I am hoping that this thread doesnt get locked, because I am not trying to start a bitch thread. I just want to voice a few of my issues with eBay and talk about what my alternatives are to using it. I make a good bit of money on eBay, and that is usually how I fund my car hobby...I am talking more about selling stuff in general, not necessarily car stuff, as I would use the classifieds to list that anyway.
My first complaint about eBay is that they dont actually protect the seller from almost anything. Case in point, I have been selling items all year, and its a bout a 10/10 list to sell ratio, however the ratio of sell/pay is more like 5/10. I have been selling on ebay now for over 6 years, and buying for over 10, and it has never been quite this bad. It has gotten so bad that it took me 4 and a half months of continuous listing as a BIN OBO, and 3 times as an auction bought and unpaid, to sell my very rare and highly desireable Akai 747 reel to reel. someone FINALLY bought and paid in December. I just listed a camera on my girlfriends account (due to the issue I am about to talk about ), and the buyer didnt pay, and a valuable and rare record i listed a week ago, same thing, and some rare cassette tapes 3 weeks ago, same thing. \Then there are the people who try to screw you and say they never get your item, eBay just sends them money and appeases them. Seriously.
Another issue is that eBay is continuously raising their fees, but the service they provide gets continuously worse as a whole. How can one raise fees, and then provide substantially worse service? and even less customer/seller support. Hell I dont even mind paying them the %13, if the service was worth it anymore. When I started swelling the fees were around %8.5, and I would have willingly paid %13 then to be able to keep that quality of service. But prices went up, and service went down.
More over it seems that PayPal and eBay might be splitting, and ebay is trying to set up its own inclusive payment system, so last time I tried to list something on eBay, eBay asked for my credit card number, for buyer protection purposes, I have almost %100 feedback, and have never, ever screwed a buyer, they have no right to ask me for my card info when PayPal already has it, and the whole point of PayPal is to keep that info off eBay in a more secure location. Needless to say, I did not give eBay my card info, and thus can not list anything on eBay anymore. From what I understand eBay is going to institute this on everyone, but right now they are doing this based on whether your credit score has fallen in the last year, which mine has. Which is even more ridiculous, since every time companies like eBay do a "hard pull" on your credit, it drops an instant 5 points. So who is to say they didnt do two credit pulls, and one dropped my score 8 months ago, and now because of that they say my credit rating is lower and I must provide my credit card.
I guess my real point here is other than Craigslist, and the classifieds of various forums, where do I even have to go? I am rather frustrated that eBay is THE online marketplace, there isnt anything else where people buy and sell shit? I mean why can nobody compete? A lot of people are sick and tired of eBay as well, so what the hell?