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khenry
Ebay’s Feedback changes have bitten hard and the site’s message boards are awash with sellers falling victim to the random suspension policy of a neutral and negative rating within a month, or Detailed Seller Ratings (the stars) falling below 4.6 out of five stars.
Personally I’m glad that my final buyer of all my old PC Gear, paid up and I sent off my other Radeon 9800 Pro to help towards the cost of the new build.
So now that the final sale is finished, I think that Ebay’s self-inflicted destruction of the feedback system as a whole, plus the wanton removal of sellers without power seller status, makes it the ideal time to quit selling and move with the times.
If Ebay will only treat buyers fairly and you can’t beat them, then it’s time to rejoin them and not bother contributing any further fees to the firm as an unwanted small seller. Ebid is growing even if buyers haven’t moved across there but if you specialised in Buy It Now auctions, then Amazon Marketplace or Play2trade at Play.com are two close equivalents, even if Amazon has fixed brackets for postage costs.
I nearly forgot to mention the much more personal message board sales environments of forums such as PC Gamer, Preys-World and Overclockers, where listings are free, Paypal isn’t forced on people and it’s much easier to split it and offer a discount for using any other payment method and trust is gained from the length of time that you hang around and post.
It’s also great that when I go to the post office now, it’s much more likely to be for sending fun stuff. It’s all too easy for offloading the items to the buyer to become a drudge, especially if you have to find and buy specialist packing eg card-backed envelopes for magazines.
What I won’t miss is the gloom and the paranoia; I previously had a completely open buying policy. Within two weeks of these changes, over 50 buyers were added to my Blocked Bidders list from all the tales of buyers, who, knowing they could not receive a neutral or negative rating, left gratuitous or anti-competitive non-positive feedback to perceived rivals in an attempt to get them closed down. This included one Warhammer model painter trying to shut down another seller of the unpainted pieces!
It’s no surprise that Ebay has increased the list size to include up to 5,000 accounts, more than double the previous length. So when bureaucracy of checking the boards and blocking the nutters wastes too much time and it’s just no longer fun, even if it’s a handy money maker for bills (as opposed to getting rich), it’s time to wind down and see if it’s all over by Christmas.
The last five years were great though, and everything I’ve learned should make my message board, Play2trade or Amazon sales keep going with the same rate of success. Ebay should find out that getting rid of the small timers, won’t necessarily mean that the biggest companies will flood in to take their place. Plenty of those favoured power sellers started out small and kept on going.
However, Ebay is yet another business run like the current British Government which pretends to listen when it doesn’t give a toss and imposes whatever policies it likes. Luckily, you can vote with your feet right now instead of waiting another two years.
Opened my eyes to a few things there. Personally it hasn’t bothered me except as I fill out feedback on a periodic basis it’s now a complete pain having to fill in all the effing star score thingys as well. Still confuses me why the introduced the no bad feedback rule from sellers - I’ve had more problems with buyers than sellers to be honest!
I totaly agree! The new idea of sellers not being able to give negative or neutral feedback,will cause most people,like me,to shut their little shops……. or sell OFF of ebay,for the fear of getting your 100% feedback ruined,and not being able to do anything about it!
Like this government,Ebay is getting a bit to big for its boots,and forcing new rules onto us ~ withoout giving us the optoion to do anything about them!
I agree that selling on ‘other sites’ ,will soon be the only option,I just wish this Moronic Bully Boy government gave us an alternative,instead of having to wait another 2 years,to rid ourselves of this ‘Unelected’ Bully’.
I’m a buyer with 200 feedbacks. Of my 200 feedbacks i have 2 negatives, both bounce back negatives. I agree that sellers on Ebay need to mark the cards of the minority of sellers who are crooks and scammers, but until the abusive way the vast majority of sellers react to a well earned negative is resolved i think this is a well thought out stopgap.
Well, now I’ve sold an item from this very blog, I think that’s underlined it - I don’t need Ebay except to buy from established trusted sellers - in the end the guy paid by Paypal so they still got some dosh, just not as big a cut as if I’d used Ebay itself.
Also, I get much more flexibility in how I sell something and there’s none of this visibility crap, if it’s a computing item then that’s what people are on this site to view and there’s no hierarchy based on a fee structure.