10 Reasons Why eBay Sucks for Sellers
Nov. 20, 2009
116 Comments
Yes, I started my entrepreneurship career on eBay. My business was selling other peoples items and then taking a commission. I enjoyed making nice commissions and was even interview on television. I loved eBay then. Now I don’t. Here are 10 reasons why I think eBay now sucks for sellers.
Illegitimate feedback
If a buyer gives you a negtive feedback for no reason, you can’t remove it. There goes your entire reputation and sometimes your entire business.
Annoying rules
For example in the last 12 hours of an auction you can’t change images. A potential buyer emailed me to notify me that I had put the wrong picture on the auction page. There was no bid but because there were only 10 hours left, I couldn’t change the picture, and what do you know, no sale.
Bogus buyers
No more negative feedback for bogus buyers, meaning that buyers who don’t pay for their winning bids cannot be penalized by the seller. This too destroys the entire feedback system.
Fees
EBay’s sale commission is a good chunk plus you have to pay for every listing detail practically. Subtitle: $.50, picture: $.25, bold title: $1, etc.
PayPal
If you use PayPal which is very handy for eBay selling you’re going to be ripped off. They continually take more and more commissions. Plus eBay owns PayPal so you are charged 3 times, listing, commission and PayPal!
Refunds
Someone can buy your item using PayPal, receive the item, and then lie and say that it was not shipped. PayPal will then refund them the entire purchase amount.
Shipping
Everything relies on shipping. The postal service once lost a small expensive package I sold; the buyer had not pay for insurance. So I had to wait for weeks to find out what happened, and then reimburse the item from my pocket!
Free alternative, Craigslist
There’s just no incentive to sell on eBay when you have Craigslist. It’s 100% free, the buying market is huge, its easy, no shipping involved, door to door. What more could you ask for?
Terrible customer service
If you have a problem with a sale or purchase, you have to go through bots and finally days later receive a humans actual help.
Messy interface:
Every time eBay seems to update their interface and website it gets worse. No matter how many people complain the site just becomes worse.
So even though I started a successful eBay business I have moved on. If you use eBay, let me know what you think.
In case you are interested here are some alternatives to eBay:
Feel free to share your experience with eBay below.
116 Responses to “10 Reasons Why eBay Sucks for Sellers”
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Ebay isn’t all that fair to the buyers either, I’ve seen buyers get screwed out of money pretty much because of crappy sellers and paypal not willing to help.
Also I know something I buy isn’t going to be at my house tomorrow, but I like it when sellers put the tracking number up so I can atleast predict when it will be at my house, its handy to know when I should be home so it doesn’t get put on my doorstep and some random jerk comes up and steels it.
Yeah I’m sure, I haven’t bought much on eBay so I wouldn’t really know. Looks like from the buying and selling point eBay is terrible for both.
Agree with B-Rad. In my experience eBay makes sure seller is safe and don’t give a damn about the buyer.
I returned a defective item to the seller and provided a tracking number. eBay said I have to wait for the item to deliver to get the refund. The seller got the item April 30, Friday. But eBay said they now need confirmation from the seller that he got it, which he didn’t provide. So I have to wait 5 days (weekend + 3 national holidays in a row in Japan) to get a response from the seller, who is instead asking for the pictures and my bank details, which I gave him weeks ago when sending the item back. Case was closed in my favor May 4. Now it’s May 8 and I still don’t have my money. Nor from eBay for the item + shipping, nor from the seller for the return shipping. And now it weekend again. I’m out of money for 3+ weeks now since I returned the item and I shipped EMS for $85 to make sure things go fast.
eBay never again for me. Next time I’ll gladly pay 20% more to buy locally, than go through this.
Not always, it could go both ways as pointed out by some other commentators. I’m sorry about what happened to you, thats terrible. Stick with Craigslist, its also very cheap.
You nailed it. Terrible!
Today I had multiple chats and calls about my case with both eBay and PayPal redirecting me to one another.
Turns out my refund has been put on hold and released to the seller! I have yet to call the Resolution Center which hasn’t opened yet.
Just waiting to get my money back and remaining items delivered to close my eBay and PayPal accounts and never use them again.
