Un-businesslike ebay/paypal practices you have seen?
logger7
Posts: 8,090 ✭✭✭✭✭
What have you seen in their business practices that irritate or peeve you?
With ebay, suddenly requiring you to enter the uncirculated/circulated qualification, saying your items are missing "important" descriptions. Not having templates for things that sellers tend to enter time and again with ebay making substantial profits; how much effort would it take them to provide these? How about providing links on NGC or PCGS listings to online database images that they provide? It seems that after all these years ebay somehow doesn't really understand numismatics in any rigorous or systematic ways. How about providing counterfeit detection software, which in 2020 is not that expensive? With paypal we have gone to most favored seller rates of around 1.9% to 3 percent across the board, also they have written a lot of exceptions into their rules, charging sellers for returns that really don't cost them that much. I'm curious who is calling the shots in these companies?
To their credit they both offer good business systems for selling and efficient transactions, I just would have hoped they would have kept better policies they did have.
Comments
eBay is basically a monopoly in the self-serve coin sales industry. As such, they have little motivation to improve their product beyond pedestrian. The only reason fees aren't higher than they are is because at some point it becomes roughly as cheap to use a full-serve site such as Great Collections. As to who is calling the shots, it's the C-Suite and, by extension, the shareholders.
EBay is not primarily a coin site, it’s not even a big percentage of what is listed.
seeing that when a customer is charged tax and it adds the total, then the total is taxed which means tax is being taxed. ><
there are a couple other scenarios like there out in our country.
Getting harder & harder to support Ebay. After this recent fiasco where Boston FBI issued arrest warrants against top Ebay execs & Devin Wenig resigned ....well that speaks volumes.
Seems like a toxic culture inside that company.
I agree. And it sucks.
eBay has forgotten that in order to complete a sale, two parties are needed.
eBay cares only about the buyers.
7 figure earning CEOs can't realize that a buyer cannot buy without a seller.
And the great folks at eBay have been putting the screws to sellers for years now.
An older member of our coin club was dinged with a malicious "negative" on ebay and sent a nice letter to the ebay executive at the time, less than 8 years ago saying that the reason for the negative was unsupported by evidence, also saying that it was a hobby business for him to keep him out of trouble, mainly autographed copies of books written by well known people. He also said he was an avid AA member and recovering alcoholic. The head of ebay at the time wrote him a nice note back saying he too was a recovering alcoholic in AA and would be glad to remove the negative. I guess those days of a healthy executive management are in the past.
I personally think coins are a healthy part of ebay's revenue. I believe everyone goes by the number of listings. I would wager the dollar volume of sales per listing is way higher for coins than the majority of ebay categories.
If ya wanna through auto sales and the like, unless things have changed ebay just gets a very small amount for each sale.
Considering they have so many 5 and dime style sellers, the numismatics must be a huge profit maker for them. I thought GC said they only do a few percent of what ebay does in the same categories.
I wouldn't be so confident. There are a high percentage of sales/listing for very inexpensive coins, under $10. Coins still very well could be in the top 50% of categories for dollar value per sale, but I wouldn't think one of the highest. I would think electronics do pretty well in that metric.
eBay is a pct of sales cost vs the expenses of setting up at a show (competition can be brutal) which are a fixed cost hurdle to clear to do any good. Many shows here it would have been better save the $200 table fee (and my time) just go walk the floor and spend that on a nice coin....put it in my online store.
At the end of the month I add up the ebay fees, pay pal fees, and shipping to calculate that months ebay selling expense as pct of sales. Then factor in my slim commission and other costs of the business to see the markup necessary make it. Not a pretty picture.....
Here's a link to eBay's total gross merchandise volume in 2013, by product category. Coins are near the bottom of the list.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/242246/ebays-total-gross-merchandise-volume-by-category/
I wish it would stop somewhere (but not anytime soon)
We all wish eBay was perfect. The problem is different people have different ideas on what is perfect.
IMO, Paypal is perfect, a fantastic business that has your back with fantastic customer service.
Back to ebay, the title says of the thread say "un-businesslike", LMAO
ebay is all about business and gives an individual the ability to build an awesome business at a very low cost.
The cost for eyeballs on ebay is the best marketing deal ever, IMO.