selector wrote: loathar used the term, "foul stench of progress". I would respectfully counter, loathar, that foul stenches come from putrefaction and stagnation, not from Life, from viability, and vitality.
loathar used the term, "foul stench of progress". I would respectfully counter, loathar, that foul stenches come from putrefaction and stagnation, not from Life, from viability, and vitality.
Tell that to my friends from Deluxe and all the other check printers that lost their jobs, careers and pensions. You've gotta remember, a lot of those new high tech computer banking jobs went over seas to third world call centers.
I won't use PayPal because it's just another guy sticking his hand out to take a cut. I've seen quite a few posts here where people said PayPal did nothing to fix a problem they had. I don't recall a single post where anyone praised them for righting a wrong. (MY )
rtraincollector wrote: I was looking at the latest message from ebay in my ebay messages and was shocked to see that come october you will not be ableto receive or pay via checks or money ordeer for items you buy/sell. They want you only to use credit cards or debit cards and pay thru paypal or other electronic paying companies. We're taking steps to give sellers the most dynamic marketplace on the Internet: reduced upfront cost, optimized exposure, and a more consistent buyer experience to drive more sales. Your Auction-style listings with a low start price are still the best deal on eBay -- no change in Auction-style fees! Plus, we're introducing a new 35¢ Insertion Fee for Fixed Price listings-regardless of the asking price or number of items in the listing-with a 30-day duration and automatic renewal option at no extra cost. For some of your items, this new Fixed Price option may be a great solution.Driving more sales with a more consistent buyer experienceWe're taking other steps to ensure buyers keep coming back to eBay:Limits on shipping and handling charges Big seller rewards for free shipping, including free subtitle, a boost in search results, and double PowerSeller fee discounts No more checks and money orders New seller standards: Minimum 4.3 on all DSRs More relevant search results to drive more sales. We're optimizing Best Match to surface the inventory most relevant to each buyer and show the best of Auction-style and Fixed Price. Get more information about these important changes. You're also invited to participate in one of several webinars scheduled for August 20-26.
I was looking at the latest message from ebay in my ebay messages and was shocked to see that come october you will not be ableto receive or pay via checks or money ordeer for items you buy/sell. They want you only to use credit cards or debit cards and pay thru paypal or other electronic paying companies.
Plus, we're introducing a new 35¢ Insertion Fee for Fixed Price listings-regardless of the asking price or number of items in the listing-with a 30-day duration and automatic renewal option at no extra cost. For some of your items, this new Fixed Price option may be a great solution.
I found this
"Payment on pick-up"
I will just message the buyer I will use a money order, and carry on as usual.
If they don't accept that, pfft on EBAY anymore.
When in England, we bought Pounds at exchange. 1.20 to the dollar. Now it's twice that. When in Canada we bought CDN at .74 plus or minus a few cents. I completed a recent Ebay buy from Canada just about 1 for one dollar even exchange more or less. It was transparent to me buying in CDN online.
Ebay by requiring people to, only do paypal or creditcard is going to find themselves out of income to a certain extent. There is just too many people who WILL use a check or money order and NEVER use the electronic money. I understand that Ebay is trying to tighten the good ship revenue from all these little leaks and grey-water sloshing about the bilge to appease the stock holder who thinks that the Ebay can do better.
One of my family members has a sign "Beatings continue until Morale Improves" in his workshop and I think Ebay will suffer from these rules. Sure they can burn off alot of the sellers and buyers who refuse to abide by the new rules. But can enough leave ebay to make them reconsider the folly of thier change?
Personally I'm thinking of looking into selling on www.choochoo.com auctions ( www.traincity.com ) charles sigel he just moved from PA. to FL and mainly has O but he offers spots for all gauges and I mainly deal in O so its good for me. From what I understand its free to list and then and only when you acually sell do you pay anything. I can still offer paypal if I wish or I can require money orders ( postal) if I wish.