They are a total DISASTER!
Unfortunately, Craigslist is not an option in Russia.
I have been a seller on ebay 10 years and YES EBAY SUCKS!!
In the last 2 weeks I have had (3) non paying bidders and if I want to leave them feedback to ALERT OTHERS THAT THEY ARE NON PAYING BIDDERS I HAVE TO LEAVE POSITIVE FEEDBACK!
So EBAY how in the heck is that honest feedback?
Also in the last week I used the Ebay shippimng Cacculator whichs gives you the cost of my package calculated by size of box, weight of box and your location!when the auction ended it said it cost $$7.50 to ship box when I went thru paypal to ship package as that way I get free delivery confirmation it said it cost $$11.20 so I lost $$3.70 x 2 as this happened on (2) identical auctions!
Contacted EBAY twice and was more or less told it is only a calculator and not an exact shipping quote!
That’s terrible, sounds like you’ve had some serious problems. I have to recommend getting started with Amazon or Craigslist…
I’m glad to tell you that my problem has been successfully resolved.
Actually, I overreacted. And it wasn’t eBay’s fault. Turns out, it was the seller who forgot to release the funds, that’s why I didn’t get my refund. Instead, several days later eBay gave me a coupon for the amount paid.
I wasn’t satisfied with coupon, though. So I called eBay Resolution Team who told me about the seller not releasing funds. So I called the seller and he issued a refund right away, apologizing for 13 days of waiting time and countless eBay chats it cost me. Looks like he truly forgot. But he even refunded returned shipping fee as their return policy promised. So it’s all good now.
Still, eBay chat representatives could be more knowledgeable. But to be completely fair, I wouldn’t have to contact them if not the absent-minded seller.
That’s great to hear. I’m glad eBay helped out for once!
Thanks for sharing great links. I normally get the best deals from http://www.BidsTick.com
Cool site, I love the concept.
****I Started Selling on Ebay back in 1998. It was the best of times in 1998. Verly little rules and HUGE end of auction prices. Pay Pal was (FREE) back then! I would love to see the OPRAH SHOW have an entire hour based about the (TRUE) Ebay and let the public really know the TRUTH! *Nothing Good Lasts forever, and Ebay has fallen down the tubes*. Every (quality) antique dealer that I speak with tells me, (I will NEVER put my good Antiques on Ebay, and get Ripped off by low class buyers. !!! (What a Shame!)
Wow, I cant believe PayPal was free, thats amazing. I wish that I had had the chance to sell back then, seems like eBay truly was amazing.
Ebay and Paypal are both BRILLIANT examples of the internet middleman. They dont sell anything yet they make a ton of money.
I have had a bad experience with ebay which I mentioned in my video interview with michael dunlop. Ebay always protects the buyers more – I have been scammed once before by a buyer who lied that he never recieved the item when he did.
Its a really good way to get quick money though – even though the final value fee is a pain! I hate it! reduces your profits!
The key though is selling information because with physical products, too much can go wrong and its just more hastle.
I’m glad you made this post so I can rant about how I dislike ebay and more so paypal.
Also if you sell something of high value on ebay like a macbook paypal will hold your money until the buyer leaves you positive feedback, so you dont even get the money upfront. I have tried to find a way around this but cant seem to find one. Can you?
Aaron Darko´s last blog post: Eben Pagan – How He Sold Over $29 Million Dollars Worth Of Information Products Online
Very true, it’s incredible how much money they make from their services. Definitely agree with what you said. Regarding your question I don’t know how to get around it, sorry! Glad you could vent your frustrations.
Check out Powabunga.com It looks like it might be the nail in the coffin for ebays auctions.
I’ll go check it out, thanks for sharing Peter.
How does anyone make money on ebay? I started listing my old junk back in august of last year and made some money. Then I decided to get serious and buy liquidated and wholesale items and sell all brand new with tags on ebay thinking the products would fly off my shelves. I have hardly sold a thing. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. I’ve listed them all with fixed prices for 30 day listing. I don’t want to do auction bidding for these items for fear I will get screwed. And the Ebay fees I’ve racked up so far this month are scaring me. Do you think these other sites you recommended have better quality buyers? It seems that Ebay buyers just want everything for 99 cents.
