Friday, February 29, 2008

All change at eBay

Well there seems to be a lot of upset artists as well as other people on eBay these days. The monopoly is massively increasing its Fees that it charges sellers, softened by a very small decrease, 10 cents! in the cost of listing, and discounts, if you can qualify! Overall it a huge increase in costs. Not only is this a blow to the small sellers, eBay will decide whether the seller's item gets seen on the site according to the star feedback rating system.

It works like this, if you score below 4.6 then tough your listings will be at the bottom of the pile and not seen by the buyers, also if your rating is low you can't qualify for listing discounts. Now eBay says that a score of 4 is 'Good' thus guiding the buyers to select that out of possible 5 where 1 the lowest. So at a stroke they are skewing the system so it is unlikely they will have to give the sellers any discounts, and with their search system skewed pushing the low scorers out of sight. As an added bonus sellers can no longer leave a negative for the buyer that messes up or rips them off ( yes it does happen to some folk unfortunately ) I'm pleased to say that all my buyers when I was selling on ebay were excellent, and I had no problems.

No wonder so many people are unhappy, a lot of sellers and buyers are now deserting the place and going to alternatives sites like Tazbar and eBid so there will be less choice for buyers on eBay and they should now start looking for their bargains elsewhere.

I have been selling my art on both Tazbar and eBid for some time, and getting some great bargains as well, including a SatNav system on Tazbar that has been invaluable when I have been delivering paintings.

So check out these new auction sites, and see what bargains you can find, in the meantime, I must press on with a commission, and sort out some paintings for the next exhibition.

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