Several random thoughts:
1) I've been an eBay member since about 1998 - but I won't sell there anymore. Their insistence on sellers accepting PayPal is the major reason. Although I do use PP for payments, I will NOT attach my bank account to them, thus I cannot accept payments.
2) Ebay has just deteriorated in general. Idiot buyers who bid things up to OVER the price of new. Idiot sellers who list a $25 item for $200 over, and over, and over, and over again - clogging the system. The only winner is eBay. Cheap Chinese junk everywhere, blah, blah, blah...
3) The in-ability to leave buyers anything but positive feedback. I understand why eBay did this - I had my perfect eBay feedback score blemished from retaliatory feedback from a bad seller. Fine - but this isn't the way to fix it - feedback should be "double-blind".
4) Most importantly - as a buyer I'm starting to shop there less and less. Their STUPID, IDIOTIC crippling of their search engine by no longer accepting wildcard searches is unacceptable.
5) Like someone else who posted here, I'm a compu-geek - I live by email. If I'm doing business online, I *EXPECT* and *DEMAND* an email response within 24 hours. Otherwise, the seller shouldn't be doing business online. Now I do agree that "stuff happens" and there are excusable reasons for non-responsiveness. But non-responsiveness as a general practice is unacceptable. Unfortunately, there are TONS of businesses out there who put up a website - often a very nice website - and then proceed to ignore it. Some of them are Fortune 500 companies!
6) Gunbroker is a lot like eBay was 15 years ago - its very nice and refreshing. I hope it stays that way.
7) As for shipping stuff to Australia - I think its a high risk shipping route. I ordered an LED 3rd brakelite for my car - there were only two places I could find this made in Australia item for sale - the official American importer, who turned out to be a "Chump", and an online store in Australia. I ordered it from the Australian outfit. It never showed up. Really. They re-shipped, I received the second shipment. The second shipment was not only tracked, but had "signature required". I don't blame them - I was just glad that they stood behind their sale, even though the loss wasn't their fault.
8) Cell phone pictures are unacceptable. Go back and read that again. At least 99.99999999999999% of the time...
|