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!

[tomuchstuff5]

@stuffbuyeruk

That's depressing. I am sorry.  I hope the season brings you some great items to bid on or buy in now on. 

[mistwomandancing]

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nawlinsron2 wrote:..........what has ebay done for YOU as a seller lately?
..and by lately, I mean the last 5 years.

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Hosted my eBay business where my sales provide a goodly chunk of our income, which in turn enriches our lives. 

[tomuchstuff5]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

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@nawlinsron2 wrote:
ebay has developed, IMHO, a totally useless identity crisis.
They were...and ARE...the world's largest flea market...solid identity.
But, the ruling genii have decided that ain't good enough..."we" gotta be hip..."filled with color" if you will.
So, flashing pictures at the rate of one per nanosecond in an ad somehow creates that "new" identity?
Gag me with a spoon...

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My opinion, FWIW - New stuff is what ruined Ebay. You can buy new stuff anywhere. Ebay should have been THE destination for vintage and pre-owned. Now Ebay is known for overpriced dollar store trash and ripoff Chinese sellers.

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Embrace Your Roots Ebay ...........At least give us a door (not an exit) but an Entrance to the wonder of what was. It can be again. 🙂

[nawlinsron2]

Back to the Future...so simple...unless you're an ebay MBA.

[biggirl_bigworld]

I agree. They're only interested in large sellers. The small sellers who put them on the map are harassed without cause. Wonder if "Griff" or pinks care at all.

[aislynkat]

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@nawlinsron2 wrote:
ebay has developed, IMHO, a totally useless identity crisis.
They were...and ARE...the world's largest flea market...solid identity.
But, the ruling genii have decided that ain't good enough..."we" gotta be hip..."filled with color" if you will.
So, flashing pictures at the rate of one per nanosecond in an ad somehow creates that "new" identity?
Gag me with a spoon...

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Agree. Ebay isn't about filling your life with color. It is or should always b about Finding what you are looking for, what you want, what you need, what you can't find anywhere else. That campaign this  past summer was a gag fest. 

[coolections]

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@grasshopperx wrote:

I find my self going even to Walmart... Because it's easier!

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The items most drop shippers sale are mostly WalMart type items. Yes, if you think it is easier then go for it. Many who don't drive, don't like to get out of the house, or who don't mind waiting, Ebay is a good source regardless of if it is a dropshipper or not. To each his own. 

[ted_200]

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@thenobletuckylife wrote:

Afternoon Grasshopper,

Last week we placed an order from Walmart...took advantage of the free shipping.

It was easy...convenient, well priced and fast and VERY WELL packaged.

Pretty much haven't set foot in, or purchased, from Walmart for almost 10 years except for an oil change.

So it's been Home Depot and now Walmart that have seemed to be the most user friendly. I even ended my Prime over on Amazon, got tired of all the damaged goods due to terrible packaging.

Mr C

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Yup.

For consumer retail goods... which is what eBay really seems to want to be all about... WalMart online is pretty decent.  Prices are good (always better than the 200 sellers of the same thing here on ebay), the site works fairly well, stuff arrives pretty fast.  I don't really like how their search works (it's OK, but hard to filter out unrelated items)... but it's still WAY better than how it works here. 

Bought some stuff from Home Depot online only once (bulky item not in local store, drop-shipped from their supplier, delivered to house for free), that worked fine too.

If WalMart has it online, the price will be the same on Amazon, they're in a big price-match war these days.  I'd rather get it from WalMart.  Only complaint with WalMart is some stuff is now cheaper in their B&M than it is on their site (used to be the online site was always cheaper, or same).   It seems like they're trying to discourage online orders for stuff that isn't really suited to mail order with Free Shipping.

The sort of stuff I actually use eBay for (both buying and selling)... the OP is right.  It really has become something of a nightmare, both as buyer and as seller. 

As a buyer, search is just awful and getting worse all the time, you get a ton of spam even when you've turned every available notification off, and they've driven away most of the types of sellers I typically bought from.  Thanks to "free" listings, there's literally a billion items to wade through, 95% of which are priced to never sell.  The picture viewer doesn't always work right, the Watch List and other features lose functionality every year, the Watch Item links don't work right a lot...  About the only upside is you can get that HDMI cord for 99¢ and free shipping, and that Chinese stuff almost always arrives, usually in under 2 weeks, and actually works most of the time.  I don't really like doing that either, but it's the same cord WalMart wants $10 for. 

