Ebay Prices

Well this guy knew exactly what he was doing. Ripping off big on postage. If a thing is so overpriced, stamps, pencils, shipping, whatever, then no-one in their right mind will buy, so how is that keeping the bay in business? Surely it is in ebay's interest too, to protect buyers from this nonsense.

Terry

$Listing Fees$ certainly not selling fees. You are right, these auctions never sell. Buyers don't need 'protection' from stupid pricing. The marketplace punishes the bad sellers.

In my opinion, one of the things that's gone wrong with ebay is the "free listings" they offer. When a seller had to pay for each listing, it was in his interest to price an item to sell.

Perhaps they should charge for all listings and refund the listing fee if the item sells.

There are two issue here that I feel I need to comment on.
#1. I don't want clueless sellers on ebay, either high or low. I think the guys that list things too high bring back memories of the days when many dealers were outright crooks. I think those days are well behind us for the most part. I also do not want to take advantage of anyone as a buyer.
#2. The Global shipping program in ebay is very frustrating and charges the buyers way too much. I somehow had signed up for it as a seller, but for the life of me I don't remember doing it. It must have been a fine print deal. ebay is very reluctant to let it go. I had to drop the option of selling to buyers outside of the US. I did start a new ID and I actually read the fine print (there is a lot of it) and while I never saw an option for Global shipping to select, everything has gone through with this new ID and I am able to offer fair shipping to international buyers without the Global Shipping Program. I have a rating over 3000 with my old ID. My new ID is almost up to 400 in just a few months. I did not close my old ID. I now have two ebay ID's. I may go back to the original for selling at some point but for now I just buy with that ID.

All of your points are good, but not necessarily plausible.

Policing ebay, et al, is too big a job for any one organization to manage. It is helpful when communities like SCF point out the problem listings both to their members and to ebay, but it will never be enough because there will always be crooks and clueless sellers - no matter how hard we try!

Additionally, there are many nuances between the aforementioned and the inexperienced (I draw a distinction between "clueless" and inexperienced". EG - a clueless seller doesn't know what a grill is. An inexperienced seller might misidentify grill types. In both cases, no malice is intended). This is where we can help with a message to the seller to try and help them.

All of this happens every year on ebay. They waive listing fees for a week or two and all of the crackpots come out of the woodwork. It's best to just ignore them and patiently wait for "free week" to end.

Brian

If you want to see if ebay has roped you into the GSP program or not - go to your "My ebay" page. Click on the account tab then click on Site Preferences on the left side and then Shipping Preferences. Look in the list for the Global Shipping Program. Hopefully it will say NO. There's an edit button which may or may not work. Other people complained it didn't work in the past, but that might have changed. Also make sure it's turned off in TurboLister. pjsstamps: you might have clicked okay on one of those "User Agreement Updates". I saw them too and simply deleted them without clicking anything.

The GSP program has been compared to the Roach Motel as "Once you check in, you can't check out". This is ebay's first attempt to fleece the buyer and again many sellers were duped into this program. Read some of the ebay forums if you really want to see some poison posts about this program.

As for Free Listings, I find them to be an absolute blessing and necessary. I don't run auctions on ebay without them. Without them you probably wouldn't see too many sellers list anything for under $10 or more. The vast majority of stamps and covers are not worth that thus a lot of material would be missing. If a seller moves 10-20% of one's material per one week auction you're probably doing pretty good, but if you had to pay a fee on every item, then it wouldn't be worth it to try at all. The fees would be too much. I don't think there's much of a causation between high selling prices and free listings. Yes, you see examples, but that's hardly a guiding statistic. Instead it allows the smaller sellers and sellers of lower priced items to have a chance of success with a lower risk.

I guess I'm behind the times. When did ebay go back to all free listings?

At least the last year or so it's been the 1st 50 listings free, unless you do add-ons.

That is until it sells.

Rieysan: It hasn't. On the U.S. site everyone gets 50 free listings per month which will change on May 15th. Then everyone will get 100 free listings if you list in certain categories like stamps and other collectibles and 50 of those listings have to be auction format.

Usually once to twice a month ebay will also give sellers in good standing 7-11 days to list for free in auction or fixed price formats. Sellers of course are still bound by their monthly limits. The most recent free listing period starts today with a limit of 1,000 items per day in seven day auction format. That offer ends May 19. Thus from now till seven days after the 19th, ebay will have loads of free listings present. Not everyone gets these offers. If you're not a good seller you don't get them thus there's not as many crackpots as you may think with free listings. There's probably other factors that determine if you get the offer or not, but ebay's not very forthcoming about that. I believe they also rotate the free listings offers around thus at any time a sector of the sellers have free listings aside from the usual 50 per month or those with stores. I don't consider listings by store owners as free listings as they paid for them as part of the monthly fee.

Unlike the old days, inflating shipping charges does little to gain you more profit since ebay's final value fee now includes the shipping fee you charge. I found this out when I sold an X box this Christmas and promptly paid $70 in fees :(

Hard to believe....

X Box ONE, not the old version

Final value fees on ebay are 10% of the selling cost + shipping cost on fixed price items, so with a sale of over $700 I had to pay $70+ in fees.

"I don't want clueless sellers on ebay, either high or low"

Agree, but hard to prevent

"In my opinion, one of the things that's gone wrong with ebay is the "free listings" they offer. When a seller had to pay for each listing, it was in his interest to price an item to sell."

I don't like it when they run their periodic a gazillion listings for free promos as it brings out both a lot of junk, and a lot of overpriced stuff (some junk, so not). The categories I regularly shop and sell in sswell during these promos and it becomes much harder to find things in amongst all the junk, so I don't like it as a buyer and I'm not sure I like it as a seller (I get to list more stuff for free, but can anyone find it). There are certain sellers that repeatedly trot out overpriced stuff every time they run these promos and it really clogs up the place.

I remember the first time I saw the free listing promo f 10,000 free listings. I just thought... WHAT?? Who has the time to do that. But then I may list something once every couple years or so.

Personally, I love clueless sellers. Unfortunately these days I'm mostly finding sellers that tend to inflate the value of their listings or that list valueless items. But I figure/hope they add enough noise with their thousands of useless items that the more tenacious buyer is likely to find bargains. It is really annoying though. It's almost as though ebay is becoming part BidStart, where the Bidstart-like portion is unrealistically priced and rarely has a chance of selling, and the decent ebay sellers are few and far between.

But if you knownwhatbyou want it's pretty easy to bypass the dross. If your just browsing for bargains it's now major work.