Sales fell off a cliff

[comicbooksonline]

Anyone else just experienced a commplete fall off in sales from about 5 Days ago. Did Ebay make change?

[davewil1964]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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@curraone wrote:

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@chameleon54 wrote:, 1.5 million are public servents who are providing essential services, but are not actually creating any wealth for the country. They are sucking A LOT of money out of the system, ( through taxes to pay their above average wages ) so that leaves 7.5 million who could potentially actually be earning income for the country.

I don't follow this argument at all.    As a former public servant I can assure you that public servants still need to buy food, furniture, electricity, cars, petrol etc.     What difference who their employer is?     It all makes the economy go round.

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I,m also an ex public servent, 3 different roles in ten years, so understand the role of the public service from a personal perspective.

You basically answered your question in the last line. " It all makes the economy go round " The point is to actually INCREASE the money in circulation and allow wages to increase in Australia there has to be MORE money in the system. Making the existing money just go round as service industries do, means no extra money to allow for increased wages. On top of that, if population is slowly growing and there is slow inflation ( as we have in Australia now ) that fixed sum of money just going round is spread across more people and actually has less buying power, slowly eroding individuals purchasing power. ( We can already see that happening now in Australia )

There are really only two ways to increase the amount of money circulating in the Australian economy and allowing for increased wages.

1) Governments can just print more money. ( including issueing government bonds etc ) They already do this to an extent to allow for the natural increase in our population. While the two are matched, its not a problem. Once the government just starts to print money at will, it becomes inflationary. Each dollar printed has a diluted value. While economies are sick, Governments including the American government have used this technique ( Quantative easing ) to artificially pump prime the economy and stop deflation. The only problem is it builds inflation into the economic system that cant easily be removed. Eventually it is going to rear its head ( usually once things start to improve ) and will eventually result in rapid inflation and very high interest rates, Somewhere down the track. ( Same as Keatings recession we had to have )

2) The only real way to increase a countries wealth and have real increases in wages and living standards is to increase the value of exports, pumping new, real money into the Australian economy. The public service dont produce any exports ( thats not their job ) but they do take vast sums of money directly from the industries that do through taxation. The more export industries pay in tax, the less money they have to invest in actually producing export commodities. Thats why a large public service is a drain on increasing a countries wealth and it stifles real wage increases for everyone.

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I've been a public servant, too.

You seem to be glossing over a few points -

Anarchy is not good for anybody in the long run, which is what you get if you don't have rule of law and the bureaucracy to support it.

And where does the government get the money for life's luxuries, like health, education, defence, roads... without an income and the people to administer these things?

You might not have noticed, but this is a finite planet. Continual growth in population and the use of increasingly scarce resources has to have an endpoint. The way it's going that will be within our lifetimes.

[chameleon54]

I,m neither supporting nor opposing the system. Just telling it like it is. Unfortunately there's plenty of people who bury their heads in the sand and dont really want to know the truth. ......and the unfortunate truth at the moment is that

1) Australians are not productive enough compared to other nations. ( wages and conditions too high for what we actually do when compared to other countries )

 2) We have had it too good for too long based on exporting raw, bulk commodities, but as our population has grown, this finite wealth is spread across more people meaning less for each individual person resulting in falling living standards.

3) The vast bulk of our economy is now based on service industries that dont actually produce anything.

4) We are currently trying to maintain our high living standards by borrowing ever increasing sums of money from overseas.

5) This will come back to bite us eventually and our living standards are going to keep falling, until we start actually producing export income again rather than simply consuming stuff produced overseas as our huge service economy currently does.

6) By the time we wake up to ourselves and realise our current, high living standards are just a mirage that we havnt earned and dont deserve, the world will have passed us by and we will be scrambling to try to get back in the game. It could be too late by then.

[countessalmirena]

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@davewil1964 wrote:

And where does the government get the money for life's luxuries, like health, education, defence, roads... without an income and the people to administer these things?

You might not have noticed, but this is a finite planet. Continual growth in population and the use of increasingly scarce resources has to have an endpoint. The way it's going that will be within our lifetimes.

