Is it Time for Buyers to Drop EBay? 1 1

[Bird]

11 minutes ago, justafan said:

The other change coming that kills me is the changing of all fixed price sales durations to a mandatory Good 'til Cancelled setting which will auto-renew/extend all unsold listings after 30 days

I guess I will be changing my listings to auction with a BIN-like starting price. That is a rough change for sellers.

[WolverineX]

yes

[Pete Marino]

I had a shock this week, sold something to Washington State, they charged the person sales tax, but the money never hit my paypal, i'm assuming eBay has some process for skimming that money right off the top and putting it in the right place??

Or am I going to get a bill for Sales Tax and never see it coming?

it's a cluster-mess.

[ADAMANTIUM]

26 minutes ago, Pete Marino said:

I had a shock this week, sold something to Washington State, they charged the person sales tax, but the money never hit my paypal, i'm assuming eBay has some process for skimming that money right off the top and putting it in the right place??

Or am I going to get a bill for Sales Tax and never see it coming?

it's a cluster-mess.

Well that's good that it is automatic and eBay is taking care of it....

Not so bad

[justafan]

3 hours ago, Pete Marino said:

I had a shock this week, sold something to Washington State, they charged the person sales tax, but the money never hit my paypal, i'm assuming eBay has some process for skimming that money right off the top and putting it in the right place??

Or am I going to get a bill for Sales Tax and never see it coming?

it's a cluster-mess.

Yes, they take care of that for you. And yes they state that is a service they provide to you free of charge.  It would be a PITA and a liability making us do it.  At least they don't include the sales tax in their calculation of their FVFees....I hope. 

[the blob]

5 hours ago, Bird said:

I guess I will be changing my listings to auction with a BIN-like starting price. That is a rough change for sellers.

Most of my fixed price free 50 listing items are things I will re-list anyway. It would be nice to control the re-list better. I suppose I can always end something on day 29 if I don't want it re-listed.

[the blob]

Does anyone know if those sales taxes collected are part of the $20K/200 transaction 1099 sum? It is not a "gross amount" any of us will see.

[Jaylam]

I buy and sell through lots of venues. I have found a few very good sellers on ebay and have never had a problem, even with raw books. Yes, sometimes some sellers don't get it, but I never consider the transaction done until I have the book(s) in hand and have had a chance to inspect it. Same goes for when I'm selling.

As far as packaging, two factors are always in play, how the item is packaged in the first place and then how it gets handled during shipment. I've had one bad experience when shipping out a CGC graded book. I think in that case I was screwed by the post office as the buyer said the CGC case was cracked in shipping, but that was an understatement; the box had a tire track on it and that 1/3 of the box along with that corner of the CGC case inside was crushed, blowing through my double box and bubble wrap like it was nothing. It had obviously been run over somehow and nothing short of a reinforced steel container could have saved that one. Even-though I had purchased insurance for the selling price ($180), the USPS would only pony up $50 saying the book was not a total loss. What a joke.

Another thing that gets me is ebay buyers. I try and track sales and price my books accordingly, so say a book has been going for $500-$600 for the last several sales, I put my book up for $549 with a make offer option. I am amazed at all the ridiculous offers that come in: $100, $200 and so on. Really???

[the blob]

19 minutes ago, Jaylam said:

I buy and sell through lots of venues. I have found a few very good sellers on ebay and have never had a problem, even with raw books. Yes, sometimes some sellers don't get it, but I never consider the transaction done until I have the book(s) in hand and have had a chance to inspect it. Same goes for when I'm selling.

As far as packaging, two factors are always in play, how the item is packaged in the first place and then how it gets handled during shipment. I've had one bad experience when shipping out a CGC graded book. I think in that case I was screwed by the post office as the buyer said the CGC case was cracked in shipping, but that was an understatement; the box had a tire track on it and that 1/3 of the box along with that corner of the CGC case inside was crushed, blowing through my double box and bubble wrap like it was nothing. It had obviously been run over somehow and nothing short of a reinforced steel container could have saved that one. Even-though I had purchased insurance for the selling price ($180), the USPS would only pony up $50 saying the book was not a total loss. What a joke.

Another thing that gets me is ebay buyers. I try and track sales and price my books accordingly, so say a book has been going for $500-$600 for the last several sales, I put my book up for $549 with a make offer option. I am amazed at all the ridiculous offers that come in: $100, $200 and so on. Really???

Folks are testing the waters or just hoping. Maybe you counter with $450 and they accept.  On a smaller scale, I have had $25 items that got $5 offers and I come back with $20 and they accept.

[ThatNerdyCanuck]

I'm not happy that eBay has started collecting taxes on purchases. Recently books I've been buying and have sent to my PO Box in WA have been taxed up the ying yang. 

[fastballspecial]

33 minutes ago, ThatNerdyCanuck said:

I'm not happy that eBay has started collecting taxes on purchases. Recently books I've been buying and have sent to my PO Box in WA have been taxed up the ying yang. 

You think Ebay is doing that because they want to? Look no farther then your state and federal governments.

