EBay fees now 14%!

[larmarv916]

Ebay is already letting it show that traffic is down across the board. SO..like any government style business. They just raise the "taxes"..I mean fees. but in reality you take a look at many sections at Ebay and all you see is the same overpriced lots almost never being sold....just rolled over again and again.

Pay Pal is another bad business model and actually bordering on fraud. Also the "required" usage is very close to the behavior of the old days or having only one phone company....Ma Bell. PayPal is always causing endless problems for customers and sellers. And let do not forget the wonderful maze of voice mail. Oh this is the best example of the worst the internet business can offer. Endless regulations, problems with no acutal resoulition and of course....they are not responsible for anything !

I think for the most part Ebay is now a business that is just shooting it's self in the foot every other day. Im sure next Ebay will demand you surrender your 1st ammendment rights ! So no wonder we dumped Ebay over a year ago !!

 

[ReeRay]

ReeRay nice to see you here, welcome to RFF. 🙂 How's the G2?

I'm loving it thanks. But what a learning curve from Dslr's! DOF, focusing, take the lens cap off !

REALLY glad I purchased it.

 

[notturtle]

I can't stand either ebay or paypal and try to avoid both wherever possible. I last sold on ebay over three years ago. I have bought and sold here recently. Ebat is taking the p1ss and has been for some time. back in 2005 they DOUBLED some of their fees I recall.

 

[David Murphy]

When the suits move in and take over a business, the prices usually go through the roof. That's why a fish sandwich the size of a silver dollar costs $5 at Mc Donalds. After all how are all the MBA-suits expected to fund their corporate perks and bonuses?

I don't think the online flea market culture (the old eBay) and corporate the Wall Street culture can ever mix successfully. Wall street suits don't do garage sales, and junk sellers don't do IPO's - the mixture is ludicrous. The fundamental root of eBay's problem, like a lot of scientifically managed businesses, is that the owners (aka shareholders) and managers are not participants in what the business does.

 

[mfunnell]

The fundamental root of eBay's problem, like a lot of scientifically managed businesses, is that the owners (aka shareholders) and managers are not participants in what the business does.

A couple of points:

1. You should have put scare-quotes around "scientifically managed"!

2. The shareholders are just as likely to get scr*w*d over as customers
and employees.

I'm not making point 2 up: an example from around a year ago: a large investment bank over here made $300M profit on a deal. Of that, roughly (from memory) $60M was distributed to shareholders (the "owners", who bore all the financial risk) via dividend and capital gain on share price. $20M was retained in the business for various uses. $220M was distributed as commission, bonus payments etc. amongst the various sales, executive and management types at the bank. Who bore none of the risk (unless separately as shareholders themselves) yet took the (male) lion's share of the reward.

(A deal by the Macquarie Bank; well documented in the Sydney Morning Herald around April/May 2008 and the proximate cause of my father selling off his holdings. In retrospect a pretty good decision, as the Great Recession hit Macquarie share prices especially hard.)

All Off Topic, I suppose, but the "owner/agent problem", IMO, made a large contribution to our current collective mess.

...Mike

 

[mark-b]

When they hiked up their prices, they've eliminated a lot of sellers, including myself. Ebay once was the opportunity for thousands of people to have a kind of home-based business, but now it's not even a good source of supplementary income.

 

[35mmdelux]

I generally know what I want for my gear and try to sell on PNET or RFF. A state of the art Hasselblad 80mm CFE lens at $750 is a hard sell on PNET/RFF, but sells right away on eBay. While no one like price hikes, my stuff sells pretty fast there. In the 1990's I sold alot in the local paper classifieds. Id get a few calls and sometimes had to relist at substantial cost and lost time.