As a guy who buys 95% of things from eBay (except food, etc.), I have found eBay to be a great place to shop over the years. As a guy who has sold a few things on eBay, it's been a way to generate some extra income. But in the last year, I have become increasingly irritated at eBay for some things that they do, which have really made a lot of sellers (I know, because I am on many eBay seller forums) question whether they still want to do business on eBay (particularly selling. I have started to investigate other avenues of buying/selling so that I don't continue to line Meg Whitman and Co.'s pockets. While I have no desire to echo other sellers' beefs, I can share with you some of mine.
1. Increasing price increases and finding ways to screw over sellers with the same. One thing I did to save some costs was to set up an eBay store. Many people do this so that their items will have longer (albeit less) exposure but incur less upfront costs. However, eBay more than doubled listing fees for eBay stores, and many stores closed as a result.
2. Hypocritical payment options. Try to list an item with Western Union as a payment option. eBay won't allow the listing. It says to use paypal (which, of course, they own) and money orders, etc. for safety. Yet, they allow people to list that they accept cash on pickup or cash sent through the mail. They have been down on Western Union for years, since Bidpay was a direct competitor to paypal. Where possible now, I will offer people the option to pickup and pay me directly. I incur no paypal fees this way, and the buyers don't pay unnecessary shipping charges, when they live closeby.
3. Ridiculous restrictions around what you can and cannot sell. Some things I totally understand why eBay has restrictions on - selling firearms, drugs, child pornography, hate literature, etc. should be and is banned on eBay. But things like BB guns and airgun (and AIRSOFT) ammo etc., they won't allow either, yet you can buy it at the local Walmart. They say they don't want kids under 18 to obtain them from eBay...yet you have to be 18 or over (and register with a credit card) to be on eBay, so what gives here? One guy at my church had some extra original genuine retail factory sealed Microsoft Office packages for sale. He took good pictures, etc. Yet eBay still pulled them because they claimed they were counterfeit, yet my friend (who has been in the IT business for 25+ years and is an elder at our church) got them from Microsoft directly!!! Yet eBay pulled them...they reinstated them again, after my friend had to fight hard for the listings to be reinstated, but not without losing some potential business in the meantime.
4. The feedback system, while it is a good idea, needs to be revamped. This has been a constant concern from probably 80% of sellers out there, myself definitely included. A buyer who chooses not to honour their transaction and pay should not be allowed to leave retaliatory feedback for a seller who has left a negative feedback due to the fact that the buyer has not paid. Conversely, many sellers are opting to with-hold feedback for buyers, despite the fact that a buyer has paid quickly and responded quickly, until the buyer leaves a positive for them. Problem here is that, if the condition of the item is not as stated, etc., or the seller hoses the buyer on shipping charges, or the seller never sends the item - guess what? The buyer is now afraid to leave negative feedback for the seller for fear of getting an undeserved retaliatory feedback in return. Feedback hostage taking is so common on eBay now. While I am proud of the fact that I have a 100% all positive feedback record, the day will come, just like in any other business, where you will get that one nasty customer who is unreasonable and will just make you wish you didn't go to work that day. When that day comes, I will continue to be consistent with what I have always done - which is, tell it like it is. If you don't pay me, you'll get a negative. I don't care what you do in return, since most people, when looking at a seller's record, will look at the whole record, not just a couple of transactions. I also want to make sure a bad seller or buyer is flagged so they can't do that to someone else.
5. Not very good security in terms of confidentiality. I get all sorts of crap in my eBay internal mail/messaging system from electronics sellers and such in Europe and China who are mass spamming people trying to unload their wares. I always thought to use the eBay messaging system, you need to enter those confirmation codes (you know, where they have characters in weird positions and you have to enter it as you see it). I get these things in my eBay internal mailbox on a daily basis. Quite annoying, to say the least. eBay has not given me any adquate non-canned, answer, which brings me to the final point...
6. The tech support absolutely sucks. If you ever try to bring an issue up with the eBay "contact us" feature, it will do everything to prevent you from sending a customized message to someone live. This is not unusual as the industry for support is going this way - but after you say no to the million prompts to solve the problem using their knowledge base (which stinks), you are then led to a form where you can write a specific question or comment. 10 times out of 10, you will get back a canned response, and if you write back to it, you will get another canned response. I have since given up on looking to help improve things on eBay. Rather, I'm slowing shifting my efforts to other auction/selling sites so that I get better value for my money.
At one point, eBay had a lot of potential. It still is the biggest online auction site, and there are many good things about it. But if you have been selling on there for a while, like I have, you will start to see that it's not as good as it used to be. I will still sell on there, but I'm selling a LOT less on there these days than I used to. If you haven't already tried craigslist.com, try it. It is much easier to list stuff for sale on there and you can easily find a local craigslist website that you can frequent so you don't need to worry about shipping charges, etc.
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