Suzy Jagger and Jonathan Richards
Posted on 02/06/2008 8:42:06 AM PST by Stoat
All buyers and sellers are equal in the virtual auction world of eBay, but buyers are about to become more equal than everyone else.
From May, eBay, the world's biggest online auction house, will block sellers from posting any negative or neutral comments about buyers who purchase their goods to coax more of them on to the site.
The move means that anyone selling an item will have little recourse to complain that the purchaser of their Britney Spears T-shirt or antique Whitby egg-timer had been a late payer, or had become a persistent troublemaker, grumbling unfairly about their acquisition.
At the moment, eBay buyers and sellers are encouraged to give a rating about their counterpart on the auction site's feedback system, which alerts other customers about bad experiences and helps to self-regulate the auction site. A buyer or seller with a bad rating is effectively blacklisted. At present customers can scroll through several months of comments about both buyers and sellers to decide whether they feel comfortable doing business with them. Frequent gripes include a seller over-charging for postage, a purchased item delivered late or one party being generally dishonest.
EBay has defended the move, claiming that buyers need more protection than sellers because they have to send money to a counterparty they do not know.
A spokesman for Ebay said yesterday that the auctioneer wanted to stamp out an increasing practice where sellers who had received a bad rating would retaliate by posting a poor rating on the buyer. "Some sellers are gaming the system. And some buyers in turn have been turned off," the spokesman said.
The group added that it is rare for buyers to renege on payments. But sellers have claimed that the new system leaves them vulnerable to extortion with buyers wielding the ability to blacklist them without the opportunity to defend themselves.
A week ago eBay - which makes the bulk of its revenue from commissions - announced that it cutting the amount it cost to list an item on the site by a third, but increasing the commission it charged on completion from 5.25 to 7.5 per cent.
For the vast majority of sellers, this had the effect of increasing the overall cost of shifting goods on the site. For instance, to sell a £100 camera now costs £6.70, where previously it would have cost £5.85.
The higher commission means that sellers of high value goods now also pay more.
Sellers have claimed that the new system leaves them vulnerable to extortion, with buyers wielding the ability to blacklist them without the opportunity to defend themselves.
A week ago eBay - which makes the bulk of its revenue from commissions - said that it was cutting the amount it cost to list an item for sale on the site by a third but was increasing the commission it charged on completion from 5.25 to 7.5 per cent.
The new pricing structure unleashed a torrent of complaints on eBay's message boards, where its sellers - who have long been a vocal community - vented their anger.
One said: “The fees are deceiving: lowering the front-end cost, then adding it to the final fee. Anyone who can do the math can see that they are not lowering the fees, they are increasing them.” Another said: “As a seller, I have been kicked in the head.”
The latest upheaval comes at a difficult time for eBay. Its core business has struggled against slowing growth rates and it is trying to combat issues such as fraud, as well as increased competition from vendors, such as Amazon.
Last year it said that it was taking a $1.4billion (£712 million) charge in relation to Skype, the telephony service that it bought for $2.6 billion in 2005 and for which it admitted it had overpaid. Analysts have also expressed concern at the failure to increase the number of users, which remains static at 83 million.
bttt
Well, I guess I'm done. I've paid north of 10k in fees but between me and one of my business but partners we have fewer than 50 sales. The reason...we sell industrial equipment that usually starts around 5k and goes way higher. Businesses simply won't paypal money for big ticket items. If I'm forced to use paypal, that's the end of that.
Many Power sellers are usually guys selling cheap Chinese crap under 20 bucks. I guess they'd rather make $1.50 a time than hundreds at once.
My personal account is often just cameras or whatnot, but I've probably only paid a few hundred in fees in the past 8 years. This powerseller garbage is the end for me.
Would this be appropriate for either the “Miscellaneous” or “General Interest” pinglists?
Thank you for your consideration :-)
There’s a great many that are product type specific.
If you google auctions you can get a google list by type.
Here’s an article also on some alternatives:
http://www.tech-faq.com/ebay-alternative.shtml
No guarantee how accurate or up to date this list is...
Interesting scam... never thought of that. Jeez, dishonest people are a real pain in the butt.
I’m sorry...I have no idea.
Likewise, if it's an impulse buy that I'm checking out, if it's something cheap that I'm looking at, then paying a shipping fee that's twice (or more) the cost of the item is just silly. It's one of those things that makes me second-guess my purchase.
I have hobby shops around and I'll be at a Sci-Fi convention in a month with a nice size dealers room, so that'll give me access to more stuff.
So, while I have bought a thing or two off eBay in the past year, it's not something that I'll actively scan like I did 10 years ago.
From the perspective of the seller, the buyer who orders his merchandise and then changes his mind and doesn’t pay, or the buyer who is a kid prankster who is just playing games - again, orders, sends multiple e-mails regarding every nitpicking aspect of the item he has purchased until you realize he was never serious in the first place and that he has numerous complaints from sellers for the same chicanery. (He then sends a final HA HA e-mail that says “gotcha”.) The most fun buyer is the one who “buys” an item and then twists himself into contortions throwing up difficulties and mind-changes about size, color nuance, etc. and then keeps on until you realize he is jockeying to get you to send the item to him for free. (This is just from watching my husband selling on e-bay; I’m sure he can add to what I’ve said about some buyers. Not being able to warn other sellers off these types of buyers isn’t going to set well with him if it’s true.)
