Thursday, August 21, 2008

Beckett Up, eBay Down

The new Beckett.com is getting better by the day. It functionality is slowly improving, but the keyword is slow. It takes me about 10 times longer to do things on the new and improved site.

I keep running into script errors and a few scattered F5 warnings. Searching within one's collection has vastly improved. The appearing/disappearing new releases, such as 2008 Allen & Ginter and 2008 Goudey have me worried.

The bells and whistles are shiny, new and good, but it's all a distraction from the problems in other areas. When the new site debuted, I likened it to the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Now, it seems more like an intelligent chimp. It's not quite what you want from a conversation point of view, but it's cute and easily frustrated. Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp, eat your heart out.

By now many of you have heard the new changes that are happening at eBay. By November, the only accepted payments will be electronic payments through eBay's site. As a buyer, I have no problem with this. I use PayPal for all of my purchases anyway. As a seller, this is just another nail in the coffin before I finally close up shop and move to another site. I don't get many Money Orders, but I do get a few. Sometimes offering the option of a Money Order has made the difference between a sale and the card sitting there for months.

Of course, my sales are already dramatically effected by February's pricing structure change. Some months I don't even make enough in sales to cover my eBay costs. How is this helping my sales? It's clearly not. I have spoken to eBay many times about this, but they are always unwilling to make an exception for trading card pricing reform.

Since all the eBay payments will now go through electronically, it goes through mostly PayPal, which is an eBay company. PayPal takes its share and so does eBay for each transaction. Does that sound like a Scrooge McDuck move to you?

4 comments:

Dinged Corners said...

Agree that it will push even more sellers away from eBay. Corporate greed knows no limits.

dorban said...

These new policies have angered a great deal of buyer AND sellers on ebay. Even more are fleeing the dictatorship of ebay for fairer, safer venues. Many have joined the Ongoing Global Ebay Boycott, which has been gaining members from 10 countries, since the beginning of the year. See ebay discussions, including "Seller Central" to read what users are REALLY saying...well, the posts, which ebay hasn't deleted, anyway. You'll see from ebay's own employee, Griff, that EVERY dispute of the "tens of thousands" he dealt with in his 12 years at ebay, (he claims) was due to "unprofessional conduct" of the sellers. You'll see that Paypal has directed some unsuspecting buyers of possibly fake items from ebay, have been forced to send those items to "Liquidity Services", BEFORE Paypal issues their refunds from the sellers' accounts (without compensating the sellers). "Liquidity Services" is NOT an authenticator of merchandise and is NOT in the business of destroying counterfeit items. They ARE in the business of SELLING merchandise. Don't forget to check the last pages of "Seller Central" for the few Boycott threads left, which have been cemented to the "basement" and not allowed to return to the front of the discussions.

How ebay THINKS they have the right to INTERFERE in transactions between buyers and sellers is beyond comprehansion. The BUYERS paymens are TO the SELLERS, NOT to ebay. Ebay has every right to mandate which payment they will accept from sellers paying their fees, BUT ebay is OVERSTEPPING their boundries, when attempting to dictate the methods buyers mest pay their sellers.

It's TIME for the LEGAL powers to step up and take on this monopoloy, as was done successfully in Australia when ebay attempted it's "Paypal ONLY" policy and FAILED!!!

dayf said...

I don't use Paypal except in in dire emergencies, so I guess eBay doesn't want my business any more. I didn't start using eBay until Yahoo auctions completely screwed up their site, so I was able to adapt then, I'll adapt now.

Steve Gierman said...

dervish, I have been going to "Seller Central" to read what the users are saying. Every time that I have written a thoughtful, intelligent response countering their policies, on the boards, it doesn't even post.

I just wish there was a central site where everyone selling cards would flock to. Unfortunately, there are some things that you can only find on eBay. If anyone can agree on a site to ALL go to to buy and sell fairly, I'm all for going.

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