is e bay damaged beyond repair

[reasonable..robert]

question.... is e bay damaged beyond repair ?

a lot of buyers and sellers both private and business have abandoned e bay some giving up selling some have gone to vinted which is now flooded with former e bayers and some like myself have a foot in both camps.

e bay appears to have back pedaled on SD as i can still use the normal option but with a trustpilot rating of bad 1.2% and the constant sell for free ad on tv  being run has e bays quest for a larger slice of the cake damaged the platform irreprobly (apologies if i spelt this wrong) or have e bay any intrest at all in trying to reverse its disasterous decisions and try and get members back.

[department28]

It feels like eBay is going through a major transition period, which they will no doubt refer to as,  'modernising & streamlining your eBay experience'. Or something equally icky... 🤢

Obviously, this doesn't go down well with those of us that preferred the old style eBay. The recent big changes - BPF & Simple Delivery - have been disastrous for private sellers, with many unable to continue selling, for a variety of reasons.  Hardest hit are the lower priced items. The BPF has wiped out the traditional 99p start auctions, & all the eye-catching 99p buy-it-now stuff from private sellers.

eBay must be pretty confident the current outcry & turmoil will die down, with the gap left by those who leave being filled by shiny new eBayers, who will have no idea how things used to be...

I'm afraid those of us hoping for some sort of u-turn will be sadly disappointed...☹️

There are various buying & selling alternatives, but it is a pity there isn't somewhere just like eBay, with all the bad bits taken away... Then they really would be in trouble!

[magpiecorner1]

Sellers leaving eBay won't worry the powers that be in the slightest.  Logically the buyer will just buy from another seller.  Fewer sellers, both private and business, means a wee bit bigger slice of the pie for everyone else.

An awful lot of listings on eBay simply stagnate.  For business sellers, not really a problem, eBay gets either a listing fee or a shop fee for all business seller listings.  You pays your money ..........

Private buyers were allowed 1000 free new listings a month, in effect meaning they could list 1000 every month and leave the listing until it sold.  No pain.  Away went the 99p listings (I remember it used to cost more to list an item at a higher than 99p price) and now we have the ridiculous sight of thousands of auction listings an hour, every hour, sitting on the site and never being bid upon. 

Reducing the listings to 300 but not sorting the auto-relists means we haven't moved very far along.

We're all guilty of this, both business and private sellers, but at least business sellers pay for the privilege and they HAVE to sell stuff for more than they paid for it to put bread on the table (a LOT more when eBay fees taking up to 30% of TURNOVER for some business sellers).  The nature of business is to allow items time to sell, but businesses are just as guilty regarding auctions, the role of auctions is to let the market decide the price, but instead we have 7 days buy it now's!

Now that eBay auctions have been strangled, not enough people come to eBay to bid, and that means they don't come to buy.

We might see change, eBay.de now offers private sellers 320 free listings a month PLUS 1000 free listings for auctions starting at 1 Euro.  It's as if the penny has half dropped.

Losing sellers, however, becomes a problem if those sellers are also buyers.  Because buyers are the oil that keeps the eBay machine running.  And buyers have always been taken for granted by eBay.

How to sort it?  A gordian knot of a problem, indeed!

[magpiecorner1]

How do you imagine businesses take money out of eBay.  

Cos I really want to know.

I. One account my eBay fees average 25%, including VAT, on another up to 45%. That's around 21% of all the money I receive is deducted by eBay and another 4% goes to the Government.  And I still have to pay all my postage costs and overheads.

If a buyer buys from a private seller, the buyer pays an amount to eBay and the private sellers takes the rest, no fees and a bigger chunk than ANY business seller!

