Ebay Going Down.

Alright who is the clown that keeps changing everything on my ebay pages. Now they are renaming and consolidating countries when you do a search. On another note their auctions have dwindled to a trickle. Do a search and you end up with about 20,000 to 40,000 entries but when you click on auction only it drops to only a couple hundred.

Basically they know how to kill a company pretty good.

Rant off.

Been like that for a while. Particularly when selecting a country and 5,000 or so total listings are indicated say, then when used is selected only a few hundred are shown. How does that work? Or should I say, not.

Terry

They don't care about us much ! Would rather you sell your car there instead of STAMPS !

That is because the sellers are not putting a tick in the mint or used box.

Bidstart is also 98% Buy it now.

Well, and less than a quarter of the stamp lots up for auction are actually up for auction. More than 3/4 of the lots are Buy It Now (BIN). And the BIN prices can be . . . whew.

Here is an example of a ridiculous

http://www.ebay.com/itm/APO-897-San...300907738121

Keep in mind that the point of the auction is the return address written on the cover by the sender, not any actual postal markings. Guess I better start writing some creative return addresses on my CZ covers.

I think a lot of the problem should be directed toward sellers and not ebay. ebay is just a platform. Sellers are getting VERY greedy and jacking up prices because 1) They don't know what anything is worth and 2)Selling at BIN is quicker and more profitable to them.
This is across the board, not only in the stamp market. My 2 cents worth.

Its a prejudice I have, but so many of the BIN prices are wishful nonsense - when a reasonably priced item comes along...I do a double take...What is wrong with this item?? What am I missing?? Where is the catch??

ebay just gave me up to 400,000 free auction listings, but I'm not ready yet. Hope they'll do it again as it's the only reason I continue to stay with ebay.

I would blame ebay. The sellers are individuals - there's no hive mind to collectively raise prices. ebay has been jacking up rates - listing fees on 99 cent items have tripled, the FVF (and that includes 10% of shipping too) are now 10% unless you have a store and yes store prices have gone up too unless you subscribe for a whole year. Of course PayPal takes a chunk too. The BIN prices on ebay have to be 30% or higher than the starting auction price - fairly new ebay rule. ebay has been actively trying to kill off auctions and have been pushing BIN hard under the belief that buyers want quick gratification.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, ebay's biggest competition is Amazon and generally when two major compete they tend to become the same. ebay has warehouses now. ebay sells for Radio Shack. ebay has international third party shipping/customs processing that they are actively trying to rope sellers into - the GSP program. ebay has been toying around with same day shipping and all the other things that Amazon has done. ebay has been pushing towards consumerable goods for a long time now and has thrown the collectibles market under the bus.

ebay is not just a platform - more like a pupper master or "Master of the House" from a popular musical and film.

I just watched an ebay item go from a "good deal" to a "no deal" in the last days of biding. The 6 Minkus Global albums that looked to be a nice find for someone that uses them, that is if you could get them at the opening bid of $100. I thought I'd wait till the last day to enter my bid. But in my mind the max worth should be $180 plus the $30 shipping, that's $35 each. Maybe $200 plus the shipping making it about $38 each at the outside. I just bought 5 brand new Minkus albums at just about $45 each, with shipping.

My congratulations to the "winner" of the ebay auction with a reserve, in the end the 6 albums went for a few more cents than I paid new! I guess I just don't understand this whole ebay thing. But I have found a few deals out there. If I am able to land one of them here and there, then I feel lucky!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/6-Minkus-Su...em58a0cbdc33

Too bad..eBay in the early days was a great place to find stuff and make a few extra bucks..then it got corporate with greed and with it constantly changing rules, policies, rates etc. Sellers even took time to provide a proper description of the items offered for sale...now that's more or less gone..replaced with the never ending text of conditions of sale etc etc.

..along with ridiculous shipping and handling costs

Nothing would persuade me to pay $280 or so dollars for those Minkus albums. Apart from being overpriced even new (to me) they are so big they would be near unmanageable when filled with album leaves. I would prefer albums of thinner capacity and more of them. I must admit that finding decent album binders nowadays is difficult. Modern machine binding is nowhere near as good as the old traditional binding methods. I picked up six nice Frank Godden 'Popular' album quarter bound leather binders last year for a total of $160. Just need to save the $500 or thereabouts for the 400 double linen hinged leaves to go in them now. Bummer, eh?

Terry

I'm also a WWI & WWII. bayonet collector and I have noticed the same things going on with those kinds of items recently; and an even bigger peeve of mine is the low BIN or bid price and an exorbitant shipping rate! say you want to pay $50.-$60. for an item and then as your ready to commit you see the $300.00 ship[ping charge! Ridiculous!

After reading this thread I am very glad I am no longer with ebay.com

ebay.com .au is perfectly put together for me to list collectible auction style very cheaply as an ebay store.

ebay.com .au has moved from being extremely primitive and going nowhere to being an extremely great place to have an ebay store.

Hoping very much that this ebay marketing plan lasts for many years to come.

It is the day of ebay.com .au!

As a casual seller ebay has become fraught with difficulties for me. Buyers all seem to have unreasonable expectations re speed of delivery- I have sold things for a buck or so then been asked for the 'tracking number'. Most of these people act as if you're doing charity work on their behalf. And I won't even talk about the problems I have with overseas sales, I just won't do it on items valued at more than a few dollars.