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The Australian government is far from perfect, but thankfully has some good policies and administration of funds to put those policies into practice. As you say, health, education, defence, roads - I consider Australia's healthcare to be among the world's very best (with the UK and the Netherlands). I acknowledge that there's variation in the standard, with Melbourne and Sydney doing much better than Tasmania, for instance. Overall, though, we're fortunate not to have the US's system, in spite of some very formidable hospitals and centres there.

Education... well, that worries me. In my view, Finland, Switzerland and the Netherlands outdo us in education with ease. Tertiary education is somewhat separate in that we do have some outstanding world-class universities, but in my view there is a disconnect between primary/secondary education in Australia and tertiary education in Australia. I believe education in Australia requires more focused funding, not just splashing money around on gimmicks and gadgets and commissions and so on.

Re endpoint - valid concern. What are we doing with the resources we have? We're squanderers. Industry is currently designed to squander. It's ridiculous.

[digital*ghost]

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@davewil1964 wrote:

Anarchy is not good for anybody in the long run, which is what you get if you don't have rule of law and the bureaucracy to support it.

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I'd like to test that theory.  (i.e. anarchy is not synonymous with chaos). 

There's actually a theory that suggests without a strong resistance to hierarchy, human beings wouldn't have elvolved as they did, so one could argue it was essential in the long run. 

[mitty_2010]

I think the economy is really tough on retailers at the moment and there are other websites that are getting popular for on line shopping such as Wish and Facebook market place, eBay is getting less popular as time goes on . 

[whoisbiggles]

Yep over the last month sales on FB pages have been outstripping my eBay sales. 

Sales margins are skinnier which is the tradeoff.

[go-tazz]

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@mitty_2010 wrote:

I think the economy is really tough on retailers at the moment and there are other websites that are getting popular for on line shopping such as Facebook market place

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That's if you can get past their stupid bots.

This year I've gone to list 8 different items that got rejected as they claim it breached their "policies" and even

when I've appealed they don't answer you and only sometimes it will say your appeal is denied.

None of the items breached their policies and plenty of others have been listed and were listed at the time.

Things like teaspoons,kitchen knives,commemorating medallions,watches,golf club,etc (everything is now listed

on here but it's not getting sold here either but at least it can be listed with more to come).

Seeing as sales on here are also none existent a bit of stuff is now sitting around that's not going anywhere 

soon by the looks of it.

[brerrabbit585]

If you get the message about a listing being rejected, try editing something minor in it and it usually works. Occasionally I'll have to try editing a second time but the first time is usually enough.

I'd never bother appealing or contacting them because it seems to be all automatic.  A friend got locked out of her account and they asked for proof of ID, but when she provided it they said it wasn't enough and decided they wanted more, and more.  In the end she gave up and opened a new account.

[go-tazz]

Tried that and sometimes it didn't even have the actual description of the item in it and it still got rejected.

The commemorative coins may have something to do with political correctness maybe.

The teaspoons had Rolex in the description and even when I took that out it may have been the photo is the

reason they were rejected.

With the golf club club I have no idea as there were loads listed and maybe because there was a choice of

shafts(regular or stiff),

Watches because they had 5 jewels in the description?

The part is that they don't communicate with you to even tell you why it's not accepted (the first few they had

that they would get back to me within 24/48 hours and I never got any reply OR notifications at all).

It's the worst type of "customer service" I've ever come across as you get totally ignored and kept in the dark.

[gumleaf_goodies]

My experience with trying to sell on FB Marketplace is the same as you. Items rejected for no discernable reason e.g. cookbooks, craft stamps, pocketwatches, and there are never any answers to appeals. I have totally given up trying.

GT is no better as most things I list there get plenty of views, but any responses always ask if I will accept a price about 50% of what I have asked. One item I listed for $10 (an absolute bargain) someone asked if I would give it away for free!!

Ebay isn't much better although things have picked up a little this month, but on one of my two IDs I sold a grand total of 4 items for the whole of June (usually sell around 15-20). Other ID wasn't much better.