eBay

ryanrobyn · ‎04-27-2024

As an owner of 2 Ebay stores this process irritates me greatly. Store owners pay fees regular sellers don't. There is no way that a seller would know that Ebay does this when they agree to Ebay's rules. When I began selling over 25 years ago this did not occur. Ebay just decides what to do without informing the sellers. After being loyal to Ebay for so long I feel cheated and stabbed in the back.

pcobra93 · ‎04-29-2024

‎04-28-2024 05:34 PM

Again, let’s pretend that eBay is hiding listings based on geography of the buyer. No need to pretend, they are doing it ...in their own words and what we have all observed. How would that hurt the average seller? If your items cannot be seen, then you cannot sell. If all are being hidden to the same basic degree, and eBay is doing it on saturated items, what is the math to explain how any seller is being disadvantaged (overall)? Got no idea on the math as Ebay wont disclose the algorithm so I would just be guessing....however, I don't believe it is on just "saturated items". I believe it is doing it on most (if not all) items and that is where the real problem is. Sure, if eBay hides listings for me in Ohio but but hides my competitors in Pennsylvania, we are even, right? No...actually, you both lost.

isaiah53-57 · ‎04-29-2024

This was an improbable issue for us also - Living on the east coast and having a statistically improbable/impossible percentage of our sales going west of the Mississippi - Given that near 60% of the US population lives east of the Mississippi, given we are situated just hours away from one of the most populous regions in the country, given people on the west coast would need to pay 2x to 4x or more in shipping than those in our region, and given that we live in a state that has no sales tax, yet HARDLY EVER got sales from our own state...

We wholeheartedly believe it was underhanded tactics designed to artificially drive up the cost of the entire transaction in order to increase the fees retained - To make things worse, in our eyes, it couldn't have been more blatant and obvious... kind of like, oh sellers are stupid... they'll never even notice...

siamjane8 · ‎04-29-2024

The problem with the rolling visibility is that when your item comes up in a search in PA but is not being shown everywhere else- you are relying on the buyer in PA being ready to purchase at that moment. If they are not then you get no sale. Perhaps there were 6 buyers in other states that were ready to purchase but were NOT shown your item- so a sales opportunity was lost and a potential customer went unsatisfied.

Granted, if you are selling i-phone cases or widgets or other high volume selling consumables, you will probably not see a difference.....BUT if you have antique, vintage, used goods and long tail items- your items need to be available for view in search at all times to all locations to effectively be connected with a buyer at any moment in time. That is where the frustration comes from for both buyers and sellers. AI does not work with unique items- they must be shown to all if they search for those keywords

siamjane8 · ‎04-30-2024

@luckythewinner

eBay wanting to get rid of small sellers
eBay favoring big sellers
eBay having "servers that are too small"
eBay wanting force sellers to use promoted listings
eBay wanting to make sellers pay more insertion fees
eBay wanting to maximize shipping costs to make more fees

Thanks for the list lucky- it really represents some of the major issues sellers have been dealing with over the years as ebay has changed. Hopefully this will help ebay management get the larger picture and effectively make design and policy change that will improve the platform again and encourage more GMV and sales in general. As these decisions are made by people that do not actually use the site- lists like this showing the challenges of eBay's customers/sellers are very valuable I'm sure.

luckythewinner · ‎04-30-2024

@isaiah53-57 wrote:
it couldn't have been more blatant and obvious... kind of like, oh sellers are stupid... they'll never even notice...

This does not happen to me. My sales are spread all over the country, and the four most common states I sell to are - unsurprisingly - the four most populous states.

But there is another conspiracy theory that eBay only throttles traffic for sellers who publicly criticize eBay on this board 😄

luckythewinner · ‎04-30-2024

@siamjane8 wrote:
@luckythewinner
eBay wanting to get rid of small sellers
eBay favoring big sellers
eBay having "servers that are too small"
eBay wanting force sellers to use promoted listings
eBay wanting to make sellers pay more insertion fees
eBay wanting to maximize shipping costs to make more fees
Thanks for the list lucky- it really represents some of the major issues sellers have been dealing with over the years as ebay has changed.

Just to be clear - my list was a tongue-in-cheek list of all the conspiracy theories that I do not believe and that I have seen no evidence of in my 20+ years here.