Posted on 01/21/2015 5:45:00 PM PST by Red in Blue PA
During the company's earnings call, eBay Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said 2015 would present "real challenges" and forecast that "it will get worse before it gets better." Separately, the company said it entered into an agreement with billionaire activist Carl Icahn, the company's largest active shareholder, and will appoint Jonathan Christodoro, Icahn's pick, to its board.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Saw they are going into hotels.
I tried Etsy but didn't like it much, too much like ebay.
Ruby Lane is a wonderful site for Antique Dealers. Extremely fair pricing and they let you run your business without any bullying crap like ebay.
How bout dat “boomin” economy? This could put Barry’s unemployment rate numbers below 3%!
Exactly why I stopped selling on ebay a few years ago. It was great while it lasted, now the fees and forced paypal and its fees erase any profit you might realize.
They charge the sellers out the you know what. They’re as bad as the government. Fees fees and more fees.
But Obama said everything’s fixed now due to his actions.
Wait until Obama gets control of the internet under “net neutrality” and can shut down inconvenient stories like these.
I prefer just paying for the asking price then to go through the bidding process and lose the item at the last minute.
I have found items cheaper on Etsy and Ruby Lane than a similar item on Ebay without having to do all that bidding.
I collect antiques- especially antique dolls. if you know of any other sites like that- please let me know.
Another problem is that searches don’t turn up what you ask for because you have to plow through 100’s of off-category items. You give up before you ever get to the specified items. And that is just from a buyer’s perspective. As a seller I used to do pretty well on eBay. But with buyers never seeing my product it is hardly worth the effort.
Can you sell your CD’s on Amazon? I haven’t tried selling anything there yet.
Something that’s been bugging my lately which is not entirely eBay’s fault, is the gigantic number of Chinese sellers that have flooded onto eBay selling everything imaginable.
I bought something for $12 from one of those sellers, and that included shipping from China to my door, with end-to-end tracking.
The only comparable shipping service that the USPS offers is First Class International, which offers NO tracking at all, and costs about $9 for a similar sized package.
If you want tracking, the price jumps up to close to $40.
And, of course, because of eBay’s rules, it’s a “transaction defect” if you ship without tracking.
I have no doubt that the Chinese government is providing ultra cheap shipping to ensure that their sellers have easy access to foreign markets.
The USPS and eBay, in partnership, are doing the opposite.
Try Amazon.
Most of my recent eBay purchases have been "Buy It Now" just to avoid those games. I signed up for one of those eBay sniper services for a free intro and it worked well putting in a bid at the last second, but it wasn't worth the fees they wanted to charge.
More and more I've gotten used stuff off Amazon.
All that’s true. eBay fees have gotten too high, and then you get double dipped from Paypal.
What’s really killing eBay? Craigslist and Amazon.
Oh, it gets even worse than that... Chinese sellers ONLY pay transaction fees, no listing fees. Just offering an item, an American seller is at a deficit. Additionally, almost every Chinese seller fakes the value for customs, thus buyers don’t have to pay duties - particularly important for UK and EU buyers, where duties can be as much as 40% of the value of the item.
Thank you for the correction/update. I didn’t not know they had backed off that rule.
Good for them.
Ebay’s wounds are partially self inflicted. The site is flooded with wholesalers and professional scavengers etc. Paypal is probably the real value there. Maybe spinning it off makes sense but they will kill Ebay in the process.
Often enough, “new crap” is not so much more expensive that “used crap” so Ebay may need to appeal less to value and more to uniqueness. It started as a site to trade Pez dispensers among the collectors. Now its a flea market of everything new and used. Amazon is better at new than they are because 1) you deal with only one shopping cart and 2) there is a tacit guarantee of satisfaction from the seller (even if Amazon isn’t really the seller).
If Ebay wants to make some improvements they may need to figure out a way to let people “shop” and pay only 1 time at checkout, and then EBay can divide the money up among the vendors the way Amazon does it. If I buy 20 things on Amazon I know it may come from 6 warehouses in 11 different boxes, but I don’t have to pay 6 or 11 times. And I know Amazon more or less stands behind it. Ebay’s social interaction rating system seems fair and they do guarantee most sales, but it still comes across as a mess because there is little uniformity, little over-arching comfort, and always the fact that in all things you need to deal with each seller individually. That’s fine for unique things but not for the general merchandize that fills up half their site. Worse, each seller provides different information in different ways in different fonts in different sizes in different colors. It may allow for individuality but anyone familiar with design and marketing would know it is not conducive to shopping. It may be great if you are looking for 1 special rare thing. But its not a go-to place for general commerce. Yet the site is full of all kinds of generally available merchandise. Fixing it may not be all that easy. They may need to split their site into the traditional “used/collectibles” and “general (new) merchandize”.
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