Why I Don’t Use eBay Anymore
- 4
- Add a Comment
- No Related Post
What happened to eBay? It used to be the main spot to pick up good stuff at a good price. Now it’s more annoying to use than fun. Since becoming a big, evil company though, I slowly used the site less. Now I don’t use it at all. Here’s a few reasons why I don’t use eBay, and why you shouldn’t either.
It caters to bigger sellers
It used to be that an average Joe in California would put an item up and start it at a low price. People would bid and win it for a nice price. Now most of the things I go to buy aren’t even auctions, but Buy it Now only. If it’s not that, the auctions start way too high. These auctions are usually run by big companies or high volume sellers, which makes up most of the auctions out there now.
PayPal only policy
I should be able to accept payment however I decide. Why is PayPal, check or money order good enough, but Google Checkout isn’t? Because otherwise eBay and PayPal wouldn’t make the enormous amounts they normally would on each transaction. They take part of your sale, and part of the payment.
Shipping prices
Sellers tend to make too much profit on the shipping charges. I bought a case for my phone and the guy wanted $10. This situation is repeated on virtually every auction.
Item descriptions are too long
When you click on an auction these days, each seller seems to have 10,000 paragraphs of fine print for you to read. Sorry, but when I’m shopping I shouldn’t have to read that much to make sure I’m not getting ripped off.
More stupid people
In the beginning, most people understood the unwritten rules of eBay. One of them was that you don’t just send a negative feedback for small reasons. Now the site has tons more people than it did 8 years ago, which means more stupid people that are willing to bitch and complain about every little thing. They often end up leaving negative feedback for things as little as “The box wasn’t shrink wrapped.”
Broken items
I searched for a laptop the other day, and most of the items in the search were broken. Maybe 1 out of 10 were actually functional. It’s frustrating and takes more time to search eBay for a bargain these days. I would rather pay a few dollars more and just get the item off Amazon.
Ripoffs
I remember when the Playstation 2 was big, people were advertising “PS2 Console Box” in the titles to their eBay auctions. People would bid on this item thinking it was the actual console. All they would get in the mail after spending $100’s of dollars was the box. I realize that people should pay attention and read, but I don’t want to have to worry about bidding on something and getting ripped off because I missed the fine print.
Prices keep going up
It seems that eBay ups their prices once every 6 months. The company was already lucrative in the beginning, why did they have to get greedy and up the prices? They take a chunk of what the item starts at, what it ended at, and if you use PayPal they get a part of that too. Want to add another photo? Sorry, spend more! Want an icon next to your listing? Spend more. It’s ridiculous!
So I wait for the day when somebody comes along and gives eBay a run. Are you listening Google? Everybody that tries gets squashed like Yahoo though.
4 Comments
Lee
May 30th, 2008
at 10:56am
Come on Google, wipe eBay off the internet!!
I hate eBay, for many of the same reasons as you, but as a small scale seller I’d have to list the following as my reasons:
Listing takes too long. I’ve had to resort to using iSale but it’s still a time sink.
Stupid buyers badgering me with inane questions about what the postage will be to the Congo, and if you don’t respond immediately they send abuse.
Stupid buyers not understanding that other people have full-time jobs and aren’t always available during work hours to answer questions, and more importantly to get to the Post Office to post the damned item.
Inane AAAAAA++++++++ star rating crap.
EBay stopping us from even rating buyers any more.
Stupid buyers whinging about their feedback. Feedback should be limited to the last 10 or so transactions WHICH WERE RATED. Who cares if you have 3687 positive feedback. For the purposes of judging a decent person to deal with there’s absolutely no difference between having 300 or 30000, get over it! If my local corner shop started badgering me for a performance review every time I started out the door, I’d stop shopping there.
There’s nothing wrong with neutral. Neutral, by definition is neither good nor bad. By default transactions should be neutral. Only rate something as good if the buyer/seller went out of their way to accommodate a particular request or did something special.
God I hate eBay.
Samantha
August 18th, 2008
at 10:55am
I hate eBay as well. I wrote an ebook and was selling it on ebay, only to get it removed! they stated it could only be sold by the owner of the intellectual property or by a person authorized by the intellectual property owner to distribute it. After emailing them 5 times trying to get someone to answer my question, as to why this was happening, I got a response that The eBay Trust and Safety team has reviewed this matter several times.
We have determined that the action taken was appropriate in this case. We will not review your account again or respond to further emails from you regarding this matter unless they contain new information. What is so stupid is, no one ever asked to see the information that I was selling. I told them, fine I will just take my business else where. They didn’t care!
George
August 21st, 2008
at 6:11am
I agree years ago it was great for the average joe’ to go on ebay, and get some good deals ebay would back you up if some one sent you junk. But you are right. It turned in to a big buyes market and just pusher us little guy away, I dont use it and stay away from it. it turn out to be a big rip off.
George
aikane
October 28th, 2008
at 6:57am
I stopped small time selling (average joe) after I was harrassed by a buyer that didn’t even read my description. He purchased the product then said he wasn’t going to pay for it. I filed a complaint only for ebay to ignore my please in favor of him (he was a bigger seller (vinyl records or something)). I had to relist my product and pay again to sell the same item. The item ended up costing me more than it was worth in the long run. Last time I ever sold anything on ebay.
I just looked for a product recently to buy on ebay, but while looking found that hardly any small time sellers were there listing products. The products available were the ebay stores and they were pushing products that could be bought from a local retailer at a lot cheaper price!
So sad to see, but my days with ebay are over!