The recent eBay fee changes have brought about a lot of discussion from sellers and buyers alike. It even brought about a fairly strong weeklong boycott by sellers that eBay barely acknowledges happened.
I’ve read some of the articles and a lot of the posts. Perhaps I am naïve but as a long time seller (for over a year I was a PowerSeller and eBay was my sole source of income) and buyer (I have bought clothing, gifts, books, cosmetics, electronics, artwork, eproducts – you name it and I have probably bought it on eBay. Ok, I’ve never bought a car but the dealer who sold me my car got it on eBay … but I digress), scamming on eBay has never been an issue. I got scammed once, back in 2003, for a $4.85 book. The seller dropped out of site right after the purchase and it never arrived. Oh well. On the other hand, I might feel considerably more wary of eBay if, instead of that one $4.85 book, I’d lost $4,850 on a bogus car sale.
But truthfully I have had nothing but good experiences on eBay. My path has crossed with a lot of truly wonderful folk, a lot of purely American folk and some tremendously gracious Europeans and even a lady from Africa whose package of three dollhouse paintings seemed to take forever to get there but she was ever so patient.
How about when I was looking at customer service and decided to poll my buyers on what they collected? One buyer (I wish I could remember what he bought from me) related that he collected fish food – like for gold fish – and it had to be OLD.
Selling on eBay taught me that folks would buy anything and sometimes the one thing that you’re thinking of tossing from that box lot might sell for $37.85. And men love their toys, particularly cars. I was forever getting lucky buying box lots of toy cars and turning them around for a $300, 400, 700 profit over the $50 or so I paid at auction. As a former Motor City girl, I had a hard time parting with a lot of those cars, particularly a 1973 Olds Cutlass model.
I have met so many wonderful people online.
Such as the time I had scored a vintage bottle of perfume from the 70’s with a hot eBay resale. Apparently folk have very fond memories of this scent, the name of which escapes me now, and pay top dollar (ok, upwards of $100-300 a bottle but when you’ve bought it for $5 along with a box of other junk, that’s a good profit margin). I listed the perfume and barely looked at the auction; so confident I was of a high ending price. Imagine my disappointment when it garnered only $78. Still a nice profit to be sure but I was a tad bummed.
That is until, through the transaction I got to know the buyer, a young nurse whose mother had been widowed when she was a little girl. She told me how her mother raised her and her siblings without a complaint – and never getting anything for herself. Her mom had loved this perfume and the nurse couldn’t wait to give it to her for mother’s day the following month. On her budget, she explained, she had tried and tried to buy the perfume for her mom but always got outbid. Only on eBay would you have that kind of story.
There were a lot of stories like that throughout my career of selling on eBay. I’ve also had some terrific buying experiences.
My beloved former father in law was a collector of antique pens. He had a marvelous set that brought him a lot of joy. He was also a WWII veteran. He’d enlisted at the age of 17, got a purple heart and spent nine months in an army hospital with shrapnel in his back that caused him pain all his life.
One holiday I couldn’t afford to buy him an expensive antique pen – but, on eBay, I found a WWII issue Eversharp pen and pencil set – boxed and in mint condition.
He couldn't have been more delighted.
In another instance I was looking for a gift for a friend I had made online and was to meet face to face – after 3 years. As a former Miss Alabama, Margie is a collector of all things queenly, most notably crowns … or “crayowns” as she calls them in her Southern twang.
After scouring the eBay listings I came across a wonderful old crown pin, not well photographed but I sensed it was lovely, priced at just $9.95 plus shipping. The pin, when it arrived, was pretty enough that I took it to the jewelers when I had my rings cleaned. It was, the jeweler informed me, from the 1940's and the stones were all garnets (surprise, Margie’s birthstone) and the metal gold – valued at around $350-400. Margie was delighted.
Only on eBay can you still make those kinds of transactions in today’s homogenized world. It would seem to me that eBay could market itself much more successfully if they focused on the positive, rather than their consistent emphasis on the negative. By continuing to hammer away at sellers with penalizing fees and now, removing their right to feedback, eBay seems to be targeting their smaller mom and pop sellers - and is most certainly setting itself up to lose what made I great in the first place.