Oh, and by the way.  I'm also a buyer and I can guarantee Im putting more into eBay than any 'private' buyer - I'd willingly bet the house that my buying outdoes yours by a country mile!  Heck, probably by the length of the A1.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

In answer to the OP’s question, I don’t think ebay *want* to repair it.  What they want is to transition into something quite different from what ebay has been in the past.  They don’t want private sellers who have “car boot” stuff to sell.  And they’re not bothered whether low value vintage items from great-grandma’s attic finds a new home or goes to landfill.  What they want - and have said so - is higher value goods.  They have engineered a form of “constructive dismissal” by bringing in BPF, making lower priced goods not worth listing.  And any that remain, well at least they’ll now be making a good profit on them.

Some private sellers who have stopped selling may come back, in spite of SD, BPF, manipulated search results, waiting to be paid and whatever else ebay decide to inflict upon their customers next.  Some will never come back as a seller because for them it's too much hassle and too stressful.  Some may come back as a buyer if they can’t get what they want elsewhere, but ebay may no longer be their first port of call.

No doubt ebay will get some new sellers who think ebay are wonderful, but it’s been said that younger people wouldn’t touch ebay with a bargepole.  I don’t know how true that is, but their advertising is aimed at young people, so maybe they can change their image.  

"have e bay any intrest at all in trying to reverse its disasterous decisions and try and get members back.”

No.  The ebay many of us used to know and love has gone forever.  It will continue its current trajectory and it remains to be seen how successful their vision of transforming ebay into a different animal will be.

[goldenwolfman]

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@magpiecorner1 wrote:

How do you imagine businesses take money out of eBay.  

Cos I really want to know.

I. One account my eBay fees average 25%, including VAT, on another up to 45%. That's around 21% of all the money I receive is deducted by eBay and another 4% goes to the Government.  And I still have to pay all my postage costs and overheads.

If a buyer buys from a private seller, the buyer pays an amount to eBay and the private sellers takes the rest, no fees and a bigger chunk than ANY business seller!

Oh, and by the way.  I'm also a buyer and I can guarantee Im putting more into eBay than any 'private' buyer - I'd willingly bet the house that my buying outdoes yours by a country mile!  Heck, probably by the length of the A1.

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Let's just clarify a couple of points - at NO point did I say that my buying was greater than your's - or any other business sellers. What I said was that private sellers often spent most of the money they made back on Obey (I was including myself in that) - look back and that is what i said.

I added that Businesses took money out of Obey - surely you have to agree with that???

The object of a business is to MAKE money - not to lose it, or work for nothing, and after expenditure - there is a profit, - that is what you are paying the 4% tax on, so you must be showing a profit! What you do with that profit I do not know, buy goods, maybe you finance an associate business off site by buying off Obey to sell there? It's irrelevant. But businesses are there to make money for whatever purpose.

The point I was also making is the same point you made in your previous post...

"Losing sellers, however, becomes a problem if those sellers are also buyers. Because buyers are the oil that keeps the eBay machine running. And buyers have always been taken for granted by eBay".

As I say, these small private sellers are 'buyers' and a part of the income that businesses live off - without them it becomes a slow downward spiral.

[lucy_farmer]

'.....which they will no doubt refer to as,  'modernising & streamlining your eBay experience'. Or something equally icky. 🤢'

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 😂 😂👍 I'll bet on that!

(Do you work for an ad. agency by any chance? If not, you should apply 🙃)

[honeymonster007]

Is it broken...some things don't work for sure

Writing a draft of a book on vehicle brakes and one of the recommended category's came up as Stamps/Canadian followed by other stamp category's!

Just filling in a ISBN numbers a great idea, but it puts items in the wrong category and you have to check item specifics as some have errors (or is it better to leave the category it puts you in?..I dunno)

Fill out the price box (after spending 5 mins juggling the numbers) and then the item description disappears and your left with a blank box!

Only had a free postage option earlier now its only buyer pays!

Pictures are easy enough to load up though 👍

[lucy_farmer]

'Writing a draft of a book on vehicle brakes and one of the recommended category's came up as Stamps/Canadian followed by other stamp category's!'

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the AI thinks brakes are for stamping on.....  🚘🚦.

