I was a big fan of eBay six years ago. I enjoyed selling and buying used items, from skateboards to video games. Rarely did a search return with dozens of "NEW" results. There were very few items with a buyout of $0.99 and a shipping total of $19.99. Back in the day, eBay was actually a virtual Auction House.
Currently, eBay is nothing more than a glorified and unfriendly Amazon.com. It amazes me that eBay is still actually in business. Most items are sold for dirt cheap buyouts with an insanely high shipping cost. And if I understand it correctly, eBay makes nothing from the shipping cost. A while ago, eBay posted saying they were going to remove auctions with over-inflated shipping costs, but any search on eBay will tell you a different story.
Another annoying trend is the auction listings themselves. Once upon a time, the listings actually described the item that was up for auction. Now a days, the listings are templated, automated, and filled with garbage. There is two lines mirroring the auctions title, a stolen image from Google, and then two pages of nonsensical legalese stating that God himself has jurisdiction over Canada. Is it too much to ask for eBay to police listings so they actually LIST something about the item being sold?
Honestly, I wish eBay would split the auctions into two categories:
Category 1: Hey, I am too lazy to get a real job, so here is a bunch of garbage I bought on clearance you can bid on. Oh, and I get great deals from my distributer, so I will sell this crap well below retail while fucking the brick and mortar stores of the world. BTW, shipping starts at $19.99.
Category 2: Hey, I have this great item that I have no use for any longer. If it something useful to you, then please feel free to bid and pay a reasonable shipping cost based on it's weight.
In the bid to become the best auction site on the Internet, they have simply become the most bloated.
I suppose it depends on that for which you are searching. For example, as a collector of Gettelman Brewing memorabilia, my searches have a pretty high ratio of signal to noise. 13 results and only 2 crap vendors, and those two are just the guys who take old ads and mount them in clocks.
ReplyDeleteBut there is no "new" market to spoil my results. When "new" is an options, I agree that the whole thing goes to hell.
Looks like the opportunity is open for someone to make the better eBay mouse trap.
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