Like all computer web sites some undergo more popularity than others, take social networking a few years ago it was all about personal pages now its all status's. With Auction sites there has been very little competition until now. Ebay was the first and has been the biggest success story in online auction sites. But now there are alternatives namely Ebid and other sites Like Amazon.
For me I have found that the Ebay of now is not like the Ebay of old , of say a couple of years ago. I initially started it as a means of just putting my surplus cds on it, a few years ago it was quite easy to pay by other methods. But of late the lines between Paypal and ebay have become quite blurred, ebay is the site which features all the auctions, paypal is the account you need to run ebay properly. That is my first critism. Ebay makes it hard for people without good credit ratings or bank accounts to sell or buy. If you purchase a item and pay by postal order you cannot locate the address anywhere and normally have to ask the person in general messages.
My second critism of it is that If you buy a few items over a period of time before long Ebay and Paypal both ask for further verification. This is a bit daft really as you should only need to link an account once as when you apply for a bank account and credit card, they are not normally issued unless an account is verified anyway. There seems to be the demand for excessive bank details and credit card details. In one instance in a old account in the period of use I had to link 3 diffrent bank accounts and 2 credit cards. Which is unworkable and very risky to a invidudual
3rd - Business Sellers have great priority and more information at their disposal, also they work in conjunction with ebay so business sellers get higher priority in listings process. So where as you list an item as a personal seller and think that you stand a chance of getting a good price when you search for your ad , it gets lesser priority. Also if you ask in help sections the business sellers , put you in your place, or at least try to. So that would be another critism that you ask other sellers and ebay and still dont really get anywhere.
4th- Case resolution - Someone in one of the Ebay offices , must have thought "I know lets create cases- works for the crown prosection, lets apply to online selling and buying'. Well I have read articles about this and from first hand experience, that you list a item to sell and send the goods out, in instances I started to notice that I was getting cases raised even though the item was in the system. This started to happen as a weekly occurance, so I started to track items. I know with this part I may be classing all buyers as Dishonest, they are not but there is always an element that reads .pdf files about how to make money on online sites. With The case resolution it gives the buyer unprecedented powers. So they order an item, wait 3 days raise a case then apply for a refund and in most cases ebay grants them a full refund, I sent a couple of items tracked and watched them arrive at their destination. If they dont remove the Case resolution I cant see problems ahead for ebay.
5- Let me get this straight Ebay is good as its popular which means that you can normally find what you want. If you are a buyer and link a credit card and pay that way its fine, but as a seller account forget it. As a seller you get hit for costs right across the board. First take you sell an item ' 50 dvds' as an example. You place the advert but you first have to open a paypal account to list and then pay the insertion fee to list the item(the item might not sell, but you still pay for the privilage). Then the item sells. The customer pays at the price he won it at, you are then deducted money from what the item sold at. So for instance you sold it for 55, you would only get 49. This gets added to the fees. So there is the listing fee and the sale fee, paypal then also deducts money when its credited. Lastly you want to transfer the money over , you get charged for that also.
For me I like the power of online auctions as it can bring music and dvds to fans at a cheap price, however at the moment I find it is sending higher costs onto the sellet, which means its becoming more a business sector thing rather than for the individual.
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