Ebay

[Michaelangelo]

Ebay has been around for a long time, personally I know I've been buying off that site as far back as 1997 or 1998.  It's a great site to find rare things and often I tell people when they're looking for stuff go to ebay.

Ebay is made up of Sellers and buyers.  If the sellers were not there, the people buying would not find what they're looking for and would stop going.  If the buyers were not there, people would not be selling their stuff.  It's all about Supply and Demand.  So in all cases here, Ebay should treat both sides equally.  Though they have not been doing that, they have been really hard on sellers and not even following up on what's going on.  Because of this people who are good sellers are being hurt by Ebays way of handling problems.

My dad went through this over the summer, he sold something on ebay and the person was not happy... they didn't go to my dad to find out anything.  Ebay withdrew the money from my dad's account before he could handle anything himself.   At the time there was a big power outage in Michigan from a huge storm, my folks had no power for almost a full week.  When my dad got on he found that Ebay bounced his account and sent him a letter saying "From now on they'll hold the money for 35 days or till the buyer leaves positive feedback" This is total Bull

My dad was great with his buyers, he would get things boxed and shipped asap after the auctions ended.  He always made sure to post photos and tell about the items in his sale.  He would add sketches to the notes he would enclose with the stuff.  Though my dad lives paycheck to paycheck, he used the money from what he sold to get medications for my mother and him.  The shipping cost always came from the money people paid him, so once he was paid he'd go out and ship the item.  Now he gets paid and the shipping has to come out of his own pocket till paypal releases the money.  Where is the fairness in this?

For months all we did was grumble about it.  Though one person is taking some action that could make a difference.  Starting a group on facebook for people to Not use Ebay for a Month.  Not to buy or sell.  Help get fair treatment for everyone on there.  Though for something like this to work it would have to be a major hit of people to stop using Ebay.   The month in choice is November, a big sales month with Christmas coming up in December.  If Ebay was to be hit with this during one of the biggest shopping Months of the year, they may realize just how much their choices as of late is hurting the people who have helped make their website as big as it is!

Here's the URL for the facebook page about this event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=284864128199348

Please take part in this event, not just by avoiding Ebay for November, but by spreading the word to any website, forum or chat room that you take part in.  Let's work as a team, not to destroy Ebay but to get them to hear our demand for equal rights.

[BubblyShell22]

I vaguely heard about this on the Drome, but I wasn't sure what was going on. Now, I feel that Ebay is being stupid by treating people like garbage. I don't use it anyway, so frankly, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. But good luck to whoever is going to take part in this. Let's hope that Ebay takes a hint and starts treating people better. However, I honestly doubt it.

[TurtleNinja]

I rarely use eBay, so I likely wouldn't be using it November anyway, especially with all the moving hubby and I are doing.

However, I do support the idea. My mother and I have a small family craft business together. When we had started back in 03, after a couple of years, we considered selling on eBay. I looked into it and quickly shot it down, largely because they charged you for every dang little thing!

The few times I've used eBay to buy things, I always bought from folks who had pictures posted so I knew what the item was that I was buying. I never went "sight unseen", lest I think I'm buying one thing and it's in poor condition or not the item the person said it was. Therefore, I wanted to post good photos of what we were selling so people knew we were legit.

I absolutely refused to even bother to go into selling from eBay because they charged you for every picture you put up for your sale! Was ridiculous! There were lots of other little charges I didn't like either. I can't recall if they charged you for how much text you had in your description, but I think they did charge you if there were no bids on your item by the end of the posted auction time.

I thought that was such baloney, because we had our prices set a certain way from local experience at craft shows in the area. We knew how much folks here would pay for what we were selling and what we had heard folks from larger cities would pay(which was 2-3 times more! And way more than it cost to make!), and what was therefore a fair price. For every little mini charge eBay was asking, we would have had to jack our prices way up and we didn't think that was fair.

So we didn't even bother going through with it when we looked into their policies on selling. Thought it was rubbish and this was probably 5-6 years ago.

I don't blame you for being upset at all. Sounds like they're jerking your dad around, all because of a power outtage that he couldn't help. If it were me, I'd pretty much stop selling on eBay altogether. When a business treats me like crap like that, I usually take my business elsewhere. Only if I've been a customer for a long while and they've been decent up until then, would I give them another chance. But ONLY one more chance. They pull something like that again, I take myself elsewhere.

Good luck with this!

[ResidentEvil7]

I've had my issues with eBay also.  I buy things and I expect to get a little cash back for anything you buy, but the thing that sucks about that is that you have to wait as long as 3 months for it and you get 1 month to use it.  It's not like they give you a large return as is.  Right now I'm sitting on about 53 cents (not a big deal this time around), but it was waiting between July and October 3 for me to be able to use it, and I have until November to use it.  It's like they force you to wait and then spend on something there within a certain time.

As far as the PayPal thing, I'm glad I sold my YLOD PS3 just in the nick of time to pay my PayPal Mastercard before they started this new policy.  I was able to pay the card off for September billing cycle with the entirety of what I had in my PayPal balace.  After hearing that they're going to hang onto people's money for 30 extra days before being allowed to make a money move, I began rethinking eBay selling.  You know when I sell something on eBay it's to pay off card bills, not to be held hostage in case the buyer decides to return the item which is the reason I believe they're changing the rules.  Someone wants to return the item within 30 days, and PayPal feels they need to hang onto that money.