if i may quote the leench from another thread ...by the way if you are reading this thank you..
It's another reason why so many private sellers have deserted ebay. These days it's really only re-selling businesses that have the time, patience and inclination to winnow out decent, genuine items from the mountains of irrelevant (but sponsored) items that ebay throws into the search results and all over every listing. (Who would have thought that a search for "19th century tea bowl would have results of about 12,000+ to sift through Only four times, out of all the items I've listed this year, has a buyer paid the (always reasonable) asking price. When an item doesn't sell, it no longer automatically means that it's over-priced, it just means that there isn't enough profit for the resellers to take an interest, so reducing the price just plays into their hands.
Ebay has stitched-up private sellers with the combination of doing away with the old, easily searchable categories and replacing them with huge new ones, send / make an offer and sponsorship fees. None of them have speeded-up sales as ebay said they would. It has reduced sales in collectable and niche areas to the point where private sellers can be held to ransom by resellers for want of any other buyers.
I've sold 4 items this year at the asking price and I'd guess they were the only genuine private buyers who managed to find my items. To me that shows how few real buyers ebay has these days and why every month we see at least one new thread about "Sales collapse in (add each month as it goes by)". Things aren't going to improve while most of the "buyers" here are only looking for "bargains" to resell.
i think that tells you in a nutshell what ebay has become
