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I liked the article you wrote about the Ebay Elite (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m05/i03/s01) and I disagree that they should be given reduced rates for selling. If you are paying 20, 30 or 60 thousand a month in fees then you must be making the profit and money to pay that amount. So why should the small guy keep paying the going rate and they get privileges. Some of the so-called elite are the very ones who screw the buyers and then blame it on the small person. Just my opinion. I work hard and do make money to help pay our bills as we are on social security and eBay gives us that chance to do that.
Al
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Another amazing quarter for eBay. I wonder how long it will take for them to raise the Seller fees.
Dave
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Hello Ina,
I have been selling on eBay for several years, but my sells have dropped substantially in the past few months. My featured page views have decreased by half. Do you know if eBay has done anything that I am missing?
Thanks and Kindest Regards,
Jerry
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Dear Ms. Steiner:
Excellent reporting in your article regarding eBay's lobbying Congress against Internet sales taxes (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m05/i06/s01). In fact, eBay's corporate record shows that they do not seem keen on paying taxes of any kind. I realize taxes are not your newsletter's chief focus but you may want to store away some facts for future use.
According to eBay's SEC filings, it has been several years since the company has PAID any federal or state income tax, despite their record-breaking profit reports. eBay's most recent 10-K reported that the company currently has almost $500 million in "net operating" tax losses to carry forward to subsequent years. The primary reason for these "tax losses" comes from the enormous expense deductions Ebay receives for their executive stock options compensation programs.
Not only is eBay opting out of America's tax burden, they also have also applied for and have been several awarded government grants to develop their company's technology. (Also reported in their 10-K). All paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Just passing this along for whatever it is worth.
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Dear Ina,
With regard to "eBay Sends Recommended Emails Immediately to Losing Bidders" (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y04/m05/i04/s02), I really don't think it is a good idea. Is it applied uniformly? For example, if something sells from a big name supplier, are all the losers sent an email that includes smaller sellers - I doubt it. How does eBay determine what is sent and in what order? Is it just the big boys that get a free advertising ride? I suspect so. I am a small seller with a pretty specialized offering - I don't want my potential customers going to some big guy who probably doesn't have the same type of offering. I doubt the big guy wants his customers finding out about me either. Why does eBay think it has the right to "spam" its customers?
Thanks,
Chuck
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eBay has been having problems with their calculation of shipping charges for more than a few days, its probably been going on for several months.
I used Selling Manager Pro for about a month, but the challenges eBay caused with miscalculated shipping charges were simply impossible to overcome.
I cancelled my subscription, and went back to the regular Selling Manager, which seems to have helped, although I do have one customer who received a shipping and handling charge calculation of $5.00 when it should have been $13.40.
I had communicated my concerns over the last two months to eBay customer support, always receiving "eBay programmers are aware of the problem" but never any improvement or resolution.
Are you familiar with any online software solution that will capture PayPal, eBay listing charges etc. and integrate with QuickBooks that will work better than Selling Manager and TurboLister? I'm a consignment seller looking for a reliable solution and I'm not having much luck finding one, or getting eBay to fix their software.
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Perhaps you can get ebay to explain why after a month their technical screw up still is not fixed. I have written to ebay twice about this, the first time on 4/14/04 and was told it would be taken of ASAP. Well one month later nothing has happened. The WW2 category is NOT supposed to be blocked in the USA, but there is no way to view anything that is listed under WW2. I have not received an answer as to why it is still blocked when it should not have been blocked in the first place.
Hopefully you can get an answer from ebay.
Thanks
Joyce
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Ina,
Do you believe in those drop-off stores? Everyone asks me about them and I feel strongly that the profit margins are way too slim to be able to overcome the intensely high cost of real estate overhead and personnel. The process is too labor-intensive.
Donna
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Hello Ina,
There will be a bad awakening some day. Drop-off Stores only make sense if people drop "expensive" stuff. Making a good description by doing research, communicating with customers, and shipping costs time (about 30 - 60 minutes per item), or money (for a barcode-based system that covers every step of the auction). Then there is the money for the franchise, and the rent for the store.
On the other hand, friends will help friends for free... I'm a software developer and know how to use my digital camera, and how to do research, and how to present something with HTML...
So maybe keep this mail, and re-read it in a year :-)
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I am writing this article to call attention to certain laws governing consignment businesses operating in California. I am trying to determine how they may apply to ebay drop off stores and Trading Assistants. I am not a lawyer and do not want to lead anybody to believe that I am qualified to perform legal analysis or give legal advise. That being said, California Business and Professions Code seems to clearly state that a consignment business in California is categorized as, and therefore subject to the laws governing, secondhand dealers. It is my intention to raise these points so that they may be discussed and a conclusion can be drawn.
