Re-thinking eBay-- version 23.71a

It seems the never-ending gyrations of eBay and their policies for sellers take a new twist every month.

In a post back in February, I was lamenting my ongoing woes in dealing with the giant online auction site-- and alluded to pretty much "putting eBay on hold" till certain things sorted themselves out (see "The Ups and Downs of Dealing with eBay" for more). In the subsequent three months, more new developments.

Whether this is the result of a mass exodus of sellers or someone actually listening to the complaints received, it seems that eBay has now changed their tune... at least somewhat. Not too long ago, I received an announcement that-- as an eBay "Store" holder-- a number of my listings every month would now be free. Well, free to list... I'd still have to pay the back end final value fee.

It was slightly odd to receive this announcement, given the fact that most stamp sellers are always complaining about the fees on eBay.

Now that my previous hassles with "selling limits" have also been resolved (an old "black mark" basically expired), it seems that I can go back to listing my duplicates and get up to 500 free listings a month, with my store subscription. And no matter how I do the math, it really does come out to cost less (in fees) than I used to pay.

Now, I can't editorialize on whether the folks in eBay management suddenly woke up one morning and "saw the light," or this is just some ploy to "retain customers" ahead of yet another rules change designed to "milk it for all it's worth." Seems like predicting where eBay is going next is a bit like trying to predict the weather.

Meanwhile-- in only somewhat related news-- I am in the middle of re-scanning a bunch of my stamps. As part of recent policy changes, all images uploaded to eBay must be at least 500 pixels on the longest side. Seems like this is a requirement that will catch a lot of stamp sellers-- 500px is pretty large, for an item as small as a stamp. It's actually a bit of a "sneaky" change, because an original announcement about image formats-- from about a year ago-- required 400px images... with which I was in compliance. Either way, if you want to list on eBay, your photos have to be big enough.

Feels like a bunch of "busy work," but what can you do?

The Ups and Downs of Dealing with eBay

I have "been away" from stamp collecting for a few weeks. A few months, actually. Life-- as John Lennon once said-- is "what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Truth be known, my wife and I have several business ventures that have been demanding a lot of our attention since the new year-- and since I am not retired, my philatelic endeavors have been pushed into the background as "less important."

That hasn't actually been so hard to do, as I am a little disgruntled with eBay, these days. I suppose "being disgruntled with eBay" isn't new to many stamp collectors who deal with the online auction giant on a regular basis... although most of the complaints I see seem related to "high fees." Mine are not.

So, I'll share a "story" and see what you think... please DO leave a comment, when you're finished reading!

I have been a regular stamp seller on eBay since 1998. I'm not really a "pro" or a "dealer;" more like a "busy hobbyist." Over the years, I've watched the site morph from something akin to a giant online garage sale and collectors' mart to something more like a giant e-commerce platform for large companies and professional full-time sellers. UNlike many, I have no particular issue with eBay's focus on being a GIANT marketplace... it's a publicly traded corporation; they are "in it" to make money, not to make stamp traders happy.

However, I discovered this year the extent to which some of their policies simply don't make sense. I don't mean that as an expression of "my opinion," I mean that as "does not LOGICALLY make sense."

Back in the middle of 2012, I got an "alert" from eBay to let me know that my account performance as a seller was now "Below Standard," with the further message that I needed to "improve my performance" to bring said standards up to required levels.

I found this a little puzzling given that I have 100% positive feedback, going back several years. Once I got past the initial surprise, I decided I needed to understand this better... I called eBay and asked for them to explain exactly what was going on. I eventually spoke to "Steve" in Mumbai (sidebar note: I have NO issue whatsoever with talking to tech support in India. I DO have an issue with someone obviously named Ranjit or Arjay pretending his name is "Steve"... how stupid do they think I am???) who explained it a little better, but was otherwise deaf to my appeals that this didn't "make sense" given my 100% positive feedback and 15-year clear selling record.

So I did a little poking around in my account, checking my feedback, looking at old performance records to show me how I could suddenly have TEN "low ratings" against me but no negative feedback. As it turned out-- after a little detective work and process of elimination-- the ten "strikes against me" were low grades for "shipping cost." So I suddenly had about 5% "low scores" in ONE category... beyond the 2% permitted by eBay guidelines.

This is where it starts getting a little weird.

