ebay authenticity guarantee limits now 250/750

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by BobC

I agree with you John, they have no special expertise. But just like how they suddenly decided to start collecting sales tax for every auction, I think a lot of their reasoning was that they figured that if they didn't, they could be losing sellers. Think of all the people selling on Ebay that don't really know, or want to know, about collecting and remitting sales taxes. Also, that would have called for all their sellers to start registering with various states for licenses to collect and remit sales taxes. My guess is that Ebay saw that a lot of sellers would be gun shy and not want to bother doing that, or ever put up with the hassle of sales tax collection at all.

I forget the specifics, but my understanding on the sales tax decision was that a court case came down which put the handwriting for that on the wall. I'm not sure if eBay was compelled to put that in place by a certain date or if it was just obvious that they would soon be challenged if they didn't. I will agree between issues like this, and changes to policy such as surrounding authentication - it would seem more difficult to business on eBay than ever before.

When I first joined eBay, you could see full info. on both sellers and buyers, and even message competing bidders. I once contacted a bidder who kept topping me saying "Hey could I persuade you to let me win this (vintage scouting photo...) because my father-in-law is in it, and I would like to give it to him as a gift." The guy wrote back and graciously agreed. Can you imagine anything like that happening today?