As a seller, the fee situation is really pretty ridiculous now, the headaches and hoops have just expanded exponentially in recent years.  Maybe OK if buyers and profit were on the rise, but mostly they deliver fewer buyers (while constantly claiming they're "driving" more), fewer bids, and lower sales price.  And now they're jamming up Messages and threatening everyone with trying to beat them out of their fees, which doesn't help either buying or selling. 

[ted_200]

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@yuzuha wrote:

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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.

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Free listings.  Hoping for a sucker, doesn't cost a dime to not sell here.

And they'll probably go with the 20% promotional rate too, meaning eBay's "relevancy" (make eBay more money) algorithm will jam those over-priced listings onto every page for every buyer if it appears the item might possibly be slightly remotely related to anything the buyer looked at in the last year. 

[grasshopperx]

As an experiment, I listed a few items(about a month ago). Which I hadnt done in a long time. It had all changed, got more confusing. The only thing that was better. The pictures loaded nice and fast.  My experiment was to see if ebay would even show me, and it there would be any views. I left the two items on a day and went back and looked closer at my listing. It sure DID look to me that  Ebay was going to force me to take best offer. I tried to revise that. It wouldnt let me. Holy cow, I couldnt end those listings fast enough because what I do list sells in flash on another site.

  Then another day , was searching for a toy for my Schnauzer.  Clicked on lowest first and was shocked. There was litterally 54 pages of the same toys... over and over again. I stopped at page 54, and only did 54 pages out of shock . It was an eye opener for sure. Just to see how badly saturated the site was with junk from overseas.

[mistwomandancing]

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ted_200 wrote:..........WalMart online is pretty decent.  Prices are good (always better than the 200 sellers of the same thing here on ebay), the site works fairly well, stuff arrives pretty fast.  I don't really like how their search works (it's OK, but hard to filter out unrelated items)..........

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This!  ^ ^ ^ ^ ^  Walmart search is awful.  You'd think all the varieties and sizes of Dawn liquid dishsoap, for example, would be grouped together, but instead the various types and bottle sizes are all hodge-podge mixed in with a bazillion other brands and sizes.  What the heck? 

I ordered from them once... all basic household supplies, and was pleased with speed of delivery, accuracy, packaging, etc.  but just couldn't complete another order from them later on.  Just too time consuming to try to find the 25 different products I wanted to buy. 

I gave up.  A difficult search experience that returns confusing results ends up in buyers backing out and shopping elsewhere.  I think eBay's search experience has been a ruin from the time they turned on Cassini and has only become worse over time.  I've learned HOW to manipulate it to use (more or less) but I doubt I'd spend much time shopping here if I was new to eBay and confronted with this search and much of the oddball results that are presented.

I have much better search results using Google, but that's a not-so-good-thing for we eBay sellers, as that spreads out all that is available from other sites too, so search there doesn't necessarily lead to the eBay site. 

[thenobletuckylife]

Morning Mist,

Yes it's all about search.

For me the two Wally & H/D were worth the time because they fit the bill because they are quick and the product comes undamaged.

Nothing worse than an GREAT buying experience to end up with a TERRIBLE shipping experience.

One of the greatest assetts we had as sellers was our excellent shipping results.

I love packaging well...but have to have the sales.

Mr C

[thenobletuckylife]

Going Back to the OP,

There are different kinds of buyers.

There are die hard brand buyers and they are out the gate with all the info they need so this alone probably helps in search.

Not everyone is like this.

There are the whimsical shoppers...they just love to shop many times not realizing how much time they use/waste doing this.

There are those, like Mrs C & I, that shop out of needs.

Many times those needs are not supported by some easy brand name. We need things we are not quite sure what the brand name is...it's more in the specifics and details. I find shopping here now for those kinds of goods a big waste of time because Ebay expects me to filter through everything while most of the time thinking I want knockoff Chinese goods.

Folks that imply I don't have the skills to do a proper search seem to live in a small bubble.

Obviously being able to sell successfully here for years with over 17,000 sales...with only one negative (I think it was April of 2011) with 100% feedback with 5/5/5/4.9 TRS+ and only 2 Unauthorized Charge cases should indicate I am capable of tailoring my searches.

Mr C

[tadege2u]

Fedex does not even ship here in S. Florida. All Fedex shipping if finished delivering with the USPS. So it make no sense to say fedex will not deliver to POB.

[tadege2u]

Fedex does not even ship here in S. Florida. All Fedex shipping if finished delivering with the USPS unless the packageias huge. So it make no sense to say fedex will not deliver to POB.