All these changes - last year's and the forthcoming ones - have really put the kaibosh on my selling plans.
The 14-day hold - despite my lack of clarity regarding eBay's stated reason for it (as stated in my earlier post) - isn't a problem for me, although I acknowledge that it is for some others.
But just about everything else is!
Removal of cash on collection, further exposing sellers to potential abuse of the MBG. I have quite a lot of items that I had intended to list as CoC due to their weight and/or bulkiness. If I ever do list them as CoC (with all the other changes as well, I'm not even sure that I will list anything on eBay going forward), it will be with a high degree of nervousness. This alone was a really mean-spirited move on eBay's part (from the seller perspective).
'Simple' Delivery (assuming it does indeed become mandatory). Like so many others here, I am very resistant to the prospect of having to go to a variety of places to post items according to buyers' choices of courier and service. I have no printer for the labels that eBay would send, and no desire to buy one solely for this purpose, so just printing a label would necessitate a trip into town to the library. It would also cost 10p per print-out - not much of an outlay, but an additional cost nevertheless. Even if I had a printer, there's the cost of electricity and printer ink. Then back home to affix the label, and out again to post or drop off the package (unless I took the package, as well as bits of stationery, to the library with me). I guess there's the QR code option (if offered), which I assume would mean that the Post Office or other drop-off point prints the label at no cost to myself, but there's still the issue of affixing the label (I stress about things like there not being sufficient space on the package for a label the size of which I don't know in advance).
Also, I still have nearly £200 worth of First Class & First Class Large stamps which I accrued when doing Royal Mail surveys for Kantar TNS (so I had to 'work' to get the stamps, they weren't just given to me for nothing). Ideally, I'd want to send items using RM24/48 Tracked, but I was planning to use the stamps up first (which I know cannot be used for tracked post). Mandated 'Simple' Delivery would mean that I couldn't use my stamps at all, leaving me with no choice but to either keep them in perpetuity (pointless) or to try to sell them at less than their current value, and run the risk of a bad 'un claiming that they were counterfeit. I know for a fact that mine aren't, as I've used some of them for previous eBay sales with no issue, but eBay would, of course, almost certainly side with the buyer.
My posting method is (was?) old-school, which I suppose is another way of saying 'unsophisticated': hand-write the buyer's address, work out the postage cost based on weight, dimensions and RM service (the service that I chose, and that the buyer accepted in making the purchase), apply my stamp(s) (either overpaying slightly, or making up the difference at the PO counter), get a certificate of posting, then leave the rest in the hands of fate. Obviously, for higher value items, I would use a tracked service, but still with RM or Parcel Force. As I said, unsophisticated, but it worked for me, and it worked for my buyers.
It looks like I can wave goodbye to all of that.
I wish I could step into a time machine and go back to what many refer to as the golden days of eBay (due to severe procrastination, I only started selling a few years ago - but even then it was simpler). I can only echo the view held by many, many others, that eBay have increasingly taken control of the selling process to the point where it feels more like we are working for eBay, rather than with eBay.
Too many changes in quick succession, no consultation with experienced sellers and/or sellers with good ideas, inadequate testing of new/modified features before roll-out, too many bugs & glitches (which rarely get resolved, at least within an acceptable time frame), poor communication, (largely) abysmal customer service, a system that is more and more biased in the buyer's favour, an evident over-reliance on AI, and the cherry on top being a truly horrendous corporate arrogance that makes it very clear that eBay has little, if any, regard for sellers despite the fact that the platform literally could not exist without them.
It's quite clear, both from eBay's own actions and from Value Added Resource's revealing analysis of the CEO's speech to investors, that eBay is jeopardising the long-term viability and success of the platform by chasing short term gains. VAR also stated that eBay will have crunched the numbers and decided that introducing these changes is the way to go, but eBay executives are not eBay sellers (I think that's a fair assumption), and thus have little to no understanding of how sellers feel about the changes, or how sellers are affected by them.
It would be nice to think that eBay staff closely monitor this forum (not just to remove outrageously disgusting language like the word 'p.l.e.b.' (I'm being sarcastic!) or user IDs etc.) and report buyer/seller sentiment up the chain of command, but, again, it's reasonable to assume that this doesn't happen - another case of corporate arrogance/contempt/indifference. If it did happen, and the powers that be were genuinely interested in 'the word on the ground' - even for entirely self-serving purposes - then many of these changes would never have gone beyond the focus group meetings, or, at least, would have been swiftly reversed after seeing the level of discontent, resistance and animosity they had caused.
The figures may stack up, the plans may look great on paper, and the investors and shareholders may be satisfied (for now), but I think that eBay are making a critical error with their high-handed attitude and their failure to listen to, or care about, our voices, and this hubris may well lead to its eventual downfall. When long-established sellers (including one on this thread who has been here for 25 years) are throwing in the towel as a direct result of, and response to, these changes, it's hard to avoid the notion that eBay is in serious decline.
It's bizarre, and rather sad, to see eBay's descent from being a trailblazing innovator to a kind of mongrel copycat site, trying to adopt practices from other marketplace sites in an attempt to stay relevant, instead of leveraging, and capitalising on, its own market domnance, utilising its own vast resources - and the resource it has in users willing to freely offer their time, ideas and suggestions - to become truly exemplary.
I could say more, but I've said more than enough.
As it stands, that's my personal view of eBay in 2025. For the moment, I'm staying, but only on the sidelines while I see how all this pans out.
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