It’s challenging, I’m sorry that you’re having so much trouble making money with eBay. I would try the other sites, its worth seeing if you could succeed more on them, plus the fees are much better.
Both Ebay AND Amazon work the same way. All they want to do is rip you off. Beware. I have a friend that used to sell in Amazon, and they’re holding his funds, for 3 months because they’re “reviewing his account”. 3 months!!! And there’s nothing he can do since it’s in their rules and regulations..I guess he didn’t read the very very fine prints…The ebst right now is craigslist, I haven’t explored other auctions sites…
Very true, I’ve never used Amazon though, I thought it was supposed to be better though. Craigslist is definitely the easiest and best.
I sell one of a kind sports watches on Ebay and have lost my ass lately. It started off really strong but last summer I think their programers started to bury my listings.
I take real baseball cards then cut the sweetspot out of the card and turn it into a dial. Then assemble my patented Baseball pocket watch with a Seiko movement.
I list them under watches. They get buried there because my watch cost more than the cheap knockoff from china.
I also list them under baseball cards, because they are. They get buried there because the programers see the item only as a watch.
I let my Top Rated Seller badge die. Why would anyone continue on the Ebay treadmill? Ebay had made their money on the backs of sellers and now treat the seller badly.
I listed a 1 of a kind Babe Ruth Baseball card pocket watch 2 days ago….. 2 hits so far……. only their spiders. It’s $50. Are you kidding me. What the heck happened to Ebay?
Yes, Craiglist is free but when loading pics on the site they really drop the resolution.
Thanks for your imput here on this site Ben.
Very smart what you did, but I see that eBay really messed you up. I would stick with Craigslist even if the photos aren’t great, you could just link to high quality photos, free is always better!
I was trying to earn rent money, so I decided to sell some things that I wasn’t using on ebay. I had never done it before, and I also, got screwed. Ebay is great for buyers… but not so much for sellers. I read some stories above, and these people are telling the truth.
I sold a working camera on ebay, and the seller claimed that it arrived broken. I know without a doubt that that camera worked. The seller didn’t even give me a chance to respond to their message before filing a paypal claim.
Paypal always protects the buyers and screws the sellers. They deducted the money from my account and put it on hold. There was nothing that I could do, and I was forced to offer a refund. This was despite, the fact that in the listing I said “selling as is” no returns because I worried about getting scammed.
So, now, this person has their money back, and I have to trust that they will ship the item back to me. I have a feeling that I will have to pay for this too – pay to have my own camera returned – which, is supposedly now broken. They might not even send it back. Plus, I run the risk of ruining my perfect feedback score.
I have a few more things that are being auctioned. I tried to cancel the auction on one because I no longer wanted to use ebay. I found that they still charge you the listing fee – even though the item was just listed yesterday – had no bids or watchers. I’m really unhappy with both ebay and paypal. I will be closing my account and not using the services in the near future.
The entire process is really not worth it. I sold four things and ended up with $40 – after fees were taken out, I refunded the item above, and I paid for shipping on each item. Ebay is not for everyday people. You really have to know what your doing, or you could end up like me. It’s easy for the average person to get cheated.
Yes, its horrible how much the sellers are abused on eBay. I’m so sorry to hear what your experience was like selling. Must admit, it truly is hard to make money, after the fees etc. it never comes out well.
Just as an update – The buyer actually sent the camera back – which surprised me. They were decent about it and didn’t leave negative feedback, which I appreciated. But, the best part of this story is when I received the “broken camera” – I took it out of the box, and it turned on. The camera was not broken. It was never broken. The person obviously just got it and didn’t like it.
I haven’t had too many problems selling stuff on eBay but I’m just a casual seller. I hate how much time it takes me to list stuff (take pictures, add in html to make the listing look better) so I always put off selling stuff for months at a time. I love selling books on Amazon because it takes like 30 seconds to get your listing started!
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Thats good to hear. Yeah it does take quite a while!
