the fact is that everyone is going to be effected by ebay pushing up their prices. Instead of having your margins pushed, I would see it more as having your cost of sales put up. Everyone is in the same boat here and we can all still make money on ebay.
I have a friend who was selling $5,000 a week worth of musical instruments a week on Ebay, then some jerk came along and was giving my friend some hassle over the price or something related to he wanted it shipped overnight at no extra cost I forget what, anyway, my friend declined his sale, refunded his money from PayPal and about 3 days later his account on Paypal was frozen with about $2,000 cash in it and no explanation. He was a powerseller with 99. something pos feedbacks and a member since 2001, Paypal which is owned by Ebay refused to tell him why they froze his account and claimed it was "something on your credit report"
His calls to Paypal were fruitless, they said he could not appeal and they would not reinstate his account, so that started a downward spiral where his customers expecting their merchandise were refunded by Paypal and were angry they didn't get their items and left negative feedbacks- about 10-12 all in a week due to that.
Then Ebay shut his account off and it now shows "No longer a registered member"
Naturally my friend is extremely upset, his business has been literally destroyed by Ebay and now he has been forced to sell of things to live on while scrambling to put up alternatives sales venues- web site etc which will takes months to get sales from.
So the warning is DO NOT EVER put all your sales on Ebay because like so many others this sort of thing has hapened to- one complaint there or Paypal
can get your account terminated without warning. See paypalsucks.com too while you are at it.
My friend calculated that with t he Ebay fees for listing 70-80 items at a time, the final value fees, the PayPal fees etc he was paying out close to 30% and really was not making much money at all.
He, like myself enjoyed Ebay's spendid email around Xmas time that said (despite record profits I might add);
"Happy Holidays! Happy New Years!" oh, by the way, after much thought we are RAISING fees, again, Happy New Year!"
Yep, Happy New Years to us!
try ziing.com and blujay.com ziing was started as a free alternative to Ebay started by former Ebay users.
An antique dealer was in the news for shill bids on his items, he was ripping people left and right that way brazenly till a reporter exposed him, when he was caught he claimed Ebay would do nothing because he was a power seller and brought them tens of thousands of dollars a week... they closed his account, probably only because it was in the news and made Ebay look bad.
