EBay Deal Irritates Individual Sellers

Dekortage writes "EBay's recent deal with Buy.com appears to be seriously irritating its veteran individual sellers. The deal allows Buy.com and other large fixed-price retailers to list millions of items on eBay without paying listing fees, and appears to be the direction that eBay will follow in the future. Understandably, individual sellers are outraged. 'I've paid eBay many hundreds of thousands in fees over the past several years and believed them when they talked about a level playing field. And they just plain and simple are going back on their word.' This comes after the dire prediction that eBay is losing its popularity."

Comments

No competition

[N8F8]

With no real competition in the online auctions and micropayment system, I don't see things getting better. Craigslist auction anyone?

Re:No competition

[ciscoguy01]

Google auctions, more likely. Craigslist's business model is ridiculous.

Re:No competition

[Shakrai]

Craigslist's business model is ridiculous

And just what alternative do you suggest that provides all of the listing of a normal classifieds section and the "value added" services of casual hookups and marijuana dealers? ;)

Re:No competition

[Notquitecajun]

Many of the hard-core ebay whiners on its website are practically BEGGING google to open up an auction site, mostly because it will have practically millions as a buyer base overnight. Ebay's other competitors can't match that yet.

Re:No competition

[mr_mischief]

I think Craigslist's business model is fine. Although they're registered as a for-profit business, they have no desire to become a large commercial enterprise. They're doing very well at not becoming a large commercial enterprise, I think.

Re:No competition

[Wister285]

They have a business model? What is it?

Re:No competition

[i.r.id10t]

Well, there is gunbroker.com which lets you buy/sell things fleabay won't (anything gun related, etc). And they have several domains pointing to them as well (forthehunt.com, a few others). No listing fees for basic listings, they do picture hosting for you, and if you don't "upgrade" your listings, you only pay when the item sells.

Re:No competition

[Gewalt]

Their model is to *not* sellout. They are doing quite well at that.

Re:No competition

[Waterppk]

There are lots of auction services out there - Reviews from 2008 of reasonable eBay competition

Re:No competition

[harrkev]

They have a business model? What is it?

From Craigslist Factsheet:

Q: How does craigslist support its operations?
A: By charging below-market fees for job ads in 10 cities, and for brokered apartment listings in NYC.

Re:No competition

[Fulcrum of Evil]

But no guns. Heaven forbid you buy a scope on craigslist :)

Re:No competition

[Broken scope]

They also provide a nice list of FFL's so you can get your gun shipped to you.

Re:No competition

[dougisfunny]

Check craigslist

Re:No competition

[N8F8]

The trouble is that eBay is the "market maker". They provide the best market for selling used goods on the internet. Sure you could use another service, but you probably won't make as much money since their market is much smaller.

Re:No competition

[s.bots]

Their model is to *not* sellout. They are doing quite well at that.

The last entry on the craigslist fact sheet

Q: Is there a connection between craigslist and eBay?
A: eBay acquired 25% of the equity in craigslist from a former shareholder in august of 2004.

Re:No competition

[EdIII]

Not only their business model. Their staff are mentally challenged too. Craigslist has the MOST restrictive mail servers I have EVER SEEN. I think military email servers on the edges of their networks are less stringent on who they receive email from. If you have an ISP email account or a free email account from one of the big providers, you don't have a problem. If you operate your own mail server, you may have a problem.

Craigslist requires that you have a ReverseDNS on the connecting IP address that matches the domain in the FROM HEADER, not the HELO/EHLO. That's insane. Only large corporations can do that in the first place.

I bugged those people for over a month and they would not budge on anything. Their policy does not even make SPAM impossible either. It just makes it impossible for any small business with their own domain to email Craigslist at all. You can only get through on the Postmaster account, not even staff accounts. The funny part, that their staff is not smart enough to understand, is that SPAMMERS can hijack whole network address spaces and add any ReverseDNS that they want. They actually think ReverseDNS is some sort of super shield they can hide behind to eliminate all SPAM.

The frustrating thing is that even businesses offering hosted email services cannot communicate with Craigslist since they are demanding a wholly separate IP address with a corresponding ReverseDNS for EVERY domain that you service. So it is legitimate people that get hurt, not the SPAMMERS.

Craigslist is aware of the problem. Their solution? Get a free email account at Google. What I love about that little gem of customer support wisdom, is that the user then calls me up and asks why I am so incompetent that I cannot even deliver an email to Craigslist. I have to carefully explain to them that Craigslist is refusing their email and why.

Maybe I am just ranting here, but I seriously doubt Craiglist is going to scale up in the future when they have people like this running their networks in the back rooms.

Re:No competition

[cleverhandle]

Craigslist requires that you have a ReverseDNS on the connecting IP address that matches the domain in the FROM HEADER, not the HELO/EHLO. That's insane. Only large corporations can do that in the first place.

Wowee zowee... I never realized that my half-dozen computers and my big, lazy butt qualified as a large corporation. But since I've had proper reverse DNS on my mail server for that last 5 years, that's obviously the only explanation.

Re:No competition

[BlueStrat]

That's exactly it. We Americans have a very distorted perspective.

Used to be you could open a little produce shop, live above it, sell produce at a reasonable price and provide personalized service to your customers, and by that make enough money to support your family and pay your bills... and that was all you needed - you were successful, your business was successful, and you were happy.

You did that until you retired, and if your kids took over the store, great - if instead they went to college and became doctors or accountants or opened up a used furniture store and did like you did - great.

The American dream, you were all happy and successful.

NOW, if your produce store doesn't become "FRUITCO," with thousands of locations, grabbing the most market share and beating out "GREENSCO" to become the biggest produce corporation on the planet with diversified subsidiaries, then you're "failing."

Nationally we seem to have an all-or-nothing mentality.

Actually, I think that one of the bigger obstacles to small shops as you describe are the infrastructure requirements and costs to be in the market. The laws, legal liabilities, and regulations regarding any sort of business these days is centered around a large corporate entity.

Complying with regulations and laws regarding things like records, reporting requirements, insurance, certified inspection and licensing, zoning permits, labor laws, taxes, etc etc, on and on, cost a large corporation only a tiny fractional percentage of their gross income, but the percentage does not scale down linearly to small shops and is prohibitive. Not saying that all or any of the above is good or bad per se, just that in total, the costs of all of the burdens that are put in place to regulate and restrain the behaviors of big corporations are beyond the means of many small operators.

