Big Drop In Ebay Sales This Week

One other thing about Delcampe that is nice. Their search engine allows for string searches. This is more of a benefit for buyers, but you don't have the same problem you get with ebay which likes to either auto correct your search topic or suggest things that have no resemblance to what you are searching for. It makes Delcampe a nice research tool as well.

Art: If you haven't looked at Delcampe yet, you'll find the German and French categories of Delcampe more to your liking. Both well developed on Delcampe.

Don is correct, love, hate or tolerate ebay. It's still the largest venue in town and brings the most people together.

Without checking at the moment, is that 180 million listings the whole site or just the stamps category?

It occurs to me that two of 'our' complaints about ebay may be reciprocal.

1) They have discontinued peer-review style programs for review of buyer-seller disputes.

2) They have instituted a draconian six-month period to initiate buyer-seller disputes.

#2 is vastly cheaper & easier to administer (for them), but achieves much the same result as #1.

We can find reasons to prefer #1 but, in the context of 180 million listings, if I were overseeing the eBigBangBay & its stock price & its employees careers, I would hope that I would make the same cold choice that they did.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

The actual number of listings is hard to determine, many accuse ebay of artificially inflating the numbers. ebay estimates the number of listings at 125 million total. Others estimate it differently; here is one site that calculates the number of listings hourly http://www.powersellersunite.com/au...itewatch.php
I think part of the problem in determining the number of listings is the fact that it is so dynamic. And of course ebay operated as separate 'divisions', each with their own servers and across international lines.

The number of transactions is also a bit ephemeral but trying to understand the number of fraudulent transaction is even harder. "Fraud is a significant risk factor for ebay. BBC (2005) reported that around 1 in 10,000 transactions within the UK were fraudulent…" is used in this article http://www.smartinsights.com/ecomme...ase-study-2/. That was in 2005 but the issue has only gotten larger. This indicates that the world-wide number of fraudulent transactions (in both directions) might be as high as 100,000 per day now.

So in my opinion the real threat to ebay is their total lack of proper vetting of user accounts. Frankly, you could easily build an account for your dog or cat. As long as you can setup a bank account or credit card they will give you an account and you can have as many accounts as you desire. This has undermined creditability and opened the door for exploits. ebay should crack down on this practice and require a REAL physical address be on file for each account. Multiple accounts should only be allowed in special circumstances. In my opinion they need to spend a lot more time and money vetting accounts to head off the threat of fraud before it gets even further out-of-hand.
Don

I have read that some of you are stamp sellers on ebay, but some of you have not given your ebay id for those who may want to look at your stamps for sale on there.

Not sure about other folks but I do not publish my ebay name or listings because of a certain seller in UK who maliciously leaves negative feedback due to the Stamp Smarter website. I do not go to great lengths to hide it but there is not much sense in handing it to him so he can do this.

Remaining anonymous on forum like this one has its advantages and disadvantages. I went ahead and let everyone know my real name so Stamp Smarter would be transparent and felt it added a bit more creditability. But I have not extended this to my ebay name because it has nothing to do with this forum or Stamp Smarter.

It is a shame since most of the stuff I sell on ebay goes for deep discounts, I have no idea how some sellers seem to be able to get the prices they do. For example, right now I have a large lot of US MNH plate blocks for sale that I started at no reserve. These are mostly 1920s-1940s and is about $70 face value; very little interest with only a handful of bids up to around $10. Yet there are several listings from other sellers who seem to be able to sell lots of common 3cent plate blocks for 5 times face. But I am not a dealer, just a collector who 'gives away' a lot of material which I do not collect.
Don

So, the risk is negligible, eg, if I completed one purchase every day for thirty *years*, I'd get screwed *once*.

Compared to the risk of food poisoning by dining at 10,000 restaurants, or from thirty years of grocery shopping, this statistic makes ebay sound safer than sitting in my mother's lap.

[tangential_anecdote]

Merck closed-down Vioxx because of a risk that 6 people in 1,000 would have a stroke each year. For the individual, to keep the math crude, that works-out to ~1/5 chance of a stroke in 30 years of daily, effective pain relief. I suspect that most folks with serious arthritis pain would take both the Vioxx and the bet.

