eBay

Full review
I have been buying and selling on Ebay for 10 years and really was addicted to the ease and the access to items my home town did not have. I had a couple of problem buyers and sellers who gave me fits in the first 9 years, but really had fun cleaning my closets and listing them for a profit. At one point, I would use it as my part-time job..of course, most of the time, I bought as much as I sold!

Then within the last year, things began to change for the seller portion of Ebay. Fees began creeping upwards, new rules and demands took effect like Ebay began pushing free shipping, became buyer geared so sellers could not honestly evaluate their experience with the buyer, sales had to be paperless, and I actually began to see another side of the Ebay experience. On top of these, my recent experience with Customer Service revealed that not all of the rules are in "black and white" because they want to "keep them flexible to make the shopping experience good for the buyer." In other words, they can change on someone's whim!

Recently, I was relisting a DKNY sweater and was refused based on a "limited number of relistings per seller." I complained about this because I had never heard of such a rule and Customer Service explained that because my reputation had not been established to Ebay's new standards, I could not list this item more than a limited number of times. Please note: no amount was specified by CS, no hard numbers were used. I made note I had 100% rating, been with them 10 years, and was confused by this. The answer had nothing to do with the question, just a rah-rah, keep trying to sell and get your reputation higher. NO sense.

Based on this and the new rules and fees, along with the knowledge I have obtained from research online, I no longer sell on Ebay and probably won't anymore! They truly don't want the small sellers anymore, period! They want to move to an Amazon-type shopping mall online where you have large vendors who peddle under one venue.

Customer Service, from my experience, doesn't answer the questions you have, merely sends canned responses that vaguely address somewhat. When pushed for answers, they still have canned speeches they send to you.

The fees are now awful to sell, despite Ebay's glossing over and "spin job" regarding lowering the listing fees. Yes, they lowered then then raised the final value fees to 12% and more.

I must admit to selling my items for a very nice profit but once the fees for Paypal and Ebay got done, my 600. profit in two weeks became less than 200.00. What made it worse is that I always prided myself on keeping my prices as low as I could, yet still make a profit on my items.

I was saddened and deeply upset by this and would suggest to anyone wanting to sell on ebay that they look at the fees incurred for each item very carefully, then, along with your expected profit margin needed, figure them into your asking price minimum. These fees have to be included or you will go broke!The listing fees are now up to 1.00 for an opening price of 24.99 to 50 dollars not including the photo fees which tack on another 35 cents or so each. Then if you want the special items like bold, larger gallery photo, expect more. My standard listing ran around 2.00 or more each and I was listing 65 usually at a time. I sold usually one third of my items at usually two to three times what I bought it initially, and still lost money.

Sadly, I am now gone, whether for good or just when I have antique glassware, I am not sure.

I have found other sites to list my items, like atomic mall and buyitsellit.com,  most filled with small Ebayers as myself who are disheartened and disillusioned by the large auctioneer.

I must add that since the new changes geared to buyers have appeared, I have encountered several of the worst buyers who have bought then changed their minds about the purchase. I turned them in and nothing happened. Ebay turned their heads proving to me the buyer now can do what they want, the seller is at their mercy and if they change their mind, you eat the fees and can do nothing.