ebay is disgusting, just disgusting
 

After nearly 10 years as a seller, nearly 5,000 positive feedbacks, nearly $100,000 in sales, $100,000+ in purchases and never any issues, ebay decided to restrict my selling account "forever" due to some arbitrary "minimal" guidelines for selling that were RECENTLY put into place. I can "never" sell on ebay again, and neither can anyone who lives in the same household as me. They never gave me an honest chance to fix the so-called 'problem', just deleted the years of work, time and effort it took to create the 600+ listings I had on there and said 'too bad, you should have done better'. I still have so much money put into what I was selling, and now no means to sell it. I'm completely screwed. All this less than a month before Christmas. I use ebay sales to pay bills, buy presents, etc... Now they tell me to screw off over basically NOTHING with ZERO recourse. Ruining my Christmas, not allowing me to pay my bills, bending me over and telling me 'too bad'. This company is about as UN-AMERICAN as it gets and I hope for nothing but the worst for anyone making these decisions that so negatively affect good people who haven't done ANYTHING wrong who are just trying to get by. I pray for the day that a PROPER auction site is created to compete with and show ebay how to treat people who are their bread and butter. Shame on you, ebay.

Have you tried creating a new paypal account, link it to a new bank account, and then create a new ebay account, and use the newly created your paypal? You may be able to extract the listings from your old account using TurboLister, and then upload those into your new ebay account. (If you used TurboLister before, you may be able to just copy your old unsold listings into your Upload, and then put these into your new ebay account.

(or if your wife has a different ebay account (like mine does), just use hers and see if it works.)

What were the "minimal guidelines" they referred to?

Wow John, that is rough...sorry that your in such a predicament. Can you give us more specific reasons why they did this to you?

Jeff

Not sure which one hamstrung John, but ebay has made a number of new seller requirements that makes it more difficult such as: (some of these are only to retain Top Rated status, but others may go further.)

(1) 90% of sales need to have tracking uploaded within one day after payment, and tracking needs to show that package was delivered.

(2) You cannot have too many cases opened against you.

(3) You cannot cancel too many transactions even if it's buyer's remorse where the buyer just wants to return an item within the ebay recommended 14 day return policy.

(4) Previously, only 1's and 2's were strikes against a seller for DSR's. Now 3's are also strikes that count against you.


For example, due to #3, I've noticed that many seller's aren't even opening Cancel Transaction cases after an item is returned to that they can receive their final value fees back. They just refund the buyer and eat the FVF themselves to that they don't get dinged on that criteria.

My account was "below standard" because of a few opened cases, which were immediately resolved. The thing is, up until recently, ebay prompted buyers to open cases INSTEAD of simply sending a quick message. Also, I ship cheap cards without tracking and sometimes people take shots by opening cases and I just eat the loss and refund immediately. But, apparently that makes me the devil and ebay decided that they no longer want my business. I had nearly $75,000 worth of cards listed. Now $0 and nowhere to sell them. All less than a month before Christmas. I feel like it's a prank, but it's not, and it's not funny.

Wow, that's so brutal :(

As a buyer, ebay is ok. When I sell, and I don't sell a ton, I constantly feel like something awful is bound to happen.

I'm sorry what happened to you on e-bay. In the long run, perhaps this could be a blessing. I sold T206 cards on e-bay since 1997. On May 1st of last year, e-bay decided to get on board the greedy train & raise their store costs. Also they decided to charge a flat rate of 9% + the cost of using their store. Since I closed my store, I'm finding other ways of selling. Doing private sales, doing card shows in the area, sending cards to auction houses, & at times doing some selling on this site. Nobody should be at the mercy of any company, especially e-bay.

Hey John,
Hit the B/S/T section here and list some of your stuff. There seems to be a good amount of cards being moved daily and (for the most part) the people here are a good lot. I've personally bought a few things recently. Good luck.

That sucks! Try the bts here and some auction houses

My sentiments, exactly
 

My sentiments, exactly. We have sold occasionally on eBay since 1998 and full-time (in my retirement) since 2008. Most years we receive a 100% rating and handle any complaints and/or errors promptly. Still, the "rules" are becoming increasingly restrictive on sellers and the eBay representatives range from very helpful (a few) down to very un-helpful and quite ignorant.

