Where have all the sellers gone?

[sortuda]

This might sound an odd question - I've been a bit out of the ebay loop as a buyer and seller for a few years until recently, but it appears that after the new payment policy a huge number of types of items/sellers have just vanished. I even wrote to ebay about this but of course never got a reply back.

Where has everyone gone??

I used to spend hours combing through page after page of truly unique and great antiques, wonderful coffee sets, great old vintage jewelry, odd brick a brack and I noticed right after the new payments I would type in a search term and literally come back with maaaaaybe 2 pages of items. Impossible! Click 'include description' and it's not much better.  I used to get pages and pages of listings and my sister and I could spend hours combing through pages in tandem browsing pointing out great items we each might like.

I know something is up as this is what is happening with almost everything I'm interested in. I honestly buy more on ebay than I sell, and I know something is not right. I seem to be getting more pages of ***bleep*** now for searches with new modern items results, overseas items, nothing am interested in. My thing is unique, one-off, vintage, antique, unusual, and ebay USED to deliver those results. Sure, I found some things tonight that are 'vintage', etc but nothing quite looks or feels the same somehow. Things are either China ***bleep*** being sold as 'vintage' or it's bottom of the barrel, -where is all the old quality vintage and antiques?

Has something happened to the search function? Have most of the quality dealers left? Are the fees now just too high (um yeah, I know that's a 'yes' but ...?)? Am I the only one noticing this? 

[mspirit57]

Many sellers left when they were going to be switched to managed payments.  Many felt they didn’t need someone managing their money/business. 

[sortuda]

Yes, I was not happy with the change from paypal as a seller but since I haven't been selling much for years I kind of went meh over the managed payments. But the impact for me as buyer has definitely been noticed. I really miss the 'old' ebay and I hate to say it's pretty much not so fun anymore shopping on here. I've also noticed that prices are either super low on items that would normally have a higher average price point or super high. It's like ebay just got whacked out of orbit. I used to buy at least once a month and usually have no problem spending money, if I can find something interesting to buy! I think the small 'junk' sellers but with unique items just up and left. 😞 

[powell-memorabilia]

@sortuda 

Fake post - you’ve been buying and selling in 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018...

[sortuda]

Wow wow wow! I guess every community has to have some trigger happy fool! Oh my goodness! Why don't you simmer down and start looking in your own mirror to find something 'fake', besides being rude, short on reading comprehension and just outright nasty. Ugh. Do you understand what "a bit out of the loop as a buyer and seller on ebay" means? No. Of course not. Because you'd rather just make knee jerk assumptions about people, actually waste your time (HAHAHAHA!) 'checking up' on my buying and selling activity and post ridiculous replies.  Karen alert! The world doesn't need more people like you. Why don't you check your fake post problem and pick up a hobby besides attacking people on ebay discussion forums.

[powell-memorabilia]

@sortuda 

Fake post.

[gracieallen01]

Perhaps part of the problem is that ebay is pushing 'commodity' items and 'velocity', and more or less ignoring vintage, antique and OOAK?  Perhaps too many sellers are getting scammed on returns and 'Money-Back-Guarantee  items and don't figure it is with the risk to sell on ebay since there are other platforms and venues where they can sell with less hassle?  Perhaps there are sellers that don't/can't/won't adapt to ebay's new format(s) and aren't listing as much as back in the wild-west hay days when ebay was pushing 'Finding IT' on ebay.  I recently saw a news article concerning 'A' and their anti-counterfeit program where ebay was referred to as a 'smaller store', along with another 'E' site.  From that, it doesn't sound like ebay is getting the recognition they might prefer and perhaps sellers and buyers ARE going elsewhere. 

Then, again, it may just be the time of year.

[drusalina]

No it is not a fake post.  I have about 70 saved searches for things I want to buy.  A THIRD of them have Nothing in that search (the blank polaroid photo).  They used to be filled with items.  Sellers are leaving for many reasons, MP, Fees, and the selling pages that make it more difficult.    Yes, they are that frustrated and figure that this isn't worth the hassle anymore.  

[soh.maryl]

Evidently there were some sellers who left because they didn't want to go to MP.

