Your latest scheme to take the sellers ability to leave negative feedback on buyers away is no less ridiculous than PayPal’s policy of taking money from a sellers account before you ever ask for particulars on a dispute.

It becomes more and more clear to many sellers on eBay that you really don’t care about us. How could you when your system is so heavily weighted towards the buyers and pillages the slim profits most sellers endure to be competitive on their auctions. Let me give an example, I once sold a video card to a guy in the UK. First he gripes because he didn’t get the card fast enough, which he can blame customs for, not me.

Then he gets the card and tries to extort a partial refund from me under the threat of leaving negative feedback because delivery took so long. All a buyer has to do is complain and you take money from the seller. Sometimes once the money is turned over to the buyer in the instance where you finally side with them (fairly or not), the item in question never makes it back to the seller leaving the buyer with the item and the money. And now I can’t even leave a negative comment for that.

At least with the old system, I could threaten to leave the buyer negative feedback. What about the ability for sellers to warn other sellers when a deadbeat has a tendency to bid and not pay for items? Sellers often don’t leave buyers bad feedback for fear of negative feedback themselves.  I am all for reassessing your system because there is much to be desired in how things operate now, but taking the little power a seller has away is certainly not the way to do it. All you have accomplished with this move is to give every hater and nit-picky buyer on eBay permission to hose a seller as they see fit without fear of retribution.

Lots of people like to think that Microsoft has a monopoly, but if you ask me eBay is the biggest monopoly around. EBay has us by the throat coming and going. If you want to sell something online, you really have little other choice than eBay and if you want to use eBay you really have no other choice than PayPal. All I can say is please, please someone (Google!) offer us a real alternative to eBay and its draconian policies and PayPal.

I’m not alone in my feelings. CNN Money reports that five long time eBay sellers feel the same way I do and are jumping the eBay ship over the new fees and lost ability to leave negative feedback. When eBay first reported they were cutting fees it seemed like a good thing until you start to get into the fine print. Once you really look at it eBay claims it reduced fees, which it did for the listing of an item with a reduction from $0.20 to $0.15.

However, what eBay didn’t really talk about was the fact that it was increasing final value fees from 10% to 12% for inventory in eBay stores. For sellers with high final values that represents a significant increase in their expenses to operate on eBay. That means that an item in an eBay store that sells for $500 final value will see an additional $10 in eBay fees under the new schedule.

The saddest part is as much as many sellers admonish eBay and PayPal, they will still sell on eBay. What other choice do we really have?

Sincerely,
Shane McGlaun