Someone please wake me up from this nightmare called eBay. It's like a bad dream--when I think back over all the hours, days, weeks, months of my life--spent working here on eBay tediously doing listings. All the times I wasted days, when suddenly my listings weren't compliant anymore with whatever glitch, "update" or new policy they threw at me. I have been through my listings (over 1200 of them) so many times, one by one--fixing some God awful new issue this past year, and struggling so hard to figure out how to (forget succeeding--I am lucky to keep my head above water) keep my account in good standing and compliant--that I haven't even barely had time to do any new listings. It seems like every time I log on here, there is some new policy, site change, feature, or glitch--that instead takes precedence. I find myself making so much less money than I did even one year ago--that I am literally appalled at the thought of how my time has been wasted. For what purpose did I devote all of those precious hours to eBay? So I could see my earnings plummet, my stress level go up--only now to have the dreadful realization that I should have been putting my best efforts elsewhere? Tell me that it is all just the imaginings of a tired seller's overworked mind--that this eBay, right now--is not what I wasted all these years on.
My pie chart that documents my costs used to say that I was at 25% expenses--that included fees, the cost of my items, and shipping. Then they took away our FVF discount, and postage went up, and my costs went up to 30%. Now I am inching close to 50%--and this percentage does not include the cost of my items. I have a stack of returns sitting on my kitchen table, and that figure isn't included either. So with all the returns I have, and the cost of my items, I figure I am closer to 70% expenses. Are you kidding me? eBay has, in ONE year--decreased my earnings from 75% to 30%????? It's like a nightmare....a total horror show. I am virtually putting nothing in the bank....False SNAD's galore last month, and this month I tried free returns for a few weeks--it was a nightmare. I didn't get but one SNAD, but one out of every twelve items was returned. Are you kidding me? Talk about taking advantage. There is no way I can ever offer free returns--not with clothing. So many returns that stated, "It didn't fit." How can this be? I put detailed and accurate measurements on everything. Lazy--eBay has trained the buyers to be lazy and careless. They are soon going to realize that their carelessness is going to cause virtually no sellers to offer free returns. It is all I can do, not to write these buyers and ask them, "Do they happen to own a measuring tape?"
If I were to take advantage of the "Listing Promotions" (isn't that a laugh--perfect example of eBay double speak--a promotion is supposed to be a good thing--how about a seller promotion for once?) then my profit margin becomes more like 18-20%. Because most of the clothing categories that are being promoted are at 12% average--or so eBay says. This is insanity. They have stripped me down to nothing. I am working for peanuts, but still working just as hard as I ever did. I sold the same amount that I usually do this month, and last year I was putting around 2400.00 in the bank from my main store. This month--not even 1000.00. That is HUGE difference--and nothing but a slap in the face.
And again--I sit down to do listings, and end up having to figure out how this GTC is going to work. I have read all the postings on this change, and I am still worried--and a little bit confused too. Just another thing to be wary of. Another reason not to trust this company--and another source of stress. I feel like I'm in prison. I always have to watch my back, and God forbid I drop the ball or my let my guard down for one minute--I know Big Brother eBay will be standing right there, just waiting for me to bend over. Telling me all the while how much they are actually "helping" me--and how what they are doing to me and my little business is "for my benefit." I am so disgusted, I don't even know where my disgust begins and my rage ends.
Oh yeah, and guess who has "high" returns? That's right--go ahead and scoop another big chunk out of my profits. I have 100% feedback, ALL positives--on over 1200 sales this year, and 5 star ratings (except shipping is 4.9), but I'm a terrible seller.......right. More like, people don't read, and don't care at all about the toll their behavior is taking on the little sellers here--they'll miss us when we're gone--count on it. But nobody thinks about the future of this company--certainly not the megalomaniacs in charge. Buyers are so used to jumping on whatever short-sighted bandwagon that eBay throws at them, that they have learned just to go with it--and I honestly don't blame them for their ignorance. If eBay treats its sellers like garbage, then what do we really expect from the buyers? They have been taught to show us no regard, and have literally been pushed in every way, to cause our accounts the maximum amount of damage.
The very worst thing though--in my opinion, is the search. It is absolutely criminal to hide our listings that we pay for--either with store fees, listing fees, or final value fees--we pay several times over when one item sells, and sometimes we pay all THREE ways. BUT eBay isn't satisfied with that--they want us to also pay for Promoted listing fees, and HIGH return fees--so we can then pay FIVE different ways to sell ONE item--the absolute greed is just sickening.
I was looking for prom dresses for my daughter earlier today, and sure enough, I was only shown a small handful of choices. I assume that prom dress sellers feel that they don't need to use "Promoted" listings for an item that a lot of people are looking for. Well guess what--underneath the handful of listings that I got (and OF COURSE, most were from overseas--even when I specifically checked the box for US only), were thousands of listings that were "results matching fewer words." But a lot of them matched what I had typed in exactly. Over and over this happened....I tried every different kind of search I could think of.....to no avail. And I know they are messing around with the amount of items even shown in the "results matching fewer words" area, at different times of the day-- because I have checked at three different times today, and sometimes I get 2,000 listings, but just in the last hour--there were 16 that they said "matched" and then only about 50 underneath. What the heck? I can't even find some of the dresses I was looking at earlier right now. And they did not sell....they are just....gone. For now, at least.