 

[jbud73]

I still buy books on EBAY, its a yin, yang love hate relationship and you must have a lot of patience and be prepared for a certain number of things.  It is kind of like posting in Comics General, you gain a lot of knowledge but have to tolerate a requisite level of   Here however are my TOP 5 least favorite EBAY things, with apologies to the Letterman fans as I'm too lazy to do 10.

5. Shipping profiteers: You know the people that charge you $7 to ship one book and send it Media Mail (the flying one can insert rant legality post here) in a old beaten envelope and thin cardboard, which is a real kicker because the extra few oz of weight for Media Mail is like pennies.  The classic reasoning, "Well the shipping cost was posted so you agreed to get spoon by bidding on the auction" I don't mind paying a little extra, heck we pay the auction houses, so a $1 here or there to EBAY dealers is ok, BUT don't charge twice the cost and then do a #$(%#(_)_ job shipping the book.

4. I'm not a professional grader / listing title uses the term "High Grade":  Its one or the other people, if you want the 'plausible deniability of saying you don't know how to grade so when the book shows up with rusty staples, then YOU CANNOT ATTRIBUTE THE TERMINOLOGY ASSOCIATED WITH GRADING.  The irony is that there are no PRO GRADERS.  There are certification companies, but no school exists, there isn't an apprenticeship program or degree requirements. Graders are never scored for their consistency by computers or have to maintain standards associated with a license to practice grading.

3. Feedback: Its been used as a weapon, then neutered and really does it really matter?  You throw a Hulk 181 up there for 99c open at auction and your EBAY handle could be, iselltrimmedbooks and it would probably still get a nice % of GPA.

2. Ending the listing early when there are bids on an item because you got a private offer through EBAY.  This one is just rooted in the 30c Variant and OA collector in me and I could go on for a page, but digress greatly.

1. The EBAY Picture Filter applied to 80% of the books call "EBAY OUT OF FOCUS"  I mean with today's smart phone tech and camera phone pixel rate, even if people are not scanning the books, I mean its gotta be a filter right? How can all these people selling comics all have the same crazy ability to take slightly out of focus or non-high resolution pics.  It must be something that occurs during the upload process to EBAY, some gremlin slightly distorts all the pics free of charge. It really is amazing how many out of focus comic pics are on EBAY.  Just the effort required to not take a good pic with today's tech and how lazy people are has me convinced there is an app called, EBAY Comic distortion de-enhancement filters.

 

Of course I'm watching 100 auctions this week, with all this to look forward to, how could I not?

 

 

Edited March 2, 2019 by jbud73

[justafan]

On 2/27/2019 at 5:40 PM, Jaylam said:

I buy and sell through lots of venues. I have found a few very good sellers on ebay and have never had a problem, even with raw books. Yes, sometimes some sellers don't get it, but I never consider the transaction done until I have the book(s) in hand and have had a chance to inspect it. Same goes for when I'm selling.

As far as packaging, two factors are always in play, how the item is packaged in the first place and then how it gets handled during shipment. I've had one bad experience when shipping out a CGC graded book. I think in that case I was screwed by the post office as the buyer said the CGC case was cracked in shipping, but that was an understatement; the box had a tire track on it and that 1/3 of the box along with that corner of the CGC case inside was crushed, blowing through my double box and bubble wrap like it was nothing. It had obviously been run over somehow and nothing short of a reinforced steel container could have saved that one. Even-though I had purchased insurance for the selling price ($180), the USPS would only pony up $50 saying the book was not a total loss. What a joke.

Another thing that gets me is ebay buyers. I try and track sales and price my books accordingly, so say a book has been going for $500-$600 for the last several sales, I put my book up for $549 with a make offer option. I am amazed at all the ridiculous offers that come in: $100, $200 and so on. Really???

That kinda scares me.  I had always expected that they would honor the insurance paid up to that amount as they are supposed to keep the comic and all contents.  Did they bother to refund you the extra $4 for the cost of insurance above their free $50 that comes with priority mail?  I wonder if you could have requested that they keep the comic and pay you the full insured amount or presented an argument that the value of the book prior to shipping was $180 but in its current state was between $0 and $x based on what a raw book in its current grade might go for based on past ebay sales, GPA, or Overstreet.  If it was a not very rare modern and the book is now in FN/VF and lower, that book is practically worthless meaning you should have been fully compensated by insurance.

On the latter point of Best offiers.  I usually set a minimum offer auto decline.  But the blob is right.  Many are just testing the waters to see if they might get lucky or find a seller with a TON of wiggle room just looking to move product.  The downside to setting a high auto-decline is you might lose out on a sale with a more realistic counter closer to your price since many buyers might be too fearful of shooting over that price with their 4-7 offer limits.  That's the one great thing about their new send an offer feature where you can now send potentially interested ebayers the lowest you'd be willing to go to move product vs listing as an auction and then having to wait for an auction to end.

