eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post links to auctions and classifieds here
JerryVan
Victor Monarch Special
Posts: 5277
Joined: Mon Aug 24, 2009 3:08 pm
Location: Southeast MI

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by JerryVan »

HisMastersVoice wrote:
JerryVan wrote:I got the same message and sent a "nasty gram" to them this morning. Maybe PayPal will start their own auction service, HA!
If eBay doesn't have a non-compete in perpetuity with PayPal, I'll eat a Diamond Disc.
What title?

User avatar
gramophone-georg
Victor VI
Posts: 3984
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 11:55 pm
Personal Text: Northwest Of Normal
Location: Eugene/ Springfield Oregon USA

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by gramophone-georg »

Raphael wrote:After receiving some fairly incomprehensible emails from eBay yesterday evening, I started to understand the matter after doing some research on ADYEN, the company mentioned in eBay's emails.

Basically, eBay is terminating it's somewhat exclusive arrangement with PayPal. I say "somewhat exclusive" because even though they are separate companies, they share proprietary information and try to control the entire money chain generated by eBay sales. Woe to the seller who dares to mention that he will accept checks, wire transfers or cash, whereby PayPal does not rake in a nice commission. This arrangement, apparently, has been so successful for PayPal that their market value is twice that of eBay.

Never to be satisfied, and I suppose never happy with their friendly divorce from PayPal a few years ago, eBay now wants to retake total control of the money chain. ADYEN will process all sorts of back-room transactions, but the front-room will be eBay, who promise "substantial savings to both buyers and sellers". Really.

I remain fully convinced that eBay truly wants to eliminate small-time sellers (especially of used goods) in lieu of volume sellers of everything new, from cupcakes to condoms. They want to become an Amazon with no inventory, warehouses or distribution centers.

If you are an eBay seller, keep tuned because I think your world is about to be shaken up big-time.

Raphael
eBay is in it for eBay and they don't seem to care much who they steamroll in the process. I was there almost from the beginning. The formula was right in the beginning but it's just been regulated to death.

I had a great run with eBay and thought about closing my regular business and doing just eBay for awhile in 2000-2001. I was uneasy about relying on a loose "agreement" with what was quickly becoming a huge corporate entity. My unease proved correct.

Etsy actually seems a viable alternative, as they are fast becoming THE place for vintage, but they don't have auctions and they are also a publicly traded corporation now.

I actually am a principal in a little site that could one day be a contender in this field AND we have auction software, but we lack traffic and our software has more and more limitations that we keep discovering and do not like. I have made some really major sales there, though, of random people wandering in off the WWW from all over the world. People are out there looking for what we have, and people out there have what we want. eBay used to be THE conduit but it's also a problem.

My experience with eBay shows exactly why you can't make a business plan with eBay.

I was on there from 1998 just throwing stuff up on auction and watching it sell to my disbelief. Hell, lots of times we didn't even use pictures yet- if we did it was analog photos we took of an item, took the film to Fotomat, then scanned the photos. I had a sell through rate of over 90% until about 2003, when they started on their stupid "change- for- change's- sake" road they're still on 15 years later. :roll:

They introduced "Buy It Now" and eBay Stores. I swear those eBay happy idiots were calling me up twice a week to pitch me on Stores. Finally did it just to shut them up. Fees were so nominal in those days I didn't even really pay attention.

I never got around to populating the Store until well over a year later when auction sell throughs started sagging to around 50%. I relisted my non sellers in the Store. It was great because it started really moving my "dead stock" for me. People would win auctions and then buy other items from the Store, too. I loaded the Store with all sorts of stuff... spent a lot of time setting it up.

A few months later, eBay doubled Store fees- and removed Store items from "core listings", e.g., you had to search Store items separately from regular search.

My Store sales dropped like a rock.

I lumbered on with the Store for 18 more months with the fees really beginning to eat into ever dwindling profits.

Finally, I closed out the Store to ditch all the fees.

Two months later eBay moved Store items back into Core search.

At that point I knew building any sort of business model on eBay was like building a skyscraper on quicksand. I didn't have time for all the additional busywork that the eternal changes and change- backs were generating, either. Their ever increasing micromanagement just kept getting in the way as well.

The other thing that they did that really boinked me was forced PayPal. I was mainly a record seller, and at least 30 to 50% of my payments from auction winners would come into my PO box every auction cycle. A lot of these collectors are "cash and carry" types who either didn't trust PayPal or didn't want their spouses/ significant others to know how much they were spending.

Whatever their reasoning was isn't my concern. What DID concern me was that when eBay went "PayPal Only" those frequent buyers just disappeared.

I see the same sort of ratio on here when I sell stuff. Lots of people would rather snail mail payment. Fine by me; money is money.

I finally just decided to take some time off from eBay in mid 2010 because all the micromanaging was turning my fun hobby into too much like work. I've never started back up selling there again. Not interested.

