I recently sold some items on Ebay. It's been a few years since I last had the opportunity of partaking from their services. In that amount of time, Ebay has nearly doubled the cost of doing business with them. They now charge a 9% commission on every single thing they sell. Couple this with the paypal fees, which are anywhere from 2-6%. My Paypal fees are 3.15%. So... to sell an item on Ebay, it cost me 12.15%. More than a tenth of the sale price. Forget making any profit.
Here's my scenario. I sold a brand new cell phone for about $112. Ebay took $9.45 immediately off the top. Then, paypal took about $4.00. Add my shipping charges to that, another $10. That's pretty much 1/4 of the total sale already eaten up before I even see a dime. RIDICULOUS! How is that sustainable?
The last nail in the casket (at least for me) is I learned that Ebay quadrupled their profits this quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Interesting. This company quadrupled their business when other businesses are going under and people are losing their shirts. Sure, that's a great business plan, but what about the employees and customers that built that business for you? I think this is a stab in the back. I for one will NEVER use ebay ever again. I will gladly let my items rot in a storage unit for all of time before I let Ebay make one more penny off the sale of my products. A small fee is acceptable, but 10-20% off the top before I see a dime is highway robbery. I'll just take my stuff to the free classifieds or pawn shops for that matter.
SCREW EBAY!
http://www.ebay.com
http://www.paypal.com
http://www.craigslist.org
-Serrated