[m25jet]

@reasonable..robert wrote:

question.... is e bay damaged beyond repair ?

Although I wouldn't go so far as to say eBay that has been damaged beyond repair, I do think that their reputation as a good site upon which to buy and sell goods has been damaged quite badly, as evidenced by the various posts from dissatisfied sellers who have declared that they are finally giving up selling on eBay, and also posts from buyers who have also expressed dissatisfaction with eBay - for example, with the fact that sellers no longer seem to be able to offer combined invoices, not to mention the deeply unpopular decision to make buyers pay a Buyer Protection Fee if purchasing items from private sellers...

Of all the points raised so far, I feel that @moonlight-rhapsody raised a particularly valid point when he/she said of eBay 'They have engineered a form of “constructive dismissal” by bringing in BPF, making lower priced goods not worth listing.'  I have been convinced for quite a while now that eBay are deliberately trying to make it as difficult as possible for private sellers to sell anything on eBay in an effort to get rid of them for good.  You may ask why eBay would do such a thing, but I feel that the answer is because they want to do away with private sellers altogether and transform the site into a 100% business seller site.  To be honest it wouldn't surprise me in the least if eBay started to charge buyers and sellers an annual subscription fee just to be able to have an eBay account so that they could use the site!  The original eBay that we used to know and which many of us actually liked to buy and sell on is long gone, and it's not coming back.

[theelench]

I'd agree with you, but put it slightly differently.

Ebay, for private sellers has been deliberately damaged beyond repair.  To the point where it's practically useless to  private sellers.

Yes it's 'free' to sell, but unless you pay for visibility you're unlikely to sell enough to make it worthwhile.

Last year I listed around 50 items, to sell only 4.  A waste of many hours of my time.

Adding a visible BPF to private listings to put buyers off.

Holding funds to put sellers off.

[department28]

Lol, no - but I'm sure we've all got the hang of spotting this sort of AI 'spin-lingo' eBay are so fond of using these days... 🤖

I suppose this stuff must be proven to work, but it definitely has the opposite effect on some of us... I now have an aversion to certain words & phrases - especially those old favourites from the AI item description tool... 'elevate this, enhance that, touch of elegance, sure to turn heads' etc etc... 😬

[akemp1]

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@department28 wrote:

Lol, no - but I'm sure we've all got the hang of spotting this sort of AI 'spin-lingo' eBay are so fond of using these days... 🤖

I suppose this stuff must be proven to work, but it definitely has the opposite effect on some of us... I now have an aversion to certain words & phrases - especially those old favourites from the AI item description tool... 'elevate this, enhance that, touch of elegance, sure to turn heads' etc etc... 😬

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Yeah I prefer not to buy from sellers using AI descriptions. I can't think of a single time I have been glad to read that guff. Sometimes I skim read it to see if the seller has added something useful to the end of the listing etc but usually the kind of seller who uses AI doesn't add anything useful.

It's just another example of how ebay don't understand the value of anything from either a buyer or seller's perspective. I really don't feel this place resonates with my thinking or values anymore. I'm so glad I signed up and started buying and selling at the place young people tend to use. There was a bit of a learning curve but it was worth it once ebay gave me this push to stop using them as my 'goto' marketplace.

To be relevant again ebay have so many recent changes to undo.

[m25jet]

@theelench wrote:

I'd agree with you, but put it slightly differently.

Ebay, for private sellers has been deliberately damaged beyond repair.  To the point where it's practically useless to  private sellers.

Having just read your post, I'd say that, upon reflection, you've just hit the nail on the head with regards to your comment about eBay having been deliberately damaged beyond repair for private sellers.  In my first post on this thread I was answering the question as to whether eBay has been damaged beyond repair, which I don't think they have, as I think they'll find a way to carry on even if they were to succeed in getting rid of every single private seller currently active on any of their sites, and altered the site in such a way that it was only possible for business sellers to have an eBay selling account.  However, if the OP's question had been "Do you feel that eBay have irreparably damaged the site for private sellers?" then my answer would have been "Yes, absolutely."   I used to sell on eBay unti they got rid of PayPal and introduced eBay Managed Payments - for me that was a step too far and I stopped selling on eBay for good when they did that.  There is no way in Hell that I would trust eBay to handle my payments from buyers who had purchased anything from me!

