Posted on 01/21/2015 5:45:00 PM PST by Red in Blue PA
During the company's earnings call, eBay Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said 2015 would present "real challenges" and forecast that "it will get worse before it gets better." Separately, the company said it entered into an agreement with billionaire activist Carl Icahn, the company's largest active shareholder, and will appoint Jonathan Christodoro, Icahn's pick, to its board.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Etsy is great for finding hand made or one-of-a kind items. But there too you can run into problems with quality control. Not many people want to buy stuff made by amateurs in their spare time. Some of it is great, don’t get me wrong. I like Etsy. I had a custom product made for me from an Etsy vendor. But like Ebay perception is a hard thing to overcome. Etsy lets the site fill up with all kinds of surplus and “wholesale quantities at retail prices” sellers, it loses its charm. Exact same problem Ebay has, all imho of course.
Oh, yeah, EU import duties are horrendous. Those buyers have almost completely disappeared from eBay.
Amazon Prime killed the Ebay star, Amazon prime killed the Ebay star...
I see,if your on Facebook they have local yard sales on line that are free.Or just do a lot sale on ebay.
Close friends bought a laptop on Ebay for about $900, used Paypal and never got the laptop and never got a refund. I only presume they followed all proper recourse to settle since they did not have a lot of money. This was a few years ago and maybe Paypal has gotten more safeguards but that really put me off of both companies.
Ebay has had a cart for some time.
That wouldn’t happen today.
“eBay has several problems...
1. Seller fees are too high. eBay’s greed is chasing sellers away.
2. The deck is stacked against the seller who has no protection against crooked buyers. In a dispute, eBay will always side with the buyer regardless of the facts.
3. To add insult to injury, eBay has now extended the time the buyers have to return items they claim are “not as described” to 6 months, which is insane.
4. The eBay feedback system was deliberately emasculated so that a seller has no public recourse against a bad buyer.
5. eBay constantly changes how their system operates without warning, which can confuse buyers and sellers alike.”
Indeed, ebay’s woes are self-inflicted: their greed and stupidity chickens are finally coming home to roost.
“Close friends bought a laptop on Ebay for about $900, used Paypal and never got the laptop and never got a refund. I only presume they followed all proper recourse to settle since they did not have a lot of money”
Paypal rules are grossly rigged against the cheated buyer. The only way to deal with such fraud is directly with your own CC company and NEVER with PayPal, meaning NEVER pay for anything on ebay with anything but CC.
I’ve had mostly good experiences on ebay as a buyer, but the few times I’ve either been or felt cheated, if the seller didn’t pony up at once with a requested refund IN FULL (including return label if they want their crap back), I simply dispute the charge with my CC company, using email exchanges and merchandise descriptions as documentation. I’ve never lost such a claim with my CC company.
Good - I gave up on their rigged “auctions” years ago.....
“I signed up for one of those eBay sniper services for a free intro and it worked well putting in a bid at the last second, but it wasn’t worth the fees they wanted to charge.”
I pretty much purchase only BUY IT NOW items, but the few auctions I bother with, I always use the FREE gixen.com sniping service, and it has never failed me. It works really great! Oh, and did i mention it is free!
eBay financials have been buoyed by PayPal’s income for some time. PayPal is being spun off into a separate intity thanks to activist Investor Ican’s pressure. eBay must now stand on it’s own two feet, keep your eye on slight of hand fee changes. eBay is the master of “new and great” programs/changes that part you from another one or two percent of the final value fees.
ebay has changed the rules...
it is no longer a place to sell things, it is a place to lose money on the things you sell..
screw ‘em
One thing they’ve already done is to raise the maximum final value fee from $250 to $750. This only hurts you on items that sell for more than $2500, however (basic fee is 10%).
If nothing else, eBay is “progressive”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.