I have been selling on ebay (UK version) since December 2005. It's easy to say that fuck ebay (mostly due to some users, not the platform itself). But with the new sellers fees/shop payments..
NO FUCKING WAY! I had pretty ok start back in the day :Smug: but then somewhere in 2006 ebay made the hilarious "visibility update" for their seach engine. Suddenly I lost all customers from US/Canada and my overall sales dropped to 3-4 sales per month. After reading post after post on their forum, it turned out that their algorhytms on the serach engine are completely against me. Not from UK, long delivery times, high postage etc.
But there were promises, a lot of promises. If someone in ebay.com is looking for something that I was selling, my stock would show up on the search. Well, that was all bullshit. Come 2007 and more fee jack ups, more "visibility adjustments" and in 2007 I think I sold one or two CD's to US/Canada. Talk about "the best marketplace on internet" here.
Come this year and another promises of "visibility adjustments". This turned to be another fee hike up in form of "international seller" or something fee. For ten pence (per title, per listing time, only BIN listings 10 days) you could get your stock show up on ebay.com searches. The catch was that apparently the search showed only when the buyer had ticked the "show international sellers" box too. Which 99% won't ever do because they think that .com search will show EVERYTHING. Wrong!
August 2008. Shop subscription fees triples, SIF disappears, BIN/Auction is only things left. While the talk is about how the upfront fees will be smaller, the fact remains that they only drop if you pay for featured shop subscription (50 pounds per month). And STILL the visibility issue is just a talk, how it will get better, how the search will better reflect the blaah blaah blaah.
Ebay had already couple years to fix the visibility issues yet all they did was to LIMIT the visibility of my stock AND rise the fees for sellers. At the end of the month I will close my ebay shop and I only feel being fucked up by this company with no head, no vision, nothing.
Emo of the month award, please?
