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? 

[lindyslucky]

I have a list of favorite sellers

Some have been added 5 years ago, some recently.

More than half are gone.

If you Google a question, and the community comes up from 3 or 4 years ago, you can see how many sellers are no longer here.

Maybe during the pandemic there have been more with time on their hands who have tried selling on eBay. (New sellers)

That does not mean that the turnover of sellers is not huge. Many unique items, especially heavy ones that were not high dollar are gone. 
Every dog has their day.

These issues could add up.

Ebay will change. Everything does.

How? I guess we will see.

[catalogue.bay]

There are few persons here who keep telling us that 18 million sellers had no problem addapting to this new "managed payments" ebay policy, and that the problem is only in you / me / in few of us.

Your post, sortuda,  shows us all that reality is very different from their propaganda / misconceptions.

[tina06457]

The number of sellers may have grown by 8% but unfortunately 7% of those are from China. It's getting harder and harder to filter out the junk sellers from China.

[divwido]

H E Double Chopsticks?

[flabill03]

Yeah, and most of them were scammers from China and eastern Europe I bet.

[1grandmashope_1]

I was happily selling here and had switched over to managed payments.  I wish that I could continue selling, but am not able to.  I believe that much has happened to many over the course of the last year that would either prohibit them from selling or change their direction.  Discontent can't be ruled out either.

As for what you are searching, there are many wonderful items from many great sellers that are real assets to the platform. 

As the saying goes, "it isn't your destination, but the journey." or something like that.  Enjoy the journey and find pleasure in your ability to buy those things that others only dream of having.

I wish everyone the ability to find your joy in the path that you walk today and all your tomorrows.

Grandma  

[dbfolks166mt]

Yes but they offer no underlying details on how they calculate this. Some individuals have multiple accounts do they count those or don't they? Scammers open new accounts on a regular basis, often multiple, especially in China and Russia. They also don't tell you how many accounts are out there but inactive or have not sold anything in years if ever. As many people who post on this board are aware some sellers have a separate account just to post to this board plus one for buying and one or more for selling. 

     The company is going to paint as rosy a picture as it possibly can for the share holders. I take little stock in that figure. 

[dbfolks166mt]

Yea and no 1099 with that. 

[sortuda]

Awwww I get that. My mother is similar age and yes, the 'old' stuff is pretty much the 'good' stuff. Well-made, beautiful lines and designs, and yes, memories. I find myself doing the same thing (holding on) but I also like to seek out unique items to buy that remind me of a memory, maybe a day spent at a beautiful national park with someone special etc. I even bought a small painted plate on here from Finland with a depiction of the Saami people in the snow because of my deceased father's heritage. I'm considering tagging some items I have on the bottom to say who what when where why, especially with the 'family' items. When my sister recently passed I realized just how many small treasures we'd gathered together and I'm not parting with many of them. Some of what she had the lineage is now lost as to just which great auntie had given what to her, those stories sometimes get lost but most I do remember and now my sister is a part of that story. As you say - memories. Long life, good health and happiness to you my friend! 

[sortuda]

HAHAHAH Good one!

[sortuda]

Yes, some of my saved sellers are no longer active also and who knows...I also prefer the small sellers and just regular folks selling off some random items as you usually get an interesting mix of "never know what you might find!" in there. 

[97_jeepmazda]

So true,on all of it!

[sortuda]

"It appears to me Ebays search algorithm "tightened" up a ton. Exact match meant just that EXACT."

Bingo! What you described minus the exact PKL example is my experience. I can't remember what I was looking for when I first noticed this but it was pretty remarkable how few search results were being returned and yes, I seem to remember some odd mix of non related items. I also left feedback on that tab on the side of the pages because I knew that couldn't be right. It improves clicking search description too but meh, I think you're right about this as seems the search net is much tighter. I wish they'd stop tinkering with stuff.

[dbfolks166mt]

I think there have been a number of things that have change the environment on eBay over the last year and a LOT more that will be impacting it in the next 12-18 months. 

     One of the biggest things that I believe is impacting the seller base is eBay's total disregard for any type of seller support. The buyer is right no matter what, at least 99.99% of the time. EBay has become a scammers paradise especially for the foreign scammers that are out of reach of any type of U.S. legal action. China and Russia will not even entertain doing anything about this and in fact condone it. Similar to the way, China especially, totally ignores any patent or copyright laws and reproduces about anything you can think of. Given their governmental structure who do you think is paying for the construction of those facilities to produce the counterfeit items? 

     Diversity is also impacting the seller base and the merchandise listing. A lot of sellers are posting across multiple online or P2P forums some of which have a more focused buyer base. People are also using the P2P forums to avoid shipping costs and fees. I sell a lot more on Facebook marketplace and other local forums that I do on eBay. People get to actually examine and look over the item before they buy it and most pay in cash so I can lower my cost on those market places by 15-20% of what I have to list them for on eBay to cover the fee's. 

     Some sellers have been moved out of the market place by the ever growing list of items eBay prohibits from being posted. These are easily listed on other sites/forums that have no restrictions. What was art or history 2 years ago is now seen in another light by eBay. 

     While some left because of the move to managed payments a large portion adapted and kept on selling. The loss of U.S. sellers because of the move to MP is probably minor in comparison to what is going to happen to the EU sellers as they are converted to MP. Totally different banking and tax accounting system in most of those counties and probably a much larger impact to the sellers. 

     Finally there are the fees, taxes, shipping cost........ that sellers have to add to the cost of their items and by the time all that is done this market place is no longer cost competitive with a lot of others online venues. I never had a problem with the fees on the price of the sold item but the fees on shipping and taxes gives me heartburn. Ebay is staying the course as an intermediary between the seller and the buyer and nothing more which gives them a good out for any issues with regards to disputes, shipping, merchandise quality or condition etc.

     Other online retailers are moving forward and expanding.  Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian which will reduce their dependency on other carriers, especially the USPS. In fact at some point that pendulum may swing the other way and it may be Amazon who is supporting USPS deliveries. 

[sortuda]

By looking at search results that used to bring up dozens of pages where now maybe 1-3 come up and from a good portion my own saved sellers vanishing. You know, real life firsthand experience. Simply asking if anyone is having similar and the seller/buyer up above definitely mimics my experience. I think the search algorithm or something has def changed and is a big part of my experience after the managed payments came on board time.