Several years ago we listed a 1982 Mickey Mantle Story set which includes a card with Mickey's facsimile autograph. We specifically mentioned "facsimile" in the listing, yet some eBayer (who did not buy the set) complained to eBay that the autograph was not authentic!

In our back-and-forth email "conversation" with eBay, we pointed out that the card in question was no different from various years of Topps baseball cards which are listed by the thousands on eBay: that is, the autographs are printed on the cards by the printer. Final disposition: a red flag stayed on our account for one year.

It is such unthinking responses to solid eBay sellers that causes me to wonder what will be next.

May I recommend COMC.Com -- :)

Failing that May I also recommend the BST

Rich

Yeah, it's silly sometimes.

I have a defect because a customer asked me where his package was? USPS was tardy on delivery and he actually received it two days later, but I got penalized simply because somebody asked a simple question that was easily resolved by the P.O. getting their heads out of their ass.

I didn't fault the guy for asking the question, he didn't know it was going to be a detriment to me. He didn't even know he was opening a case. Ebay automatically did it for him because he clicked the option that said "Where is my package?"

Did the defect disappear when the packaged showed "Delivered"? No it did not. It didn't matter to Ebay. If you ever called them up and asked them about it, they would calmly tell you it was your own fault for choosing the USPS as your shipping service. They would also say the same if it was UPS, FedEX, Pony Express, or Hand Delivered by Howard Hughes himself.

I also totally agree. As a seller, I leave positive feedback the moment I get paid (in my mind, the seller did all that is required) and ship the item immediately. I've lost count of the times I haven't gotten feedback in return. :(

I don't sell much on ebay but had a case opened against me for a package not received by an auction winner. I assumed the card was lost and then lo and behold it came back to me -- the buyer had given me a bad address. I questioned him on it and he sheepishly told me that he had made a mistake and given me an old address. After he repaid me, I sent the card again -- postage on me. I still have that one strike against me.

Wow-that sucks! Could account be made under a friend or relative name and maybe share a small amount of profit with them?

Albert

Rich,

Can you educate us on COMC.com?

The fact that this same post has been sent to PSA's message boards and BlowOut's forums, means this guy probably knows about comc. Seems odd especially when many sellers claimed last month that their negatives and non-five star DSRs were erased by eBay with no request. Just happened overnight...
Feel sorry for the guy, but eBay is no longer the only game in town.

comc.com is a website/company that will receive cards for you, scan them in for a fee, and then list them on their website. Since shipping is such a pain on single cards across the country and world, you leave your cards at their warehouse until you want to take delivery of them. Then it costs $3 to have as many shipped to you at one time as you want.
You list a card at a fixed price, and people can either buy it immediately, make an offer, or you can create a sale. Works great for cards worth $2-25, where it could be wasteful to continue making trips back and forth to the post office or where mailing the card would make you sell the card for a nickel. They also allow you to post cards on Amazon, where they get some views.

It's just as well. Ebay is going out of business anyway. It will be a slow bleed-out, but eventually they'll have to face the fact that auctions aren't their bread and butter anymore and that people prefer Amazon to BIN's. Plus now Paypal, which was subsidizing Ebay, is a separate company. I'm not saying it won't be around in some form, but they will continue to become a hollower and hollower shell of what they used to be.

On the bright side, $75k worth of stuff hitting the BST all at once sounds like a mighty fine Xmas for everyone!

I have found the B/S/T board here VERY hard to sell on, unless you are willing to give the item away. I wish that wasn't the case. Sorry Ebay gave you the heave-ho.

So true, Ebay has no balance necessary to protect all users.

With all due respect, we've never done a transaction, but the only reason I remember your posts is because you're always complaining about how your cards always sell for so low and you're having to give everything away. It's like crying wolf after a while - maybe your expectations are a bit high.

I (like many others) have had a lot of success here on the BST. I don't know what you're selling, but I bet if you try pricing items in line with VCP recent sales that you'd have a good track record here on the BST.