Incidentally, one of the twists that this new change where buyers pay eBay then eBay pays you that nobody seems to have caught is that you won't see the buyers email address with payment any more. I just bet you dollars to doughnuts.

This is significant because what I did was I got all the email addresses of everyone who ever bought from me off PayPal and sent out a brief email telling everyone I would no longer be on eBay but would be having twice or thrice yearly email auction lists, and to email me if they wanted to be on 'the list'. Over half did.
"He who dies with the most shellac wins"- some nutty record geek

I got PTSD from Peter F's avatar

epigramophone
Victor Monarch Special
Posts: 5204
Joined: Mon Oct 24, 2011 1:21 pm
Personal Text: An analogue relic trapped in a digital world.
Location: The Somerset Levels, UK.

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by epigramophone »

If eBay further alienates their sellers, perhaps a competitor will welcome them with open arms :

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... id#p198468

User avatar
Raphael
Victor IV
Posts: 1445
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2012 9:44 am
Location: Davie, FL
Contact:

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by Raphael »

There are some sellers who rely very heavily on eBay sales as the backbone of their business. Fortunately, I am not one of them, and for years have used eBay primarily as a way of promoting direct sales at a very modest cost. It's getting trickier all the time, as their computers have gotten savvier at spotting and eliminating most such tactics and tricks.

I have always encouraged many of my friends in the business to develop their own websites and establish an on-line presence. The volume of business generated by my website is more than 20 times what sells on eBay. In fact, if and when an item does sell on eBay I consider it a personal failure, having meant that my customer could have bought it directly from me at a lower price and without Big Brother eBay breathing down our necks.

Domain names, website, development and maintenance costs are nominal these days. There are do-it-yourself "kits" that anybody can use and look like a pro. No need for a consultant, webmaster, etc. - Square Space, Fat Cow, Network Solutions, etc. all can get you up and running in no time.

So, yes, there are alternatives to eBay but you must create the platform yourself and then you can dictate the terms, not them.

Raphael

User avatar
Raphael
Victor IV
Posts: 1445
Joined: Sat Jul 14, 2012 9:44 am
Location: Davie, FL
Contact:

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by Raphael »

“Incidentally, one of the twists that this new change where buyers pay eBay then eBay pays you that nobody seems to have caught is that you won't see the buyers email address with payment any more. I just bet you dollars to doughnuts.”



George,

Good point, and they are trying to do that already. I’ve noticed how hard it is sometimes to root out the buyer’s email address, as it doesn’t show up in the initial notifications. One must go to an “order details” page to get it. “Friends & Family” transactions on PayPal don’t show it at all.

However, shipping companies often require both a phone # and email address, and it seems impossible for eBay to deny that information. I am sure they have a staff already trying to figure out a way to furnish the information without letting the seller see it.

Raphael

User avatar
Curt A
Victor Monarch Special
Posts: 6412
Joined: Fri Jul 09, 2010 8:32 pm
Personal Text: Needle Tins are Addictive
Location: Belmont, North Carolina

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by Curt A »

This is not meant to be a mean comment, but lately all of the "good technology" ideas seem to be constantly changing and micromanaged to death. I tend to blame this on a bunch of bored ADD millennial nerds who are now programmers and ITT professionals, as they need to come up with new ideas to justify their salaries. They grew up playing video games 24/7 and need constant change to keep their interest resulting in this "change just for the sake of change" mentality.

No matter what technology you are using, you can expect it to be different or outdated the next time you try to use it. Phones are a prime example, since they have taken a simple concept of convenient communication and screwed with it endlessly until you now need a degree in ITT to figure out what all of the insane settings are for and once you do, they change them on the next model... I won't buy another iPhone that uses forced facial recognition. Also, I don't want all of the appliances in my house connected to the internet just waiting for the next hacker to place ransomware on them. NETFLIX is another one... I don't want a computer trying to outguess me as to what I might be interested in watching and it gets more and more difficult to locate your own watch list.

Whatever the reason behind all of this, it is appalling that we are being manipulated and micromanaged by the technology, not the other way around... Enough of my rant. :lol:
"The phonograph† is not of any commercial value."
Thomas Alva Edison - Comment to his assistant, Samuel Insull.

"No one needs a Victrola XX, a Perfected Graphophone Type G, or whatever you call those noisy things."
My Wife

User avatar
PeterF
Victor IV
Posts: 1913
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2012 1:06 pm

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by PeterF »

eBay is a business, and a very successful one. The free market will decide whether this newest approach succeeds.

Love it or hate it, you all know in your heart of hearts that eBay is the singlemost transformative influence on our hobby for more than a decade now, whereby an unbelievable bounty of otherwise undiscoverable rarities (or even just that one oddball part you really need) has come to light. Similarly, eBay has made it easy to sell off our own extra stuff rather than storing (or as we have seen here, dumpsterizing) it. And, since it's a business, we have to pay to play.

