Internet Auction Blog

eBay continues to make really ignorant decisions. John Donahoe is an idiot. Yes, I know he went to Dartmouth and Stanford, but he must not have ever learned the saying “don’t fix what isn’t broke.” John Donahoe, you are an idiot. Starting in October, eBay will begin limiting what a seller can charge for Shipping & Handling. They will start in the “media” categories. The most a seller will be able to charge is $4.00 for shipping an item.

I often sell vintage record albums. The albums measure 12″x12″ inches in size. I buy specially cut-out cardboard to use as packaging material. I buy oversized bubble mailers to ship most record albums, or even specially sized cardboard boxes for more expensive record albums. Plus my postage and time, I will lose money by shipping these record albums for $4.00.

The US Postal Service allows for “media mail” to weigh as much as 70lbs! I also often sell large collections of books which weigh nearly 50lbs. These CANNOT be shipped for only $4.00 as eBay insists. So what are we supposed to do? eBay tells us to use the shipping calculator to charge actual shipping costs. Ridiculous. So sellers aren’t supposed to be compensated for their time and packing materials? Only shipping costs?

I know, I know, eBay says to raise my starting price. Are you kidding? I start all my auctions at 99 cents. If I start my auctions higher, eBay charges more. This is all a ploy by eBay to capture more of our money, and they think sellers are too stupid to realize it.

Let eBay know how you feel!
http://pages.ebay.com/townhall/

Next Town Hall – Friday September 19 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM PST

Please join us for our next Town Hall audio event with Stephanie Tilenius, SVP & GM of North America Marketplaces.

Date: Friday September 19th from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM PST

About Town Halls
Our audio Town Hall events offer you the opportunity to have your questions answered by eBay and PayPal leaders. We love to hear from you! Phone our toll-free number during the event — 1-877-474-3302 — to ask your question on the air.

Alternatively, you can email your question, now or during the event, to townhall@ebay.com. Keep your emails short and to the point, and we will do our best to answer your question on the air.
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Please be brief when stating your question/comment. We want to get to as many customer questions as possible. Thanks!

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To listen to previous events or read the transcripts, please visit our archives. If you’re unable to listen to the audio archives from past Town Hall events, a written transcript is available on the Town Hall Archives page. Be sure to check them out.

Some girl named Angela from eBay wanted to take 3 minutes of my time to tell me about the upcoming changes to ebay that will “benefit” sellers. Yeah, right.

She starts off by telling me some garbage about having search options set to “ending soonest” would yield the best results. I told her, ok, but eBay has it set to default to “Best Match”. Her response was “Yes, it defaults to Best Match, but you can change that.” I told her, why are you telling me this as a seller? You should be telling our BUYERS that information. I already know I can change my search option, but newbie buyers do NOT know this.

Then she wanted to tell me how the new changes to eBay’s “Buy-It-Now” costs will benefit me as an eBay Store owner. She says I can now send some of my store items over to “Buy-It-Now” for only 35 cents for 30 days! Guess what. I can already list items in my eBay Store for 30 days and it only costs 5-7 cents. Sure, it would get more visibility if I listed the items as “Buy-It-Now”, but it’s also going to make my eBay Store nearly invisible.

At one point in the conversation, she said something about me needing to modify my listings. I told her I have 500+ listings in my eBay store and I’ll be damned if I spend time modifying each one. She said I don’t *have* to but that I might *need* to. WTF?

Sadly, eBay is the only viable game in town right now, and until someone does something to compete with eBay and attract buyers & sellers, eBay can do whatever it wants.