Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: arkanoid on July 29, 2008, 02:31:58 AM
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I (like many, I guess) am becoming more and more peed-off with the eBay/PayPal combo as time goes by. This grousome twosome are just WRONG on so many levels that it beggers belief! The word extortion is used far too often and unjustifiably if you ask me but I'm afraid to say it's a word that fits eBay/PayPal perfectly.
For those who mainly buy from eBay and never sell, the level of their depravity isn't really apparent. eBay are _very_ careful to give the illusion of a relatively comfy environment for buyers. The reason for this, of course, is because buyers dictate the success of any auction site and so are (in their eyes) more important to "keep sweet" than sellers. Basically, sellers will follow buyers to the pits of hell - whether they like it or not.
Anyway, today was the last straw for me when I discovered PayPal have added yet another fee to their arsenal of robbery! They now charge sellers 0.30p + 3.6% of the total transaction amount of any eBay purchase paid for using a credit card linked to a PayPal account. So, if a buyer *chooses* to pay you with a CC, the seller is forced to pay this tariff. However, the worse part about it is that it is an eBay/PayPal "offense" to reasonably expect a buyer to take responsibility for his _own_ choice of payment method. You are not "allowed" to state in your listing (or even HINT) that you expect the BUYER to pay for this charge as part of your purchase agreement. Considering most buyers pay with their credit cards, this is a nice tidy sum that eBay and its parent company PayPal are wheedling from the seller's pockets. Not allowing sellers to justifiably pass these costs onto buyers keeps buyers in blissful ignorance, which means they will never look for alternatives (very sneaky tactic by eBay). The combination of their multiple listing fees, insane "Final Value" fee and now this new credit card payment fee is complete robbery. eBay has basically cornered the auction market and they are now running what can only be described as an extortion racket.
So what are we to do? What are the alternatives? The real purpose of this post is to get any opinions from Amigans on this eBid.net site. It seems to have a growing following and I've read quit a few posts from people praising the it. If you read their forums, or search for opinions over the net, people seem to be very happy with the service. They seem to play fair, with free listings and only a small 3% "Final Value" fee. Also, unlike eBay, they have not banned sellers from accepting payment via GoogleCheckout. So I'm thinking that an eBid/GoogleCheckout combo could be a far cheaper and pleasant solution for Amiga sellers?
It's pretty late here, so I've only really quickly browsed the site but it looks neat and tidy and there seems to be quite a few Amiga items listed, so I'm sure a few of you around here must be using it. Can you say what it's like? Would you recommend it?
I may list a few of my remaining Amiga items, to test the water but I'd like some opinions first...
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I like it when McDonald's has free food day.
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:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
I prefer when my supermakret and local pubs/inns/taverns have free beer day.
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PayPal has issues too, like currency conversion, i feel like i get riped off every time i transfer to a paypal account, many times have i found myself with a sum just under the price i need to pay because paypal doesn't have a proper currency overview, and to top it off, seem to make up their own exchange rate...
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There are alternatives already.....
Amibay doesn't specify a payment method, all that is asked is that the payment made is trackable in case of a dispute. Members can pay by any method they like, I have even used postal orders to pay for goods. There are no seller's fees on Amibay either, it's a not for profit site.
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mike- wrote:
PayPal has issues too,...seem to make up their own exchange rate...
I have just picked up on some inconsistencies with the exchange rates myself also. eg. I purchased an item from amigakit yesterday at a cost of $198.xx AUS$. The actual cost when paying through PayPal was $212.xx AUS$. In understand the possibility of variations due to time, and so on, but - that much of a difference? Something isn't "right" with it.
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Sadly eBay is so popular it has the market completely to itself. So now they can slap on any fees and they know people will still sell on it. It very much reminds me of M$ Windoze.
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It tried convinsing me 67 GBP wasnt 133 USD some time ago, should have been 135 dollars at the time
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eBay have got the monopoly in this market, and monopoly is never good for consumers. It allows the provider of the service to make any demands they want from their consumers (as long as it's legal) and the user has only two choices: put up with it, or don't use the service at all.
Unfortunately this situation is perpetuated by users, myself included. Buyers go to eBay because they know there is a very high chance that they will find the product they are looking for. Seller go there because they know buyers look for products, so they have a better chance of selling their item at the price they want.
The only way for any alternative to become viable would be for both buyers and sellers to move to a different site. In a small community like ours this is easy because we can advertise where we are selling our items so the buyers will know where to look. This takes away some of the pressure on sellers to list their items in eBay, and over time eBid or AmiBay may well become the "standard" place to list Amiga items and buyers of Amiga goods might not even bother searching eBay. But then, there will always be people outside the Amiga community who don't know about eBid/AmiBay, so people within the Amiga community may well continue to search on eBay for used items.
