The end of selling on eBay is near ...

[Klondike Mike]

They screwed up and now they want their sellers to pony up. How much? Who knows. For 5 months last year they say they didn't charge enough fee's for sales and demand a payment on January 22.

They take 15% from every sale I make already and this unknown $$$ demand could add up to 100's or even thousands. For ALL sellers. I will bail and block eBay from any access to my bank account before I allow this to happen. See attached email I received. Stay tuned.

 

[nomadradio]

I avoided using their postage labels when I saw that they expire in 24 hours if you don't get to the post office on time. Or they did at the time decades ago. Not that much more trouble to pay at the post office counter. Turns out it's a LOT less trouble.

Mike's suggestion I should use Shopify instead looks better and better.

73

 

[Smokinone]

epay used to be a nice platform to sell, back when it was like a flea market. THEN it got too big, and they started to expand fees and charges and then took something from everything you do. I rarely sell on the platform, but they do offer world-wide exposure. Back when they started though you could find bargains, and get things at a reasonable price that wasn't inflated by the...greed basically...of the platform.
Used to be kind of a sell more make more, than a sell less make more operation.
Just my opinion and observation.

 

[nomadradio]

Every business model evolves in response to incentives. When you go public and sell stock the incentives tilt away from the customer towards the stockholders and especially to the stock analysts. Getting too big is never good for the customer.

73

 

[Crawdad]

Getting too big is never good for the customer.

And yet the masses flock to Big Boxes, happy to trade away customer service for less (maybe) $$, while the service oriented Little Box goes belly-up.

 

[Klondike Mike]

I avoided using their postage labels when I saw that they expire in 24 hours if you don't get to the post office on time. Or they did at the time decades ago. Not that much more trouble to pay at the post office counter. Turns out it's a LOT less trouble.

That's a good idea. I don't know what the expiry date is these days but I think its beyond 24 hours. There is a advantage to getting eBay generate shipping labels as they offer discounts that you can't get at the counter. This will be the only positive thing you hear from me today regarding eBay.

 

[Klondike Mike]

THEN it got too big, and they started to expand fees and charges and then took something from everything you do.

Yup. See my comment below.

 

[Klondike Mike]

Getting too big is never good for the customer.

Yup. See my comment below.

 

[Klondike Mike]

No new update of the mysterious eBay charge coming due on the 22nd. Who is going to allow a vendor to write their own check on what they can withdraw from your bank account and not tell you how much its going to be? Not me. But wait ... there's more!

eBay sent out another email revising the "Payments Terms of Use". 22,000 words as per a web page word counter tool. 22,000 words! It takes them 22,000 words to describe a simple buy/sell transaction that ALL users must comply with. Within this explanation are links to other eBay sub-policies generating 1000's of more words. How many eBay users are going to go through this? My guess is 3. Me being one of them. Does anyone think they are doing the users any good with this new policy? What a load of BS.