NO LONGER SELLING DUE TO SIMPLE DELIVERY

[rugbyguy1960]

AS OF 15TH APRIL MY DAYS AS A PRIVATE EBAY SELLER WILL STOP AFTER 19 YEARS.

I AM FED UP OF THE GREED OF EBAY AND I HOPE OTHER EBAY SELLERS DECIDE TO NO LONGER LET THE EBAY CONTROL FREAKS HAVE THIS MUCH CONTROL OVER PRIVATE SELLERS.

[kath3735_wxmjn]

I will never use SD and i am pleased i decided that.  I would go into my local post office (like this morning) and hand over my parcel knowing that she would ask me for £3.90 which the seller had paid to me.  That is simple delivery, no messing no fuss.  The buyer knew before buying how i was sending and how much they were paying, i knew those things as well.  Why the heck do i need e bay to get in the middle of that process.....

[kath3735_wxmjn]

Never say Never!   It may take a few years but i have found at my age that things tend to go in circles, just like fashion styles.

[department28]

'By the time we get to SD 10.0...'

Most of us will be past caring, and/or gone round the bend... 🙃

[kath3735_wxmjn]

or be dead!  At 72 i am expecting to be gone long before e bay sorts it all out (and i am pretty healthy at the moment..)

[infohelps]

eBay have indeed got themselves into a mess.  However, I feel the need to say that private sellers have not been paying nothing to sell for 'years'.  It has been a relatively recent thing - less than a year if I remember correctly -  and most of us would be happy to pay the FVFs we were paying up until that point rather than put up with what has been happening this year if we were given a choice. 

 eBay do have the ability to police their site.  AI is perfectly capable of doing that.  If it can spot when someone includes an email address in a message then it can certainly spot when a private account is really a business.   All they have to do is instruct AI to root out private sellers whose sales activity meets certain criteria, eg. sales over a certain number/value, multiple new items with different sizes/colours etc etc.  No problem at all.   I have seen people on this thread saying they have had emails suggesting they open a business account so clearly AI is already doing that, although, for now at least, opening a business account is only given as a suggestion.  (However, whether that will continue to be the case we will have to wait and see).  I have never had emails like that because I am clearly nowhere near operating like a business.  So if they wanted to sort that situation out they could do so easily.   

Equally, when it comes to getting rid of scammers AI could be programmed to search for key words like 'fake' or 'scam' included in feedback and messages.  I have reported several  sellers for selling fake items, both business and private, and nothing was done about it.   The scammers are still trading now.  So that seems to be an area that they are not interested in cracking down on even when users do the policing for them!   

Personally, I may be wrong, but think it is more about the type of sale.  I have heard it said that the execs want to do away with 'auction' type listings and the type of listings that stay on for years and just keep rolling over as these are expensive to run.   These are usually private sellers.  eBay has thousands of private sellers who have the contents of their attic on eBay and are happy if something sells for a fiver after being listed for 3 years. (I fall into that category).     Also, if it is true that they want to move the platform 'upmarket' selling more luxury goods and designer brands, whether new or second hand, they may not want  their target audience of young people being put off by seeing someone 'lowering the tone' by selling half a dozen old tiles or a 1970s calculator.  

It may be chaos now, but I would imagine they have a long term plan, (flawed though it may be)  - spend the next few months weeding out the unwanted private sellers through the new policies which are designed to alienate a certain type of private seller, whilst simultaneously spending money on advertising to attract new younger buyers/sellers who might be already using other sites with similar selling processes.  Yes, many of us will leave as was always the plan, but our complaints will help them to refine the process.  Cheers for the ideas - close the door on your way out!

[kath3735_wxmjn]

of course what e bay fail to realise (and i agree with your dissection of their motives) is that those young people have plenty of other places to go to to get their things (and will be doing so already and why would they want to come here to be ripped off).  However where else can you sit at your machine and look for 'half a dozen old tiles or a 1970s calculator'!!   It is like a car boot in that the real car booters selling off their old tat are what i go for, not the one pseudo ones who buy up lots of cheap tat at those auctions and try selling them at stupid prices!   One of my items that i sold a few years ago was some photos of planes that my brother had taken ( a keen photographer and plane nut), he was also a keen smoker....   That was in the listing and i still managed to sell them and the buyer was pleased with them.  Where else could you do that (and e bay were happy to take their cut!)  I will miss it but there goes, you have 'progress'!

[aymanalvi]

BANG! Just closed the door. Thanks for your time.

[goodibags]

"just lost my ability to do custom postage on revised items so will not be putting any more on."