The "10 strikes" were all from ONE buyer who bought 10 items and left me 10 positive feedbacks for his purchases. His comments were even positive: "Nice stamp, promptly shipped, BETTER than described-- recommended seller." But yet... 10 low ratings for shipping costs.

Now, as anyone using eBay knows, when you make a multiple-item purchase or sale, and leave feedback for 10 items from the same seller at once, it only "counts" as ONE feedback point. Yet-- evidently-- if someone leaves you 10 low "detailed seller ratings" as part of the process, they all count against you. Basically... PLUS ONE point for doing things right, MINUS TEN points against for my shipping costs.

This gave me some serious pause for thought.

I'll add here-- just for the record-- that my eBay stamp shipping charges are 75 cents for the first stamp and 10 cents for each additional stamp in the same transaction. The buyer had paid $1.65 in postage on an envelope that cost me (at the time) $0.85 to mail-- and was evidently very angry about this-- even though my shipping charges were clearly spelled out, both within the listing AND in the "shipping information" area. The overall transaction was over $120.00, so this was not a person trying to "nickel and dime" me on cheap material. And, he left me positive feedback!

I called eBay customer service to ask if it could really be "right" that positive feedback counts only "per transaction" but negative detailed seller ratings count "per item." I spoke to someone who took lots of notes and did lots of typing (I could hear the keyboard) and then was put on hold-- then transferred to someone else, who took lots of notes and did lots of typing and put me on hold for five minutes-- then transferred me to a different department... where someone took the entire story once again, typed extensively (there must be a small BOOK about my call in their phone system!), commiserated, put me on hold, came back on, told me he'd forward me to a manager who "would be able to help me"... and then the call was dropped after eight more minutes on hold.

At this point I had been on the phone for 83 minutes and needed to go to an appointment, so I didn't call back, that day.

A couple of days later I had more or less resigned myself to the fact that I would have to spend the next couple of months listing a TON of stamps so I could get the several hundred positive "detailed seller ratings" needed to go from -4.5% to -2%. It may not look like much... but not all buyers click the stars when they leave feedback, so you actually have to have more transactions than the straight math suggests. I figured I needed about 400 positive transactions, just to be safe-- a lot of work, but NOT impossible. I'm just a hobbyist so it would be a fairly stout workload while also minding my day job.

But wait! Not so fast!

As I was about to embark on my marathon listing endeavor, I discovered something else. In the meantime, eBay had taken it upon itself to impose "selling limits" on my account. Suddenly... I could only list or sell "200 items per month." On top of that, I had already received a notice from PayPal that my account had been tagged as "high risk" due to my low seller rating, and that all incoming payments would be held for three weeks before being available to me, until further notice. Given that I already had more than half of the 200 item limit used up by existing listings, my hands were suddenly pretty tied...

I thought about this, for a bit-- feeling not so much angry as simply baffled by the way it made no sense. I was also grateful that I wasn't dependent on selling stamps for a living!

Part one, eBay wants me to improve my seller rating. Fine, I accept that.

Part two, HOW do I do that? By selling lots of stuff to HAPPY customers, so my average score improves.

Part three, now my account is "LIMITED," so I CAN'T actually DO what you want me to do???

Huh?

And all this because ONE person got to give me TEN "bad marks" for ONE transaction.

The breakdown in logic that lies at the heart of this situation is not even about ME. I could deal with that. eBay says "YOU are a bad seller, so we punish YOU." But that's not effectively what's happening.

I see eBay-- as a publicly traded corporation with shareholders to keep happy, through PROFITS-- now having policies in place that means they are actually agreeing to reduce their revenues? Think about it-- if I am "encouraged" to list a ton of stamps in order to improve my performance, it means they will make a bunch more money from seller fees. Instead... they have policies that dictate that I can't actually DO what they "need" me to do, to comply with that policy!

Once more, I called eBay-- primarily to see if I could find some person, somewhere, who could actually see and comprehend the faulty logic in the policy. I went through another cycle of "explain-hold-transfer" to three different people... and wouldn't you know it? My call was somehow "dropped" during the 4th transfer/hold segment.

HOW do I remember all this, all these months later, you might be wondering? Well, I used to work in the IT industry-- and before that worked customer service at a retail store-- so I got quite used to documenting (with computer screen shots, even) customer and tech support phone calls down to the N'th degree, getting everyone's name, rank, serial number, department, time, extension number and what have you. I have a pretty much EXACT record of what's in eBay's phone recording and monitoring system. I don't DO "hearsay" and "he said/she said" unless I feel capable of potentially backing it up with hard documentation in a court of law.

