Yes, eBay / PayPal still sucks

[cdr]

Here's a story this morning on Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/c8vis/ok_you_guys_im_a_21yearold_who_was_making/

http://imgur.com/gnaOd.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1Yk5J.jpg

The kid is kind of not so smart for busting his ass to make $20K/yr (much less on eBay), but it is another good illustration of how eBay works.

Recommendations from my experience (focused on the US, where I am and most sellers are):
Avoid selling on eBay if at all possible. It's a terrible deal for personal sellers, and getting worse all the time.

eBay/PayPal's policies are designed to a) enrich eBay b) make life easier for eBay c) screw sellers. They care about a) eBay b) buyers c) huge sellers. They do not care about you.

Domestically, if you don't use delivery confirmation, you can be trivially ripped off. If you don't use tracking, there's a good chance you can be ripped off. If you don't use insurance, there's a chance you can be ripped off. If you don't use Signature Confirmation, there's a chance you can be ripped off.
Use delivery confirmation unless the item value is so low and your item volume so high you don't care if you get ripped off and/or trolled. Selling low value items on eBay unless you're a business is retarded, IMO. AFAIK confirmation is $2.80 on letters/bubble mailers.
Use tracking if you can.
Use insurance for higher value ($100+?) items and items that are attractive to fraudsters. Use Signature Confirmation for high value ($200+?) items. You might be able to get the buyer to pay for insurance, even though I think that's against eBay's rules.
Because of this, I personally recommend USPS Priority Flat Rate Envelope for shipping moderate to high value cards (selling low value cards on eBay is fairly retarded). $4.70, free shipping material, delivery conf and tracking included.

Don't ship internationally on eBay unless you're ok with a) anyone being able to rip you off at any time, b) eBay suspending your account when you get ripped off (or the buyer is just an idiot)
Registered Mail seems cheap (compared to other methods), but eBay/PayPal only accepts tracking info that they can view on the internet - Registered Mail info is not viewable online, so it's worthless for eBay.
If you're hellbent on shipping internationally, the only "low cost" method I know of that in theory meets PayPal's requirements is USPS Express Mail International. Express starts at $25 for a flat rate envelope, and goes up to $40-50+ for flat rate packages.
Yes, Canada is international.

Never leave any money in your PayPal account, ever. Transfer it out as soon as it comes in. PayPal can freeze the money in your account whenever it likes for any reason it likes for as long as it likes. It's not real money until it's out of your PayPal account.

Kiss the buyer's ass whenever possible and as much as possible. They have all the power, you have none. One bad seller rating can get your account suspended, but you can't even so much as leave negative feedback.

Feel free to share your opinion if you think I'm wrong on something or I missed something.

[wcm8]

Okay, I guess in some cases you are right. But here's what you're forgetting. Say I have item 'X', and I honestly don't want it anymore. Selling it to a store will probably get me about 1/3 of it's value. Craigslist is convenient, but people there expect to pay very low, maybe like 1/4 to 1/2 of its value. So what am I left with if I want to get the max profit from the sale in a relatively short time? Ebay. Depending on what it is, you can rake in a bigger percentage of the value, say 2/3 to 3/4.

It's worked for me when I sold old video games, and it also worked for me when I sold some guitars, electronics, effects pedals, etc. What ebay is charging you for is the convenience and exposure.

[cdr]

You probably don't understand just how rocky your position is, probably because you've lucked into not having any problematic transactions.

eBay does have a place, just acknowledge that you can get burned at any time - especially if you're being careless and lazy. If you think you can handle the aggravation when it happens, and you don't care about losing your eBay and/or PayPal account, knock yourself out.

eBay + PayPal takes 14-20% of the final value, depending on the price of the item and how you sell it. It generally takes a higher percent of lower value items.

Protecting yourself from eBay unfortunately means charging higher shipping, not getting international bids, etc, which costs you money.

There are numerous options besides a store (terrible option) and craigslist (also terrible option).

[dahcmai]

CDR is exactly right. I sell there and have been for a long time. It's just that bad actually. If it wasn't for the fact I still make a ton off it because I have a low overhead and dumb margin, I wouldn't go anywhere near it anymore.

Ebay is soooo favored in the buyers corner it's not funny. Complete retards can accidentally get their money back from you because they don't understand how it works. I've actually had it happen a couple times. It's soo annoying to have people message you laughing because they know the system and ripped you off and can even taunt you about it.

I know it's seriously flawed. If you can't afford to lose out on the money, don't bother. You actually need enough of a profitability to go above what you will lose on scammers and idiots. Tha's the only way it's worth it. I only sell in the US now because there were getting to be too many people who scammed from other countries and I couldn't afford to take the losses anymore.

If you can't provide a trackable online tracking number you might as well kiss that money goodbye if the other person complains they didn't get it. Nothing else matters. People do this on purpose all the time.


