posted on October 25, 2001 06:14:07 PMclancy99 You've hit it on the head. Where's the money going? Precinct 60 of NY tells me that there's no food being distributed to the Police anyways. So Where's the money going? hmmmm...administration costs...nah....advertising campaigns...nah...and as for ebay, where's the money going is a great question. As for any charity donation, ask where the money goes. Another great one is United Way. This is only my opinion. I wasn't impressed and the open hearts of Americans was truly noticed in good faith. Maybe placing a little pressure on the organizations will help get the money to where it belongs right now.
posted on October 25, 2001 06:16:19 PM
I always thought ebay could do ANYTHING without the sellers. AFA was ebays sorry attempt to get people to use billpoint (checkout is the next). If they really cared about the goal they would have worked out a deal with paypal also. The Democrats and Republicans could work together after the attack but ebay was still the self center ogre we have all come to know....
posted on October 25, 2001 07:00:39 PM
We gave a little bit toward the funds for those New Yorkers but I doubt if they will ever seeit.
I sure did not need eBay to speak for me to set some goal that was a number grabbed out of the air without anymore basis than Meg's 5 year projections.
Meanwhile my auctions are buying groceries and gas - a problem Meg has not had to worry about for a long time.
posted on October 25, 2001 08:40:09 PM
It still goes back to the fact that I, and thousands of other sellers, had already donated all I could before they launched A4A, then they hit us with this ill conceived charity drive. So if I don't participate I look like an uncaring seller, when the truth of the matter is I probably gave a couple thousand times what the person that is selling Cool-Aid points on A4A and a few hundred times what some of the sellers I just didn't do it through eBay and I never would anyway.
Unfortunately if your in business and this is what you do for a living it's next to impossible to absorb this much merchandise, especially with the poor sales we've been having.
If you have a B & M business and you keystone(that is double your cost) on an item, and that item is stolen or shoplifted, you have to now sell one just to get even on the items, if you have 6 stolen then you have to sell 6 more just to get even. If you bought 12 and you gave 6 away, or had 6 shoplifted you would make nothing, on the 13th one you would make the same profit of selling one item.
Now you turn that to ebay, on ebay it is getting so cut throat that it is hard to double your money on an item so you have to move twice the merchandise to make the same money. I'm lucky if make 50% these days, I buy an item for 10.00 and I sell it for 15.00, and if I give one away to A4A where am I financially when I sell mine? I'm -15 in the hole, if I sell a third for 15.00 I break even and if I sell a fourth at 15.00 I make the same profit had I sold one. But wait I still have ship the A4A item so now I have to sell a 5th to pay for the shipping, and 6th to pay for the fees on the other ones I sold for a profit so on the 7th item at a 50% profit margin I make a return on my work. Of course not taking into account the fees that have been paid in listing fees for auctions that close without bidders.
Add to the fact that 2 months ago we were having a 24% sell through rate and today it's around 17% so we have to list more to make enough to live on. If you don't have enough unique products your out of luck big time.
It's no wonder that we do about 4 time better selling on our web sites than we do selling on eBay. I've always said that when ebay is less than 20% of our income I would stop selling on ebay and by the looks of it this may be our last Christmas season.
If they had made it to where they would skim a percentage off every sale of the people that wanted to contribute, at 5% of every sale if everyone signed up it would amount to 1,350,000 per day if they are correct at reporting 27 million a day in transactions. I for one would have signed up for billpoint to have contributed in this way, they could have also made it a sliding scale from say 1 to 10%.
Sooner or later, probably later, people will start doing the math and they will realize that they are working for nothing and would be better off taking a real job. It never ceases to amaze me when something that has always sold very well doesn't get a bid for a few weeks and I check to see what other people might be asking for the same item. Often times I will find the same item I'm selling being sold by someone with hardly any feedback for cost. if it sells with one bid you actually pay the people to take it off your hands. Please just sell it out of your garage at cost so someone smarter than you can buy it and sell it for what it is worth.
stick a fork in me, I'm done..... eBay fees are like being slowly pecked to death by chickens!!!
posted on October 26, 2001 03:28:55 AM
C'mon now, you know when their stocks were only worth a few million, they started the "it's only a dollar" reserve fees.
Now that their stock (and I mean Pierre, Meg and Purslove) is worth hundreds of millions, maybe billions, that $100,000 doesn't look like much to them anymore.
Just another example of their not being in touch with their sellers.
