posted on May 19, 2001 06:39:59 AM
I have been selling on ebay for quite some time now. I have a positive feedback rating of 120+ with no negatives. I can remember when Ebay used to be friendly toward customers. It seems lately that they have almost become hostile to small buyers/sellers like myself.
I listed about 10 auctions a couple weeks ago. During the auctions, Ebay was down twice during prime bidding hours. One of the times it was down was at 7:00 PM CST Thursday evening.
After the auctions completed, I wrote Ebay customer support and asked for a partial or full refund of my listing fees for the outages. I remember a couple years ago, they would give you a credit without a second thought.
After this request, I received a form letter denining my request the first time. After I replied to that, the second time (I think) I got a reply from a real human. They denied my request for a refund even though during both outages I could not use the search feature or view my listings. Both said "Functionality Unavailable" One of my auctions was a featured in category auction with that rather large $19.95 fee.
I understand that computers fail and eBay has unscheduled downtimes..but when I pay $19.95+++++ for one stinkin listing, I expect my auctions to be up at 7:00 PM on Thursday evening. That is when bidders bid! Why should I pay full price for partial service!
They quote their policies that the downtime must be over an hour. Well, if you add these two outages together, the downtime WAS over an hour. I don't know how many times my auctions were down when I wasn't around to check on it. How many bidders did it cost me? I don't know. All of my auctions did get bids though.
They also have all of these new restrictive policies about links and such. They have also added fees and increased fees since the last time I used eBay about a year ago.
So, lets see...I get more ridiculous restrictions, higher fees, flaky service, and no refund of any kind when they go down. No wonder the total number of listings is going down instead of up.
I guess my reason for posting this message is to see if anyone else feels this way or if I am just being unreasonable with my expectations of eBay.
I honestly thought it would be fun to start going to garage sales and start eBaying again after laying off of it for about a year. These first 10 auctions I put up have me thinking that was a bad choice. The first thing that really shocked me was how much the fees have went up. They nickel and dime you to death so you can't even sell a small item or toy without giving them most of the profit. Small unique items are fun and add diversity to Ebay!
I was also wanting to know if anyone has switched to another auction service such as Yahoo auctions and if so, have your results been decent. Ebay has me so angry over the way they treated my complaint that I am really ready to give up on them for good!
posted on May 19, 2001 07:51:03 AM
rpuett: {{{hugs}}}
I think for now, eBay has higher fees and is able to further restrict buyers and sellers with various policies because they are the "big cheese".
It's probably a good idea to keep some of your listings on eBay... but many folks (the smaller "mom & pop" types) are seeking other venues on the side.
There has been some talk about www.epier.com lately as being a nice little atlernative site.
Also www.bidville.com
and www.321gone.com
These are all auction sites that are less expensive to list on and less restrictive.
The bidders haven't yet picked up on the idea of shopping other venues regularly, and this is a problem. (one that eBay is counting on as they turn up the heat for small time sellers).
Someone else pointed out in another thread that even though some of these others sites don't have the bidding activity, at least it's cheaper (or FREE in many cases) to list your items with them and let them sit until the right buyer comes along. This really isn't any different than listing items on eBay that get overlooked in their massive listings... worrying about outages that you don't get refunded for and then paying RELISTING fees over and over. By the time you sell that widget on eBay... how many quarters have you paid in FEES for the "privilege" of listing on that venue?
Shop around... diversify... grow your own online business a little outside of the ever increasing strong arm of eBays "VENUE".
My personal "second favorite" site is probably ePier. That is where I'll be stocking the shelves by listing some of my quality items.