If it's any consolation, I have been working on a site for trading and selling cards for a while now. It's actually going to cost me over $10,000 out of my own pocket, but I basically said to hell with Ebay and am going to provide myself with my own site to sell from. Should be a few more months in the making though, it's fairly elaborate.

[the Thin White Duke]

I'll third that. Selling on Ebay is for suckers.
I handled sales at a shop for a year or so and was constantly amazed with the idiocy of buyers, Ebay's fees, and Paypal's fees. (Although I started a "wall of shame" which included the best emails from potential customers. Including one with three paragraphs of instructions for proper packaging of merchandise.)
And of course there are all the people who don't read postings fully and ignore the "No international shipping". Every morning I'd have a mailbox full of "Do you ship internationally?" garbage.
As stated, the system is slanted towards buyers and sellers are always at the mercy of some ass who "didn't get what was in the picture" or some other bullshit.
I don't even buy off of Ebay because the system is so terrible.

[dahcmai]

I wouldn't say it's useless as you can still get some of the best prices selling cards there than selling to a store usually. You may take a large hit on fees and such, but you more than make up for it unless you find a store that's willing to give more than 75% value in cash (which you won't find). It's biased toward buyers heavily, but it's still a good place to sell if you play it smart.

Just use delivery notification on everything, describe what you have well, use a picture if possible, and don't sell internationally. Easy enough. The store thing is worth it if you sell enough. I more than covered the cost of that store front. It's sure cheaper than using a brick and mortar store.

It's especially good for selling crap that's only worthwhile to collectors. Kind of like getting a Pre-release foil from three kingdoms. You won't find people who will trade for stuff like that, but it's easy to dump that type of stuff on Ebay.

All in all, it has it's uses.

[Malchar]

I figure it makes sense to just sit on your cards until Ebay wises up or another site becomes popular enough to be profitable for sellers. Even people that sell non-cards on Ebay are starting to get upset. It's only logical that Ebay will eventually change their policies or another company will step in to help sellers.

[jrsthethird]

I figure it makes sense to just sit on your cards until Ebay wises up or another site becomes popular enough to be profitable for sellers. Even people that sell non-cards on Ebay are starting to get upset. It's only logical that Ebay will eventually change their policies or another company will step in to help sellers.

Unless you're selling Standard cards, which will tank soon. I just took my Elspeths off ebay and traded them to my local store for credit, $30 regular and $50 foil, about what I would expect to make off ebay sans fees and shipping.

[Malchar]

Yeah, but trying to "buy low, sell high" with standard cards is always rather risky. Anyway, Ebay's massive fumble could be great for local card stores. I think that the real problem is that card stores have trouble staying afloat on their own. As such, they're not really in a position to offer competitive prices when it comes to buying merchandise. The only problem with the market is that it's a niche hobby.

[Mayk0l]

I never knew it was this bad. I'm one of those international buyers, and an honest one. I filed two disputes in three years of Ebay, one because I never got any cards and one because the $2.80 shipping turned out to be $40 on cards worth $100 and the seller basically gave me a big "deal with it and f*ck you". Besides those two instances, I always pay instantly and am only too happy to receive the cards and thank the seller. It's awesome to be able to buy cards off of people on the other side of the planet, too bad some people purposely try to mess it up for everyone simply to make some money. But I guess it's typical human behaviour.
So all the sellers refusing to ship to Italy/Spain; is that because of real "postal issues" or being ripped all the time?

[cdr]

Italy's postal system is subpar, "playing cards" are banned from import so customs can confiscate your package if they feel like it, and there's a very high percentage of fraudulent buyers - something having to do with Italian culture, I guess.

Dunno about Spain, never had a problem there.

[majikal]

So all the sellers refusing to ship to Italy/Spain; is that because of real "postal issues" or being ripped all the time?
A little bit of both, really. Packages tend to get held for ransom at customs until the buyer pays some fee, and a lot of the time they just don't feel like paying for it. And then they file Paypal claims saying they didn't get their package, etc. Not even delivery confirmation gets around customs, so a lot of sellers tend to stay away from these countries.

Although I've also been scammed buying from Spain, so who knows.

[dahcmai]

I've had several occasions of cards being opened in the post office and stolen when sending to Spain and Italy. Only once did I have this happen in Germany and no other times anywhere else. Seems you guys just don't have that great of a post office over there. I hear about it from other sellers all the time.

I had to stop selling overseas, because of the ability for someone to buy a card from me and just say they didn't receive it and then claim with paypal. Paypal will reimburse you and the seller is shit out of luck. It was becoming way to often to cover with profits. When I started breaking even on things, I called it good. I'm not about to start losing money because people could do this so easily.

Just wish I could hurry up buying this house so I could concentrate on the new site.

[Svenanole]

paypal just added a fee for personal playments now!

[jrsthethird]

Wait, so Paypal charges for sending money now too!?!

[denial]

or possibly to receive them. try thinking a little first. which is sort of the problem with this whole thread. do ebay/paypal really suck ? or do people just get greedy, make bad decisions, and not use common sense as often as they should.