Ebay must be losing revenue, and so are sharpening their teeth. This won't stop the decline, it will drive more people away:
"We’ve added new terms to the User Agreement to clarify that users are not permitted to complete outside of eBay any sales transactions with each other arising from items listed on the eBay platform. Offers to buy and sell or communicate outside of eBay constitute policy violations and may be subject to a range of actions including limits on buying and selling privileges as well as the application of final value fees for such transactions, the application of fees for the introduction of a seller to a buyer and the recovery of expenses for policy monitoring and enforcement. The same can result from sharing or requesting contact information with the intention to trade outside of eBay. You can read the relevant policy here.
We have included language which means that we may deduct fees, charges or other amounts which you owe us from an eBay credit balance held or controlled by you."
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On my business account my contact details are shown on all listings, and although I don't have my own fully functional website, I'm wondering if selling identical items through a website for 10% less would breach any rules eBay have in place.
I feel like they have a presence now and awareness amongst sellers so I'd expect it to get better as ebay descends into outright open contempt for its users.
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(That's a live pic of one of my listings but they're all pretty much the same. I've never even had a bite on there and I've listed over 30 items. Most of them have sold elsewhere for the same or more money than I'd listed them at)
Just not enough users to make it viable and certainly not enough to scare eBay into reducing their exorbitant fees like they did in the states.
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Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after youI do use eBay for buying bits and pieces though...... I just picked up two sets of Atacama speaker stands for less than the price of a pint of ale. Pretty chuffed with that!
"the application of fees for the introduction of a seller to a buyer and the recovery of expenses for policy monitoring and enforcement."
Do hotels have the right to charge corkage if you take your own bottle?
Would you park your used car for sale across the entrance of a car dealership?
For me, ebay exposes the items I have for sale to the largest possible range of potential buyers and their fees are better than most auction houses; their payment mechanisms are reliable and convenient too and they have some protection. So I don't mind paying their fees.
However, they seem to be going down the wrong route.
I think the big problem ebay have is that their revenues depend upon the throughput, so the more transactions the more they get. If they drive their customers away, then the throughput will go down, along with their percentage; I suppose they have to gauge whether lots of customers with some going rogue is or fewer customers all being policed is their best business model.
What I don't understand is how ebay can have personal collection for cash as an option, if they don't want buyer and seller to communicate and meet f2f.
Now, this new idea of recovering expenses for policy monitoring is a bit draconian.
The daftest interpretation of the rules was when I recently bought a guitar off someone and when I went to collect it they insisted on paypal even though I had the cash with me; neither he nor me intended to diddle ebay, but he was worried that ebay might think he'd gone off-piste.
Cue silly fuckwits with the 'don't use them if you don't like their contract' arguments and 'they aren't a monopoly' arguments....
In my mind ebay haven't found me a buyer and the listing is over. Are they saying that if I now got back in touch with this person they would try to charge me for it because they introduced us?
I'm not sure why the potential buyer has done this to be honest. He hasn't made me an offer for a lower price. I would have just told him to hit buy it now and happily have sold through eBay because I only had a £1 fee on there, but I'm not going to relist now because the fee would be £50.