Good (or Bad) News for eBay Sellers

What ebay doesn't realize is that they have become cost prohibitive to sell on. Most of the remaining sellers are professional bootleggers because those parties are the only ones that can still turn a profit. All these changes are going to hurt ebay because it solidifies the stigma that is already plagued to the eBay brand. You are more likely than not to receive counterfeit goods on the site. Now with the ever increasing fees, legit sellers are leaving and the counterfeiters are staying. They don't care if they loose an item and have to do a full refund without getting it back, with an 85% markup, they can afford it. In reality where profit margins are razor thin, you can't afford to do that.

Ebay will crumble when it gets to the point that even the bootleggers have left, if bootleggers can't turn a profit, ebay won't have any sellers left except for the big brand names like buy.com and those. But Amazon is far better than any of the major retailers that ebay has, and Amazon is also a seller so they can fulfill the orders quickly. They also offer Fulfillment programs to the sellers of the site so sellers products can be housed in an amazon warehouse and Amazon employees package the items when they're bought.

So to compare and contrast:

Amazon is known for being reasonably priced, they're strict on sellers so they don't have the plethora of horrible sellers that ebay has always had, they offer a fair playing field for both sellers and buyers. Come on, they have a limit to the amount of claims a buyer can make in the lifetime of the account (5 lifetime!) and they still maintain the best customer service of all online retailers. Their focus is on customer satisfaction and they hold their sellers to that focus. The quality of buyer is much higher as well. The buyer gets a much better/professional buying experience. The seller has more of a level playing field to work with and isn't held hostage to the useless opinion of the buying party. Amazon is profitable for sellers.

Ebay - carries the stigma of getting fake merchandise, rude sellers who may or may not respond to you, as a seller it's almost a guarantee you're going to get ripped off, and buyers can file claim after claim stating INR while leaving negs stating such. In reality there is no courier in existence that would make this many misdelivery problems and still be in business, yet ebay can find no "evidence" of abuse. Constantly lowering insertion fees while raising FVF fees on the back end resulting in higher overall costs and reduced ROI. You get no shipping compensation and are encouraged to offer free shipping. The auction format will die soon, and ebay will be completely useless at that point, at that point the transition will be complete, but everyone will have gone to Amazon already and found the better selling and buying experience that ebay is incapable of delivering.

B Miller of AZ 3:39PM September 11, 2010