Cheers!

Strat

Re:No competition

[longacre]

I would think a firearms auction site would be the last place scammers would want to fuck around.

First post

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Even though, this being about eBay, having the LAST post is the only one that counts.

Bottom Line

[Hyppy]

Unless it is in a binding contract, with severe penalties, you should never expect a company to "keep its word." This is especially true when keeping said word affects the almighty Bottom Line. Cash is king, peon.

Re:Bottom Line

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You hear that kind of excuse a lot, just like when a politician does something particularly egregious (e.g. Obama's FISA vote) you hear people explaining, "Oh, that's just a compromise to get more votes. He can't do anything if he isn't elected."

The problem with the stock explanation is that it's very often just wrong. Ebay's current emphasis on big sellers at the expense of individuals is losing them money, just like Obama's FISA sellout is losing him votes. Piss off your core market to chase some other potential market, and odds are you won't do well with either. By all means, businesses should try to expand their customer base and politicians should try to appeal to more voters. But when you abandon the people who got you where you are in the first place, you're almost guaranteed to suffer overall.

Businesses that do well are those which build a steady, loyal customer base that keeps coming back for more. This is particularly true in the online world, where changing to a competitor is very, very easy; the few success stories to come out of the dot-com mania of a decade ago show how to do it right. Amazon, for all its evil, still does a damned good job of selling books. Google, no matter what else it does, remains far and away the best general-purpose search engine. Until a couple of years ago, I'd have counted Ebay among those success stories, but now it looks as though they were just as flaky as any HowFastCanWeBurnVentureCapital.com site; they just took longer to show it.

Suits and their sycophants love to talk tough about how they serve the bottom line ... but in the real world, the suits are wrong more often than not, and here's a sterling example.

Re:Bottom Line

[Daniel Dvorkin]

How was what I wrote a "political rant"? I'm talking about the effectiveness of business and political strategies, not about the merits of political positions. The Obama/FISA analogy naturally occurred to me because, as a Democrat, I pay attention to what my candidate is doing; I'm sure a Republican could have come up with a similar analogy involving McCain.

Apparently you missed the actual point of my post, so I'll say it again: businessmen, like politicians, very frequently do really dumb things, and they always have sycophants who will explain that they're doing those dumb things in pursuit of getting more of whatever they're interested in (money in business, votes in politics) while ignoring the fact that they actually end up with less of whatever it is they're after. So yes, it is just making excuses instead of actually looking at (to borrow a phrase from another hot topic) the facts on the ground.

Re:Bottom Line

[moderatorrater]

I disagree, at least with the spirit of the post. Most market-leading companies will do very well keeping their promises for a while, then they'll build a user base, refine on their core business model, and become very good at what they do. At some point, they'll fuck it up (like ebay's doing now, like google's nearly done with privacy many time) to the point where a large portion of the user base leaves. EBay's done very well for its sellers for a long time now, and it's only in the past year or two that it's started to get into serious trouble. If you count this deal as the time when they fuck it up, they've been serving people quite well for over a decade. That's pretty good in my book.

Re:Bottom Line

[Jafafa Hots]

Well. I stopped selling on eBay years ago and sell on Amazon now.

It IS possible to sell well on Amazon, it just takes a little more work to get started and you have to make adjustments, possibly change merch, etc.

And Obama has lost my vote over FISA to a write-in. I do not like to be told I have no other choice but to bend over and take it.

The harder they fall...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ebay has name recognition. That's all. Everything else they do can be done by another business following a similar model. It's not like they invented auctions, after all.

Re:The harder they fall...

[Anonymous Coward]

why do people insist on calling ebay an auction site?

it's not

auctions dont end at a certain time.
the end when the bids are no longer increasing.

plain and simple

Wrong.

Re:The harder they fall...

[Hyppy]

Methinks you need to review the definition of "auction," troll.

Re:The harder they fall...

[MindStalker]

Well there are silent auctions that work that way. But I agree the ebay system is rather ridiculous.

Though you do need a time limit for advertising reasons. I think an interesting solution to all this would be bidding doesn't end until 6 hours after the last bid or the initial time limit was reached whichever comes last. And the seller could always opt to end it early if they really need it to stop on the day they wanted it to stop. Heck most sellers would even agree to a per day fee if the auction went long.

Re:The harder they fall...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it is an auction, and a fixed time length.

One thing eBay should do to fix one of the major problems of their auctions is that every time a bid is entered, and there is less than 5 minutes left on the auction, the auction time should be extended to 5 minutes.

That way, there is none of this nonsense of waiting until 10 seconds before the end of the auction and then bidding furiously. If you knew that each time you bid you would extend it 5 minutes to give other's a chance, items would be selling for realistic values and not trumped up values in the last few seconds of an auction.

Re:The harder they fall...

[alan_dershowitz]

I've said it before, I'll say it again: eBay is a broken sealed-first-price-auction where suckers are allowed to show their hand before conclusion. Anyone who bids in anything but the last few seconds of an auction is a _sucker_. Why announce to the world what you're willing to pay so that competitors can re-evaluate their bid and then one-up you?

Also, uBid does exactly what you say. I've won quite a number of auctions on there because of people used to the eBay system who snipe in the last minute or so and then don't pay attention to the auction after that.

eBay may be losing its popularity...

[FlyingSquidStudios]

but what alternative is there when it comes to actual auctions? I can see the buy-it-now categories being replaced by other online retailers, but there simply is no better website (by better, I mean with as much variety and as many different purchase options) out there at the moment for people to sell each other things on an individual level. So maybe due to things like this buy.com deal, the era of the eBay power seller is over, but a lot of people, including myself, sell at least a handful of things on eBay every year and have since the site debuted. Other than maybe recycler.com and craigslist, both of which are more localized and filled with scammers, I don't see another good option.

Losing Popularity to Whom?

[cptnapalm]

Where are these former eBayers going?

Or is it a case of a fad (ooh, I got it from eBay!) settling down and it becomes just one way to get something (I could have gotten it cheaper on eBay, but if I need to return it, it would be a big hassle)?

Ebay on the way out

[WillDraven]

Things like this, creeping fees, attempting to wrangle everybody into using paypal, and their generally horrid customer service is driving ebays userbase away in droves. Even my dad has commented on how the volume of craigslist ads has been increasing lately. Naturally it will take quite a while for such a juggernaut to die out, but my personal suspicion is that the age of ebay has ended.

