Solid Perfume › Forums › General Lauder Solids Talk › What'S Happening On Ebay? › Re: What'S Happening On Ebay?
I agree with your friends – Ebay used to be a friendly place to buy and sell once upon a time. However, the last couple of years it hasn't been so.
Mostly 'bigger' business sellers have outmuscled the 'little' friendly sellers, so it's like a big department store moving in on the little corner shops . . . no personalisation or an enjoyable chase for something you really want.
Most things I want from Ebay are now 'cheap as chips', and readily available. There is no market for the real 2nd hand sellers who want to shed their stuff cheaply – what Ebay was originally set up for, I think. The fees have gone up, as has the Paypal conversion of currency. There are fewer auctions and more 'buy-it-now' with the seller having multiples of the same items. There is less opportunity for an individual to make a little money, or at least get the same money back for something as most things have been devalued.
There's a site over here called Gumtree that is free to advertise goods, with absoutely no fees whatsoever when you sell, so a lot of people buy and sell on that, but most of it is local business – pay and pick up. No paypal involved. It took a while to get started, but now it's taking off like Ebay in the early days. People who really want to get rid of their goods, and not buying to sell, like on Ebay nowadays.
Ebay has pretty much destroyed antique shop owners and businesses like that, like online buying has bankrupted book stores etc. It doesn't allow people to make money to cover overheads. This in itself has killed the economy. Don't know many people who go to the shops to buy anything else except for food these days . . . unless there is a department store super sale where goods are actually cheaper than you can get online (this may only happen once or twice a year over here).
However, one positive is that I seem to be able to get whatever I want pretty much straight away without leaving home. The negative is the postage has soared and the anticipation of an auction ending and 'will I get it' has disappeared. And no more adrenalin rush in the last few seconds.
In my opinion, there are a lot more 'sharks' now on Ebay – people with less knowledge about things who only want the sales. Customer service is pretty much non-existant. You have to make your own mind up about the item – less and less detail is in descriptions because people don't really know what they are selling.
And that is my two cents ! :ph34r: 😮 😀