eBay Top Rated Sellers: Higher fees and tighter requirements coming...to help you grow your business

to C-B-D
my so called abuse of the system is just a few outside sales over the past 10 years
less than a dozen, in fact much less. I think as time goes on more and more
flea bayers will develop an outside sales relationship with their clients because of the
increase in sales costs imposed on them by eBay. Decreasing the top rated seller discount from 20 to 10 percent aint chump change.

 

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But if you and 10,000 other members do it....

 

That's absolute nonsense. That is like saying eBay knows people spend money at a coin show that could otherwise be theirs so they raise fees.

If eBay didn't nickel and dime sellers on every last thing and side with buyers 99.9 percent of the time no matter what, fewer people would be so willing to go outside the system.

 

I stand by my opinion. If a corporation knows customers are circumventing the system and robbing them of profits, they find ways to shift the balance of power back in their direction. It's common business sense. Even if I don't like it.

 

They've known since day one that was going to happen on a percentage of sales. This isn't anything new nor is it why they are raising fees. They're raising fees because they can. Until they get legitimate competition they'll keep going up over time. Sadly they still are the lowest fees for items under 1k.

They may end up undoing this one in some time anyway. The reduced discount for top sellers just means that more people will say eh its not worth jumping through all those hoops for that small of a discount. The 30 day return period for top rated plus already caused a lot of coin sellers to say it wasn't worth it.

 

My point is that buyers and sellers circumventing eBay fees is 1. An abuse of the system. 2. A contributing factor to eBay's problem. And 3. Possibly one of the reasons they're increasing fees. (Though I nor anyone can say with certainty exactly what THE reason is this time around).

 

Ironic because the only reason both buyers and sellers circumvent the system is because the corporation has caused the problem with ever inflating fee's and charges imposed on sellers who then pass it on to the buyers. Creating the environment where it makes more sense for both buyer and seller to conduct the transaction cutting out Ebay so both parties make out better overall. Ebay has created the entire problem with the ever growing need for a larger slice of the pie. You're right about one thing though that Ebay's solution is going to be attempting to take an even bigger slice of that pie via a reduction in buyer promotions a la Ebay bucks lowering to 1% and increased seller fee's via a reduction in discounts.

 

Does anyone remember the early days of eBay? Almost no one used pictures. It was just descriptions of items. I even sold some coins doing that, with buy-it-now, and people still used eBay!

 

I also recall reading a story about an eBay user in the early days that paid $5000+ for a video camera from a bogus seller. He and his buddies got in their truck and drove idk how many hundreds of miles to confront him, WITH A HANDGUN. The cops were called, etc, it was a hot mess.

A friend of mine was duped into using a wire xfer to pay for a proof trade dollar. It was bogus. He lost $3500 and the seller disappeared and changed his phone number, had a false address, etc. EBay did nothing. Cops did nothing.

 

This.

We've seen eBay trying to crack down directly, by trying to conceal users' actual email addresses, and blocking things that look like contact information in messages, and looking for keywords in messages.

They can't plug the PayPal email address hole, though, now that PayPal's been spun out, so once you've done one transaction with someone, you can contact them directly. (I kind of wish PayPal would plug that hole; some of the people I've dealt with have poor info hygiene, so my PayPal-specific address has leaked out, and I'm getting spam on it.)

I expect eBay will keep trying to crack down on the exchange of contact information, and I expect they'll continue to fail. If they make their seller terms and fees too onerous, they may find they're still getting plenty of listings, but fewer and fewer sales (and more and more "the item is no longer available" cancellations). The rules and expenses will fluster sellers so much that they'll just start losing coins once they've been listed and viewed for a while...

 

I used my full name as my username when I signed up in 1998. My brother signed up earlier than that, and used his actual email address as his username. Ah, the good old days. (I've also got 50 or so positive feedbacks from a joke auction I posted in 2000 -- In Those Days, feedback didn't even need to be tied to a transaction...)

 

When choosing to play in the mud, one cannot expect to stay clean.

 

And by "playing in the mud" you mean "using PayPal to send or receive money"?

For that email address to "stay clean", it's necessary that no one with whom I've done a PayPal transaction (either sending or receiving money) ever has a breach after the transaction. The only way to guarantee that is to do no transactions at all, or to make sure I kill everyone I deal with (and wipe their computers).

PayPal decided early on to make your email address your user ID. It was a dumb decision, but we have to live with it.

 

You sure it's not getting out by some of those strange overly cheap auctions that are likely phishing just for this type of info? I went for one of those once and about a week later I'm getting spam out the wazoo myself.

 

I agree, it was a dumb decision. However, I do believe you understood the point (as Blissskr clearly did). We all make choices, and it is very possible that you are dealing with is the unfortunate result of your "gambling" decisions. I'm certainly not saying it's deserved, but only that it shouldn't come as any real surprise.

 

I see what you are saying - and being devil's advocate on this site will bring out some thumping(knowing how some members react). So how do they handle dealers that list coins on their website and on ebay? I used to see one major dealer doing this all the time. I can't remember which dealer it was DL, JJ Teaparty or NFC that the coins are cheaper on their website. Been a while since I have actually checked this out.

 

It's not ridiculous at all. eBay is a business that provides a venue for sellers to connect with buyers, and for said service they expect to be paid. People spending money at a coin show has nothing to do with what essentially amounts to theft of services. I don't like it and do realize they'll use any excuse imaginable to help their bottom line, but CBD's point on this is otherwise perfectly valid.

That said, I fully agree with the rest of your position and that eBay has indeed brought this upon themselves.

 

Tons of people do this. I saw a coin listed by Gary Adkins on eBay, went to his website, and bought it thru PayPal for cheaper. I actually list my website on eBay as well, in the description, but have only had one coin sell in about 3 months on my site. People just prefer the relative safety and notoriety of eBay.

 

It's possible, but I don't think so, for several reasons:

1) I've received the same phishing and spam traffic on other single-purpose email addresses. That's what I would expect from address-book leaks, but not from a targeted attack.

2) None of the traffic I've received shows any awareness of my behavior patterns on eBay. It's not coin-related, and I buy almost nothing else these days.

3) I got back into the hobby in 2010 or so, and didn't do the "gambling" thing earlier than that. My first phishing emails to the PayPal address arrived in 2004.

 

Too funny - that is how I found Gary Adkins also. I forgot about him. The thing with Gary was I found one coin, saw the website and then went and bought a different. Some of the sites off ebay I get leery of - so sometimes I did stay on ebay to start with.