Hopefully, this will prompt eBay to reverse its atrocious "buyer-friendly" policies. Hell, maybe they'll even lower fees! I like having a hearty laugh in the afternoon...

I stopped trying to sell things on Ebay because of the atrocious listing fees. I don't like giving Ebay money even if my item doesn't sell.

Heh. I hope it gets worse for eBay. I used to use that site everyday...now I occasionally remember to check it around once a month. I just don't have the energy to battle injustice from multiple sides when taken advantage of anymore.
Coincidentally, I have just noticed I have been shopping more on Amazon lately to make up for it.

My husband used to make his living selling his handmade products on eBay. Heck, that's how I met him! Between eBay and PayPal escalating fees, no service, unfriendly policies to sellers, he found he couldn't make a profit any longer and now uses eBay only to sell used stuff he's getting rid of, not new products.

The last time I tried to buy something on eBay, PayPal sent me a fraud alert. I got the product, and it was fine. I tried to tell PayPal everything was OK. They recovered the money from the seller anyway. Four months later, still no resolution...the seller moved out of the US and told me to keep the product.

The last time my husband tried to buy something on eBay, the seller never shipped it, and is giving random excuses. He just wants to cancel the transaction and get his money back. Neither eBay nor PayPal seems willing to do anything to help.

I just use Craigslist now.

I love eBay both as a buyer and a seller but recently my account was hijacked and getting the account properly reinstated and restored has been a nightmare! eBay customer service is attrocious - much too mechanized/canned responses and no followthrough by their service associates. After reinstating my account they have resuspended it for failure to pay $6.02 in charges that the hijacker ran up. I won't be paying it.

@Keter: It's also getting really hard to find products that aren't coming from China and/or mega-huge resellers...if anything goes wrong during a transaction with either of those, it's impossible to straighten out because the sellers have no way to provide customer service and eBay seems to roll dice to decide disputes...

eBay used to be a good way to sell unwanted items and sometimes pick up a used bargain.

Now it is a gigantic storefront for a million small time 'traders'. The fees and unhelpful policies make it painful and not worthwhile to use to sell items. The hoard of small time vendors mean an indifferent purchase experience with vague shipping promises and highly variable attitudes to customer service.

Amazon is the way to go to buy new items.
Your local craigslist is the way to go for used.

All I ever hear about eBay any more is the extremely unfriendly policies and fees. Long ago I was considering using it; these days it'd be better to just use Amazon or something else that doesn't charge $arm and $leg.

I wish I could give these guys 0 stars to make them change policies.

The buyer-friendly policies are insane and seller-unfriendly. I had a buyer get their item, then demand money back for shipping or they would give me a negative feedback which is extortion. I refused because the shipping cost is not negotiable, especially after the auction is over.

The buyer gives me a neg... A call to eBay and forwarded emails with the buyer clearly demanding money had no effect. Ebay has a policy against extortion. The group that handles those issue isn't reachable by phone for some reason.

When I talked to another rep and went over it, the CSR actually tells me that it's not extortion if they demand money back for shipping?!?!?!?

There is no definition of extortion that I've found that makes exclusions for what the extorting was about... Obviously eBay has a different definition.

atrocious listing fees
scams
non-existent customer service
unfriendly policies for both buyers and sellers

it's amazing ebay/paypal are still in business.

Ditto on the fraud/scam comments. It happened to me the last time I used Ebay which just so happened to be the first time I tried to sell something after having only bought for several years. Of course Amazon does better, you don't have to worry about Nigeria bank scams. In my opinion, craigslist isn't necessarily better, you can have just as many people trying to rip you off unless you only accept cash. Plus, as a female, I'm not thrilled with the concept of meeting up with a stranger by myself and it's not always convenient/possible for my husband to be there.

Amazon also has the awesome benefit of a good deal of their products (those actually offered by Amazon rather than a 3rd party vendor) shipped free. With their usually competitive prices, this often even beats shopping in a regular store.

