@allthingssurplus wrote:
Its a long answer. For those that use eBay in a small way I'm sure MP works for them. However if you are a large business it is a mess. For starts I always have to think of cash flow, something eBay fails to understand. Our monthly overhead expense is upwards to $80k a month. First negative problem with MP, in August of 2020 we were mandated to sign onto eBay in order to continue selling ( not willingly as eBay would like to say). With Daily Payment (eBay never looks up what that word really means) were getting cash to the bank 3 times a week, it is now 4 times a week, unlike PayPal that paid out 6 times a week and in 16 hours from the sale. The lag time in receiving payment for sales, the no longer paying fees for this month next month and the crazy return system forced me to dig in my personal money and put $15K in lost cash flow back into the business in order to maintain normal business flow.
The return system is nuts. There is no reason to hold funds from todays payout for a return that is not resolved. eBay has allowed Buyers to take up to 30 business day, 42 real days + an additional 10 days if the Buyer shipped the item back on the 42 day. So up to almost 2 months all the while holding the Seller money for no reason. eBay compounds the issue when the Buyer finally returns the item and it is delivered to the Seller when they again take funds from the current Payout and pay the Buyer. eBay at this point releases the funds from the first hold and in 4-7 days that money will hit your account. Now all this is not necessary because eBay is holding a secondary form of payment for fees and returns, they have no down side.
The next large issue is the various reports required to maintain a business and conform to all tax laws. Unlike PayPal, eBay has a mix of reports that most don't dove tail and they say they are improving on all the time. Well the latest and greatest improvement is also a joke. One on the key accounting things need for auditable books it that the returns are included in your income statements. This new report did not include that most important info. I called on that Monday and was told no problem and 15 mins later the CS person was able to get to where I can manually add up all of the returns for the month and include them my income statement. Now in March it was really crazy nuts. I downloaded and printed my sales statement for 3/1-3/15. This was a 34 column Excel report many of the columns were in computer speak and none totaled. The report measured 9.5ft tall and 34" wide after taping all of the pages together. It was clear the report was of no value. The report was just every X & o my account had generated for that period. Another thing clear is none of the eBay personal working on these reports took any accounting classes in school or have never operated a business or used the eBay platform.
Another issue for Seller is there clearly is no protection at all. I had two case this week one was clear fraud by the Buyer to steal a $400 item. In fact they did exactly that. This Buyer opened up a return request and stated they purchased the wrong item. Great I respond to the request, send it back and I will refund you. As soon as I did that eBay was basically out of the picture. The Buyer that day opened up a Payment Dispute stating to their credit card company the item was defective. After speaking with 5 CS reps all agreed that the Buyer was attempting to take the card and keep there funds. All said there was nothing they can do its up to the credit card company. The last CS person I spoke with said they worked in the Payment Disputes section of CS in the past and said almost 100% of the time the card company will side with the Buyer. The card company would need proof that the card holder had used the card incorrectly many times. In fact this Sunday I lost $400 for the card, $400, for a total $800 loss. Since eBay will not give the credit card information to the Seller and they collected and kept the FVF and charged a $20 Dispute fee for the sale I believe eBay has responsibility to go after this Buyer and their credit card company. Yes folks eBay got paid and I lost $800. This is the company you sell for.
What I have learned in 21 years of being on this platform is that this company is not very good at running this company. in 2018 Elliot Management wrote a the "2018 Plan" (Google it) . If you read the entire thing like I did you will see all that is going on is to boost the stock price, which it has. Elliot is a hedge fund and controls the eBay board of directors and owns a large amount of stock in eBay. The last thing you want is a Hedge Fund controlling a retail platform. They will sell their stock or the company. There is no interest in running things long term.
Now those that come on these thread that are eBay supporter (employees or paid works in some form) will say oh you are just not able to change or change is hard. For me nothing is further from the truth. I owned and operated 20 convenience stores for 15 years. I defy any of eBay's management to pull that off and make a profit. Change happened all the time. However those changes were planned and implemented with care. eBay uses the Microsoft way of software, get it 80% and the marketplace will fix the rest. That works great for software not when you are screwing around with Seller money and their way to make a living. eBay had years to get this all together. They owned PayPal and should have already known how to make a transition the would work for all.
Now people will read this and say why don't you just leave the platform, working on that. In 2005 I founded a eBay company and got it up to $3.8mil a year. That company lobbied in Congress about the sale tax. Sold my interest in 2011 and opened this company which does $2.4mil annual. Now I was doing all that business on eBay. However in 2016 I realized that this company was not ever going to get it together. They had started program after program that just did not make sense. So I started our website and got on other platforms. Today we are doing around $400k annual with eBay and working hard to get off. The process is hard due to the almost 4200 listings we have. Really a sad state that a 21 Seller has to leave, not just me there are many others. I just talk about it. Well you asked for the reasons, hope I didn't put you to sleep.
Thank you, Surplus, for such a well expressed and intelligent explanation of what you are experiencing here. What you are going thru as a larger seller is a travesty. Wish you well in all future endeavors.
(PS—no paid eBay shills here. Or at least i am not one and know no others despite being a regular poster.)
