Posted on 07/11/2010 10:05:06 AM PDT by granite
As of today, there are over 5,600 replies in response to to the original post (click here to read entire thread), the majority of which are complaints from sellers about the lack of sales on eBay. To be fair, the replies are not from 5600 unique sellers, but there is something to be said for any forum topic that stays in the forefront for that amount of time.
Apparently, eBay sellers who have posted in the thread have a laundry list of complaints:
Whatever is going on, someone in management forgot that most of eBay's small-medium sellers are also buyers: alienate one and you have alienated the other, which explains the continued growth of Amazon and the rapid growth of eBay-alternative sites such as eCrater, Etsy, and Bonanzle.
Back in 2007, eBay CEO John Donohoe said: "We had to create a vision of the future so people could let go of a very successful past."* If the current customer dissatisfaction is any indication, management has performed admirably.
* Quoted taken from www.leggmason.com, full speech is available here.
Ebay sucks for selling. However, for buying, it can’t be beat.
My mom is an old school Ebayer. She has had a small home business since 1999 on Ebay selling mostly small antiques (jewelry, clothes, dishes, etc).
She says that Ebay has "flatlined" because there are way too many people on there now. When she started in 1999, there were 2 - 3 million listings on Ebay. She says now that there are 137 million.
If you know what you’re doing, selling on eBay is not a problem. I suspect a lot of these complaints are from people who have no idea what they’re doing.
Actually for buying eBay can be beat, especially for cameras and computer items, whether new or added memory chips. Just "Google" the item(s) you want and then compare prices. Many "buy it now" items include additional charges for postage.
I like to check alternate prices and sources before locking onto eBay. eBay can be a winner, though, but not always.
They’re really cooking the golden goose that once was Ebay. Ya’ don’t suppose the Feds got in on the act, do ya? Hmmm...
According to my mother who's been on Ebay for 11 yrs, the complaints are very legit.
She says that China has ruined Ebay. Cheap Chinese crap has flooded Ebay. The Chinese items are replicas of the items that are listed by the long time American sellers, but are at much lower quality and lower price. It's pretty much the WAL MART scenario.
Another complaint from my mother: there are separate sites that allow sellers to list items and manage their auctions. My mother and a lot of the old school Ebayers used a site called Vendio.
Vendio was bought out by a Chinese company and the customer service is now through an Indian call center. As you can expect, this is a huge pain in the ass and my mother eventually canceled.
My mom could talk to me all day about all the policy changes that Ebay has made that has totally screwed up everything. In a nutshell: cheap Chinese sh*t and horrible business decisions by Ebay to squeeze literally every cent from buyer and seller are ruining a uniquely American business.
I didn’t see anywhere in here that maybe the lack of sales was due to the poor economy and the gargantuan amount of uncertainty Obama’s policies are injecting into the economy for all businesses and consumers.
My take on that is folks are relying more and more on sites like Ebay for deals and to bottom fish but go elsewhere as there are fewer and fewer deals to be had.
Bingo. Also, supply and demand are key factors. Rare items command high prices. The “haves” buy on Ebay. The “have-nots” look on Ebay but don’t do much buying. Unfortunately, due to Obama’s Cloward & Piven economy, the have-nots far outnumber the haves.
Also, the search algorithm is pretty bad, although it's not as bad as Amazon's, which is completely ridiculous.
In fact, Amazon's is so bad I won't shop there anymore...(although there are a couple other reasons I'm through with their crap site).
And if you can buy the same item at Target or Wal-Mart for the SAME price, you’ll not pay for shipping at the store, unlike Ebay. Ebay is still GREAT for items you can’t find in stores, especially antiques that are small enough to ship.
I quit using eBay when it went to crap a few years ago. Too many rule changes, too anti-gun, and too much protection of bad sellers. Plus, I hate PayPal.
What makes it worse for buyers is that there is no way to permanently opt out of foreign listings, that I have been able to figure out. Every time you do a search, you have to go to the left-hand side and re-search US or North America only. It is maddening. I am not going to buy anything from a Chinese (or Thailand) vendor. Period. The only place I might even consider buying from outside of North America is the UK, and an irresistible opportunity to do that hasn’t come up yet. Like much else in our world, the Chinese have screwed up something that used to work just fine.
Ditto.
Ebay was cool when it was a collection of mom and pops that typically policed themselves. I haven’t visited in years, though, as it has become one gnarly mess that looks more like scammers than genuine buyers and sellers.
They died from their own popularity.
Paypal refunds before a shipment can possibly arrive, negative feedback on unpaid purchases, 18 days to go through the dispute resolution to get such negative feedbacks removed.
In a few hours, I could get several of the biggest US sellers on eBay locked out for at least a week, and repeat the process over and over again, and there's nothing a seller can do to stop me.
It is really a shame, as a whole lot of people depend upon eBay for their income and with each change, they make it harder and harder just to keep your head above water.
listings from eBay China (whose sellers pay no fees and consequently flood the site with unlimited listings of the same items)
Does anybody know why sellers from China are getting a break like this?
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.