Either way, we are just a small community. For any alternative to become viable, the provider would have to market their services aggressively to increase awareness among consumers of competing products (i.e. eBay users) and to promote viability (i.e. show why they are a good alternative). This is well demonstrated in the case of Apple, whose market share increases all the time even in the face of Microsoft's enormous market share.
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moto
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So what is the verdict?
Has anyone else on here been giving eBid.net a try and if so what are your thoughts on it?
Best Regards,
AmigaEd
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Traffic, the problem is traffic. eBay has traffic, the others don't. Even if every Amiga.org user made a pact to give up eBay, eBay's traffic would not go down much, even for retro Amiga items. A good percentage of my eBay store sales are to people that have nothing to do at all with any online forums.
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You'll find that Paypal has it's own set of currency conversion tables so it basically gets two (sometimes three) bites of the cherry ...
First bite = during the actual conversion, Paypal offer a rate just slightly under the norm and skims the difference into it's accounts never to be seen again
Second bite = Paypal take a percentage fee just so you can receive the money into your account.
Third bite = If the amount you want to transfer is less than 50 GBP (Great British Pounds), it then charges you a percentage to do that. Remember! all the while you leave funds in your Paypal account, it earns them interest so get the money out of there ASAP!
No matter how you deal with Ebay and Paypal, you get screwed to the wall in fee's.
I've successfully bid and listed stuff on eBid.net and it's great! I'm certain that if more people got to knows of it's existence then others would too. Ebay's advertising campaigns are everywhere you look these days so it makes it very very high profile.
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You can choose NOT to accept Paypal when selling an item, it's NOT compulsory.
of course, that means a delay in getting your money and the buyer getting their goods, but you don't HAVE to have a PayPal option.
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trouble is, the general public at large knows about ebay. so people that are selling, who aren't in the "retro scene" so to speak, will still list loft clear-out stuff there... look at all the unexpanded A500/A600's with a fiver or tenner starting bid price...
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wurzel wrote:
You can choose NOT to accept Paypal when selling an item, it's NOT compulsory.
...but you don't HAVE to have a PayPal option.
Actually you do have to make it a payment option due to recent eBay changes. You may also not "discourage" buyers from using a particular payment method...
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I just saw the other day that starting next month a seller will be limited to charging a maximum of $3 for shipping and handling of a CD. I have charged $3.75 S&H for the last 2 years. Postage is right around $2 and then you have to buy the shipper. I guess there is no expense involved in buying paper for receipts, ink for the printer, and gas to get to the PO. When I mentioned ink as an expense once to a buyer, he said that was really not much of an expense. I said that I agreed with him most of the time, but not the once every 4 to 6 weeks when I had to pay $55 for a pair of cartridges. It seemed like a very real expense then. What the $3 maximum shipping fee boils down to is that ebay isn't collecting a big enough selling or listing fee from the places that charge $6 or $7 shipping for a CD. They will try and pass this off as a protection for the buyer, when all it is is a way to make millions more profit each year. The sellers will still make their money but Ebay will be getting a bigger cut.
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Hmmm... I'm not sure if it's the same crowd, but years and years ago, before eBay had the monopoly, there was an Irish site called eBid.ie. It worked well for a while, but then descended into a pool of scams and cheats, most of which couldn't be caught due to indifference on the part of the site and lack of a refund/dispute system like PayPal's. The reason for this I don't know, but it went downhill quite quickly and I, along with most genuine users, moved to eBay.
Maybe it's a different company, maybe it works a lot better now, and is a worthy alternative, but back in the day (I guess around 2001) it wasn't to be trusted...
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A small point... the fees charged by PayPal for Credit Cards are the fees paid BY PayPal usually. Every time you use a credit card in a shop, the shop are paying the credit card company, usually about 2.5%-3.5%; of course you don't see this happen, but happen it does.
It's exactly the same for PayPal.. and as a seller you are responsible for the Credit Card fees.
The reason they don't allow people to charge extra for paying by Credit Card is because then people would associate PayPal with the surcharge. Common business sense. I'd do the same.
Remember, PayPal isn't there for us. It's there for PayPal. And therefore eBay. Same as any other company.
Simple solution - don't like it then don't use it. But don't forget PayPal and eBay are companies same as any other, and are perfectly entitled to ask for whatever they want. You are buying a service from them. Complaining about how evil they are for their fees is like shopping at Harrods and then complaining how they're more expensive than anywhere else.
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this ebid crap doesn't work for me (cause I'm in japan). probably it won't work in china too. well that makes half the world :lol:
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We realize they are companies (really one company, Ebay bought Paypal years ago). But the people you buy your home heating oil or Natural gas are companies too but there are laws to prevent them from price gouging.
If you think back companies that make a good profit and are satisfied with it and try to maintain it stay in business forever. Companies that are always looking for ways to make more and more and more end up imploding and soon they are gone.
