eBay is a complete joke

[stockjedi]

Same old discussions about low sales for months now. Been here since 1998 full time seller since 2007 with multiple sellers account. Average $800-2k per day for 10+ years and since June sales have tanked across all the stores 80%. Yesterday was a record low with a $3.50 sale. Website sales are growing, Amazon sales are growing but eBay? It's just a stupid circus at this point. Our sales tanked after we signed up for the payment system, sales went to zero instantly. After months of fighting with them they finally let us get out of it but in the process they broke all our stores, customers couldn't check out, glitch after glitch dashboard completely messed up, not even getting sales emails nothing works. This site is completely worthless and a waste of time. All to deal with the worse scammers buyers while eBay takes 10-12% profit and what do we get at the end of it? $3 sale.
It's created so much stress for us running multiple stores that are not making any money we have finally come to the decision after 22 years that it's time to close all our eBay accounts and move on. Will never buy or sell anything on eBay, it's been too painful and I'm sick and tired or making their executives money and pay for their jet-set lifestyle. They have the Chinese sellers for that. Thanks for nothing eBay hope to see you go down in flame in the near future.  Unlike eBay, at least the Titanic went down with the lights on.

[turquoisetulips]

At the same time we have fewer and fewer eBay cheerleaders telling us it's not eBay - it's that you aren't selling "in demand" items, the category is saturated, or your prices are too high. uncseniorsportsfan ---------- unquote -------

Yet if  you explained  you're doing  just fine on other selling venues [ me - 3 times the sales]   and you sell the exact same items that USED to sell great just a few years ago  here on e bay   the '' cheerleaders ''  never had much to say . . Silence is golden as they say  , in fact it's the best way to tell you've made a valid  point . Tulips 

[turquoisetulips]

Very sad as eBay is going down for many, many sellers. It IS eBay as I sold 11 items on another platform last night, and 4 this morning.lovefindingtreasure -- unquote  

3 sales - e bay 

7 sales - over yonder  --  

🙂   Tulips 

[mr_lincoln]

@stockjedi   So, would you say the twin Kisses of Death were the GTC mandate in March 2019 and Managed Payments?  The numbers you are talking about are staggering ... $ 800 to $ 2000 per DAY for a while?!? In just one year that would be between $ 292,000 and $ 730,000 ... those are some serious numbers ...

[stockjedi]

For us it was the managed payments. As soon as we opted in our sales completely collapsed. Was on the phone daily with their garbage support and they informed me that we could not opt out, I was furious. Even on a bad day (holiday weekends etc) we never made less than $600-800 in sales. Oct/Nov/Dec are usually super busy times for us where we would average $1-2k per day in sales and now we are down to $300. So we completely  wasted our time for 12 years on this platform called eBay and had to deal like many of you with the worst of the worst possible customers on earth. Non-stop threats about negative feedbacks, fake "not as described" returns so we would have to eat up the shipping costs and on top eBay taking 10-12% of the profit all for what?? This place is a joke, their management is a joke and their half-broken platform is a complete joke. We are in the process of taking down all our listings across all stores, we will leave 5-10 items only just to keep our account active but will be completely done with eBay by Dec 31st. Again our own website and other selling channels are booming and this place has gone down the tube entirely. Your sales just don't drop across multiple stores 80% overnight by accident. They have broken the platform and hope they will pay the price for it. Best of luck to all of you.

[sakic92710]

1 sale in 4 days is horse **bleep**  !!!!!!!!!!

[germancargarage]

We're right behind you also multiple stores for 15+ years and went from $1k-3k per day to about $15 now across all 5 accounts and some days no sales at all. This place is finished, not going to waste any time listing on here as our own direct sales are doing better than ever.

[mr_lincoln]

@stockjedi   I think you story is like many others and I can share a similar one but minus the dreaded Managed Payments.  I spent 12 months building up a 2nd account to the low 5 figures with known good selling items, swapped back and forth between the main account and the 2nd one.  I ran regular quarterly PL Campaigns once they were opened up to Collectible categories, taking advantage of eBay's $ 30 per quarter PL ad credit.

6 weeks after the GTC mandate in March the account dropped 50% in sales ... that was the end of April ... May saw continued drops and at that end of that month I dropped the store from Basic to Entry without hesitation.  I did NOTHING different, I needed to see if eBay would recover from the GTC mistake ... they didn't and June & July saw 1-2 sales per week.  On Aug 1 I infused the account with lots of new stock and sales shot up for one month to the growth levels of the previous year but then dropped to the basement in Sept & October ... October saw 1 sale ... the Entry store was dropped and now the account is the 50 Freebies with less then 30 items for sale ... it would be empty but I just haven't had the time to shift the inventory to either the main ID or another venue.

I am absolutely dreading Managed Payments, I really am, and despite what everyone says it is not a completed program and had they set Adyen up just like PayPal as  a payment processor they would be doing better ... but eBay being the "intermediator" and getting between a Seller and their money is just simply bad business, it really is.  I don't buy the 2 to 10 days to get paid story, PayPal money is available immediately AS SHOULD eBay-Adyen ... when you transfer $$ from PayPal its free 1 business day and if you want or need it sooner it costs 1% of the total you want to transfer.

