Since a lot of us use eBay for buying and selling, I think there will be a lot of you interested in this. From TheStreet.com. https://www.thestreet.com/investing/ebay-stock-hits-lowest-level-in-nearly-2-years-14750952
I would use ebay less if not for paypal. I buy stuff from weird vendors I dont "check out" before buying because i trust paypal. I would probably be less likely to buy some of the less needed items I buy from them. I only buy and have never sold so I can only speak to that half of the story.
It's much more than just whether or not they have paypal. The whole trend that eBay has been pushing for for a while has tried to make them more like an Amazon with insane return periods, pushing for instant free shipping ect, but the difference is with eBay the seller absorbs all the costs and eBay does nothing but collect money. They keep making changes that benefit the big sellers and drive the smaller ones out. Most of the smaller sellers buy there too and when they get fed up they stop doing both. The change in payment platform uncertainty certainly doesn't help but they have far bigger problems than that. They still haven't learned to adjust policies by category among other things, and their anti-seller policies have chased away a lot of good customers. I've always believed eBay has been successful in-spite of its leadership not because of it
We could sell something and have it delivered in a few days by USPS and everyone was happy. Now you are forced to ship immediately or lose credit. Ship free or lose credit. It has become a platform to make more money for eBay and challenge Amazon. How can I buy a coin or mint set for say $19.00 and sell it years later for $18.00 and pay shipping? I accumulated a large stock over 70 years with the hope of retiring to a fun little hobby of selling. If PayPal is removed I will just stop.
I don't think any eBay policy can help with that, any more than it can help me make money on the junk silver I bought for 25x face value.
I don't understand why they're moving away from Paypal. They used to be the same company and you were required to accept Paypal if you were a seller, which is probably a big reason they've been so intertwined. I know they separated into two companies but I don't know why they ended a mutually beneficial partnership. I will say that as a small-time seller, I depend on free listings, and they've been really stingy with them the past few months. I have about 500 coins ready to list whenever I can do it without paying for it. When my coins aren't listed, I can't sell them, eBay doesn't collect any fees, and perhaps some buyers can't find what they want.
Because they want the transaction fees for the money as well. Because one of the big investors wanted the companies split as they were well aware that eBay was holding PayPal back in the stock market and didn't want the dead weight anymore
PayPal and eBay were basically forced to separate after corporate raider Carl Icahn — they like to be called “activist investors “ — bought a big stake and later sold his stock at a huge profit. He could not now care less if they both went under.
Which was 100 percent the right move. PayPal stock has potential, eBay stock well there's a reason why a company that have no inventory overhead trades like a small regional business
Try opening a second account. There are ebay sellers with multiple accounts. With a new account you might see more offers (like free listings). It might take a bit of time to build up some feedback, but it can be done.
Well, that's true Jeff. But, I know we all take a loss when we try to unload things we bought more or less on speculation. However, the rules on eBay make it even more difficult to get anything back. And now they want to cut PayPal out of the picture.
I understand separating the companies because it's two different businesses. But eBay didn't need to, many years later, decide to switch to a new payment provider that no one's ever heard of.
I have three accounts. Two of them occasionally get free listings promos, while the third one never does. But they used to come two times a month and often were 250 or 500 free listings, buy it now. Now I'm lucky if I get one a month, and it's often only 100 free listings and sometimes just for auction style, so after 7 days all my unsold listings are down again.
Between that and promoted listings they seem to want to make their money off of listings themselves. You understand they make money with more things listed that sell, many others do too, they apparently don't.
That stinks. Have you considered grouping your items into bigger lots to lower the amount of listings? Or does that cut down too much on the number of sales?
When PayPal went public, I was a Power Seller on eBay, and did enough PayPal business to get invited to their IPO. I bought the minimum 100 shares, darn it. When eBay bought PayPal, those converted to 156 shares of eBay. When eBay and PayPal decided to split up again, I think I ended up with 156 of each -- it's been a while, and it's a pain to dig through the records. When eBay announced earlier this year that they were going to stop requiring PayPal, eBay spiked, and PayPal dipped. FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, I moved on it, selling eBay near the peak and putting the money (plus a bit) into another 100 shares of PayPal. Since then, eBay's shares have dropped almost 50%, and PayPal has gone up a bit -- especially after today, when eBay dropped almost 9% and PayPal went up 9.4%. Sure wish I could do that on a repeatable basis...
I have considered it but I won't make money that way. My thing is cherrypicking foreign coins from junk bins and selling them for just enough to make a little money. Lots of people out there trying to fill a hole or get some coins from the 1800s at a reasonable price will pay $1.50-$2 for the coin they need, but you group them together and suddenly everyone's looking for a bargain. So when you're selling for a few dollars and it can take several months for a given coin to sell, you can see why I can't pay 35 cents for each listing. I'd be underwater every month. I don't make a ton of money as it's more of a hobby and a way to pay for the coins I keep by making a small profit on the doubles, but I do make some money, and eBay makes some money off of me. There is a market for these coins and there are people who want to buy them. eBay gets 10 percent of everything. It would be nice if they made it easier for smaller hobby sellers like me and not just the big boys with thousands of listings or expensive items. In the old days they'd offer promotions like free listings if you started at 99 cents or 1 cent fees, and I'd be willing to do that, but I just can't pay what they're charging.
If we want to put eBay in perspective stock wise, their costs are IT and administrative overwhelmingly. They do multi-billion a year in international revenue where the sellers absorb inventory and shipping costs and they can't crack 40 dollars a share without PayPal. Walmart has huge overhead with brick and mortar stores and is 3x their stock price right now. eBay seems to have wanted to emulate Amazon despite the fact Amazon has distribution networks and does much more work for a lot of the sellers. Then they started promoted listings, admitted they hid listings from people to be more "fair" to sellers ect. They had a FANTASTIC idea, but lost sight of it and lost sight of the fact that buyers go where sellers are not the other way around. In my opinion they are their own worst enemy