Re:Ebay on the way out

[LWATCDR]

Yes but Craigslist is far from perfect.
It is hard to search nationally. Suppose I need a gas tank for a 78 CB750K. I don't care if it is local or not. Craigslist isn't as good as Ebay for that kind of thing.
As to BUY.com and other companies putting products up I just don't see that hurting to many people
I hardly ever look on Ebay for new stuff. I look for stuff I can not find any place else.

Duh

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I know several people who used to do a lot of business on Ebay who are rapidly becoming disgusted with it because of its clear preference for giant sellers over individuals; I'm not at all surprised to hear that this is a general trend.

Why is it that so many executives feel the need to destroy a successful business model? Ebay started as an online auction house where individuals could find a worldwide audience for cool, quirky stuff, and it was wildly successful as such. If its executives want to start a site for selling commercial products with free-floating prices -- which is essentially what they're turning Ebay into -- then fine, but why are they abandoning the business that made them successful in the first place? Ebay was one of the few real success stories to come out of the dot-com boom. It's really sad to see them throwing that away now.

I based my business model...

[TheRaven64]

... entirely on a single corporation with major incentive to see me succeed, and now it turns out that they aren't acting in my interests!

Some people really make me wonder about humanity.

Ebay not going away, but changing...

[Notquitecajun]

I'm getting a little more and more irritated about this stuff with ebay, and I would honestly jump ship if there was another decent auction-style competitor that is close to the ebay of the early 2000s.

Ebay is doing some SERIOUS wrong by the small seller (mostly through their fee issues, I don't think the feedback issues are as bad as some sellers try and make them out to be), and despite their platitudes, is turning into Amazon-lite. I have no huge problem with this, but they really need to make a decision on who they want to cater to and either split into two divisions or send the small-time buyers and sellers somewhere else.

I completely understand that businesses need to make money, and the buydotcom route may be one way to do that. However, ebay is WIDELY opening a door for another company to undercut them in the small seller market, and those of us who collect, buy, and sell anything used on a small scale and aren't interested in just shopping online for new stuff that we can get down the street at Wal-mart or wherever.

Re:From the article

[Hyppy]

According to a recent MSN-Zogby poll,

WTF?! Those numbers are huge!

MSN-Zogby, IIRC, conducts online polls. Online polls tend to violate a wide array of rules regarding statistical bias.

Why I quit EBay

[Skapare]

I no longer use EBay because of the increased risk of dealing with people that don't keep their end of the deal (e.g. sellers that don't deliver the product or don't deliver a product that was described in the auction), and the fact that EBay was taking no steps to effectively deal with the issue.

Since then EBay has begun pushing PayPal harder, and that might also have been a reason for me to not use EBay.

The dilution of the auction space with fixed-price retailers is a big annoyance. Maybe it might also be a reason to quit.

If EBay wants to be in the business of aggregating retailers, then maybe it should register a new domain name and set it up, and provide links between it and the EBay site.

Re:Why I quit EBay

[mark72005]

I agree with this. Formerly there were lots of great deals to be had on Ebay.

Now, the discounted items you used to be able to get from private sellers have given way to hyper-volume sellers with more or less fixed prices.

Ebay is not really an auction site anymore. It's really nothing more than a circular where any questionable web merchant can post advertisements.

Re:Why I quit EBay

[ejecta]

I find their public paypal statements absolutely fascinating. They claim it offers additional security for you as a buyer yet if you using paypal;

- You don't have the persons name or company name (ala Bank Deposit)
- You don't have a contact point to start investigating from (ala Bank Deposit)
- If they are a fraudster they aren't going to leave the funds in their paypal account which makes paypals buyer protection useless as there a tiny small print item which says if the money isn't in the account even if they find in your favour you get zippo.
- Rubbing salt in your wounds, even if they find in your favour they respect the privacy of the now proven fraudulent seller and won't release their information to you.

It's laughable.

Paypal gives dodgy people protection to defraud you whereas the same people are less likely to do so via the Bank as they lack the chops to defraud a bank and generate false papers to open a fraudulent bank account and won't use their own bank account as you'd get their name. But they can like their own bank account to paypal & paypal will keep them nice and safe from you, the victim.

Their gun policy made me bail on them

[m0nkyman]

Their anti gun policy made me stop using ebay years ago....

Not just a prediction...

[Penguinisto]

Anecdotal, I know, but even in the past few months, some of the not-so-mainstream stuff on auction (e.g. computer parts) have seemed to dry up.

My missus used to be able to buy (and occasionally sell) a lot of antique and classic toys on eBay as a hobby. There were literally dozens of pages of auctions for the stuff at any one time for her to pick and choose from. Nowadays, there's only a handful of pages in motion at best, and little is selling (not just on her part, but in most of the auctions concerning antique and classic toys).

Poking around, I see similar patterns for other, similar things.

I don't think it's just recent policies, either (though they certainly don't help) - eBay is (just IMHO) getting one hell of a reputation as a giant fence for stolen goods, a hotbed of scams, and a place where you can't quite get the deals that you used to get.

Recently, they've tried to boost things by having $1 listing fees for certain items, and I'm sure they've been doing some offline marketing (but again, not like they used to).

I dunno... these are just personal observations, but I strongly suspect that they are indicative of a larger shift away from eBay... and the Buy.com deal kinda shows me that the company is getting a bit nervous about its long-term prospects.

/P

Re:Not just a prediction...

[Trojan35]

I agree, although have a slightly different opinion of why it is.

So many reasons I believe ebay is not going to continue to grow at its current pace:

1) Everyone already cleaned out their garage junk on ebay.
2) Diminishing quality control on products makes easy exchanges an important retailer feature (frys)
3) Used prices on ebay are just way too close to new prices. (what happened to half.com being half price?)

And, most importantly for me:

4) It's too freaking expensive. By the time you pay 10% to ebay, 10% to paypal(ebay), 20% to USPS, 10% to gas, selling that $40 item for $20 in "profit" just wasn't worth the hour of your time. There's businesses out there where you can drop off your product and they'll take care of all the hassle for you, but then is giving up your $40 item for only $3 or $4 even worth it?

It's not just the $40 items either. I look at ebay and the cheapest (barely used) macs I can find are only 5-10% off getting a brand new one at Fry's. I haven't used ebay in a long time because their listings, fees, and policies suck. Maybe that's why they are going with Buy.com stuff; they know it.

