From the article: How to Choose an eBay Business Model
eBay sellers operate using a variety of different business models, each one with its own strengths and weaknesses. eBay itself can at times be difficult to work with, but beyond eBay's own issues, part of life as a seller is to solve tough supply, logistics, numbers, and customer service problems. What's your toughest business problem as an eBay seller? Share Your Story
Holding Money
- Ebay have requested that Paypal hold money from any sales made through them, for no reason at all. I have been selling on Ebay for some time now (infrequently). I need the money that a buyer pays in order to purchase from the supplier, if Paypal ar holding these funds, I need to issue a refund as I cannot pay the supplier. Ebay do not seem to realize that issued refunds means refunds of seller and Paypal fees so they lose out also, (stupid people) Ebay is one of the greediest companies I know of , millions of transactions a day, resulting in MILLIONS revenue a day, fees are way to high and profits for sellers too low. Ebay without a doubt favors the buyer and not the seller, which is crazy as we pay the fees. I cancelled my account recently because of them withholding funds as I cannot function. In essence, they have put me out of business. I HOPE YOU ARE PROUD OF YOURSELVES EBAY OWNERS
- —Guest Disgruntled
Ebay seller abuse
- A buyer claimed an amp I sent arrived damaged; if so, this was shipping damage which we should have worked out with a claim against the shipper. Instead, buyer immediately opened a claim with ebay; ebay held the funds for 30 days while it "investigated", then paid the buyer back! So, I effectively acted as the shipping insurer; Ebay decided that instead of the amp being damaged in shipping that I had packed a bashed up amp and sold it as pristine. I have been selling for 12 years, shipped several large/heavy amps and NEVER had this problem. Their policy appears to be to assume the seller is a rip off, and make all decisions on the buyers side. I am done selling on ebay after close to 300 transactions with 100% positive feedback..
- —scott_lee
The .99 deal
- This is an unbelievable episode with EBay! I incorrectly listed 4 cemetary plots for a starting bid of .99. When someone bid I realized the mistake and attempted to explain but, this person would not accept the answer and demanded that i complete the sale PLUS she wanted an additional $20 or she would "go to arbitration". This was my first time using EBay as I had used half.com with no problems. To sum up I finally refunded the .99 and filed a extortion report after she posted negative ratings on me. So far I've heard nothing but plan to DROP both EBay and PayPal as soon as I finish this!
- —Guest Anne
Inventory
- We had an inventory mistake and sold a DVD that was not available. When we realized our mistake, we contacted the buyer immediately and told him/her to look for a instant refund. The buyer said that we had handled it well, but that was not good enough, so he gave us our first negative rating!! WE are very upset that an honest mistake that was fixed immediately could hurt our rating that we have worked so hard for.
- —saletrail
HOLDING MONEY
- Out of 1,300 sales last year I had 10 bad marks against me. Ebay demoted me from Top Rated Seller, took away my 20% discount and are now holding my funds in Paypal for 21 days. I am shocked and devastated. They are a corporate machine - you cannot talk to anyone.. you can not appeal... I am moving to my own Website after 8 years of working to build a business. Ebay is not a hobby I built it for my retirement income.. HOW DARE THEY HOLD MY MONEY WHEN I HAVE NEVER EVER HAD A FINANCIAL ISSUE WITH ANYONE!! Ebay seems to be all for the Buyer and to hell with the Seller. I cannot believe they are doing this to me. I wrote a blog on Ebay and someone (who works for ebay) writes to me to say I am taking this too personally and that I should read the rules. EBAY IS NOT A HOBBY.. IT'S MY LIVING. YOU BET I TAKE HOLDING OVER $1,000 PERSONALLY. There is nothing to do but move on. Ebay does not care about me as an individual.
- —Guest Carol
Done
- I was selling a purse. I accidently had a typo in the name. Some of the other sellers didn't like it and complained. I don't know why they just didn't ask. I return all emails quickly. I would of corrected it quickly. The item was pulled without thinking of asking or looking at the 100% Positive remarks. I have found that they don't bother to check out or ask questions. They just take the word of of sellers (probably their top sellers who are upset that I had the nerve to sell something that they sell) I am done. I can sell my items at a garage sale without all the hastle. I tried to call and found it very difficult to talk with anyone. I notice they don't have an email option for sellers to ask questions. Why not be proactive and ask questions and be customer friendly. After all who is paying the fees. I do belive it is the sellers. Well I don't need to pay you any fees. I am done.