I've done a lot of searching today scince I was off and came up with this by a freinds recomemdation
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
If I sold you a Athearn RTR Boxcar with three day Priority you will pay shipping plus whatever the last bid is. If you are a GOOD ebayer, you will stop the bidding at MSRP - shipping = cost of the boxcar in your hobbyshop. Most of the time you will be seeing a boxcar with SHIPPING, at MSRP and so on. Basically a Virtual hobbyshop with no real cost savings.
If you waited long enough like a vulture circling above, you might snag this same BOXCAR at 5.00 plus a few dollars parcel shipping but might have to fight 10 others for it.
If I say sorry, no checks, no money orders, paypal only etc etc in response to the new rule. That RTR boxcar will have about 10% of page views it once did and less than 5% of bidding activity it once did under the more open payment rules previously.
And yes it might take 30 days instead of 4 to consumate the sale of the boxcar. Might as well ditch ebay and go to the hobby shop or catalog house and have it shipped to you.
Ive seen many a rtr train thing go out the door at 6.00 total with shipping, ebay fees etc eating into the seller. Nothing makes me as angry as it does a sale that cost ME money to complete. Might as well pour some deisel onto it and burn it in the burnpit.
I'm trying to figure out how small sellers ( as opposed to dealers) could offer free shipping. Say I have an item that normally sells for $25.00. I start the auction at $10.00, and it doesn't attract many bidders, selling for $15.00. So I would be offering free shipping of say $7-10 on this item? Selling it for $15.00? This does not compute!
Maybe I'm missing something here, maybe they intend for the power sellers to offer free shipping on most of their stuff with "Buy it Now" pricing, which would be high enough to include their shipping costs?
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
Alternatives?
Easy, someone can set up a server and get a train swap/trade/buy site thing going. All we need to do is get "For sale train choo choo" information to... B "The train buyer" And the rest can be hammered out like checks, money orders etc.
If all or most of the ebay train stores get together and develop a "Coop" server for train stuff away from ebay and do thier business there... that should get things going rather well.
Bill,
Somewhere down the line eBayers will get a notice that their account information has been compromised due to a theft of an eBay employee's laptop, or a disk was inadvertently misplaced or their system has been hacked and before they knew it some uncertain number of eBayers accounts are at risk......yadda. yadda. Part of this communication will be a pious commitment on eBay's part to assure you that measures have been taken to insure that such an occurence cannot be repeated in the future...blah, blah....and oh, monitor your credit, debit, Paypal account to make sure no fraudulent activity is taking place.
I've purchased and sold on eBay and used personal checks and money orders on both kinds of transactions and have not as yet had a bad experience via these "antiquated" transaction methods.
As one of the responders to your posting noted it's a business and they will use every technique to maximize their profit and in so doing will assure you with what amounts to a corporate straight face that it's in your best interest(businesses have but one interest, their own).
Jon
If you read the financial news, you'll find eBay's stock is not where the investors would like it to be. The number of buyers is declining, which is not a good sign for future profits. Amazon is supposed to be cleaning eBay's clock with its lineup of sellers at fixed prices. The business progosticators claim that auction fatigue, and limitations of the auction business model are limiting eBay. Hence, the emphasis on Buy it Now listings by sellers, and other steps to lower the percentage of "burned" experiences of eBay. Not that eBay cared to do much about fraud before, no matter how much buyers and sellers complained (there are too many bad apples on both sides). And because of that attitude, eBay's shady reputation exists.
Unfortunately, I think eBay is missing the bigger picture. There are numerous hobby and craft communities that have grown up using eBay as THE primary or secondary market for buying/selling their goods. The auctions would typically set the going price for items. The new rules are going to force these communities to reduce their presence on eBay. I already see evidence of this in much higher price volatility (price swings of $45 to $100 or $115 to $195 from week to week for the same item) than I am used to seeing. To me, this is an indication that the number of buyers competing for a given item is way down.