Cars and big purchase items are covered under special conditions so no one winds up getting screwed for thousands. There are guarantees.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
I have made about 3500 buys with 1800 of them with unique sellers and the only negative I have is by a seller retaliating because I panned him for non delivery. I finally threatened to file a Mail Fraud case with the USPS and said I would ask the IRS to investigate him. I had my item in four days. :)
We’ve found that Auction Arms is better for accessories and ammo, etc., while Gunbroker is better for firearms.
Just our opinion. Your mileage may vary!
I wasn’t endorsing the feedback changes as they’re being done (see my post #23 for my thoughts on a better alternative, and my post #42 for an example of why the current system doesn’t really work).
I don’t know the details of any changes being made to how items are prioritized in search results (I’ve only been a buyer, so am fairly ignorant of the mechanics of selling). I tend to run searches either for obscure terms (like the small town’s name) or with very customized saved searches (e.g. I run a daily search with a string that has one included word and around 40 excluded words). The former yields very few results, so prioritizing isn’t an issue — I’m quite sure I get them all. The latter is designed (by me) to exclude most listings for new or common items that contain my included word, and regularly yields a lot of hits for listings from sellers with less than 10 feedback ratings, and some with 0. If they make changes that muck with that system, they’ll hear loud protests from me.
I think they’re thinking less about squeezing out small, but quasi-professional sellers like yourself (maybe because they assume — correctly or incorrectly — that you’ll just put up with it), and more about pulling in new small, occasional sellers (the cleaning out the attic to make a few bucks crowd). They are clearly having no trouble attracting professional sellers of new commodity-type items, and it’s a little more problematic to prioritize those listings. Hard to come up with a system that keeps the smaller sellers of those items on even footing, while addressing the fact that a lot of buyers of these types of items are not sophisticated searchers, and are likely to put in short search strings that match several thousand current listing (think “mp3 player”).
I’m forever hearing horror stories about PayPal, and have one of my own that’s practically beyond belief just by virtue of how idiotic it was. One of the silliest pieces of the story is where eBay assured me they would contact PayPal about my problem (as it related to an open transaction that PayPal was preventing me from completing), copied me on the e-mail they sent to PayPal, resulting in my getting copied on a long series of automated “not delivered, still in queue” messages and a final “undeliverable” message. Little wonder ordinary folks have trouble communicating with PayPal — eBay owns them and can’t even get its own e-mails through to them! End result was a dealer who was driving 800 miles round trip to deliver my purchase (a large, fragile antique) to my home on a Saturday, agreeing to just accept my personal check when he got there. For the most part, though, PayPal seems to be a great thing for buyers, but needs a lot of tweaking to be anything but a PITA for sellers.
If you want to give me your eBay user name, I’ll check out your offerings.
Sorry, Secret Agent Man, in all my years on eBay, "Happens all the time" happened only once a few years ago and I got my money back as order was insured.
Yet I've always wondered what new outrage eBay will offer up even as I sell my wares there daily. They never seem to use common or any sense other than promoting the San Fran Liberal Agenda and outright greed!
Yet I must admit they do have a place where the customers are and that makes it the place to be for selling online. Other online auctions sites are a waste of time. I know because I've placed 400 auctions a week on one site and over a period of a year, I sold less than 50 items. On eBay I pay much higher fees, but I regular have paying customers.
Thusly, right or wrong, eBay is the place to sell.
I've sold on eBay for many years and occasionally have a bad buyer, but I use Delivery Confirmation on each and every order to keep PayPal buyers honest and insurance to protect myself on expensive items or with buyers I don't know or trust. I charge a flat $3.00 shipping fee on most small items and have not had a complaint on this charge in several years. On an order less than $50 and heavier than 3 ounces, it actually cost me $3.28.
My Positive feedback is right now at 3,131 positive against 6 negatives from years ago.
My main complaint is the raising of listing and final value fee while eBay is spending huge amounts on television commercials in prime time. For years eBay has been a world wide web cultural icon and few, if any in the western world, do not know what eBay is.
Drop all those $200,000 plus a pop 'Shop Victoriously!' 30 second TV ads and lower the fees for the folks (US SELLERS!) who pay the bills and stock dividends!
I once watched some buy bid up and up on a piece of stereo equipment I was selling. He kept outbidding another buyer right up until the auction ended. Within minutes, he e-mailed me to say he changed his mind and didn’t want it. And then you have to wait a couple of weeks and fill out all sorts of forms to get your final value fees refunded. It’s ridiculous that you won’t be able to warn other sellers about those types.
Have registered as seller at auctionarms today.
I've purchased from there in the past. Just never sold anything there...I will be doing that now.
Thanks-
Stuff it.
I sold a car on eBay, the buyer didn’t pay, and the only apparent recourse that didn’t involve a lawyer was to wade thru a stupid 30-day complaint & appeal period and re-list.
Don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. Been there, did that, was lucky that the next time ‘round it sold for twice as much.
WOW...from your experience, it suggests that all of those warning signs that a bidder sees that “your bid is a legal contract” are merely a waste of bandwidth on the eBay site. That’s very sad, and as a reputable buyer (who has quite a few “I wish that all eBayers were like this guy” statements among his feedback comments that were left by sellers) it really ticks me off because it tells me that I’ve been playing by the rules for no particular reason other than my own moral and ethical code.
If this thing proceeds as planned, it seems that a great many good sellers may be disenchanted and leave, as we’re already seeing on this thread.
Obviously you’re a power seller, so this probably won’t be much of a problem for you. But for those of us selling “amateur” style, this is a killer. Especially since any postiive Feedback we’ve managed to build up will expire after 12 months.
Nope, just an honest seller who watches out for his customers and his own good.
I try to be they type of seller I want when I buy something.
Yet, sadly, I find few of "me" out there!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.