California Business and Professions Code Sections 21625-21647
http://leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/calawquery?codesection=bpc&codebody=21625&hits=20
or http://digbig.com/4bebe
I have spoken with a few drop off businesses in California and each of them have not answered my question, "How is this legal?" AuctionWagon politely stated that they spent tons of money on lawyers and were not about to share their findings. Auction Drop told me the same, but went on to state that they do not have a secondhand dealers license. QuikDrop was "unable to answer the question." The founder of iSold it hung up on me, and Picture it Sold told me they had no interest in hearing what I though I had learned. Separately, I have spoken with a few secondhand dealers and pawnshop owners. They have unanimously stated, "Its not legal."
The point of this article is to discover the truth about businesses like Auction Drop, QuikDrop, Auction Wagon, iSold It, and Picture it Sold. If there are any lawyers out there, or anybody what can answer this with certainty, please chime in. A few large businesses and a few thousand trading assistants would be curious to know. I believe that a court decision on this will have large implications for ebay businesses, trading assistants, secondhand dealers, and pawnshops. It seems to me that there is a lot at stake.
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Hi There Ina,
Thank you for the revealing, rather, verifying column regarding sound offs about Ebay. I have to say, I was more than a little annoyed when their system went down and a bunch of my listings were trashed due to passing over that 12 hour deadline, if you wished to extend them. Fine. I lose the fees, so I can relist them again, rather than spend the increased .20 cents each category for that 10 day run. Whatever!
To boot, I had auctions ending the following week, clearly stating the shipping fee, but Ebay had inserted that evil little green FREE at the bottom, so of course, I had to honor that. I tried revising the remainder of my listings that did not have any bids, and could not do so. For 3 whole days, I was not able to revise a single listing. Some items were heavy, and would cost a lot to ship, and I had to end several listings early, as I could not get into the page to erase out that FREE. So I took losses again, on listings that I had to pay for the shipping on, listings which did not receive bids, but which I was not able to revise for the extension, and I lost the listing fees on those that were just too heavy to be caught having to pay for.
I wrote to live help, they FINALLY admitted that this FREE was due to their shippings rehab, and that I could request credit on those ended. So I wrote to at least request for those listings which I had to end, due to their FREE, and the revision process not working for 3 days.
I received back a very condescending letter about how my credits had been made, since I was "new" (been selling for 1.5 years) and basically gave me a rap on the knuckles, with further admonishments.
This is just after, I discovered my own gallery photo being used as the gallery photo of a power seller. It took me 9 letters, detailing the URLs, and the ebayimage# in both galleries, before Ebay admitted, that yes, the guy did take and use my photo, and that they ended his listing. It took 7 days, and 9 letters. Every letter I rec'd before the last, totally denied the theft, even though the urls were the same, and mine was traceable. His was traceable too. To mine!!
Last night, I decided to revise an item I have up. Change the category and extend it, as it did not have any bids yet. I was not able to. I cannot extend, just keep paying more listing fees.
Word of note: I have already been having sales through www.anteques.com. They have a free start up no fees for 6 months deal for sellers, and they are in the major search engines. I have already had very successful sales through them, and so far, it has not cost me a single copper penny. Not 1 cent!!! And, they are nice, too. The folks are great, they have a growing new site, and a fabulous antiques letter as well. I urge anyone that is not aware of them yet, to go check out their opening page.
Thank you, may we all fare better the rest of the year!
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Hello Ina,
I think I read about a shortcut in one of your newsletters about a way to get a final fee refund from eBay on non-paying bidders in one week by using the following bidder requirement in your auction description:
"If the successful bidder does not contact us within 3 days of the end of the auction to arrange payment, or if payment is not received within 10 days of the end of the auction, then this auction will be ended by mutual agreement and the next highest successful bidder will be contacted and offered a chance to complete the auction. Your bid on this item signifies your agreement to these terms."
Then when you filer the non-paying bidder alert you choose "buyer & seller mutually choose to end this tranaction" (or something close to this statement) from the pull down box, then you could file for your refund right away instead of waiting another 10 days. Well I have been using this method and it has worked well for me but I tried you use it today and eBay has remove this option ("buyer & seller mutually choose to end this truncation") from the pull down box when I am filling my non-paying bidder alert.
I thought you should know this,
Curt
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