Welcome to my first blog! I'm starting off with what I think is a pretty important topic. eBay!
eBay at one point in time was one of the greatest things that was ever created for hobbyists. It provided a venue that opened up the world to everybody. And made it that everyone was on a more level playing field. Initially old time hobby/collectible sellers did not like eBay because it made it easier for the average person to buy and sell something at the "right" price. I personally think for quite a while it brought renewed interest in many hobbies. And then through eBay's greed, quest for domination and over rated self importance, eBay has now begun destroying everything that it built. I can fully understand them wanting to make a profit for their efforts and they should be entitled too. They should just do it in an upfront and simple manner. Instead they choose to and do it in a backdoor way, trying to get the buyer to think that eBay is trying to help them at the sellers expense, when in reality eBay just wanted more upfront profit. Here is the perfect example, For the past couple years eBay has done all it could to encourage sellers to give free shipping.
Now we all know that nothing is free. By giving free shipping the seller would just incorporate it into the price of the item and just charge more. This makes eBay's fee on the sale price of the item higher. They offered incentives to sellers initially to offer free shipping and when they got some sellers to offer free shipping, they then did away with the incentives. After they could not get enough sellers to offer free shipping, which in turn would give eBay higher fees, eBay came out in March 2011 and said effective July 2011 they are charging their commissions on the total cost including shipping. So in the end, they had to come out and say that the whole free shipping promotion was just to try and get their fees higher. Instead of being upfront and saying that they were going to charge on the total sale with shipping, they had to, for several years, cause sellers to have to spend an enormous amount of time on how to re market their items and in some cases even do away with some of the items they sold.