[Jaylam]

3 hours ago, justafan said:

That kinda scares me.  I had always expected that they would honor the insurance paid up to that amount as they are supposed to keep the comic and all contents.  Did they bother to refund you the extra $4 for the cost of insurance above their free $50 that comes with priority mail?  I wonder if you could have requested that they keep the comic and pay you the full insured amount or presented an argument that the value of the book prior to shipping was $180 but in its current state was between $0 and $x based on what a raw book in its current grade might go for based on past ebay sales, GPA, or Overstreet.  If it was a not very rare modern and the book is now in FN/VF and lower, that book is practically worthless meaning you should have been fully compensated by insurance.

On the latter point of Best offiers.  I usually set a minimum offer auto decline.  But the blob is right.  Many are just testing the waters to see if they might get lucky or find a seller with a TON of wiggle room just looking to move product.  The downside to setting a high auto-decline is you might lose out on a sale with a more realistic counter closer to your price since many buyers might be too fearful of shooting over that price with their 4-7 offer limits.  That's the one great thing about their new send an offer feature where you can now send potentially interested ebayers the lowest you'd be willing to go to move product vs listing as an auction and then having to wait for an auction to end.

Yes, this was very frustrating. I believe if I purchase insurance for said amount, if there is loss or damage of any kind while in their care, they should reimburse for the full insured amount. Pro-rating the loss based on their opinion of the damage was a real eye-opener. Yes, the book wasn't totally ruined, but I had to have the book returned to me, reimburse the buyer for the full amount, and re-submit the book for pressing and grading again (which looking back, was probably not worth the trouble), but luckily, the book graded back the same as it was before. It was an Amazing Spider-Man #88 in 9.0, but I think I'm off on my selling price of $180, as that seems kind of high for that book in that grade. I think it was more like $125. 

[newshane]

Between eBay fees, shipping costs, and PayPal fees, who can afford to ask reasonable prices on eBay? 

[Jaylam]

10 hours ago, newshane said:

Between eBay fees, shipping costs, and PayPal fees, who can afford to ask reasonable prices on eBay? 

Yes, that's bad enough, but Heritage Auctions is even worse. Not only do they take a percentage from the seller on the front end like ebay, they also charge the buyer 20% on the back end. Yikes!

Edited March 3, 2019 by Jaylam

[Sackolantern]

This is killing me after my ebay fiasco that is a few hours old. In January I received an email from ebay saying list and sell 5 items for FREE. I asked around on the boards, and they said good deal, go for it. So, I called and verified with eBay over the phone, and over the next few hours  (offer ended midnight PACIFIC, and I'm ET) I got my listing set, and put it up for sale, pictures included, by midnight. The book sells, and last week I finally get around to moving some cash around.  730 ET tonight, I get hit with the 10% ebay fee... 5 weeks after the sale ENDED. I spent about 90 minutes on the phone with ebay, and they tell me their records show that the sale listing happened ....at 5:15 AM ET, 5 hours after the offer ended.

Considering I was at work at 7 AM and was annoyed that I had finished the listing at midnight the night before and was only going to get 5+ hours of sleep, I was pretty surprised at this. BUT I have no screenshots, and nothing I can point to that disputes their timestamp, except my recollection, and the emails I have with the screenshots from my phone, that I sent to my PC to then uploda on the sale listing, all timestapmed before midnight ET.

Ebay has said the best they can do, and all that they will do, is refund HALF of the listing fee that should have been free. This has ruined my Saturday night, and I'm sitting here STILL absolutely LIVID.

Screenshots, people.

[Black_Adam]

16 hours ago, ThatNerdyCanuck said:

I'm not happy that eBay has started collecting taxes on purchases. Recently books I've been buying and have sent to my PO Box in WA have been taxed up the ying yang. 

I'm in the same boat. State sales tax is also now being charged by both Comiclink and Heritage (due to the Wayfair Decision). I would just abandon my mailbox in Point Roberts, WA if it wasn't for the fact that so many eBay sellers refuse to ship to Canada. 

[Buzzetta]

One thing I have always observed is that when people try to enforce things that the public finds disagreeable it forces to the public to become more creative in avoiding the enforcement of the thing they find disagreeable. 

• If the majority of the collecting community want to avoid paying sales tax on eBay or through auction houses, they will switch to things like Facebook and Instagram to advertise and sell. 
• If PayPal starts adding tax to transactions then more people will go the friends and family route (mistake in my book)
• If that occurs then look to see more business transactions go on locally like Craigslist which is a cash and carry thing. 

I am not here to debate the morality aspect or the citizenship aspect of the above statement.  I am basing this post on what was seen during any time period that the Government tried to enforce something that a large segment of the people disagreed with. We have seen this with file sharing, prohibition, the list goes on.  

Edited March 3, 2019 by Buzzetta

[Jaylam]

If we had been paying the sales tax for online transactions all along from the beginning of the internet, we wouldn't care so much now. The problem is we were able to avoid it, which probably in and of itself aided in the growth of internet transactions, but once the government saw all the $$$ they were missing out on from all these transactions, they of course want in on the action. The thing the largess of the government and politicians in general fail to understand, is how taxing something changes peoples behavior, and over time, all that $$$ they thought they were going to get is never realized, because they base their projections on everything staying the same, not taking into account how the taxation itself changes the dynamic.