This is a godsend. I can only hope for the death of ebay to be expedited as quickly as possible. From their monopolistic acquisition and use of Paypal (which is borderline illegal, IMHO), absurd listing fees, cesspool of scams, horrific customer service and utter carelessness for the safety of its' sellers, ebay makes my list of one of the worst companies to come along in quite awhile.

I used ebay fairly requently at one point, but now its lots of scams, and it seems to me that if the company can't keep the fraudsters at bay, then they don't have any business raising fees.

Hell Craigslist is FREE and there are fewer scammers.

Its pathetic when your greatest competition is a .org with zero customer service.

My girlfriend was recently scammed by a seller on eBay. She won an item and immediately paid for it using paypal... and it was never shipped. She emailed the seller multiple times and never got a response. About two weeks passes with no response from the seller and no product in the mail, so she filed a complaint with paypal and they initiated an resolution dispute/investigation.

Upon completing the investigation, paypal informs my girlfriend that she indeed is entitled to recover the money she paid for the item, but that there's a slight problem: the seller withdrew the money she paid him from the paypal account and paypal has no way of recovering the funds for her. So, in a nutshell, 'thanks for your business and sorry about your loss.' They were good enough to tell her that if funds become available in his account again, paypal will TRY to get her money back for her, but it's far from a guarantee.

Perhaps if there was more consumer protection from ebay and paypal, ebay would become the one-stop shop on the internet once again. In the meantime, I have no faith in either company and will not be doing business with ebay unless I can pay for the transaction with a credit card. I will never pay a penny to anybody using paypal ever again.

I don't know how many times Ebay and Paypal has screwed us over, its just not worth it anymore. It seems like nobody is honest, and I'd just rather deal with stuff face-to-face.

@se7a7n7: YES! This happened to me not long ago and its happened to friends of mine also. Buyers are taking advantage of sellers and the sellers have no recourse to it.

I have trouble even using eBay with firefox lately. Also, there are very few good deals on eBay anymore. There's too many eBay stores and not enough regular people selling their crap. Combine that with bid sniping software, it's next to impossible to find a good used Sex Pistols T-shirt.

Are the headaches of dealing with eBay/PayPal outweighing the potential savings?

Yes. And the scams. In years past, I would have looked at eBay first before I bought anything. Now I don't even bother, because I'm either going to get ripped off or go through a hassle to complete the transaction.

Funnily enough, I bought most of my holiday gifts this year at Amazon. So I guess I'm representative of what most people are doing - not going to eBay, and buying from Amazon instead.

I have paid for Amazon Prime for over a year now and barely give eBay a second glance. Unless I just cannot find it anywhere else...

I didnt know people still used ebay. Amazon all the way. Easier and most of the time cheaper. Oh, and no paypal.

To Improve eBay:

1. Lower selling fees
2. Eliminate final value fees if your item doesn't sell.
3. Eliminate Paypal fees if that is the only service you accept.
4. MUCH better customer service is needed.
5. Get rid of the buyer friendly services because it drove sellers away in large groups.

@Clevelander: THIS! This is a major problem with ebay, if you get scammed by a bad seller, and they withdraw their money which they always will, you don't get anything back. If there is no money in their paypal account, then there is no way you are getting your money back, simple as that! Most of the time the seller will withdraw everything and even close their account, then you really have no recourse at all. Buyer protection is simply not there, even though they say it is!

They can just open up another account and start all over again as well...

@Keter: That's why I've stopped spending so much time on Ebay. It use to be a great place to buy used, but now it's nearly impossible to find anything that isn't from China. Even worse, when I try to patronize a US vender often it's a sham... the vender is actually in China. :(

I swore off ebay recently for a number of reasons including but not limited to the following: seller fees, horrible usability (their site gets worse as time goes by), terrible to non-existent customer service, the fact that they deposited money to an account that is not mine and refused to help me fing it or stop the payment, the fact that there really just aren't good deals on ebay anymore, the existence of craigslist and amazon as superior alternatives, archaic security and so on and so forth.