Re:Not just a prediction...

[Penguinisto]

"This seller currently has no items for sale." - the last toy he sold was nealy three months ago.

I'm honestly not poking fun at you (or him), just that your link helps to illustrate my point exactly.

/P

Anyone take a look at financials??

[geekmux]

From vaporware to $7.6B in revenue in 2007(a $2B increase from 2006), basically done within a decade. I think the word I'm searching for is 'quitcherbitchin'. On it's way out? Not likely.

Re:Anyone take a look at financials??

[jandrese]

Ebay has always had a solid financial base in taking a cut of every sale and not spending it on customer support or anything else. It's one of the few dot coms that was a smart investment way back in 2000, because they had a solid revenue stream that wasn't dependent on online advertising or other such voodoo sources.

eBay is a shareholder in Craigslist

[sjbe]

I don't see things getting better. Craigslist auction anyone?

You do know that eBay owns a stake in Craigslist of over 20% of outstanding shares? Craigslist will not get you away from eBay.

Re:eBay is a shareholder in Craigslist

[longacre]

eBay's stake in Craigslist does not allow for any management input on eBay's part, and based on Craig's previous behavior I don't think he'd have any qualms about competing with them.

Ebay simply doesn't care

[antifoidulus]

It has been a den of thieves for all but the most esoteric items for a while(try searching for xbox or iPhone, I bet you will come up with more scams than normal auctions) and ebay has shown that as long it collects fees it doesn't really give a rats ass about anything else. This is just further icing on the cake. Ebay thinks that people will not go anywhere else, so they don't have to police their network, they don't have to treat their sellers fairly and they can force paypal down our throats and we will just sit there and take it. Its been a looooooooooong time since I bought anything off ebay and I would have to be pretty desperate to find something before I would even consider using it again.

Natural monopolies

[sjbe]

Ebay has name recognition. That's all...

Sadly that is not all eBay has. EBay has network effects working for it which makes it VERY hard to displace them no matter how much money and talent is thrown at the problem. Buyers go where the sellers are and vice versa. Amazon and Yahoo both tried to take market share from eBay and both failed miserably. There are lots of other auction and e-commerce sites out there but none of them are likely to displace eBay anytime soon.

That's not to say eBay won't cut their own throat (they might) but that's pretty much what it will take to make a real dent in eBay's market share. Ebay's business tends towards a natural monopoly as do many marketplaces.

Re:Natural monopolies

[Lumpy]

REally? I am buying moreand more from Amazon.com than Ebay lately. I've been looking at items and what they sell for on ebay and then snap them up for 5-15% less on amazon. and this is for electronics, cameras, etc.. not just books.

I've noticed recently that ebay has become rather expensive with lots of dumb bidders bidding things up past a sane price (sane being what I can get it for at an online retailer.)

Excellent

[ceoyoyo]

EBay degenerates into an alternative, inconvenient way to buy from major retailers (WHY would they list on eBay instead of their own websites anyway?) and somebody will set up a real auction site where you can buy used stuff from individuals and small companies. You know, like eBay used to be.

It's interesting

[jayhawk88]

How far eBay has strayed from it's original purpose of being the "garage sale of the Internet" to now just essentially being an outlet mall. Perhaps it's just an inevitable result of gaining too much popularity; regardless something tells me there's money to be made in picking up the slack.

There's your entrepreneurial idea for the day kids. I'm sure garagesale.com is already taken (and isn't a Web 2.0 name anyway), but just go read a Klingon dictionary and I'm sure you'll find a good alternative. Your tagline is "What eBay used to be", at least until you pop up on their lawyers radar. Market it as specializing in collectibles, unique trinkets and such, and in your literature equate eBay with Wal-Mart.

Ebay losing popularity?

[Jason1729]

I used to do about 150 ebay auctions/month all in the $5-20 range, but I stopped a couple of years ago. They kept raising prices to the point I was making them more money than me (especially after paypal fees), and even then they were pushing aside the individual seller. They've raised fees since I stopped using them too. Just recently I wanted to sell some computer equipment, and found their fees to be so high I'm better off not wasting my time listing it. They've priced themselves out of the market and alienated their core customer base at the same time. And they're surprised they're losing popularity?

Shutting out the little guys

[CowTipperGore]

eBay was wonderful back in the day, but has been on the decline for years. They've made decisions that increasingly shut out the individual reselling used items, which once formed the core of their business. The eBay of today hardly resembles the place where I bought a used guitar in 1998. I looked through a few hundred guitars each week, nearly all of which were used instruments listed by an individual. Now you're likely to find ten times the number of guitars but 90% or more will be listed by a wholesaler or huge pawn shop. Some of it was to be expected - as eBay succeeded it attracted more businesses that could do more volume than any individual, and directly tying an individual's reputation to the number of transactions benefited those large sellers.

However, the seller policies were modified over the years in ways that benefited the larger sellers. For example, many small sellers left when eBay wholesale surrendered to big business efforts to ignore the legal rights protected by the first-sale doctrine. My smart-card programmer listing was pulled without explanation, which I finally figured out was apparently due to DirectTV claiming that it could be used to "hack" their equipment.

Unfortunately, each time I looked, I found no viable alternative. There are plenty of small auction sites, but none with a fraction of the buyers and/or the buyer and seller protections offered by eBay. Has the Web simply been too commercialized now for someone to make a new eBay that caters to individuals again?

Different company

[S-100]

Ebay will continue to make money, but as a different company. The millions of people (such as myself) who labored long and hard to make eBay a viable marketplace are being brushed aside so that eBay can transform itself into another Amazon.

I stopped selling on eBay earlier this year, and I'm focusing on my own e-commerce site which I've had even before starting with eBay. I've noticed that my "My eBay" stored searches for certain collectibles have been returning fewer and less meaningful results, which is partially the result of eBay's new "intelligent" search engine and the fact that fewer people are listing unique items any more.

But when I need to shop for a commodity item, it's often on eBay (as well as Amazon and other places). eBay is shaking off its unique aspects and spitting in the face of the people that worked to bring them to where they are today.

The Need for Growth

[sjbe]

I know several people who used to do a lot of business on Ebay who are rapidly becoming disgusted with it because of its clear preference for giant sellers over individuals; I'm not at all surprised to hear that this is a general trend.

