feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

I'm feeling sad. I've been with eBay since 2003 and only mainly sold little stuff.. books, clothes, plants... garage sale sort of thing. Never made a lot of money but it was fun and cleared the clutter from my house.

Haven't sold much in the past couple of years due to work commitments and, have to admit, I missed the email about the FVF on Postage. So just recently, I put some items up and you can imagine my horror when I saw my fees. 

As an example, sold some shoes for $5.00 (50c FVF) then another $1.33 for FVF on shipping... leaving me with a grand total of $3.17. lol... if you want to add the cost of fuel for me to get to the Post Office, well... let's just say I don't want to do that particular sum.

I'm assuming that eBay doesn't want to be bothered with the small seller anymore which is a shame, considering that's how they got started. 

Has anybody tried Gumtree? I suppose I'll mosey on over there and have a look.

Mostly, I have had positive experiences here, a couple of totally horrendous ones, some very funny ones.

Time moves on, eh?

ciao bebes



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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

In the past any seller who was offering Free Postage was paying the fee on the postage anyway. 

 

how far in the past are you talking about? sorry.. don't quite understand what you said... if they were offering free postage, how were they paying the fee on postage anyway?

do you mean they would have added the cost of postage into the opening price in the first place? 

if that was the case, no opening auction would be under, say .. price of prepaid bag is about $8.40?... so no auction would be under $9? 



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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

My usual auctions weren't very expensive. I'd have to check but mostly they were probably under $10. So the fee on that is not very much and that was ok with me. But you add fees on postage and that cuts into the small profit you've made and then there is Paypal. Don't mind their fees so much. I like the safety of Paypal.


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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

Hi, Joe, yes, I feel that's what made them bring in this charge... People charging way too much for postage when in reality, it only cost them half of that.


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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

Yes, you're right. I'll have to take it a lot more seriously than I did in the past if I want to make any money at all.


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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

yes, and when you're selling second hand books, it's even worse because the postage is always high on those things.


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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

I just said something similar to one of the above posts.... I'll have to take it a lot more seriously than I did in the past if I wish to make anything at all.


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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

Years ago, I read a book about the beginnings of eBay. It was really quite interesting. If I remember correctly, it was all about people wanting a place to sell little stuff. Well, that's gone by the by, hasn't it?


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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

Think it was always based around "making money" though.  Here's the Wikipedia page about its history and the first item listed which was a broken laser pointer which bid up to and sold for $14.83 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye


@annieher wrote:
yes, and when you're selling second hand books, it's even worse because the postage is always high on those things.

You don't have to reply to each post individually.

 

I sell secondhand books and have a reasonable rate of sales. But I don't do auctions. And a lot go as large letters.

 

'Free' post has always been postage included, unless you know a carrier who will do the job without expecting payment for their service. When there were no fees on postage 'free' post items attracted a fee on the postage component because the entire sale price was subject to FVF.

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Re: feeling sad. After 14years, probably will say goodbye

Personally I think to allay your concerns,  in future instead of Ebay charging you fee's when you sell.   They should give you a FVD (Final Value Donation),  under my proposal, if your item sells they should pay you 22.65% on the Final Value, inlcuding postage, plus an additional 42cents just for the joy of them providing you a service.

 

And under stage 2 of the FVD, after the 30th of June, Ebay should pay for all postage costs.

 

Stage 3 could be where you dont need to list an item,  and they just send you a FVD based on what they thought you would have sold.

 

 

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