@Keter:

ebay totally sucks now.

the wife sold some jeans to a guy in germany and sent the item first class. as any seller knows, first class can sometimes be worst class and take up to a month. well, the guys says he didnt receive it and makes a claim on paypal. she then emailed him and wished him bad karma b/c we knew in our hearth that he recieved the item. after we emailed, he replied, i finally received it. he then left us negative and ebay wont remove it even though we have an email sent through the ebay message system from him indicating receipt.

i hope ebay goes bankrupt. i hope that german dude chokes on a bratwurst.

@humphrmi: I did too... after swearing for years that Amazon was the devil. But the experience was... nice. And I'll likely do it again.

eBay is basically just a classified listing service with integrated merchant services. It's no longer the giant garage sale it used to be, at least that's been my impression.

I used to buy/sell on eBay a bit; mostly collectible boardgames. I quit selling because the fees were getting out of hand plus the shipping costs were eating into the profit I'd make on the game. I don't buy there much either; the stuff I do look at isn't auctions it's all new from storefronts. To get rid of stuff I'll either use CL or just give it to the goodwill since it's not worth the hassle of selling it.

Amazon has been getting a lot more of my online $$ lately; they have good prices, free shipping, and I haven't had any issues with them.

The biggest problem I have with ebay is the HUGE amount of bootleg or fake items on there. They just do nothing to keep the fakes off there, because obviously the more people sell, the more money they make. The only time a fake gets removed is if the company that makes the products gets in touch with them and threatens them basically. So if someone was selling a fake Nintendo DS game (of which I might note, there are a million sellers out there right now selling fakes from China, and this just cropped up in recent months) it would not get removed unless Nintendo itself contacted ebay about the auction and had it removed.

I am better off paying a couple dollars more from a retail store to know that I am getting a genuine, authentic product.

A little over 3 years ago eBay laid out about 1.2 billion USD for Skype. Wonder how that's paid off for them?

I used to use eBay quite a bit for selling stuff I was decluttering. As others have pointed out the fees between PayPal and eBay really do eat into to your profits. I still came out ahead but I could see how difficult it would be to maintain a decent profit margin if this was your main source of income.

And this may be an annoyance more than anything else but the seemingly constant site redesigns really did a good job of uglifying a once simple and fairly elegant site.

So done with Ebay. The fees are just too much. If you use PayPal the combination of the fees eats up near a double digit percentage of your sale. I want to see more used good, less "stores," & a real price shipping rule.

You would think that with the help of Video Professors Learning How To Sell On Ebay, they would have had a positive quarter.

I wonder if Ebay paid Video Professor to come up with that tutorial?

I've actually not had much trouble with eBay lately.

But what gets me is these sellers that the very minute you pay for the item, they start demanding positive feedback!

I ordered a new microphone last month, and in the 4 days it took the item to get me, I had received 37 "reminders" from the seller wanting positive feedback!

The last 10 or so were in ALL CAPS, threatening to leave negative feedback for ME if I didn't leave him positive feedback IMMEDIATELY.

I don't shop at ebay anymore because there are multiple listings of crap, all big sellers which are basically stores putting up their whole inventory. The benefit of ebay to me used to be that I could find sellers similar to myself that would give honest listings and maybe give me a better deal than somewhere else. Now if you see an item below the average price you assume something is broke with it that the seller isn't tell you or it's a scam.

I am pretty much done with eBay having recently been scammed as both a buyer and a seller, in both instances eBay / PayPal wouldn't do ANYTHING to assist me. The automated "resolution center" is completely worthless. Fortunately in the instance where I was scammed as a buyer I was able to charge-back through VISA, but they said the policy is changing and they will soon no longer charge-back PayPal transactions.

By the way, selling car audio hardware on eBay brings out more human detritus than a laptop does Nigerian scammers.

