Worst Month in 10+ years!!

[germancargarage]

Been on eBay since 1998, been selling with multiple accounts and this has been the absoulte WORST April in the past 17 years. Sell usually 20-30 items per day, have had only THREE normal selling day since April 1st!!! So basically no sale in 26 days and calling eBay every single day but nope they say everything is just peachy, sell your products under your cost with free shipping and give the customers the best return policy. Really eBay?? Been chatting with a lot big sellers (100k feedbacks+) and every single one of them told me the same exact thing: sick of fees and more fees, sick of the sales going down month after month, sick of the buyers abusing the system and sellers being left in the cold. Sellers are the ones paying for their CEO and his lifestyle while he is destroying  eBay 1 seller at a the time. Most people who've been here long enough are SICK and TIRED of eBay and their **bleep** policies and rolling black out, it's really time to leave this dump and move on to bigger and better things.

Thanks for reading my rant for the day!

[savedfrommyspokes]

I do not disagree with anything you said in regards to ebay......my point is to simply focus on the things you CAN control, not the things you can't. 

  I normally post on the ebay sports card board and for years about once a week an OP would start a thread like this.....almost every time, I could look through the OP's listings and see they have a glaring problem restricting their sales.   Ebay is not their problem, the seller is their own problem.  

[gramophone-georg]

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@auctionpet wrote:

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@cell.buyer wrote:

After 9/11/2001 everyone became a cheapskate because the real economy collapsed into what is called the great recession, we never really came out of that, the government propped up Wall Street with Zero percent interest rates and the market is the only show in town due to this factor, the real economy never recovered, just certain tech companies and their market capitalization and that is all Wall Street wealth too.

So unless you got onto the gravy train of the stock market you have not really made anything, margins are thin due to Amazon putting pressure on every small business, even large sellers have been run out of business like Sears and many other retailers.

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This is all true. If many of the big boys can't make it, how can the littles one's possibly survive. I know Sears is old school and has been having a tough time for the past decade at least. Malls are empty these days, many in Florida by me have actually closed! However, some of the retailers that are closing carry product geared toward the younger set. Which, again bears out the fact that their not spending, except on their phones that are glued to their hands!

Retirees all downsizing at once and selling off their possessions has created a huge market glut and a race to bottom pricewise!

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You're both kidding, right? 2001- mid 2007 were bacically the halcyon days of eBay for me and every other eBayer I knew. Mid 2007 was when they started all the constant fiddling, and I think sometime around then was when they decided to double-dip and require PayPal, too. That cost me about 1/4 of my buyers, who were, for whatever reason, cash, money order, or check customers.

In 2008 we were "blessed" with Donahoe, and it all went straight in the handbasket from there.

The economy has zero to do with it. The Great Recession should have been great here on eBay as was 2001-2002 but they took all the fun and simplicity out of it by then.

[stockjedi]

Indeed been here myself since 1999 with multiple stores, accounts etc used to do $20-30k a month, but the crook executives turned against the hand that feeds them, the SELLERS and ruined it for everyone. Now every junk chinese company dumbs 1/2 million listings on here and that's whom these crooks cater too, in the meantime all the smaller business who actually care and provide customer service barely scrape by and most times go under. I rarely even sell on here anymore not worth it, seems like the more you list the less sales you have, but they will eventually pay the price for screwsing the sellers, nothing lasts forever and hopefully eBay will eventually come to an end.

[cell.buyer]

eBay doing well back then has nothing to do with the general economy, the entire financial system went bust when Bush left office, he had to bail out the banks and GM after the bust.

[gramophone-georg]

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@cell.buyer wrote:

eBay doing well back then has nothing to do with the general economy, the entire financial system went bust when Bush left office, he had to bail out the banks and GM after the bust.

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Then how do you explain the comparatively massive increases at Amazon and Etsy as eBay basically flatlines?

[liq1000]

Amazon  has 90% of America's wealthiest families as Prime customers, Etsy took over vintage, that is the reason they both are growing at the expense of eBay.

[gramophone-georg]

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@liq1000 wrote:

Amazon  has 90% of America's wealthiest families as Prime customers, Etsy took over vintage, that is the reason they both are growing at the expense of eBay.

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Correct. In other words, it's not that the economy is so bad people aren't spending money- it's that eBay is abdicating its market to competitors... which means that the problem is eBay.