But I'm digressing.

A couple more months passed. I worked within my selling limits as best I could, trying to improve my ratings-- which really made very little difference.

Then I got another "alert" from eBay, this time to let me know that my eBay Store Subscription would be canceled unless I brought my monthly sales levels up to the required levels to maintain the subscription. But WAIT! My account has selling limits, making that an impossibility. Bye-bye store...

A cynical part of me briefly considered the possibility that this was the way eBay was planning to make up for the lost revenue because I could no longer list and sell freely... instead of discounted store listings, I would now have to pay the full "rack rate" for everything listed.

The other thing that seemed illogical about the whole thing was the email from eBay stating that sellers with lower sales ratings would have their listings reduced in "rank" in searches. So basically... in a single paragraph:

You want me to improve my performance (fair enough!) which I can ONLY do through listing and selling MORE items, which you will NOT allow me to do, AND the lower volume of items I CAN list you plan to bury in search results somewhere in western Wyoming where nobody will find them... BUT it is "really important" that I improve my selling performance, because otherwise you will take away my store, which is my MEANS to do what you are asking me to do.

Did I miss any nuances, there?

Am I the only one for whom-- from a totally objective perspective-- this just doesn't MAKE SENSE... from a financial-- let alone ethical-- standpoint?

Needless to say, I have just not felt very "inspired" to deal with eBay on ANY level, including using it to buy new stamps for my collections. And certainly not to list anything new... seem the best strategy right now is just to let the "bad marks" quietly expire... they drop off my "counting score" once they are 12 months old, and then resume trading when that occurs. eBay has been one of those places I've relied on to find interesting collections to "cherry pick" for varieties... and then sell what I don't need. It'll be a while before I can do that, again...

If you've actually read through this entire saga and have arrived here, I'd love to hear your perspective on this. I'm really not in the business of "eBay bashing" (as many are), but I AM curious about this, and about whether it seems like I'm reacting unreasonably. So please leave a comment!

Is eBay Making Itself Obsolete for Stamp Sellers?

Yesterday, I got a notice from eBay, explaining that my "seller performance" wasn't up to snuff. As as result-- I learned-- a number of restrictions had been placed on my selling account. As a point of reference, I am a 14-year "veteran" of eBay, and have a 100% positive feedback rating.

Now, it's no secret that eBay often is the source of controversy among hobbyists (like me) and stamp dealers who sell stamps on the mega-auction site. In the course of the last 10-odd years, eBay has developed from a rather interesting "online collectibles mart and garage sale" to something akin to yet another colorless "Online Mega-mall."

That's just personal opinion, of course.

In spite of complaints and occasional collective whining, many stamp sellers have stuck it out with eBay, even though the fees are somewhat high and there are lots of "rules" that frequently make it difficult for stamp sellers to operate. But they still stick to it. I would count myself among those. Why? Because eBay works!

Here's the thing, you can go to an "eBay alt" site and pay "no fees" and end up selling three items a month (if you're lucky!) or you can sell on eBay and pay 30% overhead to sell 100 items a month. Simple math: You made $30 on the "alt" site but PAID NO FEES!!! (to be said with a combination of smugness and pride) or you made $700 on eBay paying $300 worth of fees... to me, that's a no-brainer. Being "offended by fees" is-- in essence-- just another variation of "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

Again, that's just personal opinion, albeit backed up with experience.

My background is in business management (among other things) and ecommerce. If you run any semblance of "a business," you go where you can make the money. And making money isn't about having things "FOR sale," it's about actually "SELLING" them. A lot of the people in what I dub the "No Fees Club" take a rather myopic view of selling expenses, somehow turning the avoidance of them into the single most important aspect of "success." Then they tend to point fingers at those who say "But I'm not actually SELLING anything!" (on some eBay alternative site) and actually blame the lack of sales on them for not lowering their prices since they are "not paying fees."

Ultimately, "lowering prices" is the single weakest marketing and business development strategy in the world. Let's face it-- if you lower your prices by 30% because you are no longer paying 30% overhead... but you only make 1/3 as many sales... you end up allowing yourself to be far WORSE off than you we're before. Get real!

