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How Amazon and Google are taking eBay's Business
prostoalex writes "Wall Street Journal says many online sellers who started on eBay are now going solo, being helped out by 'name-your-own-price' Amazon Marketplace and Google's and Yahoo's advertising programs, which allow small businesses to direct their ads to search engine users interested in specific items. The article discusses several companies where online sellers, being disappointed with eBay's falling profit margins, increasing fees, disruptions coming from PayPal account freezes and high fraud rate, are leaving eBay. Many start with setting up their own sites, continuing to do business on eBay, but then switching to solo e-commerce entirely after looking at profit margins."
A.ca takes 15% off the top, but they give you a generous shipping allowance so it doesn't cut into your profit margins (and it's actually fair, so if you *buy* from a seller, that reasonable price stays reasonable b/c the seller can't jack up the price). Win-win for both buyer and seller. The kicker is that every time I've sold something with A.ca, it's taken at the longest a week before somebody's bought it.
eBay? Never again. I'm willing to pay 15% just so I never have to *think* about Paypal.
Disclaimer: I work for neither Amazon nor Google. I'm not getting paid for this. The reason I'm saying all this is because Amazon is the only company I've dealt with over the past few years that has made me feel like a human instead of a problem.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Ebay's policies are also getting ridicilous lately, tried to sell my kidney that looked like it had the face of the messiah in it, but they didn't let me..
Lying about the location needs to be sorted out too.
I'm sick and tired of searching for items in the UK and having to sort through pages and pages of crap from Hong Kong (which seem cheap until you look at the shipping costs).
EBay was originally set up to allow individuals to sell merchandise to other individuals. That's why the feedback system was so important. Before PayPal and BidPay you had to use personal check or money order. Do you buy from a seller business with a feedback score of 65322 over one with 4352? When people had feedback 100 it mattered.
People started selling so much they started businesses. Then Ebay started jacking up the fees because they saw businesses making money off their website. Ebay was supposed to be for used merchandise. Now everytime I do a search for used merchandise I can barely find any because I have to wade through businesses that post 20 ads a day because they have 500 units in stock. Ebay just isn't made for that.
The moral of the story is there is a progression that goes from being an individual seller to a company that sells on ebay. If you continue to grow...it just makes sense to get off ebay.
You have been outbid.
Good.
I was a big fan of ebay back in the day. I still have an account that I use on very rare occasion. But today ebay seems to be nothing more than a portal for people who don't want / can't afford to setup physical shop. Ebay lost is greatest quality, IMO, a while back: the personal experience.
The last few things I sold a couple of months ago were random shirts from indie bands. Of the five people I contacted after winning, none of them ever replied to my emails. One of them left me negative feedback because she felt the shirt was in poor condition. I would've been glad to refund her the money and let her keep the shirt if she had contacted me, but apparently talking to another human (even by email) is a bit too much for ebayers these days.
It's true that Amazon takes 15% of your selling price. But did you realize that they also make money on shipping?
The amount they reimburse sellers is less than they charge buyers for shipping.
Sneaky.
Letter
eBay and Paypal rank way up there as the most evil companies on the net. I have a friend who sells via eBay, and from what he's been telling me, eBay has been making it harder and harder to get refunds on failed auctions all the while increasing their fees.
As for Paypal, it's practically a crook's paradise (eBay is too actually). They force you to enter in your checking information if you wish to perform any transactions over a few bucks (forget the exact $). Once you've done this you are completely at their mercy to screw you over however they'd like.
With credit cards, you always have the option of a chargeback. Once you have linked your banking info to Paypal, good luck! Now they get all the say as to when/if they will give you credit back if something goes wrong. If a seller sends you a box of bricks, screw you.
Here's a personal experience I've had with Paypal. A while back I posted an ad to sell some stuff. Someone bought them and paid via a "VERIFIED" Paypal account. The buyer came by my house and picked them up in person. Everything looked legit until Paypal reversed the transaction saying the "verified" account was stolen. I emailed Paypal and all I got was one runaround after another. In fact I started getting the same replies over and over again!
My problem is, either Paypal is an escrow or they are not. If they're not, they have no right to refund the money. If they are, they have an obligation to re-imburse me for my losses. However, they took the coward's way out, refunding the money to the user to avoid being sued and losing in court for failing to protect their user accounts, and screwing me in the process saying that only orders sent by mail are protected under their TOS.
I really hope eBay and Paypal die off in really horrible deaths.
eTrade SUCKS
A friend of mine was robbed of £400 after he made a PayPal payment to a seller for a PC. He never received the PC and PayPal took absolutely no interest in refunding the money.
The excuse PayPal gave? The seller didn't have enough credit in his PayPal account to refund the money - and has since been kicked off of Ebay.
Neither PayPal or Ebay care about you being fiddled of money, they take their percentage for basically doing nothing.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
They didn't mention that yahoo auctions just went completely free.. It's just ad supported now. I would be very happy if eBay had a little more competition in both the auction and payment sectors.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.