Sorry to hear that. Have not checked but mine will probably be the same.

I was kind of vaguely hoping that if Ebay algos have the ability to show different SD postage rates to different users at different times, then it might also have the intelligence to avoid enforcing SD on those sellers that have been most adamant in refusing to work with it. At least for another 3 or 4 months.

Sadly, Ebay's 'smartness' tools are nowhere near as smart as I'd vainly been hoping they were.

[department28]

'Also, if it is true that they want to move the platform 'upmarket' selling more luxury goods and designer brands, whether new or second hand, they may not want  their target audience of young people being put off by seeing someone selling half a dozen old tiles or a 1970s calculator.' 

Luxury goods & designer brands... ugh. Most of it is overpriced rubbish. If this is the way eBay wants to go, it will be horrible - and surely the market is already flooded with stuff like this?

Maybe somewhere new will emerge, to take over from the 'old' eBay?

[punzel9072]

oh kath you are so after my own heart 🙂

my example is around 15 years ago I lost an elderly friend to had left me his 'chattels' - he, and his father before him, were more than collectors of things but true hoarders it seemed. One of the things I eventually got round to listing a while back was a selection of around a dozen different forms and leaflets from the 50s, 60s and 70s from Post Office Telephones, the GPO, and early BT. Rather than throw them away I put them on eBay for not very much and they were bought by somebody who was well into that sort of thing and never dreamed that such items might still exist. It's not always about the money, it's about moving things on to somebody who will appreciate them.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"It may take a few years but i have found at my age that things tend to go in circles"

Yes and then they'll annouce a "NEW, IMPROVED SERVICE - CUSTOM DELIVERY"!! 🤣

[infohelps]

We can only hope so!!  

[goodibags]

I did something similar with 1980s home computing leaflets for BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad, etc. I had a bundle put away in a folder which proved a surprising treasure trove for collectors of rare and elusive ephemera. 

It's a real shame that Ebay has decided that it is no longer the obvious 'go to' platform for people looking for that sort of thing.

[azathothdreaming]

The eBay reps we can talk to are human beings doing a job, just like rest of us. The only thing being rude or abrasive to them achieves is creating bad blood and harming people who had zero say in eBay corporate policy. 

[dion5feb2016]

I’m the former and staying that way. I have always been round the bend but it’s nice on my planet, they know me there 😁

[dion5feb2016]

Hahahahahaha 

[fatbob*ian]

Looks like it's just a matter of time now until SD becomes compulsory for all, time to get some rest😴

[lucy_farmer]

'With regard to eBay, I'm unable to advise on how their system operates, as it falls outside of our support scope.'

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Yep, no worries with that answer. I wouldn't expect a post office employee to know how a completely different company (ebay) operates.

But that's not what the question was about.

The question is about 'marketplace seller' parcels.

'However, I can confirm that the Post Office will reject any parcel with incorrect size or weight. If such a parcel is accepted, the recipient may receive a fee to pay card to cover the discrepancy. '

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The post office appear to be answering a completely different question to the one we all want to hear about.

We want to know what happens when a parcel with ebay's 'marketplace seller' label on it arrives on their counter, and it's a different size or weight.

What we have *here* is an answer to what happens when a 'bog-standard' parcel with stamps or postage label on it arrives on their counter.

Ebay's 'marketplace' parcels are not 'bog-standard' ones...they're like account parcels from businesses. Account parcels do not get weighed and measured at the counter. They get scanned and chucked into the system.

I just went to  the post office with a pre-paid ebay return parcel.  Lady behind the counter scanned the QR code (on my lap top) and printed a label.

 No weighing, no measuring; just stuck the label on, gave me a reciept and put the parcel in the sack.

I think that's what supposed to happen!

[vinylscot]

Firstly, thanks to @theregoesatenner  for coming back again. The post got rather buried in among some irrelevant nonsense.

@lucy_farmer -  Your response is basically the same as I would respond. Although I'm sure @theregoesatenner has acted in good faith, I am also 100% sure there is a misunderstanding here somewhere. Part of the problem may be that @theregoesatenner has been contacting Royal Mail, when it really should be addressed to the Post Office, who may have a better understanding, as they are the ones "on the front line".

Either the wrong question is being asked, or much more likely, Royal Mail has completely misunderstood it, as the question is really outside their remit, and, as @lucy_farmer  suggests, has answered a completely different, far more general, question.

[aftershock3259]

I'm completely confused, some items I can use custom postage ,others I can not. I just listed an item custom postage for $1.65  , and its been listed for $1.98.. (btw my pound sign don't work)