I have been selling on ebay for over 5 years now . I have always accepted paypal , cash , money orders and cashier checks as payment. I just tried listing 45 items on ebay and guess what . I had to change my payment options to accept only paypal , it would not let me list my items until they were changed. The little red warning popped up and it said that electronic payment thru paypal is the only payment option I may use and that I had to change my listings. This is absolutely ridiculous . Now this on top of the shipping limits , it's out of control .

Shipping limits??

Yes they put a $3.00 domestic shipping limit on cd's (international does not have a limit) , but only for the small guy not for the people that have ebay stores . That wouldn't be that bad if it was only for single cd's , but it's even on box sets . I have tried listing The Scorpions 3cd box , Howlin' Wolfs 3 cd set and Deep Purples 6 cd box set and it won't allow me to enter more than $3 for domestic shipping . Now they add that only paypal can be used as payment . Thats alot more money they make now . I think it's time for a massive boycott.

I haven't put anything up for a while, and I have heard a ton of complaints about the way they are running the show there now.

They're SUPPOSED to be holding everyone to the shipping limits (ha ha ha ha). The way around it is to use "calculated shipping", though they will supposedly take down listings if they disagree. The other option is to use "free shipping" & add your shipping + ebay's 15% fee to the cost of the item.

Ironically (but I'm not at all surprised) my shipping "dsr" has gotten worse since i lowered shipping rates to honor this........ It saved ebay a 10% "DISCOUNT" they were SUPPOSED to apply to my account.

I just got my first invoice under the new fee structure. Forgetting my significant shipping losses, my sales are down over $1200 from September to October, & my ebay monthly fee is UP $4.00.

[bigred]I HATE EBAY[/bigred]

At this point, the boycott really is already on. I don't list on eBay anymore, and I haven't bought anything on it for over a year. PayPal was always a con, and eBay's decision to force it on sellers and buyers will hopefully be a disaster. And, yes, the worst part is that sellers can't even mention that they accept money orders or checks.

I emailed ebay asking them why I couldn't list my items with the cash and money order payment options. They responded within 12 hours (record time) . They said starting November 1st they are only accepting electronic payments to ensure buyer security . And starting January 2009 they are putting some other payment limitation crap into place .For years they would always say to start thing at your lowest price possible now all of the sudden they are telling me to raise my starting price if I want to make up the shipping difference . Sure the higher you start an item at the more they charge .This is just another way of them taking a piece of your earnings , a bunch of BS . I wish YAHOO still had auctions, I'd switch . Is there any auction sites ?

http://ebayboycott.info/

Not a lot of activity yet, but I bet more sites like this will pop up soon.

ioffer.com is the only one I know of other then ebay & Amazon that appears to generate actual sales. Never tried it myself, as all attemts tp contact customer service have been ignored.

I don't believe I've posted this link before; it's hilarious.

http://jburtphotos.com/eBay-Customer-Service

A Real eBay Customer Service Exchange

Wow.

I've never sold anything on ebay but I have a small collection of collectable CDs, magazines and such that I thought of putting up for bid. I have to say that these posts are scaring me off of that idea. Are there any decent alternatives?

No, especially not in auction format. Other fixed price options that some people have success with are Amazon & Ioffer. Overstock & Buy have auctions, but I don't believe they have much traffic.

Amazon is the best alternative. I'm certainly glad to be done dealing with eBay. I also enjoy ignoring all the special offers they send me to try and get me to return to working with them.

Amazon yes , but from what I heard about and read about Ioffer , STAY AWAY.

I know of people have had success on Ioffer with dvdr's of out of print classic films that the other sites won't allow.

What have you heard bad about them? I've stayed away mostly due to having problems posting & a very unresponsive customer support. It's in the back of my mindd to list there eventually, I have 100's of out of print films, mostly 20's-40's.