Anyway, stories like yours and mine on a smaller scale need to be told ...

[uniwarehousewares]

the another factor behind this are
1: carrier increase prices mean product cost goes higher
2 : tarrifs also increased prices
3 : online sales also increase prices in total

so its hard for buyers to bear these changes, but as far as you mentioned about other stuff i agree with that eBay policies has so many flaws and not good for perfect business model. i hope eBay bring some top notch experts and define policies in long run instead of keep changing every week. i am going to write a letter to eBay head quarter where they have problems in site.
above three factors also shrink buyer pocket and also new sellers are coming with new stuff there is competition too.

[uniwarehousewares]

its not all seller fault, ebay every week after week keep changing policies and so far there is not any policy which is good for long run and as result seller are facing problems, there are pros and cons but i think current policy of eBay for seller is not much fair enough, eBay has to do alot of home work, they improve little bit but still progress is very slow, in my personal opinion eBay is loosing big market due to poor shipping and return policies.
Return process and its evaluation is need right parameters, so much open doors for scammers. but over all eBay is thousand times better then amazon when its come to sellers.

[stockjedi]

@mr_lincoln All I can tell you is that Managed Payment destroyed a business it took us 12 years to build. As I mentioned before we've had hardly any sales in 4+ months now. At this time of the year we would easily make $2k+ on average across all accounts and today we are at $200 which is beyond pathetic. It's almost as pathetic as eBay and their executives. Do not give in to manage payment it's a disaster, they will pay your money but what they don't tell you is that it's a lump sum without any way to separate fees, etc for accounting purposes. We used a 3rd party to capture our Paypal payments and everything would be automatically connected to QuickBooks and went to the correct accounts without any manual work. Now managed payment destroyed that too and you have no way of knowing how much were eBay fees, final fees, taxes, etc etc so you have to do everything manually by downloading their csv report and sorting through it. This company is absolute garbage without a doubt. Best thing that can happen to them is someone buys them out and brings out the old eBay but we all know this will never happen. We're just counting the days now until Dec 31st and this nightmare will finally come to an end for us. We make more in sales per day on our website than in a week on eBay and all the profit goes in our pocket instead of the 10-12% they take. Another horrible day on eBay which seems to be the norm nowadays..

[mr_lincoln]

@stockjedi   First let me say thank you for getting back to me.  When I first read about Managed Payments I saw the writing on the wall and specifically to your point about the accounting end.  PayPal has been a dream with regards to their date range programmable CSV formatted database.  I've grown up with Spreadsheets since the early days on the old IBM Personal 2 which was my first office computer (monochrome screen) back in the late 80s ... where navigation was all via keystrokes ... you know, ALT this and ALT that LOL!!!

So on 3 accounts it takes less then an hour to cull all sales, fees, shipping, etc for tax purposes for each of two 6 month periods (we report bi-annually for Tax ID purposes).  I "may" be able to deal with the inexcusable delay in getting paid but to suddenly create a really, really bad accounting system going from one that works perfectly fine is just ridiculous ... this is 2019 so for them to force Sellers to take backwards steps tells me that at the end of the day Sellers really don't matter that much when in fact without Sellers eBay would have to shut their doors.

I am not looking forward to the day when Managed Payments are forced on us.  I am not looking for more work to do believe me.

I too hope they get bought by some other company ... back in 2016 I predicted it would happen within 5 years ... so that "guesstimate" is still in play with about 2 years left on the prediction ... we'll see.

[cs497kcpope]

I'm a seller but I'm also a buyer. I know why we are losing buyers!! I have been purchasing Christmas presents and I always click on US only. I have been fooled several times now by thinking that I purchased my items from the US. They were China sellers showing up like US sellers. Buyers are getting frustrated by eBay allowing this to happen! I know that I am!! 😞

I even contacted one seller asking him if he was a US seller. He told me yes that he was in Florida. But when I checked him out he was in China!! His feedback was terrible. They are lying! This is frustrating for buyers. 😞  When buyers select US they should receive their items from the US!!!

[miyasamaco]

I was searching for something for an upcoming crafting project and decided to look at a longtime eBay seller that I've purchased from previously. I was downright sickened by all of the ads for other sellers that were crowded in the listing! We should have known that once Bain Capital moved in, eBay would be intentionally destroyed. 

[ekmadonna]

I sell on Etsy also and they use ADYEN, I get my money transferred NEXT BUSINESS DAY! So there is no excuse like you said to have to wait 2,3, or 10 days or any time frame in between. The reason for the delay is because that is the way corporate set it up with the payment processor.

[hlmacdon]

Ask ebay to explain with transparency how they make money off of short term cash flow from payment funds and you'll have your answer as to why they take as long as they do to get your money. It sure as hell isn't a banking system limitation.