Don't you recall when Wenig stated that his strategy was to go after the segment of the marketplace that consists of buyers "with more time than money"? 

Yes, he really, really said that. I'm still scratching my head over why the CEO of one of the biggest online marketplaces in the world would even see that as anything even approaching a viable business practice, but there you have it.

[liq1000]

The only thing I can advise is to start your own website if eBay is not producing enough to make a living, that costs a lot of money, but it is an option.

[ersatz_sobriquet]

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

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As a buyer only since 2010, I disagree.

I just attempted to find a simple male outside plug for an RV here on eBay. After flailing with keyword combinations for almost a half hour, getting zero results or completely irrelevant results (who ever thought that "male wall plug" would get me pages of men's clothing from China with zero keywords in the title?) I went to Amazon, typed in "RV electric male box" (my first attempt here on eBay) and BAM exactly what I'm looking for at a great price shows up in the first few returned items... about 30 seconds. I had one- click buying turned on. Click, I'm done... faster than I can even get through the first page of completely irrelevant results here on eBay, LET ALONE the click to buy, click to get to PayPal, sign into PayPal, click for funding source, click to confirm payment, click, click, click, click, click, click...

I mean... it's years past time that eBay should have awakened and smelled the coffee here. Instead, all that ALL of us will get is another dose of that fine eBay AI- Arrogant Incompetence.

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waves Hi to Georg! 

This happened to me too. I can't recall what I was looking for, but was very frustrated with the right keyword search on ebay, a whole bunch of junk with the keywords not in the title popped up. Tried a few combinations, and just became more frustrated. 

Went to Amazon out of sheer frustration after searching for awhile, put the same keywords in, and voila, instant success exactly what I was looking for.

Cassini, or cantseeme search here on ebay is broken. It's garbage. Whomever programs cassini search has failed. It costs ebay sales which means it costs me sales. 

[gramophone-georg]

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@liq1000 wrote:

The only thing I can advise is to start your own website if eBay is not producing enough to make a living, that costs a lot of money, but it is an option.

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I did, and I even have the option of proxy bid auction software, and it's not crazy expensive.

[gramophone-georg]

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@ersatz_sobriquet wrote:

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@gramophone-georg wrote:

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As a buyer only since 2010, I disagree.

I just attempted to find a simple male outside plug for an RV here on eBay. After flailing with keyword combinations for almost a half hour, getting zero results or completely irrelevant results (who ever thought that "male wall plug" would get me pages of men's clothing from China with zero keywords in the title?) I went to Amazon, typed in "RV electric male box" (my first attempt here on eBay) and BAM exactly what I'm looking for at a great price shows up in the first few returned items... about 30 seconds. I had one- click buying turned on. Click, I'm done... faster than I can even get through the first page of completely irrelevant results here on eBay, LET ALONE the click to buy, click to get to PayPal, sign into PayPal, click for funding source, click to confirm payment, click, click, click, click, click, click...

I mean... it's years past time that eBay should have awakened and smelled the coffee here. Instead, all that ALL of us will get is another dose of that fine eBay AI- Arrogant Incompetence.

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waves Hi to Georg! 

This happened to me too. I can't recall what I was looking for, but was very frustrated with the right keyword search on ebay, a whole bunch of junk with the keywords not in the title popped up. Tried a few combinations, and just became more frustrated. 

Went to Amazon out of sheer frustration after searching for awhile, put the same keywords in, and voila, instant success exactly what I was looking for.

Cassini, or cantseeme search here on ebay is broken. It's garbage. Whomever programs cassini search has failed. It costs ebay sales which means it costs me sales. 

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Good to see you're still kickin'!

[gipsytim]

75% in my case. But not for much longer. Already downsized to basic store for the purpose of liquidation. Here's your BIG clue - Best Match = Chinese Search.

[gramophone-georg]

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@gipsytim wrote:
75% in my case. But not for much longer. Already downsized to basic store for the purpose of liquidation. Here's your BIG clue - Best Match = Chinese Search.

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"Best Match" has never been anything BUT a tool for eBay to show the buyer what eBay  wants the buyer to see, not what the buyer actually wants to see.

Think about it. To make sales, eBay doesn't need Cassino, Best Match, AI- all eBay needs to do is show the buyer exactly what s/he is searching for.

This is what Amazon does, and it's why Amazon has eaten eBay's lunch every single holiday shopping season for a decade now.

Any website that wants to think for you doesn't have your best interests in mind.