The only sellers that should be disgusted are ones with their head in the sand. EBay's costs mostly fixed so they grow through volume. You get volume through larger customers who can provide that volume. Economic inevitability.

EVERY non-regulated company I'm aware of besides eBay provides volume discounts in some fashion for larger customers. I was an individual seller as well as a high volume power seller. One of the (many) reasons I no longer sell through eBay is precisely BECAUSE they provided no incentive for me to bring additional business to them. They kept raising rates instead of providing incentives to bring additional volume. Basically they priced me (and lots of others) out of their marketplace. It was too expensive as an individual or a business to continue to sell on eBay.

but why are they abandoning the business that made them successful in the first place?

The short answer is that they decided a long time ago to become a publicly traded company and the growth demands of being public is the deal with the devil you make to get equity funding. That's why companies don't really want to go public unless the owners are either cashing out (private equity) or they have no other choice. Had eBay remained a privately held company they could have chosen to stay their present size.

Businesses out grow their original business model all the time. Some businesses simply do not scale beyond a certain point. Amazon started as an online bookseller that had no warehouses of their own. That only scaled to a point. IBM got out of the personal computer business not long ago. That particular niche of the industry just didn't hold enough growth/profit potential for them anymore and was more of a distraction than an asset. When you are a publicly traded company shareholders demand growth and eBay has hit a wall with being the world's premier online flea market.

Re:The Need for Growth

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The IBM and Amazon examples don't really work here: Amazon still sells books (whether they have their own warehouses or not is basically invisible to the customer) and the PC, no matter how huge its impact may have been, was never more than a small fraction of IBM's revenue stream. If Amazon stopped selling books entirely, or IBM abandoned their mainframe business, then their shareholders would be up in arms, and rightly so.

Google doesn't want the liability

[sjbe]

Many of the hard-core ebay whiners on its website are practically BEGGING google to open up an auction site, mostly because it will have practically millions as a buyer base overnight.

Google doesn't want the liability. If anything kills eBay it's going to be getting sued by every luxury good maker on the planet. EBay claims they want to ensure authentic goods but is unwilling to take the steps needed to ensure authenticity - namely physical inspection of items and their paper trail. Such physical inspection is completely outside Google's business model so they would be in the same boat eBay is liability-wise.

All that of course assumes Google could take marketshare from eBay where Amazon and Yahoo failed. That's a BIG assumption.

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[torkus]

Well the big difference is that eBay tries to act like wal-mart. Making everything fit their ideals, extra safe, family oriented and nicey nice ... as long as they can squeeze out the extra .01c per transaction.

Is it me or has the size of eBay become the other half of the downfall. I hate searching for something and finding a million junk auctions or ubsurd shipping (which ebay is mostly to blame for anyhow) on many others. People that list 1000's of items simultaneously all for 'buy it now' aren't auctioning anything - they below in a store. Perhaps part of a larger, searchable multi-store "online mall" but still.

Ebay is trying to move away from 'auction' and towards 'online store front'. Meh.

Give me a google auction site and maybe i'll start doing online auctions again. Or better, convince Visa, MC, AMEX, or anyone to offer a realistic e-payment system that supports micropayments and fees somewhere close to reality. Seriously.

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[Anonymous Coward]

It just occurred to me that P2P networks have the same problem as eBay. They just want to be a connection broker...but the law wants to push them into taking greater responsibility.

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[EdIII]

All that of course assumes Google could take marketshare from eBay where Amazon and Yahoo failed. That's a BIG assumption.

A big assumption? Hardly. Amazon and Yahoo were competing with eBay when is used to be viable. That was very hard to do, VERY HARD. Amazon was really only good for literature and music anyways and they seem to be moving in that direction still.

I used to search eBay for items FIRST . I would get an idea of what the prices were, how much I could bid, how long to win, etc. I got many a laptop at 60-70% off retail prices for my clients doing this. I sold my cars on eBay, even though I never actually completed a sale. I just got leads.

Once eBay forced to me to offer PayPal I instantly canceled my account and told them why. I have not even used eBay as a buyer since then at all. In fact, I don't remember even visiting their website in quite some time. I now use Google Shopping quite a bit to locate good prices on the equipment that I need.

Google could have a user base millions strong overnight, and not by taking active eBay users either. They would have those millions that are waiting in limbo for the next big auction site to service their needs better than eBay.... like me. As soon as another company comes along that offers anything close to eBay I will give them a shot. I doubt that I am alone.

As for sellers, eBay just committed the final act of suicide. I cannot understate that. Inking a deal with a major outfit like Buy.Com is a big move, and without listing fees, a fatal one. The Power Sellers will not stand by and "compete" with Buy.Com in a one-sided unfair fight. That's ludicrous. How could they? Buy.Com could compete with volume alone and with the savings that no listing fees represent it force regular sellers to destroy their own profit margins to stay afloat.

No, I don't think it is a big assumption at all. I think you underestimate just how pissed off people are, both buyers and sellers alike. eBay is losing market share to the VOID . People would rather be doing anything but eBay, even if that is nothing at all.

eBay is losing both buyers and sellers at a pretty fantastic rate. Only they really know, but I bet they are being tight lipped about it. Probably even lying to themselves that they don't need those people or that they will be back. eBay is becoming less and less relevant as an online auction site for the common man. That is how they started it, and they have forgotten their roots. Perhaps they want to push to become something bigger and new, but they can't do it without the people that started it. When Joe Blow can't sell his stuff on eBay anymore, I don't see how he will continue to buy stuff either.

Personally, I thought eBay was going under after the PayPal scandal. With this new development.... start the death watch today, July 14th, 2008.

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[stewbacca]

Ebay is trying to move away from 'auction' and towards 'online store front'. Meh.

I stopped using eBay two years ago once the online stores overtook the individual sales. Try searching for used drum gear, and IF you can get past the 50 or so posts from stores listing their "auctions" for retail price, you "might" find a deal in the form of used gear from a fellow drummer.

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[sjbe]

As soon as another company comes along that offers anything close to eBay I will give them a shot. I doubt that I am alone.

You aren't alone but I think we are both going to be waiting quite a while. EBay for better or worse is going to be very hard to displace.

No, I don't think it is a big assumption at all. I think you underestimate just how pissed off people are, both buyers and sellers alike.

Underestimate? I have over 10,000 feedbacks and sold literally millions of dollars of merchandise through eBay. I no longer sell anything through eBay because eBay policies ended up costing me tens of thousands of dollars.

