The Electra Forums

I got a unpleasant surprise when I sold that Rail bass recently, and after looking at some not so flattering blogs I find myself questioning the morality, ethics, wisdom and ultimately my future with the folks at eBay/Paypal. This is pointed out rather bluntly by some bloggers who obviously sell more than I do, and it manifests itself it three disturbing ways.

Firstly, payments. I've been eBaying long enough to remember standing in line to get Money Orders and mailing them, and I do like the convenience and speediness of Paypal, however since eBay owns Paypal, they are basically getting paid twice for a single transaction. This is further complicated by eBays not-so-new policy of only accepting Paypal as payment... guaranteeing them these double revenues. This used to be a fairly small percentage fee to the paypal receiver (seller) of funds, but now this paypal fee is higher than credit cards charge retail outlets. OK, we all learned to deal with it, or at least accept it as the cost of doing internet business.

Next Billing. eBays newest brainchild is to charge next to nothing to list things, but now they are taking a flat 9% off of the final value price (some catagories are lower, but this affects most of the stuff we're interested in)... pretty brutal when you think about it. In addition (and this is boarderline illegal, some proposed class action suits are expected) eBay will now be taking a flat 9% of your total shipping fees!! This is attempted to be justified by the practice of sellers offering big ticket items for next to nothing and jacking up the shipping cost to compensate (which formerly eBay did not get a percentage of), but man, think about it... they are not a shipping company, they did not warehouse the sold item, they didn't even touch it, and they are getting a percentage of the shipping now? (expletive deleted). OK, and lets not forget that first item above, so eBay gets a Final Value fee, percentage of the Shipping fee and then Paypal (part of eBay, remember) takes their guaranteed cut when you actually get paid. Ultimately, sellers will jack up their shipping costs even more to compensate, and probably get accused of gouging buyers, when in reality they are just trying to get back to even because of the new policy. Which brings us to the last disturbing trend:

Feedback. I guess I've been under a rock, but sure enough I just found out that Sellers can not give negative feedback anymore, although Buyers can. It also seems like eBay is getting rather Draconian with many long time (but smaller) sellers. You can lose your eBay account if things are not shipped in a timely manor, or if they find out that two eBay accounts originate from the same address (hey, ever hear of roommates?) or a number of other seemingly minor things (feel free to check out all the blogs out there... just google eBay Greed). The bottom line from the blogisphere seems to be that eBay could give a cr@p about low volume sellers (like us) and are tailoring their billing for the big box virtual sellers. One of the many reoccurring themes I've heard is that a buyer will complain about an item, open a Paypal resolution, get full reimbursement, the sellers account is deducted and they lose all those fees I talked about above, seller account can become suspended and many times the unscrupulous buyer doesn't even return the item in question...

Whew... doesn't give me a lot of confidence as a honest low volume seller. I'm torn frankly, I like the convenience and size of eBays market reach, but these fees are f'ing terrible.

Bottom line is that there are few alternatives for online selling. CraigsList can be dicey, and mostly local, and the other auction sites just do not have the traffic that eBay has. They basically have us by the short hairs until another site grows big enough to compete (which is when they step in and buy the site historically...) Be prepared to see higher shipping fees, and if you can sell an item to a forum member even a hundred dollars cheaper, you may be actually coming out ahead... believe it or not.

Sorry, did not mean to whine, but this kind of snuck up on me and I needed to vent. Cheers, Mike.

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Electra Guitar Videos ===> http://www.youtube.com/user/mjm33mjm?feature=watch

Totally agree !! I make most of my living selling on ebay and it's getting tough !! I joined GBase about 2 weeks ago, but have not yet sold anything through that site. I'd much rather sell directly to forum members (and have) -- but I'd have to join every forum under the sun !! Oh, well, I'm not too old to get a job (gulp)

That's all a bit scary, Mike - and Dave!; I've only ever bought on eBay, though we did do a lot of selling on New Zealand's TradeMe some time ago.
Even buying can be a bit scary and I'm sure we've all got horror stories about being ripped off - I lost an APII Inazuma in California that even my contact there couldn't resolve; there's unscrupulous con-men everywhere, and now it seems eBay m/ment is up there as well.... what's a bloke to do?!

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"... and on the eighth day, God created New Zealanders.

Because even the Australians need heroes."

I've been on eBay since mid 1997 and have seen lots of changes since. I'm expecting a lot more as well....and none tailored to the benefit of the seller these days. There are so many folks making their living reselling product on the Bay now that they really think that they can dictate just about everything to all members.

The restrictions on the copy guitars get my goat.....makes no sense to me. The vast majority of these guitars were legally built, legally imported, and legally sold....what's the darn problem now?

