If you were wondering what attracts people to ebay it's the variety of items listed here, but since ebay is systematically removing those sellers who are known to be the kind of sellers who have always been providing the unusual and hard to find items that ebay has built their business on, you are going to see the rate of interest dropping dramatically over the next year.
What is happening to ebay has been simply lucky for all sellers when a buyer comes to ebay and is looking for something unusual and is most likely only going to be found being listed by a very small niche seller who has a wide variety of items, now that buyer may not buy that item, (if they can even find it since ebay's search will more than likely never even allow that item to be seen by that buyer) but they may see other items (that ebay's search will show INSTEAD of what they came to get) and make other purchases while they are here.
Now once buyers start to feel that it's unlikely to find those strange and very hard to find items here on ebay but have had no problems finding them when using google search and they are showing up on other sites, well it doesn't take a genius to figure out that those buyers will stop bothering to even look here after a few times of not finding what they want.
So you can blame it on ebay or their search engine or the fact that ebay is making things unbearably difficult for small sellers to remain selling here, but it all ends up with the same results. ebay is destroying their backbone and thinks it can continue on without those items and those sellers who have made this site interesting for so many years.
Thinking that things take a very long time to change is thinking in the past, in this new age of selling and business you will see changes happen very quickly. ebay is not going to be able to simply stand there and wait around for things to pan out, there will be no panning, what will happen, just like everything has, simply look at My Space and AOL for some recent examples of how the tides have shifted and you will begin to understand that buyers have a nose for going where they can find what they want. now not everyone wants knock off Chinese junk but ebay is betting their bottom $ that we all do want that garbage. What happens when the e-packet shipping rate is removed by Trump? Making America Great Again will have to include huge import taxes on all goods from other countries as he has been saying all along. So when that happens ebay will suffer greatly especially after they have removed all of their small sellers through their targeted policy changes and rate increases, no to mention having 2 sets of rules that govern how you are evaluated. making it impossible for a small seller to overcome any defects at all. Then hitting them up with restrictions, charging them for a store that will have no benefits but you are still charged until your subscription has ended.
Just by making new policy after new policy and tightening the rope around our wallets has created a huge amount of sellers who are deciding to simply not pay their fees for the last few months and calling it quits. I know I have tried my best to get my fees as high as possible tin an attempt to try to end up leaving here with some the money they have defrauded me out of back in my pocket.
let them come after me for not paying I have been saving thousands of pages by screen shot showing all text and all examples of what ebay has done to defraud me and assisted so many buyers who have lied one after the next. I have had proof on every case and ebay refused to even look at it. I have had my terms of transactions posted in every listing that had items with shipping costs based on weight and box size if those items did not fit into Flat rate boxes. Each time there was a problem ebay had no interest in my terms I had shown, that listing was mine and not ebays if I recall correctly. They have some disclaimer that states that the listing is the sole responsibility of the seller, that means I have control over that sale not ebay, they have made sure to remove themselves from my sale but still overrule me on how I handle my sales? i think a judge will be very interested in how that works. not to mention thousands of pages of proof showing how ebay did nothing to resolve matters correctly, and how their search engine only showed my items to buyers who lived in zone 5, 6 7, or 8. making sure that i would haver to pay the maximum amount for each sale for shipping costs. But I also have proof that if my items were shown to closer buyers those buyers were known to be problem buyers who had a habit of doing returns for no reason or they were ripped people off.
I have plotted my facts on a map of the Us and shown the zones and amount of sales Both large and small item and then shown which areas had the most problem sales. funny thing is the closer area had 3 times as many problems.
zones 1-5 had 40 large items sold and had 8 problem sales where a buyer opened a SNAD case without ever making contact. that's 1/5th of all large items sold (43 small items were also sold in those zones). Compared to zones 6-8, it breaks down to zone 6=27 small items, 15 large and 1 problem. Zone 7=38 small items, 37 large items an 1 problem with 3 cancelled sales due to buyers changing their minds (cancelled items are not included in overall count of sales). Zone 8=55 small items, 54 large items, 2 problems. Now when you compare the numbers that's a whopping 106 large items sold with 5 problems that's a mere 1/21 of sales with problems but also I paid max shipping cost on 106 large sales compared to 40 that had much less cost. Just my zone 8 items alone were more than all zone 1-5 items sold 56 to 40. these number are no coincidence, this was planned this way. there's no way this happened without a plan.
These number were collected from my sales between 12/25/2016 and 9/16/2017 I would have kept on going but i have to start anew map, I had too many lines drawn to continue with an accurate count. I have the map showing the end count and positions of those sales as plotted by zip code, then I used an overlay that showed the effective zones derived from my zip code as the origin. Each zip origin with develop a new set of zones, I found that Pitney Bowes had such a map available that showed my specific zone layout with my zip entered in as the origin. With out this map i would have had a tough time knowing some of the midwestern states zones but most of my sale were squarely placed in Maine and Florida as well as throughout the new england area so I pretty much knew that this was a problem before I started checking it out.
If you think ebay's going to continue on doing business when this is how they treat their sellers I think that you might need to take a reconsider what's actually happening here right now. You also say for each that leaves they gain even more, from what source are you finding this information? I tend to disagree and at this moment there has never been a greater amount of seller s leaving this site, word has spread that selling here can and will end up costing you every penny you have if you aren't careful. You have no defense and sellers find out quickly that their money is not safe when you make a sale here. list something in hopes to make $10 but end up loosing your item and having the shipping cost x2 deducted from your bank account. If your shipping was on an old stereo and cost $45 to ship you just lost $90, the cost of supplies and possibly your stereo since they can keep it and you can't do a thing about it.
This has deterred many new sellers from even considering starting to sell here. It's very well known now, maybe not so much a year ago but the word spreads quickly and so do the buyers, once they find out they won't find what they want here they will be gone as well, ebay may have a ton of junk listed by big box stores and chinese sellers but that's the same junk they buy anywhere, no need to come to ebay and take a chance of getting ripped off when they can just go to that stores site and get an unopened and not already returned item for the same price.
Or go to AliBabba and buy that same chinese junk for half the listed price here.