EBay basically made it impossible to do business with them and choked the life out of a company I worked very hard to build. You think I don't understand how pissed off people are? I understand better than almost anyone you'll ever meet.

eBay is losing both buyers and sellers at a pretty fantastic rate.

Really? You know that for sure? Because there is almost no financial data I can find to support that hypothesis.

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[hairyfeet]

Same here,although I never bothered to sell on eBay,I always went to eBay FIRST for my used computers and parts. After they started forcing the scam that was Paypal down everyone's throats I haven't been there since. I will pretty much shop anywhere BUT eBay. They have just become a haven for scammers and thieves,with eBay as one of the worst offenders with Paypal. So I would be happy to move my business to Google. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[EdIII]

Well I guess you are pissed off and rightly so. As for the financial data, well... that is a little naive. I am not insulting you or flaming you either. Those bastards LIE. LIE, LIE, and LIE some more. It's always worse than what they are telling you, and I am sure some pretty fancy "Arthur Anderson" type accounting can hide how many users they have lost.

Of course that is easy for me to say and not a very strong argument. However, you WERE a big seller, and I WAS a dedicated buyer. Does the financial data even reflect the amount of user base you would have expected to have disappeared by now?

Everyone I talk to does not visit eBay anymore now. Your the first big seller that I have personally heard that left eBay. It would seem logical that based upon my limited experience, which is 100% of people leaving eBay, that eBay has to be suffering serious losses and most likely hiding it.

They recently increased their fees substantially. Perhaps the people that are still left are keeping the numbers afloat giving that the increased fees allows less users to achieve the same cash flow. Give it another 18 months and look at the financial data. I expect a meltdown to occur inevitably as eBay cannot operate without buyers and sellers and I don't see a reason to stay.

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[sjbe]

I am not insulting you or flaming you either. Those bastards LIE. LIE, LIE, and LIE some more. It's always worse than what they are telling you, and I am sure some pretty fancy "Arthur Anderson" type accounting can hide how many users they have lost.

Again, nothing surprising to me here since professionally I'm a degreed industrial engineer and a certified accountant. When I'm not trying to be an entrepreneur I'm in the business of operations consulting so I need to know every sort of problem I'll run into including cooked books. I know all about the games that can be played with the numbers as well as the operations.

If you want the the short version of my opinion on eBay's prospects, I think eBay is on the verge of some serious problems but they aren't there yet. It's sort of like Microsoft in a way. Few people really love them but they haven't quite pissed everyone off enough to really torpedo their business. I think the biggest threat to them actually is litigation from luxury goods makers. That has the potential to drastically increase their costs and open the door to other marketplaces. But I don't expect anything in the near future. I expect eBay to remain a cash cow for the next several years at least.

But hey, here's to hoping eBay goes down like the Titanic...

Re:Google doesn't want the liability

[XHIIHIIHX]

I don't really see who's suing who here. I bought some of those christian audiger hoodies and that got shipped straight from china to me. So sue me? Or the guy in china. Best of luck with that. These overpriced designer labels are getting what they deserve. Produce quality goods and we'll pay a premium, otherwise stay in bollyhood.

Missing the point

[sjbe]

The IBM and Amazon examples don't really work here:

You are missing the point. The point is that companies often exit businesses that they were successful in. Even if they keep them they become a much smaller piece of the pie. I can come up with other examples if you like. How about Nintendo which started as a card company? Or 3M which originally sold corundum for grinding wheels? The point is that lots of businesses exit particular marketplaces all the time.

Re:everything is about money

[hostyle]

You're forgetting about Peak Money and also failing to take into account the effects of Global Earning! Wheres Al Gore when we need him ...

Compare to Google Product Search

[tepples]

Google doesn't want the liability. If anything kills eBay it's going to be getting sued by every luxury good maker on the planet. EBay claims they want to ensure authentic goods but is unwilling to take the steps needed to ensure authenticity - namely physical inspection of items and their paper trail. Such physical inspection is completely outside Google's business model so they would be in the same boat eBay is liability-wise.

But what's the difference? Google already offers a fixed-price marketplace called Google Product Search, powered by Google Base and Google Checkout. How does this incur any less liability than giving buyers 7 days to name their own best offer?

I can understand the reason for those, though

[phorm]

Guns, alcohol, and many others can be a regulated or restricted market. There are age-limits, and various others (permits required, restrictions against owning a firearm, etc) which makes the whole thing rather complicated. When your business is general-auctions, some things are best left to the specialists.

Ebay is missing some seriously needed features.

[pecosdave]

One thing eBay seriously needs is an individual blacklist. Set it up so that you can mark certain sellers (or buyers) as Bozo's and never see their auctions again. There's certain sellers I've never done business with I would like to blacklist for various reasons. 30 point blinking font in all caps on a contrasting background and excessive use of the word "rare" would be some valid reasons I can think of, along with working in names of completely different items into a description. If I could just eliminate sellers who do this serially one by one it would make searching a lot easier.

A nice addition to this would be a notation field that shows up next to people you have done business with that quickly links you to feedback you left for them in the past so you know who's good or who you may not want to mess with again if you can chose someone else.

More shipping info would be nice. Who the heck does "ground based shipping provider" mean? If it's (certain types of) DHL or USPS that has to go to my PO Box in my case, if it's UPS or FedEX it has to go to my house. The fact these retards don't read notes half the time doesn't help matters.

Instead of preventing sellers from leaving retaliatory feedback, there should be a seller review option. If you get retaliatory unexplained feedback check the retaliatory button, both feedbacks get removed temporarily, after the seller gets 10 or so checks, an actual eBay employee takes time out of their day to investigate. If it turns out the seller (or possibly buyer) is a serial feedback abuser they lose their right to leave bad feedback for a while, maybe even their account.

Identity verification needs to exist. Something to prevent any one person from having more than one account.

Make a few changes to get rid of the common dipshit, or at least filter them out, and eBay may be worth using again.

Ebay is worthless right now

[bill_kress]

There is absolutely no point in bidding before the last 5 seconds of any auction. This makes it really irritating.

I'd really like to see them say "Bidding will continue until at least (some time) plus up to 24 hours (randomly set).

Paying them as much as they want is also kind of silly--craig's list gives you the ability to meet the person you are buying from and examine the product. You can also avoid shipping.