[/tangential_anecdote]

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Am I the only one for whom the word " ebay" in every post is a hyperlink to ebay?

They are affiliate links from which the SCF owner derives income if someone clicks through and buys something.

Agreed that this is part of the issue. But ebay has to try to strike the right balance between good, solid identity verification and not making the registration process so onerous that people give up. They're a huge, multi-billion dollar company. I have no doubt they have well-paid people to analyze their cost and benefit of every policy and fee they have or are considering.

So if the bay is the only marketplace, and they won't protect me, how can I protect myself against fraudulent buyers? Are there signs I should look for that would indicate a possibly mendacious buyer? And if identified can I block, or refuse, their bid?

Terry

Terry: You can block potential buyers who have a history of not paying their bids. You can also block bidders by user name. As for other offenses, I don't know but the reality is that at least for stamps the risk is still very minimal at least from my experience. The potential is high thanks to ebay's rules, but the reality is that most people are honest and to withdraw 100% of your business from a venue where problems are less than 1% is a bit much. The postal services have a worse rate.

The best thing to do is to take whatever steps necessary to protect yourself. Send expensive items with tracking and pack things well - use insurance if needed. Describe conditions of all items in great detail, don't list items until you are certain of identification and have good photos. Great communication and service can eliminate a lot of potential problems. And there will always the possibility of a potential problem, but that's not a reason not to do anything. That would be giving in to fear.

You are right, Battlestamps. I will stand my ground on the bay.

Terry

I am brand new here but a long time collector and participant on ebay (over 3,000 transactions since 1997). As a buyer, there are a variety of things that impact my behavior.

First. the vast majority of stamps offered on ebay are buy-it-now. For example, I just search all of British Commonwealth and Colonies and found 263,219 lots. Of those, there are 54,196 auctions, which represents 20.5% of the total. The other 79.5% of the lots are buy-it-now. When I started on ebay in 1997, 100% of the lots were auctions. The auctions are a lot more fun. The rest are just price lists, which can be found all over the internet and by mail.

Now there are some scarce items offered buy-it-now, but most are not scarce and sellers price a lot, perhaps the majority, at retail prices. I think a lot of buyers are like me- they don't go onto ebay to pay retail. If I want to pay retail, I'll buy at shows where I can see the stamps and be sure I am happy with the quality. Or, I could buy from sellers who I know and trust from years of doing business where I know they will send me quality. And I know if they make a mistake, I can return the stamps and they don't accuse me of switching stamps out.

I cannot articulate how frustrating it is to receive hinged for never hinged, or stamps with tropical stains, tears, holes, and all kinds of flaws that are difficult or impossible to see in the scans provided, often because the seller has arranged the stamps in the scan to obscure corner, perf, and gum problems. Then I have to post them back at my expense and wait for a refund (even though I paid first and paid for the postage to receive the stamps). This is not uncommon- I would say 30-40% of the lots I receive from ebay (and Delcampe) are lower quality than described, and every* seller swears they didn't look or didn't see or think I'm just a swindler. I have had better luck overall on BidStart, which I like a lot, but I still probably need to return 20-25% of items received from BidStart.

At times, I have given up buying from unknown sellers and I suspect other buyers go in cycles just like I do. But in the end, it's a hassle to send stuff back and lose money in the process.

I think if the philatelic community auctioned most items, and were super vigilant about describing conditional issues (after all, don't sellers reject items you don't want to sell? Buyers are the same!), I think the general trend in sales would be more positive overall.

I still buy stamps online- a lot of them. Hundreds of dollars just in Sept. But I don't come online to pay retail and receive stamps lower in quality than described and/or pictured.

Thanks everyone for responding to my post thus far, some very interesting comments & reading.

""Germany and Colonies" and "France and Colonies" et. al. (just to cite a couple examples) are far, far too broad"

Plus they have split the Brit CW countries into colonies and independent (pre some year/post some year), so if you want to look at all of Fiji you have to look in 2 places (and not all listers split them the way ebay intends anyway)

Getting back to the topic of slower sales this week, mine actuall picked up this week after a terrible summer.