Have any of you had problems recently with eBay/PayPal putting holds on payments until proof is shown (through either feedback or delivery confirmation) that the item was received by the buyer? I bought a CD from a seller a couple of days ago and transmitted payment immediately. The next day he forwarded me an e-mail he had received from PayPal saying he would not be allowed to access the funds until I left positive feedback, delivery confirmation info was transmitted, or 21 days passed. He was pissed -- not at me, but at eBay -- and asked whether I would be willing to leave positive feedback in advance so he could access the funds. Given his 100% positive feedback rating, I went ahead and did him the favor. But that really is crappy, making a seller wait for his funds like that. It's never happened to me. Has this become yet another strange, new eBay policy?

That's SUPPOSED to only happen with new sellers.

Pay Pal has also conveniently had their automatic nightly batch closing feature "broken" for over a MONTH. That's a standard feature of any merchant account. Obviously, Pay Pal needs/wants the extra time with the money for extra interest.

Warning: I just discovered that sellers have basically no protection from ebay &/or Pay Pal in "item not as described" disputes. I'd kind of suspected this, but when it's going to cost me around $400 including $70+ in postage to Germany & China it sort of hits home. From speaking with a pay pal manager It goes like this:

1. The customer will ALWAYS win this type of dispute, unless they refuse to return the item. It was explained to me in this way: "Say you were selling a Michael Jackson item. For unknown reasons the customer thought they were buying something by Cher, even though the word "Cher" was nowhere in the listing & Michael Jackson was stated repeatedly, if the customer says it was supposed to be a Cher cd, by Pay pal's policies the customer will always win & get a 100% refund.

2. Requiring insurance means nothing. Pay Pal will NOT require the customer to file an insurance claim under any circumstances. I have found that some non US customers have an aversion to filing a claim (I'm dealing with that now, 1 of the 2 situations the customer also complained that the shipment was damaged but refuses to file a claim, even though they'd get to keep the merchandise & get a full refund. Makes me doubt the customer's honesty). I don't know why; but in 10 years I've NEVER had this problem with USA customers being willing to cooperate with an insurance claim.

3. Ebay takes NO responsibility at all, even when entering the correct sku on their pre-filled listing section brings up the wrong information (this happened in my situation).

4. This one is especially ironic: Ebay now REQUIRES sellers to post a return policy with any exclusions clearly stated. However, Pay Pal (owned by ebay) has told me very clearly that they will ignore that stated policy 100% of the time.

Unfortunately, (based on talking to them a couple months back), from a seller's perspective Amazon is no better then Ebay/Pay Pal other then that their prefilled listings tend to be more accurate then ebay's. On the other hand, Pay Pal does offer seller protection for US non delivery if the dc shows the item was delivered. Amazon does not offer that.

As international is close to 25% of my business, I'm really thinking of shutting down. Just don't know where to get a decent paying job in this economy at my age (over 50).

Oh, & on an unrelated note, ebay is once again requiring us to change ALL of our listings (by "us" I mean ALL of us), to remove any reference to the words "check" & "money order" & any reference to any shipping fee we might have once charged in the past that's higher then their new maximums. As i spent 25 hours + last fall doing a similar update, I may choose to tell ebay to go f**k themselves.

Even though it would be less profitable, i am once again considering moving to Amazon; they haven't pissed me off or treated me like poop LATELY.

Despite my 10+ years of selling on ebay, no Pay Pal chargebacks EVER, & current 100% ebay feedback rating (30,000+), Pay Pal has taken $119 from my bank account, just in case I lose the dispute. They feel they can hold my $119 until the end of the month.

The problem is that even with all of that, it's still remarkably easy for a buyer to get screwed by an Ebay seller.

If you pay with Pay Pal, it's pretty difficult for the buyer to get screwed.

Not unless an overseas seller stalls you longer than 60 days.

This is all too bad.

I enjoy buying things on eBay, but have only tried selling years ago.
If it's gotten this bad for the sellers, then I'm surely missing out on
some great stuff that no longer makes it to eBay.