@lwpm wrote:
But people who are just old school declutters are NOT business sellers and never will be. This began as a platform for people to sell things they no longer need.
The money I made as a private seller would invariably be spent on eBay (and then some) usually on press kits, slides, lobby cards. There was a time I was spending around £2,000 a month on eBay.
Simple Postage is a complication too far and I’ve given up on eBay. I won’t be making money on eBay and I’ll be spending a lot less.
Private sellers are the canary in the coal mine. If eBay loses us there’ll be less money circulating and businesses (who must outnumber private sellers nowadays?) will take a massive hit… promoted listings or not.
Indeed, declutterers are not business sellers. But the person I was replying to has 7,000+ sales, which suggests more than just decluttering.
I get what you're saying about Simple Postage, I really do. But what people aren't taking into account is that while Simple Postage is annoying, expensive, cumbersome, and even downright unworkable for existing sellers who are used to the old way...I don't think appeasing those people is eBay's priority. Simple Delivery is not complicated to new users. Or it won't be, once the edges are rounded off and (if) they fix the woefully inaccurate guesstimations of item sizes and weights.
eBay is trying to pull in the crowd from Vinted, who started selling over there mainly because it was a hundred times easier to manage than eBay. No fees. No worrying about how to post stuff. Sure, I'll sell this food-stained t-shirt with one arm missing for £2. Why not? The buyer pays for the fees and the postage, and I get £2 for slapping it in an old Tesco bag with a bit of sellotape and scanning a code on a locker in a supermarket car park. Job done. About the most inconvenient thing about it is having to answer messages from people who think every single sentence has to end with "hon xxxxxx", a thousand question marks, or "lol."
eBay will lose a lot of existing private sellers, I'm sure. But I think they're banking on making up the numbers with new people from the other site who have never, ever sold on eBay realising that they can do so by mashing their phone with their face the same way as they currently do on Vinted. Only, it won't work, because even with BPF and Simple Delivery, eBay is still way more complicated. Prohibitively so for the masses of people who appear to be unable or unwilling to read simple instructions.
In an ideal world, Simple Delivery would exist, and it would be pushed as the preferred choice for new users, but it would be entirely optional for existing ones or people who don't need to have their hand held at every single step. And choosing which side pays the fees would be optional too, without needing to upgrade to a business account.