There were also some sellers who said they were leaving but stayed.

I believe that, as time goes along, there will be fewer unique items listed here simply because there will be fewer unique items available for sale.

Maybe the owners of those unique, one-off, vintage, antique and unusual things are wisely deciding to keep them for themselves and just let the heirs sell them off at the estate sale when that time comes. I am 88 yrs old.  Most of my old, antique, vintage etc items are still useful to me, if only because of the memories they bring.  

[drusalina]

And to add to the problem is the Shipping Fees.  My goodness to buy a piece of pottery or an antique the cost to ship a 1 to 2 pound item is anywhere from $15.00 and up.  People that have been buying for years just don't want to pay that high a shipping cost.   I'm not breaking even with the fees and shipping.   All those unique items and handcrafted items will go away.  It just isn't worth the hassle that eBay has imposed on the sellers. 

If eBay had wanted more people to accept Managed Payments, they should have made the fees Cheaper than Pay Pal.  But of course they are the ultimate Greedbay and have made it the same or more.  With all the cyber hacking, people are not giving out their info anymore.  It is too scary. 

[luckythewinner]

Where have all the sellers gone?

According to eBay's the Q1 2021 results, the number of sellers grew by 8%. 

[drusalina]

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@luckythewinner wrote:

Where have all the sellers gone?

According to eBay's the Q1 2021 results, the number of sellers grew by 8%. 

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That is because of all the people out of work because of the virus.  People were trying to put food on the table by selling their used stuff here.  Look at the boards with all the New Seller Questions.  Any large company is Never to big to fail.  Sears, Kmart, Circuit City, Pier One just to name a few.  They made the wrong decisions that cost them their business. 

[shag182]

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@mspirit57 wrote:

Many sellers left when they were going to be switched to managed payments.  Many felt they didn’t need someone managing their money/business. 

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For me personally, after 22 years (1999) on eBay, along with MP, and the NEW INSUFFERABLE seller's view pages. I decided to retire. I was selling the past year more or less as a hobby.

As far as MP, I know it will not work for me personally. Yes, PayPal fronted the money, and the sellers received the buyers payment INSTANTLY in their PP accounts.  MP has a processing time, plus the processing time of the financial institution which I understand to be 2 BUSINESS days for MP and 1 to 3 BUSINESS days from your institution before you see the payment safe and sound in your account. That's a NO GO for me. Plus I will not send the buyer's item out before seeing payment. I always send my buyer's items out the same or the next day, depending what time of day of the BUY IT NOW purchase. Plus, I always select 3 days handling time to overestimate shipping time. As you can gather, MP would not work for me. 

As a matter of fact, I just saw another another thread, where a buyer was puzzled why the seller was not sending their items out promptly.

Oh, there's also the ripple effect, as most seller's are buyers too. As for me personally, I won't be on eBay selling, so I won't be on eBay much, thus no more buying as well. 

To me, MP seems like it's going back to the future:

[luckythewinner]

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@drusalina wrote:

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@luckythewinner wrote:

Where have all the sellers gone?

According to eBay's the Q1 2021 results, the number of sellers grew by 8%. 

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That is because of all the people out of work because of the virus.

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Thank you for confirming my point - that all the sellers have not actually gone. 

Personally, I wish it was going in the other direction. I think eBay's seller base could shrink by 20% and not miss a beat. Especially if that 20% included the sellers who do not understand cash flow and refuse to ship promptly after a buyer makes the payment. 

[hemma52]

I just sold for the first time in a while, and can say I'll not be doing it again. Been on eBay for over 20 years and 

mostly buy but I used to occasionally sell. With the new payment system as well as the tax on internet sales and the way eBay calculates their fees you really get screwed. Their fees are based on sale price plus shipping charges, which are usually lower than actual cost to ship, plus sales tax. So if my item sells for $500 and it costs $12 to ship to PA @ 6% sales tax, eBay fee is $68.02. So my sale of $500 nets me $431.98.

Then you have to wait for the money to be transferred to your bank instead of going to PayPal as in the past.

It used to be 10% fees to eBay plus PayPal. So with the new and improved, yeah, system I get $18 less and wait 3-5 days for my money.

GREAT