What a nightmare Ebay has become.

[grasshopperx]

What a nightmare buying and selling  here has become. All of a sudden everyone is a drop shipper. Some are great and ship fast, the rest take forever.

  Then there is the chinese carp. It's all small. Once I  bought a large shirt for my dog, and it wouldnt fit a 6 lb dog.  If you ever even get your item, your lucky. Big scam.....

   Also, all of a sudden , no one ships to a P.O. Box? Can someone explain to  me whhhY??? Because if it's becaus of shipping fed-x? it does end up at the P.O. box anyway??????? The companies must be sharing rides to destinations?

 Then there's selling.... We have been on here since 2001, sold thousands of items in the good ol days, and cant even GET A VIEW these days? so bad we quit.

   Then there is the watch list and the cart...  which dont work!

The fees are bad..... What the heck?

   It's the natural evolution of failure, I find my self going even to Walmart... Because it's easier! This site is TOAST unless they clean up theit act. No future here at all. WHAT A PAIN!

[stuffbuyeruk]

The main killer for me is relisters and incompetant/dodgy sellers.

I do shop mostly in the second hand and collectables section and ever since ebay stopped charging people to list the place has become a grindstone of people relisting thousands upon thousands of relisted rubbish that never will sell or, if it does, someone's been fleeced.

There's this one guy in my favourite category who's been listing the same coin for over 5 years. It never sells and he never changes the price and never changes the photo. I know his name off by heart not because I've ever bought from him, but because his listing drain the life out me every time I search.

In the last 6 months he's sold maybe 5 items for a dollar each, and, just in the category I search, he has about 30 listings across 5 different but similarly named accounts, each one on a permanent re-list week-in week-out, never changing but always increasing in volume.

That one coin has mushroomed into a quagmire.

And he's not the only one. I could name at least 10 more that are doing the same. There are literally pages and pages of 9 or 10 sellers just constantly re-listing the exact same items, none of which are priced to sell, most are unattractively photographed, and almost none of which have any descriptions of interest.

People say collectables is a different market and that its about waiting for the right buyer. Wrong, By-it-Nows are the place to sit and wait for the right buyer, not auctions. The genuine auctions have become so buried in a sea of rubbish failed-BINs as to be nearly pointless looking through. When one little thing does appear that's both new and saleable the final price it gets is merely the dedicated and masochistic re-sellers competing with each other to bid it up 25% of its worth.

Now, you might think that's great for a collector, cheap items! But it's not, no matter how much one loves one's hobby, scrolling through 1,000 listings every single day to catch the one single genuine new auction, which only has a 1% chance of being a decent items itself, is so mindnumbing that cracking rocks suddenly starts to seem like an attaractive alternative hobby.

And then when that one item you do by turns out to be from a charlatan seller who mucks you around...

Oh lord, what... is... the... point... anymore...

And this is the case for a huge number of categories I used to browse a lot.

Nowadays I mostly use the site for just seeing if it's price for a DVD that I know the title of and want specifically, is cheaper and less hassle to buy here than somewhere else.

[bonjourami]

As long as Ive been on here, and thats eighteen years, there have been many sellers who refuse to ship to p.o. boxes..dont ask me why..but whatever..its nothing new or 'all of a sudden'.

[goodluckselling]

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@grasshopperx wrote:

SERIOUSLY? I've been ON HERE 2O YEARS! give me a break.  LOL

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I am sure you are an expert at clicking the BIN button when you can find your item of interest,  And my point is that you might have some issues in searching for items that will allow you to find them and buy them without hours of frustration. Yet I just demonstrated how easy it is to find your chosen item in less than one minute. 

So I have to ask again.  What is causing you so much frustration and hours of time to find what only takes about a minute?

Good Luck Buying!

[grasshopperx]

I did too tunic. If I searched white wire crafts I got 6400 items of all sorts. What i need is white craft wire. I went over to etsy and found a buch real fast. Not here on ebay. Then when you do find it, the price is thru the roof to pay for the fees. Cant blame the sellers tho,(I've sold alot on here). They do what they have to to stay alive.

[thenobletuckylife]

Afternoon,

Sounds like ya live in Nobletucky when folks give directions.

