Edward
Bartender
- Messages
- 25,081
- Location
- London, UK
I first used eBay as a buyer back in the day, 2002... Then, as I recall, it cost a bit more to place the ad to begin with, but if it didn't sell you got a sedcond run for free, and there were no 'final valuation fees'. I remember selling something after a long gap of not selling and being shockedd when suddenly and unexpedctedly eBay was taking a chunk of "my" money - 'oh, yeah, we do this now.' It's all great for buyers, but I can't help feeling that in the longer term they've stacked it so far against the seller now that it's hardly worth the bother for most. Still, this was tghe result of eBay deliberately shifting the business model some years ago, when they wanted to move away from the 'world's biggest fleamarket' concept to emphasising high volume / low value unit shifters. Still, they're to only game in town (I like Etsy, but as a place to sell second hand goods rather than new, craftsy items it's sorely lacking), so they hold all the cards.
So you'd think..... I don't like it either. It's the same as a business selling you an item for a set price, then charging you more to pay by credit card. Always just feels a bit.... cheap, somehow, especially if it's a business rather than a private individual. I don't mind the option being there for people who genuinely want to send money to family, a charity, w.h.y., but it seems it shouldn't be an option when you're dealing with a business account especially.
I'm the first to say I'm far from convinced by the 'invisible hand of the markets' argument, but in this case it does seem that eBay largely have the freedom to do as they pelase becasue no real alternative exists. Etsy is superior now for some things, but I'm not a small-business selling crafts, leatherwork, or whatever, so it isn't for me (as a seller - great as a buyer, much nicer than eBay for a lot of things. I think most sellers on there are people who abandoned eBay some time back).
Yes, I can see why eBay wanted to change things - there was a lot of bullying gonig on, a lot of withholding feedback until buyerf feedback was given, then negatived strike-backs for fairly given, non-positive feedback and such. I always felt they should have a double-blind feedback system: let the seller and buyer leave feedback, but neither can see what that other has given them until after they have already completed their end of the feedback process.
Well, that's the thing. eBay went from trying to be a palce for selling second hand goods in the main (though of course you still can) to being a place where they really prefer sellers who shift high volumes of low value product - stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap, make profit from overall volume. It really kills the individual buyer, though. I often suspect that if you asked eBay to sell you a nutcracker, they'd deliver a sledgehammer..... it seems that for the sake of a small proportion of dishonest sellers, all sellers are now treated as if in the wrong, often. Like when they stopped allowing you to charge postage on a DVD, meaning that unless you were selling thousands of them for a few pence profit at a time, they were never going to be worth the hassle as the postage costs gouged so much of the couple of quid you'd get for a single disc.
On balance, ebay still provide a service that otherwise wouldn't be there, so to some extent enough people just swallow their terms. I'm surprised, though, that we've yet to see anyone establish a challenger gared towards what eBay used to be as eBay eyes up Amazon as its preferred competition.
