Not necessarily. I think it’s a effort to promote listings of offbeat items that have an iffy chance of selling at all. As a fairly frequent buyer of such items, I’d like to see more of them listed. E.g. I’ve bought a number of items related to a small midwestern town where my mother’s family has roots. To most prospective buyers, they’d look like worthless junk, and a seller has little way of knowing whether there may be an interested buyer or two hanging around looking for an item with an obscure feature. But the more such items are listed, the more occasional/casual searchers will find an interesting hit on their obscure interests, and the more occasional/casual searchers will become regular, systematic searchers and frequent buyers.
The timing of this is probably perfect for the economic cycle. More people will be finding themselves in financial difficulty, and with time on their hands due to unemployment or under-employment. Perfect time to scour the attic and basement and shed for items they don’t want, but which might bring in a few bucks if sold on eBay. But they’re less likely to list them if it involves a larger upfront fee with no guarantee of any return at all.
A related benefit to eBay from bringing in new buyers of obscure stuff is that many of these people are probably not in the habit of online shopping, or at least not on this type of site. Once they start hanging around eBay looking for obscure items, they’ll soon start to notice that you can get just about anything on eBay, and start shifting some shopping that they used to do in bricks-and-mortar stores, or the online sites of bricks-and-mortar store chains, to eBay. I definitely fit that category. I originally got into eBay when looking for items that were unlikely to be found anywhere else, but now buy new mainstream merchandise there fairly frequently.
Don’t know why anyone would bother buying new stuff there if you can get it elsewhere - quicker, surer, and without the hassle or worry.
I trust Amazon over eBay. And when I’ve checked, there was little or no savings on Ebay. I have bought used items there and bargain shopped, but only if I couldn’t find it elsewhere first. It’s too much hassle for usually, too little savings.
Unless you enjoy the bidding thing.
related benefit to eBay from bringing in new buyers of obscure stuff is that many of these people are probably not in the habit of online shopping, or at least not on this type of site. Once they start hanging around eBay looking for obscure items, they’ll soon start to notice that you can get just about anything on eBay, and start shifting some shopping that they used to do in bricks-and-mortar stores, or the online sites of bricks-and-mortar store chains, to eBay
I think what's going to happen is the complete opposite. I am a full time (almost) Ebay seller. I deal in antiques and hard to find oddities. I have almost 1000 sales and 100% positive feedback.
With the new system, they are going to wipe out your hard earned ratings and only keep the past years I think (both buyer and seller).
Any seller with under 100 recent sales (60 days I believe) will be required to take Paypal. Paypal will hold your money in their "escrow" account for up to 21 days. I've heard that they give buyers their money back for no reason at all.
The new search engine they will implement will show you items listed by their criteria. Their criteria is by Powerseller and their rating. Little guys items are going to be hard to find.
There's a whole lot more changes than simply upping the fees and not allowing sellers to give feedback anymore. You will find less oddities and much more big box items that you can find anywhere.
Small sellers are being squeezed out.