talkingDigital

I used to love eBay. Indeed, I was an eBay fanboy. I made thousands of dollars selling found items using eBay. eBay made a lot of money off of me and I was happy to give them a share of what I made. That is, until eBay decided they didn’t want to be eBay anymore.

This photo was taken when eBay was awesome.

photo credit: Ryan Fanshaw PhotographyAfter taking a year off from eBay after writing my rant piece Where is Pierre Omidyar’s eBay?, I decided to try it again. I have learned over the past nine years as a computer geek not to take anyone’s word for what’s good and what’s bad in the computer world. I have to try things out for myself.

I knew that eBay had made many changes over the past year or two, but I had no idea how much those changes would effect my experience as a seller and buyer on eBay.

In my return to eBay, I decided to buy one item for over $100 and sell one item for over $1000. I bought a video converter box for a little under $150 and things went pretty smooth as always. That got my hopes up. I had to work with PayPal for about half an hour to figure out how to take the purchase funds from my credit card instead of my bank, but I was able to figure it out.

In order for eBay to succeed, there must be two groups – buyers and sellers. As a buyer, I was fairly happy with the experience. Selling was an entirely different story.

QUESTION: You sell an item for $1245 including $25 shipping on eBay. How much will you get to keep in the end?

ANSWER: That depends on whether eBay and PayPal allow you to have the money that the buyer sent you.

It has been nearly two weeks since the end of my auction, the item has shipped. The buyer has sent me the money, PayPal will not give me access to the money until the buyer leaves feedback on the transaction and UPS verifies shipping delivery.

That all may sound more secure and better for the buyer, but it is not the purpose of eBay.

eBay used to be a flea market. I went to eBay to do business with individuals and knew that eBay would not get in the way of the transaction as long as both parties played fair. Even in the few bad experiences I had, eBay did very little to get involved with the dispute, they simply gave each party the information they needed to work out the problem.

The new eBay takes a vastly different approach. When selling something on eBay, you can now count on eBay getting involved in every step along the way. You can feel yourself breaking through red tape from creating the listing until you try to collect the funds from the purchase. Instead of feeling like a great flea market, it feels more like customs.

Now, two weeks after the sale, not only am I still waiting for PayPal to add the funds to my account (balance shows as pending), eBay has also made it unclear as to whether they have finished charging my fees. Is my $23 eBay bill and my $36 PayPal bill, all that they are going to charge me, or is there still more coming?

To sell an item for $1225 +$20 shipping – I was charged over $50 in fees. A small percentage, I suppose, but consider the fact that I had no idea whether the item would even sell – or how much it would sell for. No doubt I could have done better by listing the item on craigslist or in the local want ads for a few weeks for under $20.

eBay used to be fun, it used to be cheap. It was never extremely easy, but it was no unreasonable either.

Today, eBay is a little easier to list items for sale and buy items. But, all of the risk that buyers once had to consider has been moved to the sellers.

The time is ripe for a new eBay. A flea market where people can unload their extra stuff and take risks as buyers and sellers. Especially in the current state of the economy. People are looking to get rid of the items that they spent too much money on when they had money, just so they can get a little extra cash in their pockets now.