The most onerous of the new rules is probably the shipping cost limitations, and the strong "encouragement" to have sellers offer free shipping. If sellers were limited to realistic shipping costs, that would be one thing. But often the limitations mean a seller is going to automatically lose money in addition to the higher fees on auctions. What I expect to see is a lot more Buy it Now for ridiculously high prices, and a lot more unsold merchandise, as sellers over-estimate what their stuff is worth. eBay obviously anticipates the same because the Buy it Now listings will be good for 30 days under the new rules instead of the current 7.
Hopefully, a new, widely used auction site will arise, which will once again provide us with a realistic market price.
my thoughts
Fred W
vsmith wrote: This raises a good question, aside from these two, what ARE the alternatives to Ebay?
This raises a good question, aside from these two, what ARE the alternatives to Ebay?
I miss Yahoo auctions, free listings, small % if you sold the item. Even with free listings they couldn't compete.
Onlineauction.com and Ubid.com, but of course, you will not see the traffic that EBay gets.
GS
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
The more I think about this the less I like it.
I agree that check payments are iffy at best but to eliminate money orders in lieu of PayPal seams to me to smack of more than a little self-interest. Ebay has been catering more and more to their online stores and there higher prices than to the little guy like me who only sells 3 or 4 times a year and subsequently gets the shaft.
I suspect if I continue buying on Ebay, I will do so with a prepay debit card account in lieu of paying by MO, as for selling - I dunno just yet, I got a ton of bike parts I was going to sell on there, but this rather self-serving policy has me second guessing that, how much ya wanna bet Craigslist and Amazon.Auctions will see a rise in listings after this.
Have fun with your trains
Apparently, it wasn't "secure" was it?
Dude, you have the worst luck
Geared Steam wrote:A little PARANOID Jeff ???
A little PARANOID Jeff ???
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
Robby P. wrote:I sell all of my weathered cars on eBay. I accept checks, money orders, and Paypal. I have some buyers that use checks only. Now that makes me wonder if I will not get there business anymore. Makes you wonder if you can get around the Paypal only payment. Probably say that you paid threw paypal and still send a check. I guess they wouldn't know.
Don't count on it. Ebay owns Paypal and the two are linked as well. Paypal is a good way to pay for ourchases made thru Ebay. Many vendors accept payment thru Paypal as well. But one has to carefully watch Paypal just like you watch any other account that contains your money. To do otherwise is just asking for trouble these days.
As for doing business on Ebay, well I've been there since the 1990s. I used to be able to sell lots of stuff there but it hasn't been the same for the last couple of years. Competiton is stiff and there just aren't as many buyers there as there once were. So I've cut back on what I sell and te number of auctions that I have running at any one time. Lot's of vendors have left Ebay and lots of folks who used to buy there have done the same.
As for the liars and cheats, well they come on both sides of the transaction these days. But their presence are highly overexagerated. Besides feedback is important and it has to be looked at before committing to buy or sell anything. YOu shouldn't look only at the number of positive feedbacks a prospective vendor or buyer has but also at the feedback ratios. 100% or very close to that is good anything less could be asking for trouble.
Irv
Last Chance wrote:I got out of ebay last month after about 4 years because of changes. If someone was to try and log in as me and get the password wrong (And they will) Ebay computers call my home at all hours.Unacceptable.
That's very strange. I've typed my password wrong from time to time, and they've never done this. Of course, I think I may still have a dummy phone number listed (done after a buyer called me for technical support and ended up wanting to shoot the breeze).
jeffrey-wimberly wrote: rtraincollector wrote: I was looking at the latest message from ebay in my ebay messages and was shocked to see that come october you will not be ableto receive or pay via checks or money ordeer for items you buy/sell. They want you only to use credit cards or debit cards and pay thru paypal or other electronic paying companies.Am I going to buy from EBay anymore?NO WAY! As long as I could pay by money order it was OK, but putting my credit card and/or bank account info online? Nothing doing!
rtraincollector wrote: I was looking at the latest message from ebay in my ebay messages and was shocked to see that come october you will not be ableto receive or pay via checks or money ordeer for items you buy/sell. They want you only to use credit cards or debit cards and pay thru paypal or other electronic paying companies.