I had a buyer on ebay make a claim against me the the day AFTER he was paid by the UPSP insurance I had placed on his purchase.. then I had to agrue with ebayt reps half a day to no avail telling them this was a scam he was running then I call USPS myself and find out he was paid off and only til I practically begged an ebay rep to call the USPS accounting dept himself.. proving the buyers claim was false.. did they rule in my favor..
In retaliation, the buyer hit me with bad feedback and ebay wont remove it..
It totally sucks.. so I canceled all my then current auctions and have closed all accounts dealing with any online payment links to ebay.. they can go pound sand for their money now.. they cost me 3 days of MY time and I say they still owe ME.
That’s so unfortunate. Those experiences really turn people off from eBay.
I just had a buyer not read my listing where I said payment due within 2 days of the auctions end. I send numerous invoices to them with no payment or response so I opened a case. They reply the day before it closes and finally pay. I refunded the money since they paid 6 days too late and it already was re-listed. So they leave a big negative full of lies. I got ebay to remove it since it was feedback abuse. That was 2 weeks ago. Now today the negative reappears! I spent over an hour just trying to get a hold of someone. Finally when I did they told me it was removed in error and was not feedback abuse! WTF!? I also didn’t have much luck as a buyer either. I had an absoulute nut sell me a(fake from further research by looking at the so called images) juicy handbag. 4 days after I won I contacted her to see if it was shipped. She “claims” her sister died(sorry, but I only heard that excuse 20 times on ebay) so it would got out on priority mail the next day. one week later, not bag no tracking number. when I told the seller I wanted a refund she went crazy and accused me of already having the bag after I had asked her the day before where it was! She claimed to have messages from me that I said I had it and loved it ect. She even provided a bogus tracking number so the case was decided in my favor. 3 hours after the case was closed, she sends 4 hostile emails to me and none of them made any sense it was like she was getting me mixed up with other people(which turned out not to be the case). She then provided a tracking number. But We refused the package for fear of what was in it after all the hostile messages. We got the refund, but the messages continued. I left her negative but she said she won the case on a follow up comment(after the negatives for the same reason as me began to pile up). That’s how sad this seller was. So now I have to put up with her as well since ebay won’t do anything. It’s beacuse of sellers like her that we good sellers get the short end of the stick. so after all this among other countless inccidents I’m closing my ebay account for good and going somewhere else. What a mess the last few months have been thanks to them.
That’s a terrible experience, actually sounds quite frightening. People like that should not be allowed on eBay, they really damage the environment for sellers. Hope its all been settled since then.
For the most part yes, everything is ok now. They got her to stop e-mailing me. But closing my ebay account is the issue now. I hate that they make you wait 30 days to close the account if you sold something.
I recently learned this lesson the hard way; buyers can lie about not receiving an item and get a full refund, and as a seller, I can’t even leave a negative feedback to warn other sellers.
I basically paid eBay $50 dollars to send $250 dollars worth of merchandise to this dishonest JACKASS.
It has been a very painful and frustrating experience, and I hope whoever is helping thiefs steal from us, receive the same level of karma!
Jeffrey,
This exact same thing happened to me in late 2004! How many years ago was that!?! I’m shocked (well, I guess not really…it is ebay we’re talking about) that these complete greedy, inept, corporate pigs haven’t figured out this scam. I HATE EBAY!
They used to call it the “seller protection” plan, but it really protected the buyer and enabled them to lie about not receiving an item if the seller didn’t pay for delivery confirmation at the PO. When this happened to me, I had been a member for years, had NO negative feedbacks out of hundreds, and these brain-dead greed-bags couldn’t figure out that the jack-ass that scammed me was a lying criminal, even though he didn’t use a human name (he had some kind of religious organization as a name) and used a PO box. I should’ve known I was in trouble when a religious person was buying an old horror comic called “Tales from the Crypt.”
This whole episode resulted in a domino effect where paypal took away my money ($200.00), so I refused to ship other people’s items that were paid for until paypal gave me my money, which they refused to do. So I instantly got my money out of paypal, took an $87.00 loss, canceled my credit card that ebay used to charge to get their fee money, and closed my account. I owed ebay $300.00 that they never got, so I figured I came out over $200.00 up on the deal. I didn’t like doing something like this, but I had numerous interactions with their customer service dept., which was useless. Plus, they wouldn’t even give me the CEO’s address so I could write her a letter.
