It is all too much complicated.
When ebay started it was an auction site for once off things people had on their attic and so forth, used vehicles and stuff. People were believed they need reputation as a buyer, and they were egible to receive negative buyer feedback.
Many things were amalgated into ebay such as Buy now and GTC, as well negs for buyers were abolished.
Also when you study negs of large chinese sellers which I do for a long time to understand patterns of fraud and deception, youll see its pretty half baked. Some items show, some have a link, some are blank, and after 6 months, its different.
Totally Machiavellian, adding lots of small authoritan and superflous detail and variation in order to be in control.
I also know Aliexpress. Buyers can for instance add photos of merchandize received to item pages. They could write detailed comments if they wanted to.
To me all of this doesnt apply. I feel harassed each time I get nagged to rate DSR or leave FB and all the like.
I only want the item, pay and receive and that will be it.
Same for supermarket chains with their 1% off to let them know your spending patterns, and 10% student discounts (applied to extremlt overpriced items). I never understood what point theyre trying to make.
Cocacola and all the like billboards all day long everywhere such as you never heard of soft drink beverage cans, but if you see the billboard, best with large *BLEEPS* immediately you decide you need cocacola and leave all be jump to the next available store and buy 20 cans at least...
Totally useless. I go shopping anyway, and browse all the supermarkets and over time, try many things, always rotate brands because it becomes boring.
Yes I know theres people who for 20 years buy one and the same brand, one kind of jam, Irish breakfast perhaps every day and that will be it.
But most advertising and reward schemes, even the bright colors printed on the packages are totally useless.
However, as a buyer, you pay for the administration, creation and processing of all these things.
Typically, white label products are 20% to 50% cheaper, and often its exactly the same goods.
These advertisers and marketers dont add any value but they of course receive salaries and this is rolled into the price.
On ebay I found sales do little next to nothing.
What is important primarily and Ive learned it the hard way, the title has to be crisp and stunning, no baiting or superflous word. The picture has to be sharp and with perfect light and only about the product.
The price has to be "good".
It is a formula for success. I started from scratch, having some years experience on US ebay.
It collapsed pretty much due to several factors.
So I made new listings using the inventory on ebay UK.
I put efforts into making good pictures, to the point titles and descriptions no frills, and tried to make them a good price.
After a little more than a month, its quite a success. The sales conversion rate is quite good. There is no requests or bad FB (only very little marginally). Comments are outstanding which I receive.
All without special promotions, sales, frree shipping and other frills.
Without guaranteed 3 day delivery or free intl returns (totally rubbish and not needed by 98% of buyers).
I did buy some items again but they just dont understand, they think I could buy small parts for $1 and resell for $1.10 and could make a fortune. They dont understand the parts may be bad or may not sell. So there has to be markup.
Sometimes in the past when I sourced packages for resale goods on ebay, they did almost feel deceived, also not counting the long hours I spend well into the morning hours almost every night, to search for hard to find items. They also dont see I dont just dropship or resell chinese only but its a wide variety of goods from many different origins, and all prices are negotiable.
Last not least, I always help buyers when they have questions or dont get on with the parts they purchased, it is only a few percent of buyers, but I care for the smallest purchase and dont turn them away. So service is available if needed and it would cost tremendously to have a paid staff to do these services.
This is also a concern, they could see things I buy for resale.
Or is it I should rather create a blog with links to good deals? What is the point of all this? It takes ages to search for things, and put them together like a real world market in a way that makes sense, so I could get combined orders, large orders. Often a single seller stops selling the part in question and I need to get supplies from elsewhere pretty much every few months. For about 1000 items, its a large amount of work.
Yet some 2nd world place buyers see I sold for a large sum, or purchased at low price for resale and they almost get furious, perhaps decide to do a scam purchase. I dont know but often I got a feeling like that.
So I almost do no longer source on ebay. not to speak the price is 20% to 30% higher. There is some where it is same, or lower, and a few where it still makes sense to purchase here for resale.
For myself I dont care if they see I bought new laser toner or stuff like that.
