I'd rather get it on ebid.net (ebay.com)

Member Name: MisterReview

Product:	ebay.com
Date:	14/08/09 (69 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: ebay has no advantages any more

Disadvantages: high sellers costs which are passed onto buyers, lack of affordable sellers.

Where once ebay was a fantastic place to buy and sell with a great degree of flexibility for its buyers and sellers, it has now become as dull as dishwater.

This is mainly in part down to many sellers migrating across to ebid.net.

Since ebay acquired paypal things have just got worse and worse.

Sellers are now forced to offer paypal, which although this APPEARS great for the customer, the reality is that ebay are getting two lots of fees from the sellers. This means sellers hike their prices to cover the fees ebay and paypal charge them.

It is now like a ghost town there, and all that is left are the big sellers. An analogy - where ebay was once a friendly and vibrant marketplace, with variety, like the market that might come to your town once a week, it has now become the Arndale Centre, or whichever generic term you use for your local corporate shopping mall full of big chain names.

Media sellers have now been forced to cap the P&P they charge - this does NOT benefit the buyer - some items cost more than the capped price to post - many buyers will just add that to the price, ebay will then take a further cut on that, which means some buyers also add to the price to cover that - a vicious circle. This will get worse soon as ebay are now saying media items should be sent for FREE. Customer, don't be fooled by this. As well as what I have already outlines, this will only lead to confusion in the case of any item missing disputes, as sellers only have certain obligations when postage has actually been paid for.

I have toddled off to ebid.net to do my shopping, and although it still does not have the amount of sellers ebay has/had, ebid.net have a wonderfully flexible system.

ebid.net also verifies its sellers, and should a scammer slip through, they are dealt with rapidly

ebay is no longer appealing

Summary: Once a bit of a gem, now a rough old rock