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
