This morning I listed an old lapidary machine on ebay. I have a few of them lying around that I’d acquired in trade back when the craft store was busy struggling to survive, and failing, and there’s a fair pile of stuff left yet just taking up space and contributing to the general clutter. I’ve been looking at it long enough, time for it to go. Now that I’ve broken the ice and navigated ebay’s current listing form, that seems to change more often than the tides, and succeeded in getting a first listing up, more will follow. This is my New Year’s Day Resolution that I committed to today, which I’ve officially declared to be the real New Year’s Day. Calendar printers, take note.
The ebay listing form has gone through a myriad of changes since I first joined up in 1995, and most of them have been confusing as hell. Then, just when you think you’ve mastered the damn thing, everything changes and you get to do it all again. If ebay isn’t the cause of the expression “If it ain’t broke, DON’T FIX IT”, then they should be.
Of course, everything they’ve done, every change they’ve made, has been for their benefit, not for those of us who use their online auction service, to make them more money, more more more money, as we watched in dismay while their rates and fees increased and more were added and the cost to us just kept on increasing in direct proportion to their hold on online auction selling. The greater their share of the market, the less competition they had, the more they charged. They called themselves ebay, but for us users, it’s Feebay.
I’m not even sure anymore. When they started out the fees were around 7% of the sale and now it’s at least 13%, maybe more. Sotheby’s Auctioneers charges less. I know, I’ve sold with them, and they have the wealthiest clientele on the planet. But for us general riffraff, it’s ebay because Sotheby’s has no interest in our cheap junk and no one forces us to use ebay. The plain truth is that they’re a lot more profitable than selling stuff at a yard sale on our front lawn.
They have refined their methods of making sure they get theirs first so exact and perfect that I don’t see any need for them to keep coders on the payroll anymore and chances are they already fired the ones who wrote them all that perfect, money-grubbing code. Less employees, more money for them. Yes, I do see ebay as being run by the living avatars of Ebeneezer Scrooge. So sue me for my opinion. I have good reason for it. Yes, I know that businesses are not charities but does ebay have to be quite so ruthless? It’s just offensive to me.
GLUTTONOUS MONSTER