Logged into my eBay store tonight to relist some graded (by NGC) Type B Reverse Washington Quarters. Had a bunch of old listings "stored" in my Unsold Listings bin, so I thought, "Hey, it will save me some time if I just relist them." Hahaha...nope. Those of you who know eBay know that NOTHING is easy. Nothing makes sense. So, the first problem I encountered was that their software would repeatedly refuse to save the "No Returns" setting. (For those of you know don't know, I decided to end allowing returns on eBay as soon as they tried to force me into 30-day returns. I still offer the normal 7-day from arrival of the coin return policy on my website.) I'd click on "No Returns Allowed", hit save, it would do its little "I'm working" graphic, and then would go back to the main screen. Then, just to double check, I'd go back and look at a listing, and sure enough, 14-day returns. Took me 4 times to get it to actually save. So that worked (eventually) for my graded Jefferson Nickels. Then I tried re-listing my graded Type B Reverse Washington Quarters. Keep in mind that they are all NGC attributed varieties, and the words "copy", "replica", or "reproduction" do not appear at all in either the title or item description. These are listings that have already appeared on eBay before (they were ended when I went out of town for an extended period of time.) And yet, I get this message: So, now I cannot relist any of these coins on eBay until I call them tomorrow and get the JOY of speaking with CS reps who know nothing about coins, who most of the time don't even know eBay's own policies, and about half the time can't even answer basic questions (not sure if it's a language barrier issue or just a "I'm not getting paid enough to care" issue.) Has anyone else had this issue? I'm curious if it's just a temporary issue that will get solved if I log out and back in again (for all the IT Crowd fans...) EDIT: As I was typing the phrase "Do you guys think it's just the word attributed?" - I thought I should try taking that word out of the title and see if I can list it. Yep. eBay now has software that automatically assumes that the word ATTRIBUTED means that a coin is a replica/copy/reproduction. Wow.
I'm thankful I don't have to rely on ebay to make a living. I do wish you luck in solving your issue.
Your experience with eBay customer support (which I'm sure is about the same most of us have had as sellers) pretty much paints the entire picture. Too big and too dynamic to be properly informed and keep up with changes.
eBay tends to deal with small problems by using overkill (killing an ant with a sledge hammer). So there's a LOT of collateral damage. I just bumped into that recently. Tried to post a message on one of the Discussion Boards using the term "crap shoot". It was posted as "*** bleep *** shoot". I probably should have seen that coming but ....
As a seller on eBay, my main issue is the fact that sellers are charged the 10% fees on the shipping costs as well as the final price of the item. This was introduced several years ago due to the fact that eBay was losing commissions on items being undervalued for sale, with exorbitant shipping charges appended. (e.g. - a $100 item being sold for $5 with $95 shipping charges). The sellers who did that got away with not paying full fees, until eBay caught on to their game. But then eBay penalized everyone with their 'blanket' coverage of 10% on the item's price and shipping (ultimately another cash grab). And Paypal gets their cut on the 10% fees that eBay takes ... not necessarily a great amount per item, but when you add it up on all eBay sales fees, a considerable amount. Rant over.
Just out of curiosity since I don't sell: You sell a coin, say, for $200. How much do you wind up with after eBay and PayPal fees?
Assuming the $200 includes the cost of shipping, you would get approximately $174 after eBay and Paypal have taken their cut. Ballpark the amount at 13% off the top for their fees.
I share this concern. It would seem fair if eBay were to exempt the cost for using their own USPS shipping and a reasonable cost for packaging of say $1.00 from their fee. Maybe if a number of us would make that suggestion....
I understood why they started it though they way it was implemented was clearly to make more money. Any shipping charge under 5 dollars could have been exempt as could any charge that uses their own system calculator or standard price for the tier in the listing.
I once had a listing rejected until I removed my statement in the description that "...from my photo you can obviously see this is NOT an MS70, but still a nice unc..." So you can't even use MS numbers to tell people what it isn't.