I don't like any of the new eBay policy changes here of recent....and how about the new IRS income reporting thats gonna be put in place this year for sellers?

And don't they now own a significant portion of Craigslist? Expect significant changes there too as soon as they get controlling interest.

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JD's Electras

Ebay has become increasingly difficult to deal with from a selling standpoint. It's still a decent place for a buyer - but as stated by Pro it's harder and harder for small sellers. They had the nerve to justify the selling fee by stating that it was designed to "lower" shipping costs. I fyou lower your shipping charge many will have to raise the selling or buy it now cost and vice versa. It's a thinly disguised way for ebay to line their already over-flowing pockets. Let's face it, after ebay and Paypal fees, a seller is out of pocket about 15% for the 'convenience" of using the site. using round numbers, let's say 10% ebay selling fee (i think it's actually 11% for musical instruments) and 3% Paypal fee. Formerly a $250 guitar with $50 shipping would result in fees of $25 eb and $7.50 PP = $32.50. Net for seller - $267.50. 12% to PP/eb. Now, the same transaction would be $29.50 eb and $7.50 PP = $37. Net $263. 14% to eb/pp. Clearly selling and/or shipping prices need to rise to net the same profit. This doesn't include any listing charges.

Does anyone know if Paypal is now charging their % based on price and shipping? If so, then everything is even worse.

Bottom line is the margins for a seller are squeezed and that translates into fewer bargains for buyers. I can only hope that ebay has a drop-off in revenue as a result of this practice, but unfortunately, they are still the best way of reaching the largest pool of potential buyers. Their business model was fine and profitable as well, without charging more. When is enough enough?

well, the way I look at it, for some things, on eBay the prices are lower, and for some higher (Guitars) than what I was seeing locally...
If you were to take stuff to a local auction house, you will get charged 20-25% and you won't reach a wide audience at all...

also, what we see as price increases, are really the falling value of the dollar...

as far as ebay implementing the income reporting, I'm guessing they are getting pressure from the government, so the government can take more...

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My Electra Pages
I have too many projects!

I've already raised shipping 9% - but then I have lower shipping costs domestically because I use a local busines that has a commercial UPS account --- and I charge a $6 handling fee for overseas sales (which make up 50% of my business) === and I'm already filing with the IRS on my sales - I did almost 150K last year and I don't want the IRS after me (again!!) - of course, I can write off alot !! I may be wrong, but doesn't paypal charge a percentage of total transaction amount ??

I have a couple of recent ebay transactions and the fee structure is:

11% of the first $50 & 6% up to $1,000.

PayPal (the pal gets me) charges essentially 3% (2.97xxx%) of the total received from the buyer.

I find the easiest way to estimate my fees is 9% of the total plus $2.50.

The last figure is the fee difference on the first $50 (5% of $50 = $2.50).

Pretty nice piece of change for fees, I should be buying ebay stock with my profits, if I had any to speak of!

We need an "Electra-bay"!

I'll start it off - my current listing on ebay is a Nice X185RM, BIN/BO for $295 + shipping, listing below.

On "Electra-bay" it's available to any forum member for $240 + shipping and that's at my cost.

Time spent getting the switches working right & set up correctly, free (and priceless ).

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... K:MEWAX:IT

I don't see a problem with the IRS, you only pay taxes on net Profit!

Dan

p.s. Apologies if I stepped on any toes or violated forum protocol

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Electra Player, Trader & Grandpa-to-be

Bonanza.com

Free to list and the listing doesn't expire, and final value fees are 3.5% up to $500, and then $17.50 + 1.5% of the amount over $500.

Not as much traffic, yes, but I've made a few sales there. Also, buyers are fairly quick to jump over there when you tell them they can have their guitar $50 cheaper.

Worth checking out. I've had a booth there since March.

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magemusiconline.com

Redeye - Thanks !! I just opened a booth there also - same seller name as ebay, and importing feedback from ebay is cool !! The more options, the better !!

It's getting pretty ugly on ebay, agreed.

I see it as useful for unique items that need to reach the widest possible market.

I'd like to write them a nastygram and cancel my account, but I'm quite positive they don't care about me, the individual seller. I just try to increase my prices so I'm covered, but that just does two things I don't like:

1. Puts more money in their pockets.

2. Shows me that the market can bear a higher price, and I should be getting more of the bottom line.

I see now that as of Aug. 31st, sellers that want to have any return policy at all must offer a MINIMUM of 14 days for the buyer to contact you that they want to return, and you MUST offer money back. You must agree to this or offer no return policy at all. Oh, but they have thrown sellers a bone in that you get another 25 characters to describe your item. OH BOY!

I'm doing all I can to drive all the traffic I can to my Bonanza booth. I'm growing to loathe greedbay.......

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magemusiconline.com