Am I going to buy from EBay anymore?
NO WAY!
As long as I could pay by money order it was OK, but putting my credit card and/or bank account info online? Nothing doing!
Well, there goes the way I usually buy stuff. (use my paycheck and take money from it for money orders).
Sometimes the MO is faster, since it always takes 5 days for Paypal, and lots of people I've boughten from, that MO would only take a few days to get there.
Vincent
Wants: 1. high-quality, sound equipped, SD40-2s, C636s, C30-7s, and F-units in BN. As for ones that don't cost an arm and a leg, that's out of the question....
2. An end to the limited-production and other crap that makes models harder to get and more expensive.
One way or another, we'll just have to get used to more restrictive rules that always come about when dishonest people abuse the system.
Tom
--------------
Indeed.
And here's the sad part. Crooks will win by finding new electronic rip off methods ..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
BRAKIE wrote: Crooks been around for years cashing bad checks,stolen checks etc yet stores still gave their customers options of:Will that be cash,check or charge?Customer service RIP.
Crooks been around for years cashing bad checks,stolen checks etc yet stores still gave their customers options of:Will that be cash,check or charge?
Customer service RIP.
Problem is, when the store gets ripped off by a customer using a fradulent check, guess who ended up paying for it? That's right, the honest, paying customers. This drives prices up and makes some stores less competitive. The more ways they can find to keep costs down, the more customers will spend their money there. If paying customers want the low prices, they will just have to figure out how to use cash or get a debit card.
Seems like the same logic applies to eBay, but in reverse. Instead of the seller getting ripped off by a bad check (since he doesn't have to ship the item if the check doesn't clear), it's the buyer who usually gets ripped off by a dishonest seller who cashes the check, but doesn't ship the item. I agree that doing away with checks/money orders might make it easier for buyers to trust the seller, and therefore do more buisness.
Lots of emotion here already.
My take on this, not that I have any intention of every dealing with ebay, is that the company has a duty to its shareholders, people who believe in the model and in what they do, people with values, to ensure the company evolves ethically and mechanically so that it has long-term viability. It would be unethical to not change when change is indicated because its customer base was becoming vulnerable to fraudsters. One could even say they had embraced "green" a bit and want to do away with mail, paper, and all the eco-unfriendly usage of that nature. Maybe not. In any event, the company must evolve when they understand the need to do it for its own sake. That almost always means it is, to a healthy extent, good for its customers as well...a positive sum game for all who do ebay, employees, management, and some of you.
Ebay has learned over recent times that their policies have caused grief for too many of the very people upon whom they rely. It would be suicidal to shrug and tell people to get over it.
My
Ebay makes a good "Train show" when there is none around here except once a year down in Pine Bluff which isnt really a safe town having just annexed 4 state prisons.
The trick is finding actual hobby shops that have some of these items in stock and buying direct.
Shipping is my biggest reason for getting out. Made a 100 dollar sale requiring a building in HO scale to ship in a 2 foot by 3 foot box two feet high. The box was 8.00 gratis to the buyer along with the necessary packing and double boxing also gratis. So... roughly 20 dollars gone. The post office got most of what was left over after ebay fees and etc was paid.
One reason I found shipping to be steep was because I shipped only priority mail with the necessary confirmation, tracking etc. No other method. Most of the time I could sometimes build in "My half" of the shipping prices into the open bid to get the customers fee down to about 15 dollars for shipping.
Ebay started to moderate what shipping fees were charged with pop up boxes etc while you attempt to build the sale. They would think that 16 dollars, 20 dollars or whatever were too much. So that ended my 1.00 open bids and made them 30.00 or whatever resulting in higher fees all around.