I price my cards BELOW VCP average and they still wont budge here. One time I tried to sell a Sandy Koufax rookie card. The guy offered my $300 for it. A card shop out of Kansas has the card on their BUY list. They were paying $350. I told the gentleman that I already had an offer of $350 for the card. He proceeded to give me a hard time, and basically made me feel like an idiot for not selling the card to him for $50 less than what I was already offered because he was a "collector"! He basically said "Shame on me for not wanting to help out a "collector". Don't get me wrong, I have had some great transactions on the BST board (the few that I have had). Unfortunately, it is incidents like the Koufax card that stick out in my mind because they are just so absurd.

PS - and don't think it is just an isolated incident. I have had private messages confirming the difficulties some have had selling cards on here. I might try again in the future. Not right now. Ebay is still king for getting rid of cards for me.

BST is useful for selling a few cards here and there. However, if you have hundreds of cards in your inventory that you are looking to sell, BST is really not viable, and you need to use ebay, which will still usually get you higher prices. Bobby's not the only one who has said that ebay gets higher prices. Here's another story: Link. I'm not saying that BST doesn't have it's advantages. Obviously, there are no fees, so you save 10% there. However, if you have a lot of inventory, ebay is still the best bet even with all of its hassles.

Regarding Bobby's issues selling on ebay, just in my opinion, I think it is because he sells a lot of stuff starting at 99 cents via auction. I've done it before when I started selling on ebay, and personally, I think it's seller suicide. The card market is big with so many different cards out there from so many sets, that unless you have a big name HOFer, the market will typically be thin for your card. There might be 50 - 100 people who are interested in your card, but if they are not looking at your ebay auction the week you are listing it, you are screwed. Only the big time dealers and consignors who regularly list at 99 cent auctions get the views necessary to be able to generate proper market values for these cards. If you are a small time dealer who just lists auctions every now and then, you are not going to get the views necessary to get good prices on your cards. You might get lucky every now and then if the right people are looking at your auctions, but if not, you are dead meat, which I think has happened too many times to Bobby. Frankly, I think it's better to just list as BIN's based upon VCP/past sales (or auctions w/ the same start price as your BIN price), and that will get you prices that you want. If you really need to move inventory that's not selling or need to raise cash, then do the 99 cent auction, but just prepared to get killed on them.

I am knocking wood as I type this but I have had very few bad transactions as a seller on ebay. I am a Top Rated Power Seller for more than 15 years with 2 stores, a mid level store for sports memorabilia and a basic store for general ephemera. I typically sell paper items or publications. The few problems that I have had seem to be on the very rare occasion I sell a card. Maybe it is a card problem more than an eBay problem?

Jeff

Net 54 rocks

Very well said! I agree 100% as an occasional seller.

I really miss the old days when so much was offered on ebay in auction format. It was must-viewing, every day, back in the day!

Two things
 

A couple thoughts...

1. I had an eBay rating of "above standard" on my seller account for quite some time. One person went in last summer and bought 5-6 BIN's I had listed individually over the course of 24 hours. I wrote to him and asked if he was OK that I send all of them in one insured pkg. "Absolutely" - did that, all went fine, everyone happy. I loaded the tracking number for all the cards into one of the listings (not copy/repeat same into all of them) and then eBay dropped me to "below standard" as their "system" showed that I was not "90% within one day compliant". When I called and explained that I was, they were all in one pkg, I got nowhere. Just mindless babble (.. ever notice their Cust Svc people apply no common sense? Just read from a rule book). Seems like they try and do all possible to tell you stick it up your a$$ and go elsewhere - - to the point made by other members, can't see that sustaining long-term.

2. My own experience, I've had very good transactions on the BST, sold all my 1914 CJ's here to some great collectors this past spring/summer. Sometimes you get low offers, sometimes things don't sell at all or for what you would like or hope for. It happens. Not a problem, usually always have had great dialog one way or the other.

selling...
 

Glchen has some great points about ebay selling. Sometimes I put higher starting bids on items, or list as BIN with reasonable prices. If someone wants a card, it will sell with reasonable prices. If I don't care so much and just want to sell, then auction with $9.99 starting point makes sense - at least you weed out the penny ante low bids.

If an auction with low start price does not bring my ideal selling price, I go back, look how much I paid, and usually I realize I got a pretty good deal on the card in the first place - so all ok.

My biggest "burn" has been with REA on a 1939 Ted Williams Rookie PSA 8 - don't ask, but I took a bath on that one, ouch. I have not consigned to a major auction house since.