But I also just simply dont want anonymus to see what I purchase.
Same like we wear garments because we dont want public arousal, uncontrolled interactions, or giggling by strangers. We have this custom for good reasons, and Arabs even cover their faces and heads even go further.
Allowing anonymus to see how many transactions I am having (through amount of FB), when and what I sell and for how much, what I buy incl price and item descripton. It is analogous to go without garments in the public and say, theyre basically good, they wont freak out, incl children as well perhaps.
Well we dont, special population groups do that, but the ordinary people do wear garments and are reserved to have their phone number seen , their name known and all.
I feel exposed and I dont see any reason what it should be good for. That is the problem.
I think they should not be able to see how many transactions I am having, if my sales recently increased or decreased. Neither the value of a sale I made. And of course not, what I am purchasing for resale.
The primitive feedback on ebay is a remnant from the early days when it was all about auctioning once off attic things and used vehicles and all the like and build a reputation as a buyer (as for auctions) to be welcome to bid, or less welcome.
Buyers should receive negative feedback of course, when theye misbehave.
We should see how many requests they have opened, if any. We should be warned if they opened a request with us before + be able to cancel the sale (high risk). Nothing the like.
As for me, once a request ends with a refund, this will be the end of the professional seller customer relationship. Why should I sell to them again? Beg them they could hound me again?
If the price is right, products are unique, well described, no time wasted with lamentations or superflous information, buyers will come.
If the items are cheaper at other places, if there is complicated procedure, tremendous amount of unneeded information as well stock photos, they will go somewhere else.
Ive taken a look at thousands of sellers on ebay and other avenues. Theres many bad ones, in terms of sales performance (sales conversion rate, inventory value compared to monthly sales).
Mostly stock photos, bad deals, totally overpriced, and without any affection to the items. Loads of such.
They are a ballast for ebay, a burden, they clog up search results and have relatively few sales.
They are the bottleneck. They make people leave ebay after looking and perhaps never come again.
The sellers who dont ship items on purpose, the items getting "lost" all the time in the post, the fake goods en masse (everything is fake products), the poorest quality products (often refered to as junk),
DO THEY ACTUALLY EXIST?
ALICE IN WONDERLAND PERHAPS.
You get what you pay for. I bought a bluetooth mouse some months ago, the battery spring is bent, the scroll wheel broke. Yesterday I openend it and the scrollwheel is thin plastic cheaply made (of course).
If it is pushed down its quite obvious it will break soon.
I have put some superglue and joined the broken parts, no problem.
Also I had to superglue the plastic shell since it needs to be tight. But it works again, no problem.
I got the chinese wireless mouse at very low price incl shipping, good deal, and I showed the appropiate affection to my product received.
How appropiate is it to want to return intl something that costs 5 dollars? Or get a full refund? When I used it for some months, and I was well able to fix it. I got what I paid for, functional, cheaply made of course, but not even looking bad. It does the job well.
So yes I do still buy but certain things I would rather not buy on ebay, and privacy concerns is a big reason. It is simply not anybodys concern what I buy. When I want others to know what I buy, I put it on social media. But these onliner feedbacks are just **bleep**.
Study them. You see the bad language full of insults and lousy grammar. I doubt it is people youd want to consult in real life. I doubt some small town US shop owner would argue, rather produce a baton or the like. Theyd have to leave.
In Ireland its so rough every tiny shop needs a security guard, hard to believe but it is like that. Youd be kicked out in 10 seconds they dont bother. Here on ebay, they can harass, stalk, start a bogus purchase, open requests or fake returns. NO HELP AVAILABLE.
No button "THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THIS CUSTOMER". It should exist.
It is joke to have to call and having to spell some 30 letters weirdo username. It can be quite hard to spell unusual words on the phone and intl lines can be extremly low quality so you dont even understand regular talk properly at times, have to ask to speak loud and slowly and repeat.
Id just hate to spell weird usernames on the phone. Or random ones as such when they buy as guest...
This is a big conglomerate of problems and things amalgated and half baked and all is somehow related.
Regards,
