Ebay gone mildly bonkers?

Sounds about right for ebay, all pretty pictures but little substance.

There's a lot of changes going on right now, not all good ones either. They are gradually changing over to an 'all-trader' selling position, which will see almost all standard auctions disappear eventually.

Buy-it-Now auctions now dominate almost all the categories as buyers with single items drop out and go elsewhere to sell.

Their last financial report wasn't too good, only Skype and PayPal helped them make any money.

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

It had gone back to 'normal' by this evening, just the usual 'you're the current high bidder'.

Not sure what the motivation is for ebay to head the way they are doing, they're putting a lot of people off selling (myself included) but it seems to be part of the plan?

Tim

Where do the single-item sellers advertise stuff of interest to UKRME these days? I thought eBay had a strangle hold on the market, but I guess I'm just showing my ignorance. There do still appear to be bargains to be had, but we'll see when I go collect the CVA I got for £250 yesterday whether I'm riding a horse or an ass.

Regards,

Alan

The last change that pigged me off was forcing Flash advertising onto many of the pages. Still it did become such a pain that I found a plugin to disable flash unless I hit 'play' on it and this has helped on a lot of other sites as well :)

The main problem with ebay nowadays is their idea that they are no longer a 'car boot sale on line' so people advertising and selling second hand goods get hit with the same rules that should only apply to brand new goods. My siblings have been hit a couple of time now with people buying things they are clearing out, only to have the money pulled back from them and in one case not getting the goods back !!!

So YES we need a more ethical 'car boot sale on line' and kick ebay into touch.

Any links to where we can get this?

I've tried a few Flashblockers but few work in Opera, only IE.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

te:

yes i want this prog as well ..

i have great trouble with a royal mail advert in yahoo mail ..its doing my head in ..

its freezes the computer until its fully loaded and can take up to 30 secs to recover .

all the best.markj

That's good. I've purchased 'buy it now' items like shoelaces, shaver foil, Diesel biocide and rubber trailer buffers just recently. It's very easy, convenient and much better than driving across half the county for it. I'd be quite happy if all the second-hand stuff sold by crooks and advertised as good condition when it's obviously not was gone for good! :-)

Julian.

I'm on Seamonkey ... on Linux ... and FlashBlock is working nicely for me even though it is an older version that is used.

'i have great trouble with a royal mail advert in yahoo mail ..its. doing my head in.'

Don't use yahoo! 'Tis sh^^....rubbish.

I think that's a bit harsh. I've done a good deal more buying than selling on fleabay and only had a few bad experiences, roughly in equal proportion used and new stuff. A lot of the new stuff may indeed be new, but calling it rubbish would be charitable, viz mild steel hacksaw blades for example. You do have to be a bit careful with expectations, one blokes 'Good' is someone elses 'Junk' just because of perspective.

I've gone right off fleabay for selling, their rules and costs, especially with Pimpal thrown in are extortionate. I object to being forced to pay (Pp) for someone elses convenience and to get my own money. Because I'm not a busess user, they recently rushed me 50p charges to claim a £2.50 payment. Yeah, I know, it's _only_ 50p, but

I got a terse email from them next time when I put in the payments methods '...anything .... even Tuareg fertility beads...preferred to Pimpal..' Can't imagine why.

Richard

Sadly, online auctions are a "natural monopoly", so shifting eBay will be difficult.

BugBear

Yes I know, I did stick a smiley in there. Recently I've purchased a walk behind petrol engined vacuum cleaner and a Ransomes Bobcat mower, both quite old but acquired cheaply and in good working order.

I tell you what, rather than look for specific retailers on the www for stuff like car parts and razor shaver foil etc I now gravitate to e-bay because the ''buy it now'' option coupled with the ease of using PP, ie not having to register details for each sale and transaction, makes it a winner for me.

I'm not too bothered about the various negatives, I'm out for the easy life (so I can devote more time to working on old rubbish :-) ) and thus far it's worked for me....

Julian.

Unfortunately for my wife, it's worked well for me too, hence the large ratio of my bought to sold :-o)

Richard

Hopefully Google will open a fleabay competitor. Frankly, given the naked greed, incompetence and general "f*ck you" attitude that now blight ebay, I can't see myself bothering with them for much longer. I'd rather take my "junk" down the local charity shop and give it away than line the pockets of the ebay/paypal monster.

Regarding stopping flash and other irritants/nasties, if you're running Firefox then the "Adblock Plus" and "Noscript" plugins do a very effective job of stamping on flash. Personally, I'd pay good money to see the inventor of flash publicly disembowelled - the amount of 'Net bandwidth that must be wasted by pointless flash adverts must be colossal, bandwidth that you and I ultimately end up paying for.