by Nathan Stout (of According To Whim.com)
Why such vitriol Nathan?
I’ll tell you why… Ebay needs it. They have gotten too big for their pants and need to understand that without sellers they don’t have a business.
Ebay has been implementing a lot of changes over the last several months in an effort to make themselves look like Amazon or some such bullshit. Basically they are putting more and more restrictions on their sellers in an effort to ‘give buyers more confidence’ and other crap. Ebay is nothing more than a giant garage sale and they want to make it into Macy’s.
More than a year ago Ebay hit their sellers with the first in a salvo of annoyance and greed by making every seller pay more for end of auction fees. When an auction ends Ebay gets a portion of the sale price (not including shipping). Well, Ebay decided that the end of auction fee would now include the shipping fee. That’s right, more money! They claim that it stops sellers from getting extra money though unnecessarily higher shipping fees but if you take a look today you will still see outrageous shipping fees from seller… it did nothing to stop this… just made more money for Ebay.
Next Ebay started sending out emails to seller telling them that their Power Seller discounts were about to be in jeopardy if they didn’t start doing several things…
First off let me fill you in on Power Seller status. Ebay says that if you have a lot of sales (so many per month) and you have a great feedback rating (basically people like dealing with you), you get Power Seller status and you end of auction fees get a 20% discount.
Ebay starting saying that in order for you to keep you 20% discount and status you have to start:
- Offering returns (really? you can’t take crap back to a garage sale).
- Entering tracking information for 75% of your sales (are they in cahoots with the USPS?).
- Some other BS I can’t remember.
More efforts to try to make a yard sale into a Macy’s.
Next they have notified everyone (not just Power Sellers) that they will soon start requiring photos in your auctions and they must be real photos (not stock).
So all this junk is just the base of the cake of crap… here is the icing…
I use Turbo Lister. It’s a program by Ebay that lets you make and manage auctions. You have the created auctions saved to the program so you can go back later and alter them and make new ones out of them. I have a lot of auctions saved here. Well, back in the day Ebay let you put actual links inside your auctions. Then they got greedy and didn’t want anyone advertising any other site so they banned the practice. If there is one in your auction their systems will automatically cancel the auction and notify you. I have had this happen several times since I reuse old auctions saved in Turbo Lister.
This happened again a few days ago when I used some old auctions I had saved in Turbo Lister. I get the usual notice that Ebay has canceled the auctions… no biggie. I’ll correct the issues and re-upload.
BUT THEN….
I get another email from Ebay stating that they have suspended my account for 3 days because of the issue.
REALLY EBAY?
You are going to stop me from putting up some more auctions (which MAKE YOU MONEY)???
This has finally pushed me over the edge. I have accepted all the restraints and the extra money I have had to shell out to Ebay while they try to ‘be more than a yard sale’ but this is it.
I realize that I am a VERY small cog in the massive machine that is Ebay and my passing will not even be a blip on their radar or bottom line but I do what I feel I must.
I will be closing my auctions down after all my current transactions are finished and then shutting down my account. I will do no business of any kind with them again.
It’s time to look at their competitors and see where I can make up this part of my business.
Always remember that you are the consumer and YOU have the power in your wallet. Stand up and use your power to make a statement.