions for certain words like "check" or "money" or "order" and others. I started getting nasty-gramms from them stating that if I persisted in listing these alternate payment methods after 1-15-09 that they would pull my listings. So I decided to get creative and my instructions now read as follows: Seller's payment instructions:
I accept Paypal, mnoey oredr, casiher's chcek or persnoal chcek. (I am aware of the misspellings but you understand them, right?)-- It's a great thnig taht the hmuan bairn can intrepert mispsllenigs but cpomtuer sfotwear cannot!