160+ sales all perfect 100% and only three issues, two of which were naru'ed against the person who did it and one was a straight refund of a 10 dollar boxcar that was damaged badly.
Ebay made lots of money off me in 4 years. When the adding was finished it was close to 2500 dollars to them. And another 2 grand to the US post office which saw me as a cash cow requiring first class service. And I dont recall too much paypaling fees or trouble because again I kept a isolated bank account and "Zeroed" it after every sale completion. Ive heard of them taking whatever it is they wanted to via autodraft.
No, Ebay is not a way for making a living. Indeed it was a very good way of dumping unwanted train stuff to good homes. Yes I say dumping. If that nice 400 dollar engine did not pull very well upgrade then it got sold for a hundred or whatever the market would bear. I would hope that the buyer would enjoy these things.
Plowing through the mounds of truly junk items to get to the diamond in the swine trough takes hours per day and a planned sale is a military style sniper strike planned down to the last three seconds at any day/hour with obscene amounts of cash stacked and ready to go in that paypal.
Oh.. that paypal? 500 dollars every month yer allowed to move in buying or selling. If you want to be able to move 2000 dollars per month, you go down to the Justice of Peace office and draw up a Marriage certificate between you and Paypal and get ready to bend over. Sheesh.
I dont know about you, but I actually enjoy train shows these days with simple tables and prices written on post it note pads.
Also I enjoyed not having to hassle with sales taxes, money order fees other than .65 cents or whatever to generate one and follow up on it whenever the money order got lost or whatever the buyer or seller might claim. I did personal checks twice and did not ship until my bank said that the check itself cleared. That would take about 14 days.
I investigated the possibility of sending stuff to the local store downtown that advertised themselves as taking your stuff and selling it on ebay. I dont see how they can do it very long with that albatross of a store around thier neck.
Sorry for the negative tone, I must mention that there were plenty of very good people on ebay who bought trains and sometimes shared with me small tidbits about the "Stuff" or photos on occasion. I believe also that several were train clubs and think that perhaps the stuff I sold might be part of a model train somewhere passing in front of people who knows nothing about the hobby during a open house.
One can dream.
I say that the ebay's attempt to exert thier own control with the heavy hand in the form of "IOmportant Changes" written in overtones meant to make you feel good as you are shipped to hell onboard the train with shackles.... that model of business is dead and if it is the future, I dont want any part of it.
The IO misspelling in the Important word is deliberate. A sort of a computerese word for Input/Output. I say garbage in garbage out.
However, The draconian restrictions listed by ebay pretty much squeezes out the giggling 8 year old playing ebay game on daddy's computer or perhaps those who have no intention of paying anything for anything. Credit cards have a way of making sure that the buyer or seller is something that can be chased down and nailed to the wall by ebay security should a buyer whine about the mashed box off the UPS brown truck.
Cash only or I go home.
I might just go home lolz.
I don't understand a buyer's hesitation in using PayPal. As far as I know, the SELLER pays all the fees when a buyer uses their services. I have my account set up to allow debit and credit cards, for a one time minimal fee. I don't have a store, just a load of MRR stuff I've bought over the years that I have decided will never get built or installed on my layout.
For my purposes, the change in payment method is great. There have been times I've waited weeks for a money order to get to me. Almost always I have to query the buyer as to the status of his payment when he uses a money order.
Almosts always I get payment within two days when PayPal is used. The transaction is far cleaner and quicker that way.
Another change that eBay is making is that I, as a seller, don't like is that I can no longer post comments on dealing with a customer. Most customers have been absolutely fabulous, and there have been one or two stinkers. Seems pretty one-sided to me.
Maybe where you live, care to guess how many public train shows we have here per year?
....one.
...and they kinda frown on selling bike part and furniture at those shows
People, it's called TRAIN SHOW.
Good deals, sometimes can be great with decent stuff too.
Also known as real modelers ebay...