- —Guest Knee Jerk Reaction
president
- The new dispute policy will not help you when trying to keeping your top rated seller status. I have a customer that opened a dispute on an item that he did not pay for and I was charged with an open case. Ebay customer support clearly advised me that there are zero disputes that will be removed. This customer clicked on 3 purchases and only wanted one. He opened a non receipt of item dispute and he never even paid us for the item!!!! Ebay refused to remove it causing us to fall into a percentage of over .50 % We had another case opened on a case where we offered to refund the customer to be nice even though we state in our listings that there are no refunds. The customer sent it back and opened a dispute because the item got lost in the postal system and took longer then expected to be returned to us. We finally did receive it and processed the refund, we did nothing wrong and whet above and beyond to make the customer happy, ebay customer support said TO BAD!!!! Treated me very
- —Guest Tom D
P&P as a seller
- As a seller, I charge buyers the actual cost of P&P. As I have now received low ratings from a couple of buyers on my P&P charges, Ebay have indefinately stopped me from selling( I don't add P&P to my starting price of my items so people can get a bargain!). Have explained this to Ebay but to no avail. I can only assume that as I am small time buyer Ebay have no interest in keeping me as a seller. They only seem interested in buyers and power sellers as they are the ones making money for Ebay.
- —Guest guest furious
To fast
- My biggest problem is ebay letting people file no item recieved complaints to fast..I just got an notice that a person in France has not recieved their package and it has only been 5 days,also paypal reurned 116.00 to a Germany customer in less then 2 weeks..we can't track packages out of the USA..people need to have to wait longer to file a complaint..at least 3 weeks...overseas mail is very very slow.
- —Guest Usamom36
ebay greed
- GREED is the main word with ebay & paypal. we have to pay for listing, final value fee and paypal to use their service. if they are so smart they would realize that lower fees to the seller we would list more items which would increase the sells and ebay would be doubling their money and giving the seller a break on all the fees we pay. i was in management for years, for us to increase our sells and bring more buyers in we had to do weekly specials to increase our sells. ebay just see the billions they make off of the sellers and dosen't care about our profits. they could once a month offer free listing for items under 50.00 one week end a month, think of the profit we would all make that weekend including ebay & paypal. there are so many great ways for ebay to help increase sells for the seller and of course more profit for them. for them to be so smart they do stupid things. i agree also about not being able to talk to a live person when there is a problem, customer support is no hel
- —Guest annlavis51
greedy
- ebay are so greedy, they seem only interested in buyers, they do nothing to help out sellers, people seem to think its easy work on ebay and very profitable, to actually function as a business on here its virtually impossible, 40p insertion fee for a product that doesnt sell.... get a few of those, plus the ones you sell at over 10% fees taking into account final valuation and paypal fees. how about a free listing day for us, if we didnt sell anything you wouldnt have any buyers????
- —Guest sharon kind
An ebay alternative
- You should try Makatto.com. It's a new site but so far it's been a pretty good experience for me.
- —Guest Jay C
Model 1 is the only problem
- The reason so many people bought into Model 1 is for the low risk. Anyone can direct an order to the supplier. But what happens when thousands adopt the same model? You then compete against the very same people who are applying model 1 on eBay. I personally don't think it's worth investing the time or money. Model 2 is ideal and if you're lucky to land the distributor than model 3. To be successful with model 2 you need unique inventory at a high selling price or else it's useless. How many people are selling clothes, DVDS, games, books etc...? Makes no sense to compete in a dead beat market. The only way to become successful on eBay is finding the right product and the right supplier or distributor. Good luck
- —Guest Steven Saczkowski
toughest ebay problem
- your toughest problem will be ebays double standards, they say one thing but do another, then the next biggest problem is there ever changing rules that even their own employees dont seem to know, not being able to contact a real person if you have a problem is one of ebays biggest problems also, then there is the jealous competitor who will work to surreptitiously try to put you out of business cause you have a great product that you are selling for less then he is, basically the problems on ebay are too numerous to mention, i was a powerseller for a few years and in the end it was just not worth it, but take heart, ebay will not be the top dog for long, there is a new site that will be coming soon that will be a direct competitor to ebay....without all the politics and crap of ebay
- —Guest cruise
Ebay Problems
- As a new seller my toughest problems so fare have been product sourcing from a reliable source along with paying combined very high eBay & Paypal fees. After that it's learing about eBay and the many sources that are so-called "expert" on eBay. So for me it's been a slow process of trial and error in selling on eBay.
- —Guest Bayer