I can't comment on their fees and buyer-friendly policies as I have never sold anything on eBay. All I know is that as an occasional buyer I stopped checking eBay when sellers started charging up the wazoo for shipping. Like we weren't going to notice that any deal in the purchase price disappeared with the way-more-than-necessary shipping...

Now, its Amazon all the way.

I use ebay to seel my old junk, period. You will not find me buying anything through them. I cant deal with wading through all the KA-RAP.

I've never encountered a scam or a fraud on ebay as a buyer and only had a few loose-cannon buyers as a seller, but I think that has to do with my market -- needlework supplies don't bring out the crazies the way electronics can. I just started selling again there this week after almost a year away; I hate their policies and business practises but it's the best place to get rid of rare, out-of-print patterns and get good money for them. It's already proved worth my while, even if I won't be paying our mortgage with it these days.

Ebay needs viable competition and/or someone with morals to take over the running of the place. It used to be a great location to buy and sell but with the influx of shady importers and the changes ebay has made to encourage scamming and thieving buyers, it's a mockery of what it used to be.

The thing is, eBay doesn't have lower prices. Every time I look for something there, it's at least the same as retail, sometimes even higher. The reason Amazon is doing so well is because their prices truly are the lowest, and on top of that they have fantastic customer service. eBay sucks.

Add one more to the crowd. I still buy something there every few months, but the items tend to be esoteric and otherwise very hard to find. That's their only value to me anymore.

Ebay would make an interesting rise and fall study. They were once the hottest fixture on the net, but their crazy fee bumps (on all sides) and lack of or hostile customer service have alienated just about everyone. I'm afraid whatever momentum they possess is going in the wrong direction.

Yes. Yes they are.

@Blueskylaw: They paid him in old baseball cards, if I recall...

Ditto here. Used to sell stuff, mostly vintage jewelry and collectible doodads, but the fees made it not worth my time. Now eBay requires sellers to accept PayPal and forbids them from accepting checks or money orders (unless the buyer emails to ask if they can pay that way!), so eBay racks up even more fees in the process. Now I have the occasional yard sale and do as good or better as I did on eBay, plus I don't have to deal with shipping or taking futzy pictures.

Still occasionally buy stuff on eBay--mostly new household stuff, and only if the S&H is decent--but only after checking Amazon first. Most of the time, Amazon's cheaper and ships for free.

@Illiterati: I don't think that's true. I sold something about a week ago and was able to specify check or money order payment options for my buyer. Additionally: [pages.ebay.com]
Scroll down to #6. The accompanying graphic shows "Personal check" and "Money order/cashier check" check boxes.

@Illiterati: Oh jeez. My apologies. You're right. Just checked out there "Accepted Payment" policy. [pages.ebay.com]
That'll learn me to post something before verifying it.

Crap. "their" not "there". I'm on a freakin' roll today.

I can see eBay trying to justify this policy in terms of fraud prevention (not that I'd necessarily buy that excuse) but then why make exceptions for certain specific categories? Man they are really shooting themselves in the foot.

Paypal screwed me out of $500. Now I'd rather sell my stuff on Craigslist and do it face to face or not at all. Whereas I used to go on eBay 2-3 times a month I now go 2 times a year or not at all.

The listing fees are bull too.

37 comments, from buyers and sellers, and they're all the same. eBay used to be great, now it sucks.

I still buy and sell there, old car parts, the kind of stuff you can't buy new. The feeling I get from everyone I talk to (buyers and sellers) is that as soon as a viable alternative comes up, everyone will leave.

I sure hope that day comes soon. I'll dump eBay like a bad date and never look back.

I was watching some horrid commercial the other night for a company that just goes by "SMC". They provide a conduit for you to buy all that imported crap you see on horrible kiosks at the mall. Maybe I should try that and then list the items on ebay so that I too can be making 50,000 or more a month selling from the comfort of my home.

Yeah, I don't think so. That's what everyone else is already doing, ebay's gone straight into the sewer.