Paul McCahan said:
PROBLEM is, the cost to sell those SAME Batteries has been raised by
about .62¢!!! Not a nickel or a dime, but a LOT OF FREAKING Money.
Big Fucking Deal.
I've been buying and selling on eBay for many years. I don't give a
shit.
The buyer doesn't pay this fee, the SELLER DOES... you can't just raise
your price... since PRICE is determined by the Market in and OUT of eBay.
So your profits go down. Tough shit. If you don't like it, find
some other way to do business. eBay does NOT owe ANYONE. They're a
business, they're not obligated to help you make your living on small
margins. If this is enough to put a serious dent in some sellers, I'm
not going to cry for them, they'll have to find other ways to make a
living. You know, like before eBay existed? Or they'll have to
adjust how they sell, or what they sell. That's life, suck it up.
In other words, it will make it less viable to sell your stuff on eBay,
So what?
thus less choice for buyers... This is a SERIOUS issues for the main
reason that eBay is just a website... they don't have any real cost
outside of maintaining a very complex server. They are spending money on
expensive TV commercials, buying up Rent.com, Craig's List, without our
approval, thus driving up OUR fees.
"without our approval"? Who the **** do you think you are, anyway?
They're a business. They're in business to *make money*. The only
approval they need is from their board of directors and the
shareholders - and the feds, of course. Users can take it or leave it
- period. That's how our system, capitalism, works - perhaps you've
heard of it. There are other auction sites if you really don't like
eBay. There are other ways to sell online too - Amazon zShops,
setting up your own site (osCommerce is an open source shoppign cart
package written in PHP which is solid and widely used), etc.
And it sounds like you don't have any clue what it costs to run a
major IT infrastructure. 'They don't have nay real cost outside of
maintain a very complex server.' Try hundreds of servers, and paying
for massive amounts of bandwidth, and 24 hour IT staff, and
programmers, and support, etc. I've worked for large companies that
ran large server installations (Lucent, GTE Internetworking) - the
costs are *massive*.
And those TV commercials are called *marketing*! What do you think
drives many of the buyers to the site in the first place? eBay was
once upon a time a marketplace used mostly by geeks who happened to be
online. The marketing they've done is what turned them into a
household name and drove up the number of buyers and sellers. Without
marketing they'd be like any one of a number of auction sites that
started around the same time - and died, or linger on pitifully.
If you sold on eBay you'd be raging mad, if you buy on ebay, it won't
become clear that the show is going to get very quiet after Feb 18th.
I sell on eBay - I couldn't care less about this. I buy on eBay - and
I doubt I'll notice any change, except maybe some whiny bastards will
have left.
And yes, I *am* being harsh. I'm sick of snivelling twits demanding
corporations bend over to make their lives easier, especially when
they do it in a way that sounds like they feel their *owed* something.
Like all the people who whine, bitch, and moan about how evil PayPal
is - but refuse to switch to any other payment system because PayPal
is so 'easy'. Those people need to shut the **** up - either put up
or shut up. If you've going to keep using PP, stop whining when they
freeze your account and keep your money. You asked for it.
ebay needs to solve this problem before it's too late.
I think eBay *is* solving their problem. Good riddance.
Maybe they'll all go start their own site - eBray.com.
-MZ, RHCE #806199299900541, ex-CISSP #3762
