Selling on ebay - 15 Years - My Story

[ezy-mobiles]

Dear sellers,

Just had a quick read of some of selling experience story's as part of the recent e-bay 20 year publicity.

I haven't been selling on e-bay for quit 20 years, but I can share my story of the last 15 years.

Ebay in the early days was fun and exciting, it opened up selling opportunity's within Australia but also other parts of the globe (mainly the US in the early days). 

Sure technology challenges seemed to be prevalent back then, especially with dial-up Internet, slow upload speeds, expensive digital cameras and frequent virus attacks.

One of the stand out features in the early years was that most people you dealt with were polite, friendly and even patient (and often exchanged e-mails from other buyer/sellers from other countries). Buyers seemed to be understanding that you had to patient with the postal system.

The main forms of payment received from buyers were cash....yes cash (posted disguised in a brochure or similar), Aust post money order or bank deposit transfer. Payment from overseas buyers (remember most international business was with the US) was in US cash sent through the post..

Before paymate and paypal came into play this form of payment was actually endorsed by e-bay and worked very well with 100% of all my US payments being received successfully. It was only when e-bay and paypal joined together that that it was decided that this method of payment was no longer considered appropriate and also swaying us awy from bank transfers!!!

We had the freedom to choose in the early days of paypal to use it or not (many sellers preferring bank deposit in order to avoid the high paypal fees. Unlike today were it is a requirement.

The first year of e-bay in Australia it was 100% free to list and the fvf was very modest. No seller restrictions applied including limits or holding payments unlike today.

Ebay back then was very much a "community" with majority of sellers being individuals clearing unwanted goods or dealing in treasures sourced from local secondhand markets or garage sales. Unlike today where the small time seller are being pushed aside in favour of the big retail corporations $ or flooded with Chinese made items

If a buyer refused to pay for an item that they bid/won or changed mind etc,  then this could be shared with the rest of the ebay community through leaving a negative or neutral feedback comment. Unlike today where only buyers have the freedom of leaving a negative or neutral feedback.

For me, the early days of ebay were enjoyable due to the freedom that sellers had and particularly the lack of restrictions placed on us by ebay. 

Although I occasionally sell items on ebay, I am not selling no where as much as I was 8-15 years previously. In short ebay has become way to restrictive and expensive for the small time seller (aka mum and dad, hobby / casual sellers).

Somehow I don't expect ebay will be contacting me to do a "fluff" piece on My Story.....

[springyzone]

I've been on ebay about 15 years now ( under another ID).

My memory of it is I used to pay via bank deposit. I would go into the bank and pay the money over.

When my sister and I started selling (over a decade ago), just about every payment to us was bank deposit also.

There were some problems, the main one being that if you paid, there was absolutely no guarantee you would get your item. You depended on the honesty of the seller and that is why feedback was so important. If a seller had a lot of positive feedback as a seller, you felt more confident in your purchase because a person using ebay regularly to sell was probably going to care about getting positive ratings. In fact if they got a few negs, ebay seemed to kick them off.

There were a couple of times I went in to give a neg for not receiving the item, seller not responding to messages etc, only to find all the other angry buyers had beat me to it and the seller was no longer with us.

Didn't help with money though, it was still lost.

Buyers-their incentive to pay was sellers could give a neg if they didn't & they might find themselves banned.

But for newbies, they could walk away with nothing to lose as they had no high FB score to protect.

---------------------

The new ebay.

Good for buyers, they can pay via paypal, have auto proof of payment, can apply for money back if the seller doesn't post.

Worse for sellers in that they aren't as in control. Back in the day, if someone complained about something, we could decide exactly what to do- full refund, partial refund or whatever. I suppose that is tough if a seller is unreasonable though.

Things seem to have swung more over to buyer protection but I think a lot of it stemmed from the buyer perception you paid your money and you took a risk, and to be honest, you did.

Oh, and feedback comments have gone from being highly important back in the past, to a side issue now. I can see it being scrapped eventually.

[audio_australia_]

I've been selling on ebay for 12 years this month, averaging well over $1 Million sales every year.

Seen too many changes, most of which you have all covered.

Ebay is too expensive, too complicated and way too fluffy.

I will be saying goodbye to ebay on the 1st of January, I'm over it.

Justin

[languidlady49]

I started selling here in 2002 and the thing I loved was how helpful the ebay staff were then, you could email and an understanding person would answer within the day, they would fix up my mistakes, like listing the same thing twice etc. no fuss no charge. I joined paypal US at the same time as I was selling a bit overseas but all my aussie buyers paid by bank deposit, cheque or postal order.

The other great thing was the reserve price, I realise it doesn't work for a lot of categories but listing an expensive piece of jewellery or antique at $1 with a reserve certainly got a lot more interest and bids than starting off with the price one actually needed.

[ourphonecase]

How many times have I heard "the good old days"? Did you parents say that did your grand parents all said it too? It seems the past is always better and going by that logic, the cave man days were the best or the beginning of time. Maybe it's true because back then tax didn't exist and you could do so much things without getting into trouble.

Now that is said, I belive eBays has such a **bleep**py system. I'm trying to get turbo lister working but it crashes every 5 minutes no joke. I need to update my iPhone 6 listings and add the iPhone 6s models into the variation . But nope it's too hard.

[utebns]

Gone are the days of rushing to the post office to get a money order to post off for purchased goods, or lining up at the bank to transfur to an account!
However even now ill transfure when i can, and yes i still go into a bank!
My accounts 10years old but ive been selling for 6.... i freakin hate the b.s. of all this credit card **bleep** & paypal.. yes its a must have but with banking online now and easy to use from a mobile phone its a shame we cant have bank tranfure on all purchased items only as a priority rather than as an option.