They are really walking the line when it comes to some of the anit-trust laws and their time will come. It's sad about their greed because they really have a neat thing going that everyone can enjoy. But soon sellers will see they are making little or no profit and will move elsewhere or start doin something else.
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Hmm, I haven't noticed google checkout before. wow, it looks nice and dandy. I guess google is aware of the lucrative auction market and will challenge ebay's dominance in the future. that should bring some sense into ebay's policies.
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Just logged in and took a look at it, my first impression of the site is pretty good, a bit heavy on javascript, though. (Might just be my system, IB on my machine tends to choke when using JS+HTTPS) I was still able to use the site with Javascript disabled, however. I'm going to set up url prefs to do this automatically for the site. Not sure if you can register for it with no javascript (I had enough errands to do @ the time I let the Amiga do what it had to do and came by every few minutes :-D ) When I actually have some money (At the rate i'm going, this will be about the time OS4.1 has new hardware to run on :-D ) I'll have to make a bid or 2 and see how that works. Unfortunatly, as I like having fewer buttons on my browser, this sites has kicked mobygames off of my fastlink buttons. :-D
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My impression from looking at eBid when I started this thread was that the _system_ itself looks fine. I'm pretty sure you could have a nice buying and bidding experience using it - no probs.
Sad thing is, it is very sparse on Amiga items. If somehow it could take a hold in the Amiga community and we began using and directing people to our bids listed a eBid, instead of evilBay, then I can't see why it couldn't work for Amiga items. But it would have to be some kind of concerted effort amongst us all...so I can't really see that happening.
oh yes, and by the way, just to rub salt in the wound. eBay are hiking up thier listing and final value fee charges YET AGAIN on the 25th of this month (September). You have to admire their drip drip/stealth tactics tho, most people wont notice when they're at 40-50% combined PayPal/eBay fees.
So basically, sell you items while you still can on eBay.
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Well, considering that we started AmiBay last December and we have just under 500 members now, I think that says that there is a movement away from auction sites. Auctions aren't everyone's cup of tea and only serve to drive prices higher unless you are lucky.
That's why Amibay isn't and never will be an auction site; if the asking price is too high, no one buys it, simple as. This keeps prices sensible.
WTF aka Merlin
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WotTheFook: AmiBay is a great site and a lot of things seems to sell there at "community spirit prices".
The trouble is, most of us didn't buy our items at those community spirit prices. I certainly have never purchased any of my recent collection at a "cheap" price. Most people today buy rare Amiga hardware from eBay and pay the going rate. Whether we like it or not, the final bid value of items on evilBay *IS* their real "market value". Those Amiga auction items arn't artificially high, they're the prices people want to pay for them. And they're often around or close to what the seller originally paid for them.
The only problem I have with selling on eBay is with what I consider extortionate fees. others will disagree but most ppl selling on eBay are getting are feeling ripped-off.
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I am seller on e-bid and some of you guys have bought from me! http://uk.ebid.net/stores/Zoogamer
I like it because I am a private seller and list individual items on there...it's too expensive on ebay!
OK I don't sell a ton of stuff but for a 'hobby' the COST of sales to me is much lower on ebid.
I now only tend to do bundle auctions on ebay and have to put a bit on postage to cover the charges (some of my stuff only sells for 99p!!!)
I always state that I accept cheques or PO's, but most still pay with paypal! (greed seems to be an UNDERSTATEMENT when it comes to ebay/paypal!!!)
BUT....if you can accept that for now it's a fact of life, and want to sell to the widest audience then ebay still gives you that opportunity?....although I HATE them with a passion, as with ANY FAT GREEDY CASH COW GRAVY TRAIN POT BELLIED PIG!
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it seems ebid.net is much much WORSE than ebay, all I get is this message:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Apache/1.3.34 Server at www.ebid.net Port 80
bah
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orange: I've had countless 404's from eBay's site over the years. :)
fatboy: couldn't agree more. it's the small-guy (as usual) who gets screwed over more. yet it's the small guy selling his odds and ends that has built eBay and made it so sucessful. I've actually heard rumours that eBay has long-tyerm plans to actually squeeze small sellers out of selling, so that they can make eBay more attractive to commercial retail outlets.
nice
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it's not a 404, it's 403 forbidden. It seems they've put a ip check and blatantly block people from unserviced countries. what an amateur job.
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Happy to state that I have neither a credit card nor a PayPal account.
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@countzero
Over in the eBid forum, there is a growing consensus of opinion that Japan should have eBid.net site access.
If anyone here has an eBid account and would like to propose Japan, Serbia or any other country for that matter be allowed access to the eBid network ... please leave a message here stating which country you have decided to nominate --> eBid linky (http://helpdesk.ebid.net/showthread.php?t=111253)
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wish Craigslist had an auction section... would be the best.