Paypal is Satan and ebay owns paypal. I hate both companies more than words can say!
Um… I don’t think it’s right to screw other eBayers simply because eBay screwed u… I mean, what happened is between you and eBay and the JACKASS liar, but you should never refuse to ship, and then empty all your accounts so that the buyers don’t get a refund.
eBay sent a debt collections agency after me for unjustified seller fees associated with the transaction that was refunded. I finally took my friends’ advice and paid it to protect my credit rating. I then fought with the representatives about the legitimacy of this charge, and they agreed to refund it back to my account. Which makes me believe that there are other people who didn’t fight for their rights and eBay made it off with money that they are not entitled to. I am looking into joining or organizing a class action lawsuit against them for that.
But what I want to say is, if you never shipped the merchandise, you really should find the buyers who paid, apologize to them and either ship the item or give a full refund. Because this would hurt any possible legal claim you may have against eBay in the future, and more imminent is your credit score!!! I would check if these bastards did anything to your credit score! even if it was six years ago…
We used to have an eBay store and times were good, then they raised prices on the store and things were not so good. At the time, we had a couple thousand items for sale. We got out when we figured out the eBay is only good for the person who is satisfied making only a few bucks a day. Unfortunately, there is enough people satisfied with a small income that eBay continues to thrive.
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eBay stores seem to have become much less popular, and I think what you said is exactly the reason for that. eBay simply doesn’t care. Thanks for sharing Colleen.
I wanted to add, mainly for the benefit of anyone reading this, that the phishing schemes also helped us get out the door. Towards the end of our tenure there, we had phishers waiting for us to sell something, then they would send the standard (but fraudulent) eBay notification. Their fake eBay selling notification looked and behaved EXACTLY like eBay’s. Fortunately we caught onto this, but the schemes were getting to good to not get caught eventually.
Colleen´s last blog post: Richland Monterosso’s Italian Restaurant Offers Complimentary Wine Tasting
Very controversial topic you selected to write. I think, this is going form long time.. Thanks for your points
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Agreed, atleast I hope so!
I’ve had problems before in the past with eBay, when I sold my first ever item on eBay I shipped it to someone from Israel, I received the payment, all was fine until I saw my paypal account was negative, and I had gotten an email saying that the buyer did a chargeback on the sale. The buyer claimed that the DVD’s he received were pirated, and that was enough for him to get his money back, I never saw the items back, and no they were not pirated. It’s unfortunate but its a hard lesson I learned as a eBay seller that I was bearing all the risk.
Till then,
Jean
That’s very unfortunate, I hope that doesn’t happen to you again. Best regards.
Hi Ben, thanks for the reply, not to worry friend, ever since that DVD, the only things that I have gone on to sale on eBay have been schools books from college, which thankfully I sold successfully
Till then,
Jean
Anyone want to team up with me to create an ebay alternate where people can go and buy and sell, because this is unacceptable.
Ebay and PayPal are frigging terrible. I sell art and not very often as its got a high price point. ON EVERY SALE I have to wait to get paid because of the ebay paypal crap. Even when the buyer recieves the item they still make the seller wait for their money. This is a total rip off. They want to hold the sellers money as long as possible so they can recieve interest – its that simple !! On every conflict paypal settles for the buyer -no matter what – In a nutshell ebay and paypal treat their sellers like total crap !!!
That’s horrible, it really seems that you’re being abused by eBay and Paypal. Hopefully it will get better in the future.
I always work with free classifield’s….
Craigslist rocks…
kunal bhatt´s last blog post: Thursday- July 22- 2010
Ya! 100% agreed.
I was a new seller and I though I could make money on eBay so I started selling all my useless things. I listed 45 things but I only sold one but they still charged me almost 79 dollars and by the way the guy who bought me my iPod touch claimed a refund because he didn’t get the item. I was so pissed off then I try to close my account but eBay didn’t let me until I pay the 79 dollars for using their services. I wasn’t think on having a penny to eBay so I had and Idea and maybe you can try it too. I just call my bank And told them the I lost my card. The solve my problem!!!!