| jeffweico | 04-29-2015 07:00 AM |
Re: ebay and paypal closing down?
Ummm... There is NO WAY that 75% of what is sold on eBay is counterfeit or stolen. If that WERE the case, they would have been shut down already.
You may believe that 75% of the listings in the categories you watch closely are counterfeit. But even THAT would be a stretch. For example, you mentioned someone selling paintings. They could be original LITHOGRAPHS. Lithographs are not normally counterfeit - so a person COULD have 25 of one item for sale. I am not looking at the same listing you mentioned, so I am not speaking to that specific listing, I'm just using it as an example.
As for PayPal, they became successful because they were the FIRST company that allowed ANYBODY to accept Visa and MasterCard payments without actually having a merchant account. Back then, it was VERY DIFFICULT to get approved for a merchant account. Mail order firms always had a difficult time and the internet was very new. It was not uncommon for merchant account brokers to charge $300 or more just to APPLY for a merchant account - with NO guarantee that you would get approved - which most people did not. eBay DID have Billpoint back then, but it was EXPENSIVE and hard to use. Same thing for CCnow. Plus, PayPal gave you your funds IMMEDIATELY back then, while CCnow paid you in 21-30 days and Billpoint had their own holds, but I don't quite remember what they were. I DO remember that I HATED Billpoint and would cringe every time a customer would ask to use it. I LOVED PAYPAL! Back then, anyway.
PayPal paid a referral fee of $5 for every new customer you signed up. Everybody selling on eBay sent invoices and said "Why not try PayPal? It is faster and easier than sending a check!" and got paid $5 for every new signup. I made THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS from new signups.
PayPal didn't have to resort to laundering drug money. I'm sure some people used it for that, but not the majority. PayPal grew way too fast for the growth to have been funded by drug cash. There simply is not enough drug related money out there to fuel a growth rate like that.
It is very easy to look at things based only upon your own experience, but you have to remember that these companies (eBay, PayPal, Amazon) do BILLIONS of dollars in business every year, covering all kinds of products - everything from socks to industrial equipment. If you sell paintings, and see a lot of counterfeits listed in that category, it becomes easy to believe that EVERYTHING on eBay is like that, but it is not true. You have to see the whole picture - paintings are a very small part of eBay's overall business.
And hot categories change over time. Right now, cell phones - especially Apple cell phones and accessories - are extremely hot items. In 1995, the hottest category on eBay was Beanie Babies, ridiculous as that may sound. This stuff is always changing.
Ten years from now, DVD's will still be around but a lot fewer people will actually be buying them - everything is moving to streaming. Just like books are still around - but most of the sales of new titles have moved to the e-book format. There will ALWAYS be a market for physical books, especially older titles, out of print titles, etc. it just becomes smaller and smaller. Solar is a quickly expanding category and will be HUGE in years to come. Why? Because costs have dropped to the point where it is actually a RATIONAL decision to have the solar panels installed on your home. Just a few years ago that was not true. I can't predict what everything will look like in ten years, but I know from the things I have previously seen, they will be VERY DIFFERENT from what they are TODAY!
My point in all of this is that it is very easy to look at things only from your perspective. | 
