New Ebay Rules May Help Stamp Sellers But May Hurt Them

I actually like the fact that stamps are only one part of what ebay's sell and it is a reason why I know I can sell more covers on ebay than any other site. Since it is not exclusively stamps and covers and has such a huge population of buyers across many demographics I find that I sell many items to non-traditional collectors. People are buying covers because they are part of their town or family history. Others are buying items because it fits into the topical ephemera they collect or they think it's just pretty or interesting. It's like having a store in a massive mall with holiday shopping crowds versus being in a sad run-down strip mail next to the closed down Radio Shack. While I cannot measure any metric, I feel that a site like ebay might even be able to bring people into collecting while I don't see that with other sites.

unfortunatly over the years there has been a lot of fraud in other areas also and most items cannot be just mailed in an envelope like we do, they arnt worried about people who sell a 5.00 stamp, they have people who will make up a name and claim to have 5 iphones a day for sale untill they get cut off, so in a way I see why they want the tracking numbers, they can now see alot fast
For those who dont know it you can go to the usps website and sign up for txt alerts and every time someone mails me something with a tracking number even if they dont post the info on ebay, you will know and can see it within a few hours. I love it.

I agree, which is why I'd rather see ebay improve than to drive people elsewhere. It's probably also at least partly the reason that ebay's search engine will never show you only what you want to see, because, like any store, ebay wants to show you as many things as it can.

The ebay search engine in my view is responsible for a loss of seller sales. I have tried to search for certain stamped covers on ebay and they don't always pick up the ones your looking for in the results. And the results pick up a lot of ones not relevant. I have done searches not to find the item I am looking for but then gone into bigger seller stores and found the items sitting there. If the search engine does not detect all sellers items in the right searchers then sellers are loosing out on many potential sales. And collectors are missing many good stamps. ebay really need to improve the search engine esp in the stamp category. And they should get rid of that ebay bell icon next to the shopping cart. The message reminders constantly flashing on the screen is so annoying.