Little Ebay Gripes
 

It's probably no real secret that I've been dumping a lot of parts lately from my 10+ year stash consolidating what I have... even selling off several of my nice restored Cubs and attachments I said I'd never part with. I've sold some things on Ebay and its been nothing but a nightmare. Among the problems, I've had at least two other sellers sharply slashing prices to undercut me when I list something (makes you wonder how much they marked up before and they don't realize when my one item is gone so am I in the market, so not exactly competing), 1 Ebay tractor-parting regular message me and ask me to remove my item because its inferior to his and he even falsely reported it to try to shut it down, 3 non-paying no show bidders that have cost me sales and wasted my time, and 12 people that never left feedback after I left it (both buying and selling). This is all since 2012 started by the way.

I'm not trying to start an uproar and understand free economy and competition, but come on... are people this desperate to control every inch of the market every minute and have nothing real to do in life but attack others? Guess I'm just blowing off steam for once, not trying to start a war.

When you're 40+ years old and still living in your mom's basement, what you have to sell on ebay so you can afford your cigarettes, becomes more precious than life itself. Therefore, cornering the market and knocking out your competition is all in a day's work... :ROTF2:

:biggrin2: Oh man that just made my night and I'm all better now :biggrin2:

Almost forgot 2 sellers changing their listing to specifically include (without mentioning names) why their product was superior and mine junk. I went to buy an item from one of them in specific but they openly told me how my other item was "inferior" and changed theirs to follow that point. Cost them a $70 sale. I paid more local but money well spent I feel.

Kevin,

Non payers,non feedbackers,I can deal with,the double dipping between ebay and payal makes my blood boil....
You always sell good parts and tractors and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I stopped selling on evil pay about 5 years ago. Cub parts where maybe 20 or 30 pages long and now 3 to 4 hundred pages long. Most are belts and such. But the market if flooded with cub stuff. Stuff is going for 1/2 or 1/3 less then what it was. I'll keep my rare stuff on the shelves. Just sell by word of mouth or swap meets.
But to each there own. Also paypal and evil pay make you pay on shipping charges so now if you sell something you have to pad the price. Also not good business.

I've gotten several things from Kevin and you've always sold me good stuff at good prices. I would gladly pay more to deal with someone like you that I trust then some of these CL and eBay sellers out there.

Keep doing what your doing Kevin your one of the good guys out there!

Thanks guys. I think I have had 2-3 times that I can remember where someone was dissatisfied and we never resolved the issue to satisfaction, but that's probably out of 750+ transactions over the years. I'm not perfect either and realize that.

I think I was just upset at some of the "shady" business practices by people trying to keep me from selling off stuff to better value their own assets.

I've never been happy about the 13% charges Ebay now charges, but if their service was good and helpful, they probably deserve it and I'm okay with it. Not punishing deadbeat buyers, impossible buyer protection restrictions, and now as mentioned by MM the shipping cost issue isn't what I consider a good service deserving the 13 or so percent though.

If Ebay cared, they could have solved their shipping issue with restrictions keeping people from charging $100 shipping and $3 for a product to avoid final value fees, not punishing the 95% of honest sellers. That is if greed wasn't the issue of course. Also, feedback should be mandatory for sellers to leave BEFORE buyers can leave any, but both still give a negative. This would allow a negative for deadbeat bidders still AND stop feedback extortion forcing a positive for bad service (which I've been extorted before by a well-respected Cub part seller that sent me a terrible item and said if I don't leave a positive he'll leave me a negative). I stuck with Ebay a lot longer than many but unless something changes I'm really slowing up or stopping for a while. Too much hastle and stress for little return.