Anyone familiar with ebay or any of the popular online forums this week will know that the online community is not happy with Ebay's latest policy changes...well most of them anyway.
I sell dichroic glass jewellery via Ebay and these change will effect me heavily.
Ebay has lowered the cost of listing items, whilst taking a greater percentage of the final value fee once the item sells.
It has also withdrawn the ability of sellers to leave negative or neutral feedback to buyers.
At first glance these changes don't seem to drastic but i've no doubt that they will be the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of using ebay.
Whilst the lower listing fee is welcome this is only because ebay has lowered visibilty on UK auctions to the extent that a larger proportion of items sell and when they do I barely cover the costs. I use Ebay mainly to advertise now.
Not allowing sellers to leave feedback is potentially far more dangerous to the sellers. Sellers are now far more exposed to 'neg blackmailers' who effectively extort sellers against the threat of ruining their feedback profile. Also, what's to stop a unscrupulous competitor from 'negging' you if a seller cannot leave reciprocal feedback?
When it comes to fashion jewellery and handcrafted jewellery, I think the feedback system will now become more of a 'critic' than an honest feedback of the transaction.
I have always prided myself in honest and efficient customer service and in my 20, 000 ebay transactions I have only ever left 1 negative feedback but i've a feeling the negative feedbacks will now start flying about and therefore lose the effectiveness of them in the first place.
The strike is due to take place in a few weeks...should I take part? Based in Liverpool, UK I was hit badly by the October/ November Royal Mail strike which lost me a great deal of money and nearly cost me my livelihood. I'm not sure I can afford to take part, but then again can I afford not to?
The out come of the whole thing is that i'm now much more focused on other outlets than Ebay.
I'll pay much more attention to my website and ETSY...let ebay put itself out of business!
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4 comments:
i have sold more than 24,000 items on Ebay. Corporate MBA types dont have their spreadsheets programmed for seller psychology.
They just dont understand, it aint the economy stupid. It is the point of the darn thing.
Leaving a buyer negative feedback -didnt get my money back, it didnt keep them from giving me a negative in return, and it didnt get them to leave or stop extortion or stealing from others on ebay, but that aint the point.... it made me feel like i had one small iota of control in the transaction.
Ebay is it too much to ask?.. Is it to much to give us? A small inconsequential token called feedback in exchange for our hard work, risk, hours upon hours of work? Amazon has already done what you are trying to do.. buy em Amazon or their stock, leave Ebay a place where used and hard to describe items have a market.
How many sellers have access to branded well defined products? How many can sell cheaper than Walmart? Whereas on Ebay’s original model, everything in the world could be sold and resold.. talk about short sighted, and (let me yell it a bit louder…) STUPID.
I am striking as well. I wont sell on the week of the 18th either… why? not because i think it is good to hurt our mutual network, but because after 7 years of dealing with Ebay i have yet to get the feeling they are listening to anything i write, type or speak at them.
Send em a signal, make it large with fireworks.. we need significant numbers… including turning off paypal on our websites to make this something that those atrophied Ebay ears can hear and weak greed drunken eyes can see.
I wish I could post a well-thought out comment, but instead of striking ebay as a seller I just removed my 500 6 cent store listings, cancelled my store and other subscriptions, and closed my $400 per month in fees ebay account. It will take 180 days to complete the close, but that's fine with me. Goodbye, FEEbay! Hello Amazon and Google!
I, too, have voted with my feet and left eBay for good. Now that there are other selling sites, let eBay reincarnate itself as a seling site for people with expesive items only. They are welcome to it. Caveat emptor!!!
Glassprimitif
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