Ebay Can Now Take Their Cut Even If You Don't Sell

Don't misunderstand my post: I'm not complaining about seller's fees. 10% is the same I pay selling through a B&M auction house. The difference is that if I use an actual auction house, they are my agent. If the auction house sells my item but the buyer doesn't pay (that happens more often than you'd believe since everyone went online), they don't charge me to relist the item; they don't charge me for the sale that didn't happen. The traditional auctioneer acts as agent for both seller and buyer and owes each a duty of care. That extends to fair dealing; fair description; warranty ... the list goes on. EBay holds itself out as an auction platform but fails to deliver on its duties as Agent. It has steadily become more onerous to the seller using the platform while backing away from anything that smacks of duty of care.

Back in July, I listed a vintage Rolex on eBay. it sold three times. That is, it sold once and the buyer went silent on me; it was relisted, sold and that buyer cancelled the purchase; I relisted again and a buyer messaged me multiple times begging me to take an offer .... which I did on the promise that he would pay immediately via PayPal. He didn't. Didn't answer any messages either. I gave up on eBay and sold it at auction. It was the main photo on the catalogue that week and bidders went mad for it.

Fine. Except with the changes to T&C on eBay, they now have the right to charge me for those incomplete sales - or at least one of them. I already take the risk of the heartache that comes with dealing with faceless buyers, why should I take the risk of being charged for their idiocy on top of it?

My suggestion is that the charges are split between seller and buyer. Sure, the "hammer price" may drop by 5%, but that doesn't affect my bottom line. What it does is it levels the playing field a little, putting some financial incentive on both parties to fulfill their obligations.

In the Norton/Triumph world, Lucas was known as "Prince of Darkness."

Maybe in line with this topic :

eBay is having a pretty bad day



eBay is not having a great afternoon after posting a pretty ho-hum third quarter that fit roughly in line with analyst estimates, but perhaps not seeing the kinds of leaps that Wall Street is looking for heading into the fourth quarter.

The company said it added an additional 2 million active buyers and now says it has 168 million global active buyers. But even with buyer numbers as large as that, it seems that eBay may still face an uphill battle trying to change the perception that it’s a company that was a powerhouse. Like other companies that are struggling with growth, that problem may lie at the product level rather than the operational or mechanical level. eBay, for now, seems to be more a story about a revamp as it looks to draw customers from a platform where people can pretty much buy anything with a single click and get it in two days (and also works with servers).

Here’s a look at the company’s active buyer numbers. Note that the most recent number excludes domestic active buyers in India following its sale of its India business to Flipkart:




(You can find the full specifics of the earnings report, as well as Wall Street analyst estimates, at the bottom of the post.)

There was some growth across the board — most units grew less than 10% year-over-year — but it’s seemingly left eBay as a kind of minor growth property as it gets compared Amazon. But going forward, it looks like the company’s expectations for the fourth quarter came in lower than what Wall Street hoped. Looking for some kind of comparable to Amazon in a brand that was a powerhouse in the early era of the consumer web, investors apparently are still looking for more from the company.

Here’s a quick rundown of the stats on the company for the past several quarters:



“In Q3, we drove acceleration across all three of our platforms, delivering strong top and bottom line financial results and our fastest volume growth in over three years,” CEO Devin Wenig said in the earnings release. “Our customers are responding to the significant product enhancements we have been making, and this is reflected in our results.”

We’ll get to the specific financial numbers later, but clearly, eBay is not getting the kind of friendly treatment that Amazon gets. While the company seems to be trying to diversify beyond just its marketplace — and it turns out that StubHub is a pretty significant business with hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue — it doesn’t get the same kind of leeway to pull out a checkbook and buy a grocery chain for $13.7 billion.

While growth on the financial front is pretty tepid, eBay’s stock has still been on a run in the past year. The stock is up around 20%, despite facing constant pressure from Amazon as it grows into a larger and larger behemoth. The past few months have been a bit shakier, and clearly, today didn’t help. Here’s the stock chart from the last year (including this afternoon’s drop shortly after the report):



Here’s the final slash line for the company:

• Revenue: $2.4 billion, versus Wall Street estimates of $2.37B
• Earnings: 48 cents per share (adjusted), versus Wall Street estimates of 48 cents per share.
• Q4 revenue forecast: $2.58 billion and $2.62 billion
• Q4 earnings forecast: $0.57 to $0.59 (adjusted)
• GMV: $21.7 billion
• StubHub revenue: $275 million
• Marketplace platforms revenue: $1.9 billion

Update: An eBay representative quickly reached out to clarify that its Classifieds business grew 19% year-over-year. Our story previously indicated that every unit grew less than 10% year-over-year. The company’s classifieds business generated $235 million in revenue this quarter, or just over 10% of its revenue for the quarter. We have updated the story to reflect that most units — units aside from Classifieds — grew less than 10% year-over-year.

Source : https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/18/ebay-is-having-a-pretty-bad-day/

I don't disagree with your numbers at all. Where I differ is in the view that excessive risk is being placed solely on the seller. EBay is only protecting its 10% and I think that it's worth the drop in the bottom line to cover myself against the increasing number of scammers, non-payers, frauds and others that are attracted to the easy pickings eBay is offering up.

This is 100% the problem wit eBay. Terrible customer service and they just don't care

Omega forums forsale section? Okay, you're unlikely to find screaming bargains, but you're also unlikely to get fraudulent sellers.

Yes, they're the largest online site to hunt old watches, and most everything else, for that matter.
But, for a while now, they've been acting like the DMV-a vile, vicious govt monopoly that treats its customers like crap because, well, there isn't/can't be anywhere else you can go, really..
And, for that, they can burn in hell.

As a buyer you have a lot of protection. Unfortunately their rules get abused by some buyers without eBay stepping in.
As a seller you're on your own as I learned.

eBay can be pretty bad if you're a seller:
- pretty high fees that don't get you any advantages (other than that of listing an item but that doesn't guarantee anything) not to mention that you have to pay Paypal as well. I also have to pay VAT for the 10% eBay fee.
- eBay offers a lot more protection and safety nets to buyers while sellers can get scammed easily especially by people that know the rules and how certain things work (my uncle got scammed of a quite a few hundreds of dollars on multiple items and no one helped; customer support was passive about it)
- they need to revamp and improve their terms & conditions, mobile app, website and user interface as it's pretty clogged up with useless crap and not as simple as they could be

They do "care" about their powersellers that can have negative feedback erased or get away with selling or at least listing fakes, replicas, stolen items, etc.

Couldn't agree more..... but as you say that's a totally different discussion!

A little education won't help you if the seller ships you an empty box instead of the watch pictured.