Ever notice how a bunch of stuff on ebay is $0.02 + $5.00 shipping?? Honestly that's got to be a scam--someone is getting a cut of that shipping cost. Another nice policy would be that a buyer always has the option to arrange all shipping himself--(For instance: Just put it in an envelope and drop it in the mailbox, I'll take the responsibility, or "I'll have UPS show up at your door" or "I'll pick it up myself").

Re:Ebay is worthless right now

[the eric conspiracy]

Bidding will continue until at least (some time) plus up to 24 hours (randomly set)

I've used auction sites that did a variety things to extend the auction time, including what you suggest as well as adding time past the last bid. They sound great when you have lost an auction to a sniper, but in reality they have much more severe drawbacks than Ebay's system. Ebay's fixed end time is by far the best online mechanism I have run into. Online auctions really are not the same as outcry auctions, and work much better if different rules are used.

Ebay has a LOT of problems but this is not one of them.

Ever notice how a bunch of stuff on ebay is $0.02 + $5.00 shipping?? Honestly that's got to be a scam

Yes it is a scam, against Ebay. EBay charges a percentage of the selling price not including shipping. Sellers try to keep their Ebay fees lower by inflating the shipping costs. It is strictly in violation of Ebay terms of service.

I'd strongly suggest going into the Ebay message boards and spending some time there before buying and selling on Ebay. You will understand the site much better, which will lead to a far better experience.

Fraud-friendly

[phorm]

I had an item which I was bidding on, but got a bit too pricey for me. About a week later, it popped up again in a second-chance, offer, so I snagged it.

Now, apparently the second-chance offer was a scan wherein somebody hacked the seller's account and was trying to get people to pay with an alternate email address. However, I paid through the proper channels (pay by paypal button) etc and the money went to the *correct* seller's account.

Of course, about an hour or two later the seller's account was temporary closed, and the auction removed. So I called the seller, who indicated that his ebay account had been hacked. I pointed out that I had paid to *his* (not the hacker's) paypal account, which was not hacked, and he offered to refund my money.

2 days later, no refund

So I had to go through hell with a bunch of the morons at paypal (who will thoroughly disclaim that they work with the same company, though ebay owns them now), pointing out that *EBAY* had closed the auction due to the hacked account. They told me that I could only file a 'did not receive' or 'not as expected' claim, but if I filed did not receive and then something arrived (even if it was a load of bricks), I could not later put in a "not-as-expected" claim. I also couldn't put in a "did not receive" claim yet because I had to give the seller time to send the item (which came from a bad listing, go figure).

So time goes by, and finally after days of calling them, they put the damn dispute in. Another several weeks I spent waiting while the seller simply ignored the dispute and didn't respond at all, and then it went in my favor. I got my money back - actually, less than my money back, did you know that on both a purchase and refund Visa will service-charge your ass for changing currencies, that's another story though - and was able to look laptop shopping *outside* of ebay.

The sad thing, that seller's account is still active, and he's happily still selling laptops. I couldn't even leave negative feedback because the auction I had been screwed on had been taken down by ebay.

So maybe the seller's account wasn't hacked, so he didn't commit fraud that way. He sure as hell did by keeping my money though, and forcing me to fight to get it back.

What does that tell me? Ebay, and paypal, support fraud, and they support fraudulent sellers. Screw them.

I don't know about you guys, but

[C_Kode]

I don't know about you guys, but nothing makes me feel more warm and fuzzy on the inside then finding an item I'm looking for at a great price on Ebay then seeing that the seller is charging 10x the actual shipping.

I am the seller mentioned in the NYT article

[BenelliShooter]

I am the technology products seller mentioned in the article. I have a BS in Comp Sci. from the University of Maine, 95', and have been a Software Engineer at several .com's until I wrote the code that is running my website (http://www.teckwave.com/#showMostViewed), eBay Store (http://stores.ebay.com/TECKWAVE), Amazon, and Google Base accounts. It's written in Java using the Google Web Toolkit for the website and several Web Service API's for integration with the various marketplaces, distributors, and warehouses. It runs on Amazon's EC2 compute cloud and uses S3 for image hosting. My intention from the start was to create a scalable software platform to make selling online easy, and I think I've about done it. Buy.com coming into eBay and getting their backroom deal has accelerated my plans. No hard feelings though, business is business. If anyone's interested in helping me scale this platform please email me... tlibby *at* TECKWAVE.com

Re:Ebay is dead, the body hasn't hit the ground ye

[mlwmohawk]

Think what you wish. I said the same thing about Wang, DEC, Pr1me, and others.

EBay will be dead and buried in less than 5 years, It will be acquired and destroyed by some giant like Microsoft, Google, or possibly even a rebounding Yahoo (long shot).

EBay doesn't add any real business value to the large customers it is currently targeting.

Paypal is a good idea, but FedEx, UPS, or even the USPS could offer shippers and receivers escrow and verification.

With Craigslist existing and growing, EBay doesn't have a viable business model.

If you disagree, please tell me what ebay brings to the table that Craigslist does not also offer? (And no, auctions are dead, people are sick of them.)

How best Buy has been scamming on E-bay

[goombah99]

Maybe this is actually some sort of devil's bargain to put an end to the scam best buy has been running on e-bay for years. Best buy has this network of 2nd parties like "2ndTurn" and "DealTree", that simply sell-off Bestbuy closeouts. The scam is that they don't disclose they are best buy agents. So when you get to the check-out you suddenly see this whopping charge for local taxes you were not expecting.

2ndTurn lists it's address as Texas on all it's auctions so people outside of texas don't expect to pay tax since there's no @ndTrun brick and mortar stores.

But 2ndTurn is just BestBuy in sheeps clothing. Since they are one and the same they have to charge the brick-and-mortar state taxes. Yet all the complaints and abuse never gets connected to best buy.

It's a screw because people take this into account when they bid and then wind up paying 8 to 10% more than they bargained for. So best buy makes more money.

Moreover 2ndturn is vicious and aggressive about people who refuse to pay after they disclose this.

So maybe this is just

e-wants it anyway.

[fish_in_the_c]

I started lossing intrest in e-bay as soon as they stopped being a place for normal people to sell thier junk and became a place for 'business' to make a killing (driving up the price and complicating the search). I want to buy online for stuff that is cheaper then I can get it for in the store , because buying online requires greater risk ( identity theft, shipping , getting shafted,inability to easily return, etc.). So if I can't get it cheap because it's basically something someone is trying to get rid of or it is something so hard to find I can't get it in my area, why would I buy it on e-bay.