Well you'nes go up here towards the lake for just a bit and then turn left when ya see the firewood sign.

Stay on that until ya get past where buckeye's are and turn on Halleys.

Jr Bonds lives up on the ridge right there where the water company stopped the water line before the EPA got involved cause of the 98 flood...man that was bad...then go past Danfords...your almost there.

When ya take a bend down into the hollar turn right into that drive ya cannot see...it's across from where them folks from Alaska live...the second ones...not his brother.

If you loop around and come on up to the Dairy Queen then ya gone to far.

(By the way...no Dairy Queen out there...just a term they use here for an ice cream shack found that out the hard way)

The moral of the story...some folks that have lived here all their lives & still get directions like this...them thar folks coming from out of county have NO IDEA whatcha talkin bout & how you can get around so easy.

Doesn't make the locals any smarter than those that don't live there.

Mr C

[mistwomandancing]

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stuffbuyeruk wrote:..........the place has become a grindstone of people relisting thousands upon thousands..........guy who's been listing the same coin for over 5 years..........he never changes the price and never changes the photo..........pages and pages..........constantly re-listing the exact same items..........

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This is the junk that is listed Good 'Til Cancelled and runs forever.  Awhile back, eBay said they are only going to let that stuff run for one YEAR, and then they're ending it.  If the sellers want to keep it going, they'll have to actually do the work of getting it up and running for another year, which many will do, but at least it might require that they put a bit more consideration into their item, pricing, and listing overall.

And when eBay announced that they were only going to let stuff run GTC for a year at a time, you should have heard the hollering over the announcement. 

But I'm with you.  Yes, I know some items DO take awhile to find the buyer in need, the one buyer who actually has an interest in that item, but...  tons of this stuff isn't selling because it's not priced right or presented well. 

[castlemagicmemories]

That is what I find hard to understand.  Buyers want functionality above all else.  They are not going to care if you move a button from the right side to the left side of the page, or change the look of pages.  No change should be made that makes the process less simple, or requires more time and clicks and pages.

I read once from someone that was in IT that IT people love new project, but as far as fixing what doesn't work, not so much.  They don't really want to fix things, they love to work on new projects, not old.  It would seem to be true.

Like you, I love to buy here.  But the constant issues with things working RIGHT can be enough to send a buyer elsewhere.  The constant error messages for different functions are very frustrating.

[castlemagicmemories]

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@thenobletuckylife wrote:

Afternoon,

Sounds like ya live in Nobletucky when folks give directions.

Well you'nes go up here towards the lake for just a bit and then turn left when ya see the firewood sign.

Stay on that until ya get past where buckeye's are and turn on Halleys.

Jr Bonds lives up on the ridge right there where the water company stopped the water line before the EPA got involved cause of the 98 flood...man that was bad...then go past Danfords...your almost there.

When ya take a bend down into the hollar turn right into that drive ya cannot see...it's across from where them folks from Alaska live...the second ones...not his brother.

If you loop around and come on up to the Dairy Queen then ya gone to far.

(By the way...no Dairy Queen out there...just a term they use here for an ice cream shack found that out the hard way)

The moral of the story...some folks that have lived here all their lives & still get directions like this...them thar folks coming from out of county have NO IDEA whatcha talkin bout & how you can get around so easy.

Doesn't make the locals any smarter than those that don't live there.

Mr C

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OMG Mr C!

Have you ever seen Funny Farm?

Old local sitting on his front porch.  When asked for directions, he says something like, well, you go past the barn that isn't there anymore...

[rolenboy01]

Would you venture to say it's become a real horror show or a house of horrors?

[thenobletuckylife]

Maybe it will get entered into next years Cannes Movie Festival

Mr C

[luckythewinner]

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@grasshopperx wrote:

All of a sudden everyone is a drop shipper.

Also, all of a sudden , no one ships to a P.O. Box?

cant even GET A VIEW these days?

