I use to buy a lot of Cinerama related items on EBAY but, I see the same items
being re-listed each month for many months (sometime years!) by the same
sellers with the same inflated buy-it-now price. They must have plenty of money
to be able to re-list their items with no sales.
Glenn Taranto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Bruce -
I've been feeling the same way for a long time. I used to think eBay was the
greatest thing going but then...
1) Less items being offered or interested in
2) Overpriced shipping and Bad packaging
3) Unsold items being relisted over and OVER again to the point where I
wonder if the seller can still make a profit.
4) Search items and catagories suck - really, really suck.
5) Worrying if what is being offered is what you are really going to get.
As a person who used to enjoy small time selling but hasn't really done so on
a regular basis in years I can add this...
Many of the items I sold were collectibles. The odd poster, vhs, dvd's,
books, photos. One of a kind type stuff that I wouldn't be able to hit the
relist button and sell an identical item. So the same process had to take
place over and over...
Taking a picture, scanning an item, and writing a detailed description for a
9.95 item, then having to pack it, take it to the post office, write emails
back for inane questions, (ie is this a real dvd or a knockoff?) and be
concerned about a crackpot's response, and then there are the eBay and Paypal
fees...
I realized I was making less per hour than if I worked at In and Out Burger.
The time and expense just wasn't worth it. Subsequently I started taking some
items to Ameoba records just to get rid of stuff. Getting 5 for it instead of
10 saved me a lot of time and aggravation. I felt it came out to the same
return.
Sure there's the chance an item could hit a bidding war but what a pain to
try and find out. If it did it wasn't going to be thousands of dollars for me
anyway.
I have a feeling a lot of people now feel the same way. The initial feeling
of a selling bonanza has waned once people did the math.
Glenn T.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bruce Hershenson
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 5:32 AM
Subject: [MOPO] How much time/money do you spend on eBay NOW, compared to
a few years ago?
I USED to be a really regular buyer on eBay (for a while, my buying level
was so high I needed a full-time employee to take care of paying, unpacking,
leaving feedback, etc). Not just movie paper, but also vintage glass frames,
paperback books, 1939 World's fair items, #1 magazines, and a few other
areas I somehow wandered into.
I had a lot of really good searches saved, and I also would go through a
few select entire categories, and also check all the offerings of the sellers
I bought from the most.
One day, I noticed that eBay had added a lot of unnecessary categories,
that really messed up my category searching, and worse yet, many sellers
were posting items wherever they wanted, and no one was policing this at
all, and complaints to eBay went unanswered.
Later, I noticed that most of my searches had gotten screwed up (some
kind of changes eBay had made), and I was just unwilling to re-do them all
(since eBay might ruin them again at any time).
I also noticed more and more sellers being deceptive in their titles,
meaning I would have to click on the listing to see what it REALLY was.
Sometimes titles like "Casablanca, rare style original movie poster" might
turn out to be a 1990s video poster!
Finally I noticed that many of my "favorite" sellers were listing less
and less, and when they did list anything good, they would usually have a high
starting price, unwilling to gamble their good posters on an eBay that was
clearly delivering less and less in the way of good buyers.
Worst of all, I was finding that a growing percentage of my purchases
took longer and longer to arrive (sometimes I would have to complain to get it
sent) and a growing percentage of my purchases were not very well
wrapped, and a growing percentage of my purchases were ovrer-graded and the
seller had somehow "missed" extremely obvious defects.
ONE DAY, I JUST PACKED IT IN AND QUIT BUYING ON EBAY COLD TURKEY. Do I
miss finding lots of cool stuff? Absolutely! But do I miss the hour a day I
used to spend searching all over eBay, finding something that seemed to be
promising but that turned out to be nothing, or do I miss the crushed
packages, or the over-graded items? Not at all!
HOW ABOUT YOU? How do your eBay buying habits NOW compare to a few years
ago, both in terms of time spent on the site, and total money spent?
Bruce
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