Off Topic > The Pub
eBay rant
Charlotte:
I sold a laptop yesterday. It went for £180 plus £15 p&p.
eBay charged me £0.35p to list it (it would have been much more, but I started it at 99p) and £17.99 "final value fee". Then Paypal (also eBay) charged me £6.83 to receive the payment. That's £25.17 fees in all. Given that I don't overcharge for postage, I'm actually getting £154.83 for my laptop. Less if I've screwed up on postage.
They're charging me 14% and it's now obligatory to offer Paypal as a method of receiving payment, so you can't avoid it.
After the sale is concluded, both parties are invited to leave feedback for each other, but the seller is now no longer able to leave negative feedback for buyers who screw them about. Only buyers can leave negative feedback. They can also comment on communication, description, postal costs etc., with a star rating that's not visible to the seller.
eBay have got too greedy. Theirs is the ultimate e-business model - they buy nothing, they sell nothing and they ship nothing. Yet they rake it in. I wouldn't mind so much, but when a buyer refuses to pay (the last one swears blind he only had the item in his watchlist and never placed a bid, so could I please "cancel the transaction?") I can't do anything about it. Yet he can leave me shitty feedback!
Yeah, they have a dispute resolution process, but it's awful. I've had some fees refunded, but it's a pain in the neck and I'd much rather just go back to the way it used to be where the buyer and the seller left each other feedback on an equal footing. There's no trust left any more.
But that's not all. When I'm after buying something, I have to wade through huge numbers of commercial offerings to get to the few genuine private sellers who actually have stuff that I might want to buy. eBay's chock full of fraudsters, scam-merchants and bullshit artists and unless you're very clued up at recognising them, you're going to get ripped off.
Have eBay got too big for their boots?
pcolbeck:
Ebay don't provide nothing. They provide a service that connects you with potential buyers and advertises your goods. Exactly the same as any other auction house. It costs a huge amount of money to run all those web servers and backend databases. However you may have a point about there fees being too high.
mike:
I'm completely fed up with it too. I sold a lens on there last month, the buyer pulled out a couple of days after the close saying he now couldnt afford it. Wanker.
toekneep:
Ebay used to feel like a community venture in the early days, it was fun to buy and sell on there. Now it feels like a commercial venture, still useful at times but not fun any more. You can still pick up bargains of course but now it seems like hard work and as for selling, I can't be bothered with it. Shame really but I suppose that it the natural cycle of something that is as successful as Ebay has been.
little miss mac:
Interesting, though. Local newspapers are on the verge of oblivion because their classified advertising has been all but wiped out by tinternet. If ebay moves away from its original premise as a forum for private individuals selling second hand stuff, to becoming an online warehouse sale of unsold stock for commercial sellers (ebay itself has indicated that this is its strategy - but can't remember where I read that) then where do the classified ads go?
I do agree that using ebay to find a bargain is hard work these days. Where's their competition going to come from? Gumtree as an alternative is utter tripe.
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