Then there is the watch list

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I have not encountered any of these issues.(Can't comment on the cart, because I never use it. )

[touchdownarkansas]

The Amazon thing is so true. I have Prime and buy a lot from Amazon. I still do buy a lot from Amazon but have stopped buying certain things. I no longer buy anything food, anything medication unless I am sure of the expiration date and that it will be sealed. I don't buy anything like aluminum foil or parchment paper anymore. I used to buy a lot of household goods on Subscribe and Save but not anymore. You are so right about the packaging. The last aluminum foil and parchment paper came to me in a huge box like they were just thrown in there and the product boxes were totally crushed and open. Something tells me that they were like that when they were packed. I called Amazon to complain and returned them. Not all, but a lot of the shipping boxes are not sealed properly. Half of the tape is hanging off and not even attached to the boxes. Sometimes I wonder how my stuff got here without falling out. I am really disappointed in Amazon and have told them so. I buy a lot of stuff and they are losing my business slowly but surely. The prices are also going up a lot on certain things. Amazon is trying to do too much when they can't even handle the things they already have going. I just received a refund on some hypoallergenic lotion that had no seals. I cannot believe that they would sell personal items with no seal. They refunded without return and said that it is the way it comes. Another thing I will not buy from them anymore. One more thing they do that I can't stand is when they ship a small appliance or computer/tablet in its original box so that it is not protected and everyone can see what it is. I have had to return several things for that reason. It is sad. Amazon used to be great.

[nawlinsron2]

My Senior year home room teacher (do they have those anymore?) gave us a never-forgotten nugget of wisdom..."The things you care about are the things you get done."

Prima facie, ebay does not care about sellers per se. It cares about THREE things, and three ONLY:
1) Stock price
2) Stock price
3) Stock price
Individual sellers are reduced to molecules in a gob of Play Doh called ebay...that gob is massaged
into whatever shape their brainiac MBAs think will serve ebay's sole purpose...raise that stock price.
Unless you're selling under $50 new clothing, what has ebay done for YOU as a seller lately?
..and by lately, I mean the last 5 years.

[thenobletuckylife]

Hey T-D,

It's horrible over there and it has progressively gotten worse over the last 2 years.

As I mentioned...I ended my Prime over there because I lost so much time dealing with damaged goods.

As a business owner and cabinet maker I spend tens of thousands of dollars a year in materials and supplies. How can it be that folks simply do not know how to ship blades...hardware just bouncing around it a box...heavy items mixed with soft damagable containers...busted open fasteners etc sometimes shipped in boxes more than 10 times the size needed...or as you mentioned...just a sticker stuck on the side of the manufacturers box.

It has gotten so bad that if and when I was buying there this past year before my prime ended I actually pretty much purchased Wharehouse Clearance/Used/Damaged goods because at least 30% of what we bought new came in that condition anyway.

So at least ebay has some hope in this area...yet it's mostly the same folks here as over there I presume that I am buying from anyway...at least here sometimes I get the 8% or 10% ebay bucks.

Was able to stock up with a 5 pack of underwear with the last ebay bucks...saved me $15.

It gets old calling about problems...no matter where they are...here...over there etc.

I will say this...man was the goods from Walmart VERY WELL packed and almost everything was in another clear bag...not just a bunch of air bubbles like so many others do.

Home Depot is not quite as good...mostly problems with their 3rd party vendors...but have very little complaints.

Here, we shipped like our goods were going to the moon with Neil Armstrong...lol...oh yeh that was a hoak wasn't it?

Mr C

[yuzuha]

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@mistwomandancing wrote:

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But I'm with you.  Yes, I know some items DO take awhile to find the buyer in need, the one buyer who actually has an interest in that item, but...  tons of this stuff isn't selling because it's not priced right or presented well. 

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There's a seller in one of my categories that I watch with a sort of morbid fascination because she has her items priced so outrageously that no one is ever going to be dumb enough to buy them.  I've sold the exact same items that she's trying to sell and her prices are just ridiculous-- she has keychains that I sold for $20 priced at $40 and figures that I sold for $15-40 priced at $50-90.  It's not like these things are rare; there's usually a decent amount of them listed at any given time and unsurprisingly, all of the other ones sell because they're priced reasonably.  Her stuff has been sitting there for well over two years now with no takers when she could sell them fast if she would just lower the price to what they're actually selling for.