It's laughable how the loudest complainants about perceived "unfair" practices by eBay are ones who use it mainly for free or low-cost advertising. Cue the tiny, sad, violins.

User avatar
gramophone-georg
Victor VI
Posts: 3984
Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 11:55 pm
Personal Text: Northwest Of Normal
Location: Eugene/ Springfield Oregon USA

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by gramophone-georg »

PeterF wrote:eBay is a business, and a very successful one. The free market will decide whether this newest approach succeeds.

Love it or hate it, you all know in your heart of hearts that eBay is the singlemost transformative influence on our hobby for more than a decade now, whereby an unbelievable bounty of otherwise undiscoverable rarities (or even just that one oddball part you really need) has come to light. Similarly, eBay has made it easy to sell off our own extra stuff rather than storing (or as we have seen here, dumpsterizing) it. And, since it's a business, we have to pay to play.

It's laughable how the loudest complainants about perceived "unfair" practices by eBay are ones who use it mainly for free or low-cost advertising. Cue the tiny, sad, violins.
My objection to eBay has to do solely with how they treat their paying customers like pariahs. People complain about how eBay is all "for the buyer" in disputes, totally missing the fact that it's really eBay being all for eBay with the buyer being an unintended beneficiary.

Send out a Victrola and the buyer claims "not as described"? As the seller, YOU are forced to pay for a return shipping label and eBay forcibly refunds as soon as tracking shows delivered to you. If what you get back is a cinder block, eBay will tell you they really have no idea whether that's what you initially sent or not, and will absolutely refuse to look at any evidence you have to the contrary, whatsoever. "So sad, too bad".

In my mind, if you have no idea what the seller actually sent out, what the buyer received, and what the seller got back, you have no business deciding disputes, but whatever.

What really happens in these cases is that eBay gets to keep all the fees. What's more, even if your buyer is a known scammer, eBay will let him keep going and going because scammers "buy" lots of things and generate tons of fees.

The whole thing, I feel, tempts some other buyers who normally wouldn't scam over the edge to being scammers too... just because it's so easy and condoned by eBay.

If eBay were a mall, it would be as if mall security trips the store owner chasing the shoplifter, then holds the door open for the shoplifter so he doesn't drop any of his loot, and points him away from where the cops are.

eBay's idea of fraud prevention is to "turn out the lights", e.g., if you can't see it it's not happening. At the beginning, everything was transparent, but now they hide so much buyer info you only know what you're dealing with as a seller when it's already too late most times. You used to be able to put a problem bidder on your Blocked Bidder's List but now if you get one that created a new ID to circumvent (which is "not allowed" per their published policy) eBay customer service will tell you they can't make a connection (even when all info but the user ID matches exactly) OR that YOU as the seller has to prove this was malicious.

Fortunately, in our categories, there are few scammers- a crowd of serious collectors is a very good risk pool- but just the fact that eBay is taking peoples' money in exchange for knowingly exposing them to all this while saying otherwise is just wrong.
"He who dies with the most shellac wins"- some nutty record geek

I got PTSD from Peter F's avatar

melvind
Victor IV
Posts: 1313
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:23 am

Re: eBay-PayPal-ADYEN

Post by melvind »

My experience with eBay has been only as a buyer. I have never been interested in selling much, and especially not when I have to pack things up and ship them. I just don't like doing it. But, I will say that in the late 1990s and through the middle of the 2000s, eBay was a much better, friendlier, and more fun place to find things. I still use eBay quite a lot for small, specific things. (BTW - I would never buy machines that had to be mailed. There is just too much risk.) But, prices have skyrocketed in recent years and now shipping from Europe has become so outlandish that I can no longer justify buying much of anything from there. Though, I am not sure those new prices have a lot to do with eBay. I think it must have something to do with Europe and how it handles international shipping in recent years.

I have bought and sold both on the TMF with great success, but the eBay audience is much larger and world wide. So, there is so much more to choose from. When I am going to a phonograph show or event of some kind I will continue to advertise what I have to sell on TMF and I will always buy from sellers here as well. But realistically if you want records, smalls, advertising and such related to phonographs and you don't want to use eBay, it will be a very slow process. Unfortunately there are a lot of sellers that did sell smalls and advertising for good prices that have disappeared. So, while I still buy from eBay, there simply isn't as much there as there once was. eBay did that to themselves and us by making it harder for the small guys to make any money.

So, I often don't like what eBay does, but it is a publicly held corporation headquartered in the USA. They are doing what all other US corporations now do and are only concerned with making profit, mostly for the short term, and nothing else. Small sellers and buyers make them so little money they don't even notice us. The new American way! I don't blame anyone for not selling or buying on eBay, but seriously, if you really want to build a collection (of smalls) I don't see that it can be ignored.

Just my ramblings...

Post Reply