Is Ebay dying on its feet

[aqua_beach]

Just an observation really

18 months ago I was selling about 500 items a month easily getting 400 ratings a month, Im now down to about 100 items a month and 65 ratings, I sell the same items at roughly the same price and have also monitored my competitors who are all down unless they sell at ridiculous loss making prices, something is wrong with ebay, too many rules, lack of trust, or making what was simple now complex has in my mind reduced its appeal and most definitely in my case my income and also eBays income. if a photo works leave it, stop meddling in what is a proven formula, why new seller performance criteria, I go from above standard to below standard and will sell less, hence you get less in fees. history is a great teacher most projects start simple and with the introduction of complexity and progress end up unworkable, a simple example is motor vehicles, years ago if the exhaust went on my mini I could go and buy a new exhaust and fit it myself cost probably £10 and easily sorted' nowdays if your modern progressive car goes wrong you dont have any choice, progress dictates you take it to a garage and hook it up to a machine that will tell you the exhaust is defective, after replacement the bill will be probably about £300. We need cars but eBay can be replaced by another platform it needs to go back to its roots if it wants to survive

Mark

[evoman3957]

It's called complacency........the chase seems to be the driving force. Everything honed to catching the prey, then when they've caught it ,they lose interest.

[cee-dee]

Unfortunately ebay has followed the pattern of everything in modern life.

Like your example of the car, everything has had gimmick after gimmick added to it making it more complex and diffucult to use not to say more to go wrong.

Many times I've tried to explain to the powers that be that what ebay (as a platform) needs is a complete and utter makeover with all the gimmicks removed.

I think it all began to head down the road of little-used gimmickry (as far as I'm concerned) when the integrated circuit (chips) began to take over from a myriad of transistors. The whizz-kids came up with something like "Oooo, if I apply a DC voltage to this pin and ground that one then add AC coupled with an IF of 455kHz to those pins there I can make it (the chip) do so-and-so......." thereby producing some interesting (but little used or largely useless) function or other.

Since then the techie boys been allowed to run wild.

On top of all that, things have been done here which has not only driven sellers away, it's driven the buyers elsewhere too.

It really is very sad to see it all going wrong and company representatives who are afraid to do anything except sing the Company song, wearing the Company hat while doing the Company dance don't help! It's all a lot more diffucult now but to make it work, you just have to go with the flow!

[joe_bloggs*]

"when the integrated circuit (chips) began to take over from a myriad of transistors. The whizz-kids came up with something like "Oooo, if I apply a DC voltage to this pin and ground that one then add AC coupled with an IF of 455kHz to those pins there I can make it (the chip) do so-and-so......."

It's easy for you to say

[upthecreekyetagain]

I haven't noticed eBay getting any more complex as a buyer - if anything it has become much simpler.  Having said that there are now far more choices of where to buy any particular product than there used to be.

I buy far more online than I ever used to but probably buy less from eBay, certainly for anything costing much more than £50.

[m25jet]

The current state of affairs with eBay seems to suggest that things are only going to get progressively worse, as has been the case for a long time now.  No matter what you say to eBay nothing ever changes for the better - all feedback is ignored and things only ever change for the worse.  They really have got too big for their boots...

[dark_castle1]

Yes it is and the sooner someone puts it out of its misery the better !

[suzieseaside]

I was put off ebay for selling any small items I wanted to get rid of ever since they took a percentage of postage costs or courier costs as well as listing and sales. 

It seems all wrong to me that they can take a percentage of something that they have nothing to do with and don't provide themselves. Royal Mail and any courier service are entirely separate businesses from ebay so I fail to see why ebay should profit from a separate delivery service.

You don't buy an item from an auction house, arrange for a man and van to deliver, and then pay the auction house part of that cost on top of their sales commission, and I can't see how online should be any different.

If someone replies to say it was to stop sellers charging hugely unrealistic postage costs - I don't believe it. I think that was just an excuse to find another way to increase their profits.  It was only a minority of sellers that tried that on and it would be reflected in their FB, and could anyway be reported to ebay if they don't keep an eye out themselves.

The latest fees make it unworkable to sell low value items.  I may be wrong but think I read somewhere on an ebay forum recently that if you sell something for about £1 you end up with something between 20 and 30p after Paypal and ebay fees. If so, life's too short to spend all that time taking photos, writing a decent description, wrapping and trekking off to the PO. Good on those who still do, but it takes a huge amount of time and effort for very little return.