If I type in, "Prom Dress Dave and Johnny Ice Blue 12 Full Skirt Tulle" I might only get a few listings (at least I DID in the past) but they are listings that I am interested in. I am perfectly capable of narrowing OR broadening my own search. I am NOT interested in a champagne colored dress from China in a size 4. But I can't even get the basics to work for me--I was down to three word searches, and it was a catastrophe. And from a seller's perspective--I don't care if I'm on the last page of thousand pages, because someone who types in "Prom dress 12 ice blue full skit" just might ONLY see my dress. IF it is available to see, that is--and I might get a sale. But I WON"T get a sale if my dress is even lucky enough to be included in the "results matching fewer words" area, along with 2,000 other dresses, because for ONE thing--you CAN'T SEARCH that area--you can't organize it from lowest price to highest--you can't filter by size, shipping cost, or country of origin--you can't do ANYTHING with that section, but sift through it one listing at a time and look through 2,000 listings to hopefully find what you want. Who has time for that? Not me, and not your average buyer. This company has become so hateful towards their small sellers, that they would rather cut off their own nose, rather than to help us put money in our pockets--they would rather have NO sale, than run this site fairly--and it is beyond comprehension. And no seller on eBay got a sale from me today, because after two hours of wasting time here, and after getting seriously frustrated, I did what tons of other buyers must be doing--I went somewhere else--and found what I wanted.
This is the true problem for most of us--how can we sell anything if we are not even being shown? Is the answer really to give eBay an extra 12% of our already SLIM profits? Do you really think they deserve to get more money from us? This is an outrage--and I can't help but think that forcing us to do these GTC listings, is just another way to bury our items, and make them lose relevance in the search. To make us forget to revise them and update them--and don't forget about the HUGE controversy when eBay just took it upon themselves to TAKE DOWN and DELETE a bunch of sellers' listings that had "been up for too long." Doesn't that strike some terror into anyone else's heart? No warning, no discussion--some people lost thousands of listings--just *POOF* gone. All that hard work.....gone. Personally, that is the thing that really worries me about these GTC listings.
You know, eBay does encourage us to get bigger and bigger stores--now we find ourselves, many of us, in the position of looking back at all the time we have spent working to get those listings up and compliant--and it is beyond understandable why so many of the long time sellers are reluctant to leave. I dread the thought of doing 1200 listings again for another selling site. But I will, and most likely I will have to. Pretty soon I'm going to be working for what--10% profit? You think eBay will be satisfied then? I don't-- I think they see us as geese that lay the golden eggs, and when we have no more eggs to give them--they will cut our throats, devour us, and use our bones to pick their teeth with. That is how little we mean to this company.
But I have a plan, and I have decided to pull 80% to 100% of my listings for the first two weeks of next month. Starting on April Fool's day I will be showing only a small fraction of the listings I usually have up. I am sick of complaining and being told that there is nothing we can do. If every seller here took down (or didn't allow the GTC to roll over) for even 50% of their listings--eBay would show a HUGE loss. And then maybe management would sit up and take notice of their "small" and "unimportant" sellers. Maybe when the corporate fat cats and their stock holder buddies start having to be accountable for their terrible decisions things might change. As it stands now, we come here and complain, and that is fine, everyone deserves to have their say--but we don't come to any solutions--and right now we need action. The ONLY way to get a message to them is through their pocketbooks--that is literally all they care about.
They don't care about the years we've spent here, the time and effort that 99% of us put into being the best representatives for this company that we can be--and the fact is, eBay has some great sellers, and we deserve to be treated with a little fairness & respect. We have earned, at least, that much. The amount of fees that some of us have paid into this company is MIND-BENDING. I look at just what I've paid to them, and I am shocked--and I am in no way a HUGE seller--I am very small--but I could buy a nice house with what I've paid eBay. But they don't care if they cheat us, step on us, and use us whenever they need a few extra dollars. I am not trying to influence anyone in any way--we all have our own needs and reasons for doing what we do--I am only throwing out a suggestion, and telling you what I am going to do. I know that the trolls and the cheerleaders will be here shortly, and if they can't refute this post, and state over and over, that "nothing can be done" then they will start off-topic arguments attempting to get this post silenced--it happens a lot to my posts--and it doesn't really bother me, to be honest. I am not the type of person to just give up and give in--not yet--not when there is still some hope.
Reading through this board, I have never seen sellers so upset and angry--how much more can we honestly take? Just when we think it can't get any worse it does...so is losing some income in the short term worth gaining in the long term? eBay only thinks about the short term, so maybe if we also stop worrying about our personal gains for the short term, and instead take a little vacation--spend time with our friends and family, do something special during the times we would have been listing--paint a picture, re-arrange the bedroom furniture, go through your inventory and organize--anything other than putting up listings. Can you imagine what it would look like if all at once, not only the GTC plan failed, but also if Promoted listings took a HUGE downward turn? How satisfying would that be? My purpose here today was not only to commiserate about the stupid GTC listings, but to also shine a light on all the other terrible things that have happened, and continue to happen here. I am sick and tired of being treated like an imbecile by this company. The only reason they keep getting away with disrespecting us, fleecing us, and hurting our businesses is because we keep rolling over and letting them. The fact is, that things can only get worse--what do we really have to lose? I thought six months ago when they took away 20% FVF's that things couldn't really get much worse--but instead of being satisfied with that huge financial boon, it seemed to only serve to make them more greedy, and more entitled to OUR hard-earned profits. As if now, instead of actually looking for ways to improve this site, they literally are only looking for a short-term cash grab--one after another--always from the sellers. And it won't stop, they have gotten far too comfortable with their big pay-offs from us. It won't stop unless we make it stop. So I will make my stand on April Fools's Day--and as I do not only will I be hoping for the best April Fools Day prank ever, but I will also be thinking about the wise words of Abraham Lincoln, repeated by the brilliant Bob Marley--both heroes of men, and champions of the "little" people. "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