Re:Placing Your Max Bid Early

[remmelt]

An argument against that:

People are emotional beings. Let's say we both want to buy an item. You want to spend $200, I want to spend $210 max. In a perfect world, the auction would go to me for $205 (or something like that.)

We both place our bids, you see the $205 amount and think "Hey, I can spend another $10 on that." Bidding war.

Then there are the people who really don't want to lose because only losers lose. It's all very emotional.

Best would be if all the people would just place a secret bid, then afterwards the price is announced, but that will never happen because it keeps prices down.

The proposed 5 minute extension after a bid in the last 5 minutes of an auction is good as well.

Ebay proxy bidding: a tutorial

[Cassander]

You seem to be confused about how eBay's proxy bidding system works. That's OK, you're not alone. Based on the prevalence of "sniping" programs and people complaining about losing auctions due to "sniping", it seems nobody understands proxy bidding.

Here's how it works: You bid what you are willing to pay. No more, no less. eBay then bids ONLY AS MUCH AS NECESSARY to make you the winning bidder. Competitors DO NOT get to see your maximum bid. The seller DOES NOT get to see your maximum bid. The only person who knows is you, and maybe some admin at eBay.

Example: You are bidding on an auction. You decide that you are willing to pay exactly $21 for the item (you want to beat people willing to pay the nice round figure of $20, but $22 is just plain outside of your budget). Let's say the current high bid stands at $17. If you bid $21, you will be the winning bidder at $18. Even if you bid $10,000,000 your visible bid will only be $18 (until someone else bids higher than $18, that is).

I have participated in many auctions on eBay, and the only ones I have ever "lost" were due to the simple fact that someone else was willing to pay more than I was for the item in question. Sometimes they do it in the last 4 seconds of the auction (which is admittedly annoying), but they still have to be willing to pay more than I am.

It seems that a lot of people care more about winning the auction (like it's some kind of contest) than they do about getting the merchandise for an acceptable price. To me, THEY are the suckers.

Re:Ebay proxy bidding: a tutorial

[dgatwood]

No, just because you don't understand the complaint doesn't make it invalid. Yes, the people who care more about winning than about getting the merchandise at a decent price are suckers. The reality, however, is that because there are so many of those people, all of whom bid with bots, the odds of anyone -ever- buying -anything- at a reasonable price on eBay rapidly approaches zero, making it a waste of people's time to even bother bidding unless it is at the last second in hopes that your random snipe bot might generate the lucky closing bid and do so at a price that is still under your personal maximum for the item.

Also, searching for items on eBay takes time. If that auction is then snatched by somebody else at the last second for only a dollar more than your high bid, people naturally feel cheated---not because they didn't bid what they felt the item was worth to them, but because the amount of extra money somebody else paid was so small that the value of the time they have to spend searching for another one and bidding for it exceeds the amount of extra money they would have had to pay to win the auction. That's what makes the last-second bidding thing absolutely suck for buyers.

Finally, there's the problem of snipe bidders who then turn around and resell the products on eBay. They calculate the average selling price minus fees and shipping costs and effectively guarantee that no product will ever sell below that price. In effect, this creates an artificial supply shortage and drives up the average selling price of goods for everyone. Of course, eBay doesn't want to stop that because they rake in money from fees every time somebody does it.

And then there's the issue of shill bidding---somebody bidding against you to find out what your maximum bid is and make you pay as much as possible. Of course, they might accidentally go too far on occasion, but odds are somebody will outbid them, and if not, they could always retract the bid (and then rebid as a different user for just a little less than your maximum bid). It's probably safe to assume that such things happen far more than eBay would like us to believe.

I have participated in many auctions on eBay, and with only one or two exceptions, the only ones I have ever "won" were because I bid low initially, then sniped against myself and the other snipers at the end (and even then, success is limited). The system is utterly broken as it stands now, and I have basically stopped buying anything through eBay unless it has either a "buy-it-now" option or an "or-best-offer" option.... Either every bid should require you to key in the text from a CAPTCHA or bidding should be extended by five minutes every time someone bids within the last minute of the auction. Either one would fix the problem. Until the problem is fixed, eBay is, IMHO, an utter waste of my time.

Cooperate with Sellers

[sjbe]

Ebay's growth doesn't have to be by squeezing the sellers.

Exactly my point. EBay would do a lot better in the long run if they treated their sellers like genuine partners instead of cows to be milked. They cannot and should not try to please everyone but their solution to increasing profits so far has just been to raise prices on sellers and frankly they're just about at the point they cannot do that much more.

For example, they bought Skype and they could do something with it to grow their company.

Skype to my mind is the most retarded thing eBay has done to date. It has zero fit with their current business model or with their skill set. It's probably the clearest signal that the eBay management is seriously lacking in talent or discipline. Of course that's why they had a $1.4 billion write down on their purchase of Skype.

Search by individual sellers

[IdahoEv]

One feature alone would instantly pull me from eBay to whatever competitor there is: search and filter by "used item" vs "new item" and also "individual seller" vs. "large retail outlet".

When I go to online auctions, I'm looking for a deal on something used. I'm tired of living in a society where paying full priced new is the only option: it means individuals who'd be happy with a used widget have to spend more and our landfills fill up with still-useful widgets.

When I search eBay now for (tools/computers/whatever), I get 90% listings from large businesses selling new, usually crappy knock-off, items. I don't want a cheap chinese $20 wood router that barely functions. I want a used porter-cable router from some hobbyist who is downsizing his garage or upgrading to a newer tool. But the floods of cheap chinese crap are all I can find on eBay!

Re:No laughs

[Anonymous Coward]

We really need to do something about the moderation system to avoid situations like this: the punch line is currently at +4, but all the build up lines are at 0, so we get to see the punchline first and then have to click to reveal the other lines. Which comedy school did the Slashdot programmers go to? This is like reading Abbot and Costello, but with Abbot modded to oblivion.

Just like the flea markets

[thewolfe]

You know, the swap meet/ flea market used to be fun. You could go thru peoples junk (from their own garage) and find cool stuff and great deals.. Then during the late 80's, it all started turning to Chineese junk and dealers of it. The last time I went to a swap meet, there were like 30 rows of "import" crap and only one row of garage sellers. Ebay is headed that way. RIP