You read like you're a volume seller, perhaps even with a storefront and the beneficiary of low fees because of your volume.
My very infrequent sales on eBay have stopped because of the high percentage taken by the site from people like me who sell only a very few items per year.
I much prefer no fees on PN or very low fees on FM!
Nope..not a volume seller. No store front. No special discounts for volume, very straightforward listings. No special HTML coding. Straight auction and buy it now. Yet for all that, I simply understand the TINSTAAFL theory. "There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".
I'm sorry but for all the complaints of fees, there is nothing out there at comes close to the simplicity you seem to desire, that doesn't carry other attendant risks.
OK.. let's take Craigslist for example.... NO fees, but Identity Theft, Scamming, Risk of personal injury, Mugging, Robbery... and even now a few deaths. Sorry, escaping simple and low cost fees for that kind of risk is not MY cup of tea.
Furthermore every brick and mortar retailer and even wholesaler out there in business, fantasizes about costs as low as eBay offers.
I am not doing anything special. I'm just a guy buying and selling on eBay to support my hobby. I do thoroughly understand the system however, and I play by the rules... both dictated by eBay and Paypal. I submit that that is the part that the whiners hate the most That eBay and Paypal have a great thing going for buyers and seller, have for years, and are in CHARGE of the system.
It's the control that people miss, even if it's in their best interest.
My primary point is that no matter where you go to transfer goods between buyers and sellers, eBay and Paypal are the most forthright with both sides of the equation. Those costs are always there, in every transaction where goods change hands. If buyers and sellers are reluctant to face those facts, then perhaps reality is just not the way for them to do business.
Again, not doing anything special here. Not receiving any perks that a once a month lister is getting. In fact my activity may run from 2-5 transactions month to raise some money for something I want to buy, to periods of 2 or 3 months without a buy or a sale listing.
It's such an easy system if one applies the time toward learning how it works.
I can often look at every complaint I see about eBay/Paypal and point out every red flag that would have saved someone grief... either a buyer or seller.
That's about it. I will not pursue this issue farther than these two posts.
It's all free will. Use it. Don't use it. It works for me, and millions of other people. We can't all be wrong.