Ed, I had the same situation with 3 items...I called everyday for a week and finally had a supervisor remove the ding from my account. After I combined the items into one invoice, who would have thought that I needed to go back and enter the tracking number into each item individually. Just another example of a broken eBay.

Jeff

That's one of the advantages of using the Stamps.com software. It will let you combine different payments into one shipment and then report the shipping number back to Ebay for each item.

I try to avoid Ebays own software as much as possible. Whether it be shipping or listing. Too glitchy and they're always tinkering around with it, just for the sake of it.

Selling on eBay and the BST
 

I have had a lot of luck selling on both eBay and the BST. I'm not a big seller, but I usually average about $1500 to $2000 a month. I buy and sell to build my Prewar collection. Lately I've retired and I need to sell a bit to augment my retirement.

Usually on eBay I start my auctions at a low starting price and let the market determine the value. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but it all seems to average out for me. Also, I have found that you will get a higher price for HOF players and low to midgrade lots on eBay than anywhere else because there are so many buyers.

Lately, I have been selling more on the BST than on eBay. I really appreciate the relationships that I have built up with some of the collectors here. There are some really nice people on this Board. When I get return customers it makes me happy. You don't get that feeling often on eBay.

The key to selling on the BST is not to let the low ball offers, and worse, that dreadful silence that occurs after listing one of your treasures bother you. Sometimes you may even have a card priced fairly, but you just have to wait to find the right buyer. I cannot tell you how many times that I have been contacted by a member about a card that I listed on the BST a month ago and now they now want to buy it. Sometimes, just relisting a card in a different format does the trick.

Occasionally, there is a misunderstanding on the BST because we are using electronic instead of face to face communication. (I still haven't figured out how to use the smiley faces to correctly determine the appropriate tone.) However, most buyers here are very polite, and its not hard to work through a problem. Sometimes (not frequently), a buyer will make an offer and then disappear, but that happens on eBay, too. It is just part of the business.

Being patient is important when dealing on the BST. A good sense of humor helps as well.

The best part of selling a card on the BST is when you know that the buyer is happy to add a card to his or her collection that they really wanted. You may have gotten a little less than you wanted in money, but now you have a friend. The motivational speaker Zig Zigler used to say that "you can have everything in life that you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."

So, if you need to sell a card by a certain date you need to run straight auctions on eBay, but in my opinion the best place to sell is here.

I want to thank Leon, Scot and all the board members for giving us this platform to sell our cards.

Best regards,

Joe

He sento Beckett as well

John, I would call ebay and ask to speak with a supervisor. Explain to them your predicament and see if they have a heart. Be persistent and go to the top if you have to.

sportscardtheory - John

What do you have for sale as far as T06s?

If you have any, let me know what you have. I've tried really hard to be good this year, so I'm thinking Santa should bring me something.

As far as Ebay shutting you down, to me its a win-win situation. You can sell your stuff elsewhere, like our BST and offer potentially new customers better prices since you don't have to pay all the Ebay & Paypal fees.

I've just about given up buying on Ebay and somewhere around 60% of my T206 set (in progress) has been bought from other members on our BST.


Jantz

Well said, Joe!

John, I'm sorry to hear about your situation and wish you the best of luck trying to get some sort of resolution.

I have not done a ton of business on the BST here, but have not had the best of luck when I do list something...While I think we do have a good sized pool of buyers here it is still dwarfed by ebay.

I recently listed a cereal box with 1961 Post cards on it...put it up here for a week or so at $500 OBO, never even got one offer. Put it on ebay for $500 BIN and it sold in less than 5 minutes. Not a complaint, I just realize we are smaller than ebay.

I have also sold some things here for more than I paid on ebay so it just depends on your item and your audience.

Just for the record, someone on another board posted what was supposed to be the OP's ebay user name and the feedback looked solid to me. With many sales, in the last 6 months (the total duration showed) had a total of 2 negs and 1 neutral for a 99.7% feedback rating. To my eyes, looked like the feedback of a solid enough eBay seller. There definitely was no rampant complaining from customers. Plus I checked one of the past sales lots and the shipping was free.

You can get booted for more than negative feed back. Having to many cases opened against you can get you the boot. If you look at the sellers DSR his rating for "shipping time" had been dinged several times. This probably resulted in the seller having multiple cases opened for items not arriving in a timely manner.

