Flushbye@aol.com wrote:
> Ebay recently made several changes that make it difficult on sellers:
>
> 1) Significantly Increased final value fees....IF you> sell out of an eBay
store and accept Paypal you can pay up to 13% in fees!.....
>
I have to ask: Where else can you conduct business without costs? When I've been
in business I always had costs far in excess of 13%. Of course you can always
decline to accept PayPal, but then I, and many others like me, will just not
bother bidding and you will realize much lower returns on your auctions.
>
> 2) Revamped feedback. Sellers can now only leave positive or no feedback.
> Buyers can leave any feedback, positive, neutral or negative. Also %
> positive feedback is on a rolling 1 year basis.
It's about time they did that. If feedback is to be a meaningful measure of a
seller's reliability, it has to be seperated from the retalitory practices of
some few sellers. As a buyer, I PayPal the bid amount immediately following the
close of auction. That is my one and only obligation and I shouldn't have to
baby a petulant seller to avoid negative feedback.
>
> Sellers do have difficulties navigating the system when there is a problem.
> eBay won't remove retaliatory feedback. Getting Paypal to help with charge
> backs is difficult. I think it is weird that when you go to say, Sears and
> buy something with a charge card if your card is scanned and accepted Sears
> can be pretty sure they have the money. Not so with Paypal. There have a myriad
> of rules to follow to assure you get payment. Like ship to a confirmed
> address and having proof of delivery. .....
You have that all wrong: If I buy something from Sears and the never ship it, or
the ship the wrong item or damaged goods, I can easily contact my card company
and dispute the charge and if it doesn't get settled, they will refund my money
and charge back the seller. PayPal works much the same way and if you cannot
prove that you did indeed ship and ship the correct item, you will get a
chargeback. That is simple and it is fair. And it also the reason I seldom pay
by money order.
>
> eBay was losing income when deals were commenced outside the eBay system.
> To combat this communication outside the eBay message system is difficult.
> Visibility of eBay bidders on completed auctions was eliminated as sellers
> would contact 2nd place bidders offering the same item on a deal outside eBay.
> Masking who is bidding does help hide shill bidding.
As I understand it, the seller always sees the complete bidder list with correct
names. What masking bidders names does is to eliminate third party scams.
Unethical sellers can still try to circumvent the system and the bidders
protections.
>
> Also some tidbits from eBay's past. Did you know that at one time it was
> allowed in eBay rules to bid once on your own item? Also at one time you could
> give any eBay user feedback even if you were not involved in their auction!
> I once bid on my own item back around 1996 and a fellow who wasn't even
> involved with my listing noticed it and gave me a negative feedback. I
> enlightened him on the rule and he then gave me a positive recanting his earlier
> comment! This is still part of my feedback in 2008!
eBay became the biggest by being the best. Sellers came to realize that they could make much more money with eBay and most of the other large auction sites have disappeared.
Now Ken, I don't mean to pick on you, you are more than entitled to your opinion, but what you wrote was so one sided I just couldn't help myself <g>
As a buyer I have had some unhappy experiences, most of them amicably settled with the seller, or just ignored, like the DeRosa frame that ended up to be a rattlecanned Ampello. Only one time did I have to resort to PayPal inervention: Just recently I won a bunch of older Simplex stuff from a french seller who would never reply to my email or ship the goods. Two days after filing a claim, he did ship, but it was the rattiest bunch of floor sweepings you could imagine. But at least I did get them thanks to PayPal. <g>
Best Wishes,
Rick Burns
Streator, IL usa