Because you suck, and eBay hates you.

[unixronin]

(To paraphrase an oft-heard meme on guns.)

Apparently eBay is planning rules changes ... and the rules changes are good for eBay, good for a few major corporate sellers on eBay, good for rogue buyers who try to extort free items out of sellers by threatening negative feedback, but bad for everyone else.

Fifth, they instituted "Seller Rewards".  Essentially, if you meet certain criteria as a seller you can earn 15% credit on your account.  The catch is that you have to sell 1,000 dollars or more on your account every month and have to have a 4.8 rating on all your "stars".  I feel that these guidelines are impossible to reach and that they were designed to be impossible to reach on purpose so that Ebay, yet again, would not have to actually pay out the discounts.  To give you an example of how hard these are to reach, out of Ebay's top 500 Powersellers (These people are the creme [sic] of the crop on Ebay and make lilke $100,000 a month on Ebay) ... anyway out of the top 500 of them, only SEVEN qualify for the 15% discount.  SEVEN.

Included among other changes:  Sell 20 items in a month, get negative or even neutral feedback on one of them for any reason, and forget about any of your sales ever appearing in an eBay search listing again.  Also, if you're a seller, you will no longer be able to leave negative feedback for buyers — even for non-payment or negative-feedback extortion.

ebay.  Because we never said anything about not being evil.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Mmm. This also has the *fascinating* side effect of making feedback USELESS for actual feedback, as it will only be used for punitive or extortive tactics.

...more reasons not to use eBay!

[jilara.livejournal.com]

They're also raising fees, especially the percentage they take of final value. An example is that for a final value under $50 is the ebay share goes from 5.25% to 8.5%, if memory serves. There is a small seller grassroots boycott this week. Like they care. I hang out on the boards on ebay a lot, and someone said they were told that little people don't matter to them by an ebay admin. Flat out. (Makes you think of Blade Runner...)

Andrew did some research, and found that ebay has been quietly buying up all competing auction sites and software technology so that they can be the online auction monopoly. Interesting.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

They're also raising fees, especially the percentage they take of final value. An example is that for a final value under $50 is the ebay share goes from 5.25% to 8.5%, if memory serves.

Yeah, the article I linked mentions that too.

I hang out on the boards on ebay a lot, and someone said they were told that little people don't matter to them by an ebay admin. Flat out.

I'd be a liar if I said I was surprised. And this isn't the first time I've been unsurprised as some new eBay perfidy.

Andrew did some research, and found that ebay has been quietly buying up all competing auction sites and software technology so that they can be the online auction monopoly. Interesting.

Interesting indeed. Maybe they think that if they're the only online auction site, it won't matter how hard they suck, people will have no choice but to use them anyway.

[danjite.livejournal.com]

Paypal just fought me for three weeks as I dared ask for my money.

They demanded faxed ID, faxed bills to prove residence, contacted all my previous month's buyers to confirm atisfaction even though I got positive feedback for all teh stuff I sold and no complaints and I had to drive the process, as if two weeks passed without action on my part, I'd get a "permanent suspension" blocking me eternally from my $2,580.44.

I am so done with this shit.

I now, however have my money in my possession.

But I fucking quit.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've heard too many stories of PayPal being evil. I am phasing out my usage of PayPal as far as I can.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

If you want a great (but too true!) spoof of Ebay and their abuses, check out this page:
http://www.tabberone.com/Trademarks/EbayLand.shtml

I wonder how long "EbayLand, the Game" will stay up? But Tabberone seems to have a lot of success with suing ebay and their affiliates for abuses...

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

thanks for the heads up!!!!!