Meanwhile, check out one of their Huge Sellers like "NewEgg".

Ebay does their best to hide their feedback in their listings but if you dig around enough you get this:

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...edbackAsSeller


I get that they sell like 20,000 items a month. But 100+ negatives and not exactly sterling feedback every month doesn't seem to get them "defected" off of Ebay.

But they still have over a 99% positive feedback and nothing below a 4.9 on their detailed seller ratings.

That being said there is no doubt in my mind that a company such as new egg that makes so much more money for ebay would probably be given a little more slack.

Back to your previous point, showing their feedback looks the way it does, and knowing that nowadays a "neutral" is just as damaging to a smaller seller as a negative, how many "Cases" and "Defects" do you think they have on their records.

I read about 100% feedback sellers getting kicked off Ebay all the time. 4-5 defects in a period of time, caused by questions from a weather delay, slowing down USPS delivery times will get a smaller seller booted.

Rules are completely different for the corporate accounts Ebay is bending over backwards for, meanwhile, the bread & butter they grew their brand on....sellers paying them $100-$2000 every month for the last how many years, are told to go pound sand, we don't need you anymore.

Yeah, I can vouch for the OP's story. A friend of mine, who had dealt on eBay for years and had 600+ positives with zero negatives was selling without incident. A few months ago, he lost his job and bought a few collections with solid value that he was able to split up and make some money off of.

He had one guy buy two vintage lots of cards which he very generously said weren't in great shape, took pictures, etc., and the buyer left him a negative saying they weren't in good condition. In addition, he had one buyer leave him a neutral for not shipping soon enough, and had two cancel orders. This all happened in the course of a few months and it was enough for eBay to prevent him from selling. I still find it hard to believe they would ban someone with like a 99.9 positive rating for essentially one bad buyer and one 'tough' buyer.

As a result, he was then stuck with a few thousand dollars of cards he had planned to sell with no good outlet in which to do it.

eBay has become buyer-centered for one simple reason - they (understandably) don't want buyers afraid to purchase items from them. It's the same reason you see them (eBay) doing things like extending the amount of time buyers can file Paypal complaints for the holidays, etc. I get all that, but they also seem to punish perfectly good sellers for unreasonable buyers.

I barely use Ebay nowadays
 

I barely use ebay anymore...I guess the next generation uses Facebook and Craigslist to sell what I used to sell on ebay. I use the BST for about 95% of all the cards I ever decide to sell and try to avoid listing on ebay anymore. Even as a buyer I avoid it. There are still a lot of hassles and I don't like supporting an entity that has turned its back on the sellers that helped build it. Finding a good deal on the BST is just as rewarding and I have never had a problem with it.

this is why I stopped selling on ebay months ago. Its just easier and less hassle to send your cards to a consignor. And by doing that you can actually save money as I found out when I saw probstein's rates and realized they were better than what me as a seller w/100% + 2000+ FB can get. If you don't get screwed by the buyer then ebay will screw you...either way you get screwed! Best of luck to you!

ebay
 

I am just a buyer on ebay. I have never sold anything there. I remember the days when sellers did have the upper hand. Customer service has improved greatly under the new rules, from my standpoint. But. crazy and or unethical buyers now can play havoc with good sellers, and as a result many no longer sell on ebay. That is a loss for me as a buyer.

I seldom use ebay except for cards, do the current rules favoring buyers cause the same difficulties in other categories of sales ?

I have had positive experiences on the BST. It really helps me build me relationships.

well said.....
 

Well said. I too have high (over 4000) feedback on Ebay at 100% and can't STAND them anymore. They really do HATE sellers. That sounds crazy doesn't it? I have had more petty and some bigger problems with buyers and ultimately Ebay recently and have also gone the consignor route to PWCC. PWCC does charge a little more (around 20%) but this is only 5% more than I pay with all the fees and hassle etc.. and PWCC has an incredibly transparent and easy to use consignor system that you can find on their web site. Just type in PWCC on google to find it. There is a consignor portal on their site where I just click to see all of my auctions and what they are going for. Flawless and ZERO effort from me. I'm not dealing with customers or ebay for that matter. PERFECT!

peace, mike