But getting back to eBay's most recent changes, there's now a certain element of doom on the horizon, when it comes to being a stamp seller. And it's not that eBay is on some kind of vendetta against stamp sellers, it's just that we who trade stamps happen to have a product that doesn't fit eBay's new "general" policy.

This stamp can be purchased for $6.00 in my eBay shop.
75c shipping is fair, but would you pay an extra $3.00 to get it?

Here's how things have typically worked out for me, in my prior dealings on eBay: When I sell a random $8.00 stamp, it goes into a first class envelope and I have historically charged US $0.75 for shipping to buyers in the US, $1.95 to buyers elsewhere. That covers the cost of a 2-ounce (up to 60g) letter and supplies-- an envelope, a cardboard insert to protect the stamp(s), a glassine for each stamp. I'm not here to make money on shipping.

Problem number 1: In order to comply with eBay's new guidelines to be a "top rated seller," I must upload "tracking information" within 24 hours of shipment. Here's the problem: you can't have tracking information on a normal letter. In order to get that additional service, the package (containing my $8.00 stamp) would have to be shipped as a "first class parcel." So now the cost to mail is $1.95 for postage + $0.85 for trackable delivery, for a total of $2.80. What's more, I can no longer use a plain envelope to mail (cost $0.02), I have to use either a "photo mailer" or a padded envelope (cost $0.25 each, even in bulk). So... my effective cost to mail a stamp would go from slightly under $0.75 to $3.05, in order to follow the new guidelines.

Problem number 2: Stamp collectors... collect stamps. It would be possible for me to make shipping less expensive by using an online shipping service, through which the USPS offers reduced priced shipping and free (or very low cost) tracking. However, that would mean using a pre-printed and encoded paper label as postage, rather than stamps. Pretty boring, for a stamp collector-- especially given how many buyers write to me (with their payment) to say "please use current commemorative stamps on your mailing." Thus following the one avenue to savings would potentially hurt my reputation, as a seller.

Problem number 3: Even IF I were to follow eBay's guidelines to obtain "top rated seller status," I would promptly lose it. Why? Let's face it, stamp collectors are pretty "thrifty" folks. And in the "detailed seller ratings" on eBay, there's one "grade" you give sellers for "reasonable shipping costs?" If I am charging $3.05 to send an $8.00 stamp it would not be long before I'd get sufficient "low seller ratings" (because $3.05 IS expensive, to ship one stamp) to no longer be in line with "top seller" requirements... and then I'd be right back to square one.

Problem number 4: This one is particularly important! When you are not a "top rated seller," there are limitations placed on your seller account (as I just discovered), as to how many items you can list, how much you can sell (dollar wise) and how long it takes for funds from PayPal to be "released" to you. Ironically-- the delay of payment is actually being caused by the lack of tracking information-- the very requirement that's causing the "failure," in the first place. In other words, if I decide-- and even if my (and other stamps sellers') buyers agree-- that being a top rated seller is "not important" to me, I am also agreeing to the following "penalties" or "sanctions," if you will: (a) I no longer qualify for a 20% discount on my selling fees, (b) I will only be permitted to offer a fairly low number of stamps for sale, per month, (c) in case I thought to by-pass "b" by offering high value stamps, I am only permitted a limited dollar volume per month and (d) because my seller performance doesn't meet eBay's standards, I will no longer have immediate access to PayPal payments made to me. Now IF I were uploading aforementioned "tracking information" that delay would be only a few days... but since I am a stamp seller, and we've agreed that tracking information doesn't really "work" in this field, the PayPal delay will be three weeks!

I've been selling on eBay for a LONG time... and my buyers seem to
be fairly happy with the way I treat them.

I'll state, once more, that I have no individual beef with eBay, as a marketplace. But I do feel saddened by the fact that the "product" offered by stamp sellers is-- for lack of a better term-- "incompatible" with selling on the "new" eBay. As a long-time eBay fan with a good reputation as as seller, I feel like I am coming up against a "no-win" situation.

