| jeffweico | 11-28-2014 07:04 PM |
Re: My funny ebay story
Back in 1995, when eBay was AuctionWeb (and even for a while when it became eBay) you could sell almost ANYTHING on eBay. There were VERY FEW rules, the biggie was that NO adult items were to be sold in the public areas of eBay. Back then, selling those types of things outside of the "Adults Only" section was the number one way people got banned.
Almost nothing was prohibited, except for drugs and alcohol. You could sell cigarettes, guns, and even used underwear (although I never understood that one). There was all kids of cool stuff to be found.
Then newspapers started writing articles about eBay's success on the web. They highlighted the more controversial stuff like the guns, tobacco, adult items and other things. "DEN OF DEPRAVITY!" screamed a headline in in a North Carolina newspaper. The reporter documented several things being sold, including one guy who used code words for marijuana to sell marijuana without naming it. A state official in NC tried to pass a law that would force every person listing on eBay REGARDLESS of where they lived to have a North Carolina Auctioneer's license. Then he raised the price of a license to $250.
His plan didn't go anywhere, but it got the politicians in an uproar. Wacko extremists from coast to coast were demanding that eBay ban this, that and the other. One politician found a VHS copy of "Making Love" on eBay which was a mainstream movie, not x-rated, about a man discovering he was gay and wanted it banned. He had a whole list of products that were gay related in fact, including a gay pride flag - he wanted all of them removed. Other politicians chose to target different things, usually because a few people objected to them, or because they wanted to protect local businesses from lower prices available on eBay.
Mostly, they did not succeed, but eBay hired teams of lawyers to respond to threats and advise eBay of any liability they might have in allowing certain items to be sold.
And then the bans came. Guns were among the first things to go. Even licensed dealers were no longer allowed to sell on eBay. Then tobacco. Certain types of software, food items, stamps and coins, and many other products.
Then, they started creating a ton of new categories and sub-categories. Safe Harbor (now called Trust & Safety) started removing auctions for all kinds of reasons, mostly for being listed in the wrong category - even if the category was correct when the item was originally listed. They started disallowing certain products from being listed as "featured auctions" - anything deemed as too controversial or bawdy to be listed on their front page.
Safe Harbor went from being the good guys - the ones you would email if you were scammed - to being hated by sellers. Often, they would remove your auctions without giving any reason at all. If you dared ask them WHY it was removed, you would just get a canned response from them saying if you dared to re-list the item, your account would be closed permanently.
Fees went up and up, increasing every six months. There were so many new categories, fewer people were viewing (and bidding on) each item and sellers stopped getting decent money for their auctions. There was no "buy it now" option. All you could do is list your item with a reserve price - for an additional fee, of course.
eBay went from being an open marketplace which encouraged communication to a police state, where attempting to communicate with others was prohibited, except through eBay, and only for reasons they deemed allowable, such as specific questions about an item. You were no longer allowed to use your email address as your user-id. Everything became strictly regulated.
Many sellers left in frustration. It was becoming more and more expensive to list items and harder and harder to make any decent money. More and more of each seller's time was spent fighting with Safe Harbor than on dealing with customers and making money. For many of us, selling on eBay was no longer worth it. It went from being a lot of fun to place listings, to an adversarial relationship - you had to think every listing through, looking for ANYTHING that might be objected to by Safe Harbor.
What happened to their adult section was downright silly! According to their new rules, you could only put 3 pictures in a listing. Those pictures could NOT contain any full frontal nudity and could NOT use a blue or black dot to block out objectionable content. Your listing could not describe any actual sexual acts in the video. How the hell are you supposed to sell an adult product if you can't show the cover of the video and you can't describe what was IN the video? Their rules are a bit different now, I think they realized their first attempt at rulemaking in that category was unworkable.
When I first started on eBay, I was never afraid to list an item. I was fairly certain I would get a decent price for whatever I listed, even if it was not quite as much as I wanted. But with all of the BS going one, bids were in decline, reserves were usually necessary and I went from selling 99% of my listings to maybe 15% of my listings. And each one that didn't sell was costing me a fortune. It cost $2 just to list anything. A Bold title was another 50 cents. Pictures added still more cost. Putting a reserve price on an auction was another $2. After all was said and done, it cost me $5 to list each item whether or not it sold. And if it sold then there were the final value fees to deal with. I gave up on eBay.
I revisited it a few years later and some things had changed. A lot of competition was gone. Listing fees had been lowered dramatically and the site had changed from mostly auctions to buy it now listings. I started to rebuild my eBay business, listed on Amazon as well and started my own website. Now, I use eBay as a marketing tool as well as to make money. I include a coupon for my website with each order. I will never again trust eBay, you can go from happily selling to out in the cold in 5 seconds or less. | 
