Survey: If you could change EBay....

[ooo-ribay]

As a buyer, I sure liked when it was easy to contact winning bidders who may have won lots with multiple items. That said, I totally get why they tightened that up.

Paying a seller's fee on postage is ridiculous.

I'm to the point that I dread doing my searches because ebay has become such a buy it now of brand new stuff. Most of my Giants collectibles are no more than 70 years old but I'll bet my searches only turn up 1% that is even 25 years old.

[thecatspajamas]

Do away with free listings, with the possible exception of 99-cent no reserve auctions.

[pgellis]

No more Buy It Now. Everything needs to be an auction. No more "storefronts".

[CW]

All auctions, no buy it now option, bidding history shows the user ID, and sellers can leave negative feedback. Also, make fees about 7.5% for the seller and allow sellers to freely accept check and MO as payment.

So yeah, basically go back to the way it was in 1998.

[baseball tourist]

Getting rid of sellers fees on postage and allowing sellers to leave negative or mediocre feedback.

[antiquefootball]

Hypothetically, could an alternative to EBay exclusively for vintage sports collectors with low fees be successful? Would it improve your ability to find what you want if most of the sellers are other collectors, or is part of the appeal of EBay the possibility of finding items that others miss?

I agree that buy it now items make EBay more like a store than an auction site, but could you convince sellers to use a new site during its initial start up if it wasn't mostly buy it now or moderate minimum bids?

[hawaiian bam bam]

its no secret ebay wants to be the next amazon(buy it now with free shipping), they have wanted this for years so i seriously doubt buy it now will ever go away as ebay is trying to compete with amazon for the #1 spot.

[ooo-ribay]

You can hardly ever find desirable memorabilia with BIN, but it CAN happen. BIN is also handy when buying non collectible stuff. I had also thought of having two ebays (vintage auctions and new BINs) but some sellers are convinced their 2008 SGA item is somehow vintage and desirable. I sure do miss the garage sale feel of the old eBay. You could find some great stuff last century!

[sbfinley]

It's actually a "PayPal" issue, but I wish granted return times were based upon the type of item you purchase. Three months is a laughably absurd amount of time to be able to return a collectible item and the system is abused by buyers as a free investment. All you have to do is make a purchase, spend two months trying to get a profit and file an "item not as described". I won't sell modern cards on eBay for this reason, if the prospect falters you can expect a return.

Originally Posted by antiquefootball

Hypothetically, could an alternative to EBay exclusively for vintage sports collectors with low fees be successful? Would it improve your ability to find what you want if most of the sellers are other collectors, or is part of the appeal of EBay the possibility of finding items that others miss?

It's been attempted by a collection of notable hobby members and it failed because sellers stayed away. It would take a massive company with plenty of capital to take on eBay at its game because without a massive media push and a gauranteed level of buyers then sellers will be fearful of losing bad. At that level, however, you are just dealing with another eBay.