Uh Oh! Mandatory 6-Month Returns If You Accept Paypal

2000+ ebay sales. As I have observed on other forums for years - ebay / paypal hates sellers, even though it is sellers that generate its revenues.

Now, do the sellers get their money extracting it from the thin air, or does it still come from the buyers, who feed everybody?!

A buyer and seller come to the table ( ebay) to conduct a transaction. The transaction can't happen without both parties. But the buyer comes to the table with money in hand. Money talks...so to speak. As a 10,000+ ebay seller I too have grumbled about ebay's (perceived) bias in favor of buyers, but ebay is still my preferred sales venue.

It's a chicken and egg argument with varying perspectives. Some would say that there can be no ebay without buyers, others would say the same re: sellers. A third perspective is that since buyers pay sellers and sellers pay ebay, the sellers are more accurately ebay's customers rather than buyers.

Truth be known, it's a symbiotic relationship where all parties benefit, however ebay increasingly is making themselves an unpleasant parasitic part of the arrangement.

Indisputably, ebay and PayPal have been hugely successful. I can understand making some improvements over the years, but at some point you would think they would abide by the "if it works, don't fix it" principle.

rustc: I wish that was true, but there's so much turnover at ebay and PayPal and each new wave of executives and managers always wants to fiddle with the formula and leave their mark for better or worse.

I wrote on here years ago that ebay wanted to become Amazon 2.0 and that's becoming a reality piece by piece. It should be interesting to see how ebay reacts to Alibaba.

If anyone is curious where e bay is heading, it's this direction according to marketplace president Devin Wenig :


As for Alibaba:


http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/a.../m09/i05/s02

It took me a while to understand just how deep the rift is between sellers and buyers. Those who are hard core sellers (hard core = gleaning a substantial amount of income from selling stamps) have a much different perspective then others. This can be seen in topics like this and some of the more controversial topics in this forum. Those who espouse the 'buyer beware' perspective are generally the sellers. They often feel like they had o 'learn the hard way' or that there is a 'price to learn a hobby'. Ditto on topic like this one, sellers see it as having to deal with the cost and expense of a very old transaction. These folks get frosted when speaking on the issue of not being able to leave feedback for a buyer on ebay. Having owned a retail store for many years I can certainly understand the seller's perspective. Retailer 'burn out' is a very real thing after you have dealt with customers who pull some of the craziest stuff you have ever seen. I could tell you stories…

But on the buyer's side of the issue many see things from the opposite perspective. They seek things like a longer period to return items. They feel they are the ones who are actually paying the ebay bill, that sellers cost of doing business is built into the price they are paying for an item. They view this the same way as they do brick and mortar retail stores, they are the customer and they are 'always right'. Of course one key aspect of this group is that this is where our hobby get all their new hobbyists from, we all started as buyers. Unfortunately it could be we don't hear much from this group at times because they never get far enough in the hobby to join forums such as this one.

Every time a topic on ebay or other transactional dilemma is discussed, the rift between these perspectives becomes quite obvious. I am unsure how to get everyone on the same page. Those which argue that our hobby needs to do what we can to protect new hobbyists have a good point. Left uneducated in today's minefield of sellers a noob stands a good chance of being taken, sometime more than once. On the other hand, over regulation drives up costs and can be detrimental to the hobby in other ways such as eventually limiting competition.

So is there a solution to appeasing both the buyer and seller groups or will they forever by divided?
Don

Don - e-bay has only one customer: those who sell on the site. e-bay derives zero revenue from buyers. Buyers are the seller's customers, not e-bay's. All of a sudden though, e-bay has decided that buyers are its true customers and has begun to micro-manage transactions that it has no absolutely nothing to do with saleswise (it neither supplies the stock nor pays the sale price). Unfortunately by doing so, e-bay has greatly alienated sellers and sadly in the process, created a divide which is now probably irreversible, unless it goes back to its role as middleman, which is all that sellers are paying it to be.

Jenny,
While that is a common opinion, it is not shared by ebay. Look at any of the ebay pages concerning Customer Support or Customer care, etc. such as this one "Contacting ebay Customer Support"
http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/...support.html Obviously they call the buyer the customer. For right or wrong (shareholders would absolutely agree with it) their business model is that the buyer is their customer. It has been this way since they started.

In fact Google works the same way. You can go buy an ads with them, and in fact spend some big money with them, but they still view the person who is searching as their real customer. I know it sounds counter intuitive but users who may never spend a dime with them are considered their customers. The only revenue stream and dollar that Google sees coming in come from ads, but that is how they operate.
Don

If and when Stanley Gibbons ever gets their re-buid of BidStart running (the existing/old BidStart site is now horrendous due to technical problems that have driven away many buyers), they are also supposed to be launching their own payment system. The potential there is huge if SG can capitalize on it, and if they do, there could be quite the migration to there from ebay. I do well on ebay both buying and selling, but like many others, the seller-pressure due to their constant micro-managing is wearing on me.

That only goes to illustrate the point (made by many here) that as big as they are, ebay is not able to recognize their own customer. Many of their other business assumptions are equally wrong, and that does not bode well for their future.

In the ebay ecosystem the buyer is the source of demand and ultimately the revenue. It makes perfect sense that ebay view the buyer as THE customer, even though the seller directly pays the bill (though you could also view the bill as a slice of the revenue from the buyer). The seller provides supply and apparently ebay believes it's newest initiatives will increase revenue to the system at the expense of some replaceable supply.

Sh*tBay and Paypal again strike sellers. But they are not aware that in doing so destroy themselves, and if it continues it will be like as the fall of the Western Roman Empire. High fees, buyer diaper "protection", allowing buyers criminal activity, funny new feedback system, new global shipping program, and funny "report buyer" etc.
Now you're up, now you're down. I would not be surprised if in a few years, ebay and PayPal fall into the background, as buying site and as the payment method.

When e-bay first started, it understood that its role was merely to connect sellers to buyers from all over the world. Meg just wanted to sell that Pez dispenser. It has now evolved into some sort of quasi Amazon clone, even though it supplies zero product. This confused identity is good for no one - most of all e-bay and sales will no doubt suffer.