There are plenty of rumors in the stamp trade that eBay is "out to get us," prompting the question: "Is eBay trying to 'get rid of' stamp sellers?" Doubtful. Sound like "conspiracy theory" thinking, to me. As of this morning, there were approximately 2.37 MILLION listings across eBay's various stamps categories. If you're a publicly traded corporation who has to keep shareholders happy, would you be likely to "dump" one of the largest categories on the site? Probably not. It's more likely an issue of eBay management simply not understanding that not all products are sold the same way... and the people in the boardroom being so far removed from the "street level operations" that they don't see any logistical issues with a "one size fits all (sellers)" approach.

The challenge-- and problem-- facing stamp sellers is that there really is no "viable alternative" to eBay, if this somewhat hostile selling environment persists. Sure, dozens of people will read that last sentence and insist that they "do well" on any number of other sites. However, a closer examination of all these alternatives (simply done by looking at the percentage of "closed" listings that ended with a sale, and the number of listings "with bids" as a percentage of total listings) will reveal that "eBay alts" are LUCKY to have a sell-through rate between 5% at the top end (Delcampe and Stamps2Go) and down to less than 1% for most... compared to eBay's 30-40% sell-through rate. From a personal perspective, when I run stamp auctions on eBay, my sell-through rate has been in the range of 90-95%. Meanwhile my "alt site" efforts have mainly resulted in private messages asking things like "Will you take $2 for that stamp you've listed for $8?"

I don't expect eBay to suddenly "see the light" and institute lower fees for the benefit of stamp sellers, and that's not my point, in writing this article. It's not the fees I have a beef, it's the limitations placed on sellers. What I would hope for-- against the flow, no doubt-- is a chance to be able to conduct my business in peace, the way business in my "industry" normally is conducted. I accept that I may not be able to be a "top rated" seller, but I'd like the opportunity to not have "the system" automatically relegate me to "below standard," with the attendant limitations on my selling activities.

Bottom line: Individual sellers are NOT "Wal-Mart." Individual sellers are what add interest and uniqueness to a marketplace. And, ironically enough, eBay was BUILT on individual sellers... there would be no eBay, were it not for the thousands of individual sellers who sold their "stuff" and collectibles, back in the 1990's.

So is there a "win/win" solution in all this?

Perhaps. One option might be to force ALL eBay sellers to include a "weight" entry with all their listings. For stamps, sports cards and the like, that would be a fraction of an ounce. Subsequently, any parcels below a certain weight-- say 4 ounces-- could be made exempt from the tracking requirement, thus taking most stamp sellers "out of the loop" while still leaving the tracking requirement intact where it is "relevant," namely for larger packages. The beauty of this approach is that it doesn't try to "play favorites" with stamp sellers, it addresses a broader issue that items shipped in an ordinary first-class letter can't purchase tracking.

Another and perhaps more feasible solution-- given the existing eBay interface and the way pages are coded and linked to both PayPal and shipping services (UPS/USPS/FedEx, etc) is to simply add "First Class LETTER" as a shipping method, when items are listed. If you (as a seller) choose that as "how this item will ship" it will automatically "filter through the system" from the USPS site that the shipment in this particular sale can't be tracked... and if something was shipped "first class letter" there will be no place to enter "tracking information." Subsequently (to the benefit of sellers who sell "mixed goods") only "trackable" transactions would count towards a given seller's "top rated seller" status. So... if I sell 500 stamps and 50 stockbooks... I would still have to upload tracking info for the 50 stockbooks... but I wouldn't be penalized for NOT doing so, with the 500 stamps. The 500 stamps would be "non-counting transactions."

Another alternative would be to have "business" and "individual" class sellers on eBay, where an "individual" is subject to less stringent rules than a "business." They could be delineated by a number of transactions or dollar volume per year. That method would be somewhat harder to implement, however, and would make less "sense" in terms of WHY we use tracking information for packages.

Of course, that's not an easy "sell," as eBay has made itself a major stakeholder in the shipping business, by charging final value fees on shipping. But sometimes you have to look beyond the immediately obvious and consider the longer term benefits.

I hope you have learned something from reading this commentary, or-- at least-- it made you pause and think. If you are a stamp (or other) seller on eBay and you can see the inherent in eBay's new guidelines, please take a moment to tweet this article, or post it to your Facebook page, or google+ it, or post to your newsgroup, or stamp collecting forums. As you probably know, NOTHING happens unless there's awareness. And there can be no awareness, unless people spread the word. And remember, this also affects you if you're only a BUYER of stamps on eBay-- if the dealers leave, so do the stamps!


So spread the word!