I thought I would send you over to the Upper Deck blog to check out my latest blog with them. I spoke to a bunch of vendors at the card show about eBay and wrote about it. Somewhat interesting, and perhaps you have been through a similar situation or have heard the same things. Sooz and I actually just closed our eBay store ourselves, hopefully it is a temporary thing but we'll see how things go.
Jerry Hairston Jr. just made an error to extend the inning and destroying the game. On that note I am done writing because I'm kinda fuming.
I haven't read your article yet, but the biggest problem with ebay is that they 100% favour the seller. Time and time again. And the buyer has no recourse. Until this blatant favouritism ends, ebay will continue to suffer losses.
ReplyDeleteI too have pretty much given up on ebay. I've never been particularly burned by anyone, but you can almost equal deals from online warehouses (that you can trust), and it's not worth the hassle of sorting through 'penny' cards with $5 shipping just to find reasonable sellers.
ReplyDeleteWhy did you give up on ebay?
Well, it's not that we gave up it's that we don't have the money right now to continue to stock the store with new items. As far as buying on there, I haven't been buying as much as I used to mostly because the guys I collect are going for more than I'm willing to spend or people are charging $3.50 and up on shipping that I know doesn't cost anywhere near that from selling for years.
ReplyDeleteActually with ebay they favored the seller with me. I was a powerseller and one day an old woman bought her grandkid a toy from me. Later they claimed id theft and paypal automatically froze my account and gave them money out of my account w/o asking me for any info. It was around $200. It took 2 months to sort it out with her saying she made a mistake and her cc company and paypal slowly giving me my money back.
ReplyDeleteman i must be tired. Meant to say buyer.
ReplyDeleteCheckOutMyCards.com seems to be a great alternative to eBay. Their shipping fees are great. Their selling fees are great. I've enjoyed my experiences with them so far.
ReplyDeleteI've given up on eBay too. I used to do a lot of business with them. I got tired of the fees going crazy. I get an eBay fee and a PayPal fee for the same sale. It's terrible.
ReplyDeleteLike Jared, PayPal froze my account one time because I needed to prove what I was selling was legit. I had to provide physical proof that I had the tickets I had listed on the site... even though I had over 500 approval feedback, 100% positive. Treating me like a criminal and proving my innocence ruined it for me.
That has also happened to me where an international buyer claimed that they never received the item, and since there is no delivery confirmation I had no proof other than my customs form and number that it was sent. PayPal didn't care that the item was sent with proof shown through a receipt and the customs form with date of mailing stamped by the post office. I ended up out $200+ and my item that I never saw again.
ReplyDeleteAnother bad story was my purchase of the 2005 Bowman Sterling Lind GU Auto RC. The guy said his wife went out to put it on the boat but she missed it. She put it on the boat the next day and there was a terrible storm. There was a lot more to that fairy tale, and I think I actually posted about it 2 years ago when only me and Sooz read this, lol. It was the most ridiculous story.
All in all, selling is great if you sell in very high volume or sell very high priced items. The fees are now very high, and the seller has no protection whatsoever which is the major drawback.
I don't sell much on eBay, I purchase more. However, I have a few items listed now. Based on my shipping-fee-fury as a buyer, I now include this caveat in whatever I list:
ReplyDeleteIf I'm off by more than 50 cents on the shipping, I'll refund you the difference through Paypal.
I know it's not much, but as a buyer I want to pay for what I am receiving, and not the seller's fees. So as a seller, I want buyers to have the same assurance. *shrug*