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eBay's Donahoe Has Crow for Thanksgiving

Take for example the DSR ratings of which there are 4:

Item as described
Communication
Shipping time
Shipping and handling charges

To the novice this all seem like a nice thing to impliment. eBay should like to know if the item was as described, right? Wrong. There was already a method for dealing with that and the buyer is not only covered but can easily scam the seller if they want over at paypal.

What about Communication? Does eBay want their sellers to communicate with the buyers? Like how? Thank you very much. Have a nice day?
I don't think they care and I don't think anybody else does either unless there's a problem. And just like the 1st item, there is plenty of remedy if something goes wrong.

What about shipping time? If seller's don't deliver, there is the same remedy as above. Hummm. I try to ship the next day after getting paid. Why would I wait a week? There are of course a lot of Drop-ship sellers on eBay and it's out of their hands when something actually get's shipped. Does eBay want to identify the slow shippers and get rid of them? I kinda doubt it but but maybe.

Item #4: Shipping and handling charges. This is what it's all about. eBay doesn't collect their FV fee on Shipping and handling and it really hacks them off if the seller is making a profit on shipping and handling. It shouldn't matter to the buyer what shipping is because it's right there in the listing. They are not stupid. They are on eBay to save money. They add the cost of the item and the shipping together to see how much it costs them. It doesn't matter to the buyer how much of their money goes to the seller and how much goes to eBay and how much goes to Uncle Sam.

But it matters to eBay because Billionaires Pierre and Meg are gone and Mr. Donahoe is a long way from leaving Dodge with his Billion $. So the buyers are recurited into reporting sellers who they think charged more than actual shipping. And it works. Buyers have got used to free shipping from Amazon and others and of course eBay is encouraging sellers to offer it as well. That means of course the selling price must go up to reflect the shipping costs but that's ok with eBay because they get their 15% of the selling price (Yes, if you list a media item in fixed price, you pay eBay 15% FV fee on a sale. And of course Paypal takes a cut of all the money changing hands, so if you offer free shipping you're getting raked twice.

You know Paypal is owned by eBay, right? I wonder how much control Donahoe has at Papal? It was a going concern when eBay bought it. Does Donahoe have a hands access to making changes over there too? I kinda doubt it, because this whole DRS folly could be avoided and eBay could get a detailed answer to their true concern just by looking at the sellers who use Paypal shipping to print their postage and compare it to how much they collected from the seller.

So there you are, scrap DSR and just get that computer programmer back to look at the data you already possess.

eBay's Donahoe Has Crow for Thanksgiving

About that programmer who quit eBay. Does anybody there work on the small stuff, like fixing the bugs, or are the all inventing new stuff nobody likes. Here's one that has been around since they created the 30 day fixed price listings and nobody ever fixed:

If you relist an item to fixed price, of course you want to have it be 30 days, but most of the time the duration box says 7 days. So occasionally, I forget to change it and then I see my listing is only 7 days, so I edit it and change it to 30 days, right? Wrong. eBay won't let you change it to the 30 days which cost the same amount as 7. Maybe this isn't a bug but a gottcha.

Not only that but I was dumb enought to selced good until cancelled (automatic relist) when this first came out. No, I didn't even imagine that they wouldn't charge me another listing fee each month. But I did think that with a day or so to go, I could back it off to 30 days in case I didn't want to list it any more. NO WAY. You have to kill the auction or pay another listing fee. And if there's 12 hours or less to go, then of course you can't edit it at all and are trapped.
I wonder how many long time sellers like myself would love to see eBay fail? I have since they went public.It's been one thing after another how they squeeze the sellers and lie about the motives for everything they do.

eBay's Donahoe Has Crow for Thanksgiving

Someone said that Listing fees aren't important to eBay compared to FV fees. Does anybody have the #'s? For years I've browsed through the closed items and see 90% unsold. Cha-ching. I always thought listing fees were the main source of eBay income.

Another thing some peeps here don't understand: Auctions are not the best way to sell MOST of the stuff in the world. Auctions are suitable for rare items in demand and for things a buyer want's to liquidate soon at any price.

Other than that, everything else does better with a fixed price on it. Think about it. Would you go to Kroger and bid on a loaf of bread and come back in a week to bid on another loaf if you didn't win? Same thing with a video game of which there are millions available. IF you auction your old game, all week long buyers will be buying immediately and move on.

Now that the facination of auctioning EVERYTHING on eBay has diminished, maybe eBay will change the rules of having an auction end at a specific time. Can you imagine a real-world auction with bids flying in left and right and the audience all excited, and then suddenly the auctioneer hears a bell go off and wont't take any more bids. that's the eBay model. That's how the word sniping got a new definition. It's created less revenue for the sellers of true auctionable items and less revenue for eBay. And it's easy to remedy....just never end an auction until 5 minutes have elapsed since the last bid.

Finally if you read my previous post about getting suspended by eBay last month and then reinstated and then being semi-suspended last week, I have a follow-up: I was allowed to create new auctions 1 day after getting that privilege taken away, why I don't know.

Then today I got an email from eBay saying I created another sin: The wacko who gave me a BAD last week and lied about it in my feedback didn't like that I left him a GOOD feedback (the only kind sellers can now leave) but told the story briefly in the comment field.

So it seems I broke an eBay rule I should have deduced before hand: Sellers are not allowed to say anything negative about a buyer in the buyer's own feedback field.

eBay's Donahoe Has Crow for Thanksgiving

On 11/24 I was flashed a screen while listing something that eBay was having a 50% off listing sale for auctions only (I had been listing Fixed price items only).

So I listed one and it didn't show the reduced charge so I clicked on details and it said if I wasn't using such and such browser not to worry the discount would be reflected in my billing. So I listed a bunch of stuff with minimums I wouldn't ordinarly do because the sell-thru is so bad at eBay these days.

But my fees were not lowered in my biilling so I called today wand was told I was not elegible for the discount because my DSR scores were below 4.5. And they calim this was in the ad.

So last night I attempted to list something and was presented with a screen that said i could no longer list on eBay because My shipping DSR went below 4.3.

I just got back from a 1 month suspension because 2 people left neutrals (one said he thought that was an 'average' transaction rating) and 2 Bads. One was a nitcase who dekanded I reduce shipping and handling to what he figured was actual postage charged AFTER he had already bought the item (he was a newby and is now no longer a registered user). I have been selling on eBay since before eBay was a public company and he got me suspended.
The other bad was a scammer who claimed the item was damaged in shipping and I said ok, wait for UPS to pick it up as they insured it. Instead he filed and won a Paypal claim because 'item was not as described."

Since I've been back on Nov 11, I sold 60 items. 16 of them have given me feedback (don't you assume the rest were satisfied.) I got one bad 6 days ago. It was another nut case. I offered to give a refund immediately but he gave me a bad and didn't opt for the refund. They he added on the feedback saying he's going to file a Paypal claim, which he hasn't done...Why? I offered a refund.

So you see I get a nut case occasionally. Since that Bad I have got 11 straight goods with praise. Yet last night my DSR' average dipped below 4.3 and I can list any more. No email or anything from eBay.

Now today I tried again after getting another good feedback and I can list again.

Do you get the picture Steve 577? This company is no more than an insane asylum run by the inmates