[crafty_cat_lover]

I've never paid for visibility and have no intention of doing so, but don't have a problem with lack of sales. Some of the items I've sold over the last three months have been newly listed, others have been listed for a while. It actually makes no difference to me as I'm clearing some of my late mum's stuff as well as trying to do a bit of de-cluttering of my own so I 'm not really concerned how long things take to sell.

I'm a private seller and Ebay is certainly not useless to me.

[akemp1]

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@m25jet wrote:

In my first post on this thread I was answering the question as to whether eBay has been damaged beyond repair, which I don't think they have, as I think they'll find a way to carry on even if they were to succeed in getting rid of every single private seller currently active on any of their sites, and altered the site in such a way that it was only possible for business sellers to have an eBay selling account. 

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Let's be real Ebay is not in the same league as Amazon and never will be and the only thing that makes this website worth visiting is for the interesting items private sellers tend to list. If the market for those categories move elsewhere Ebay is just left with listings for things like Chinese imports (which AliExpress etc do better) or the boring everyday consumer stuff that Amazon sells. Even the interesting small business sellers won't hang around and pay fixed shop fees if they are no longer getting the enough views and purchases as the private buyers have gone elsewhere.

[*maetrix*]

12 months or so ago ebay were taking roughly 15% of our sales....then we get the "it's free to sell" campaign....now hmrc are taking roughly 15% of our sales.

They're in it together.

[carrotdrusus2]

Well having heard that Rachel from Accounts will be closing the tax loophole that allows Chinese sellers to sell here tarrif free for shipments imported under £135 I think that a lot of E Bays 'business' sellers in the UK are in big trouble.

ho knows they may be begging for Grandmas attic contents by the end of the year?

[edwardian-dreams]

Thought she was after growth not constriction 

whatever

[carrotdrusus2]

Well she certainly achieved constriction without a doubt!!

[magpiecorner1]

Lets clarify your first point - you wrote

 maybe my 'small buying power' is actually larger than your own - you are business so as I said earlier are withdrawing more than you are spending here'

it was not directed to me, however, you assumed that you buyer power was greater than the other poster based solely upon that poster being a business.  

Unresearched, lacking in actually experience of being a business seller, assumption based on no facts, and a load of tosh, if I might say so!!

Just about every single month I buy more than I sell on eBay, and every single year I buy a ton more than I sell on eBay!    

So yes, you DID say that your buying was greater than mine, based on nothing more than you being a private buyer!!

To clarify another point - I cannot agree with your assumption that businesses take money out of eBay - they simply don't - eBay takes money from businesses before they pass on their EARNINGS!  The goods sold don't belong to eBay,  all eBay gets are fees and taxes!  And they take a whole lot more from businesses than from private sellers.

A further clarification - businesses sell on eBay to make money.  True, but so do private sellers.  Everyone who sells on eBay does so to make money - the difference is businesses have to make a profit and don't always - private sellers always make money - if they sell for £1 they make money, which they take from eBay with no deductions.  If a business makes £1, there will be deductions of fees and tax - and they will not always make a profit!   Businesses need to make a profit - private sellers merely need to sell stuff!

To clarify a second point: the 4% tax to which I referred was VAT.  My own personal taxes are nothing to do with the eBay platform - as well as being a shedload more than 4% - so I only referenced taxes taken by eBay - from business sellers - and passed to HMRC.  Your comments about my business are merely your assumptions, get the facts and then discuss my business!

Private sellers and business sellers are integral to eBay's success, but eBay simply doesn't need all of us!