Now, now... let's not fan the flames... It's just a fancy bicycle. BTW, ol' RS1.4 was slightly off on his selling price... by 100 large, as "T" might say. I was wondering how the pricing model could have possibly worked with the figures he claimed. $408K is what it brought, not the half mil. I guess he didn't want anyone to think he really should be making the $200K less remodeling rather than some real estate speculator. It's not that hard.
Yes. He knew a lot more about how Ebay works than I do. We used his account to sell the stuff that I found in the Penny Saver for free. However I want to start selling my own stuff through Ebay and was just browsing all their policies today and was amazed at all the fees. I want to set up my own seller's account on Ebay.
What fees? Last thing I sold was 55 cents to list, plus they wacked you 3% of the selling price to allow the buyer to use PalPay. The 3% is the same any merchant would have to pay for a credit card transaction. Fair enough.
Apparently Paypal "wacks" you, too. From the last statement I saw, it appears that we were charged around 10% between Ebay and Paypal combined. I'm not complaining, I just wanted to know exactly what all these fees were for. If we pay to have something listed, why do we also have to pay for the closing and a reserve price? No wonder Ebay stock is doing great!
Huh? Well FPC., I guess this must mean you are not interested in the bike? Only in instigating trouble. You are troubled!
just some background - ebay and paypal (now together, ironically enough) have lied about their fees and charges, and futureplans, since nearly day 1. so, if you use them, *expect* to get whacked with ever increasing charges. however, i'd suggest checking out the usenet newsgroups if you're not in a super rush. make sure that you can post classified ads there..you'll often get afficionados in the groups. back to ebay and paypal...tips to save some money. -> if you're sure you're going to sell the item, add the ebay fee to your 'shipping and handling' charge. 30c sounds like nothing, but it adds up. ebay's final value fees come from the cost of the item, NOT the shipping and handling. -> paypal has 2 types of accounts - one which charges money on ANY transaction through paypal (including credit cards), and one which does NOT charge money (except when you withdraw it), but you can't take credit cards. if you want c.c.'s, have 2 different paypal accounts - that are different from your ebay email account. -> ebay will try and 'opt you in' to a million things. make sure they are unchecked. worse, they'll re-opt you in if you ahven't used them in 6 months (or a year, i forget which), claiming a bug in their system. they've had this 'bug' at least 5 different times. -> don't let paypal have access to your checking account at ALL. there are horror stories out there about it. -> if you get email from ebay or paypal asking to confirm your password by clicking here, DON'T. it's 'phishers' who want to steal your password and have set up fake ebay / paypal accounts. always go there by a pre-set bookmark you've created, or by typing it in. -> don't expect to get satisfactory answers via email. ebay terminated all direct emails unless you go through their web server, so (for example) if you email abuse@ebay.com about the scam artists, it will auto-bounce your mail back. also, if you post the publicly accessible phone numbers to ebay on their boards, you will get warned the next time you will get suspended because "ebay isn't set up to handle phone questions". if you need to know the name of one of the good paypal employees (at least he was there a year ago, and since paypal got hugely negative complaints on most of their CS people and this one was hugely positive, i'd suspect he's still there), let me know privately. -> check the completed items area to see what your thing has sold for. you may be surprised (or disappointed) at what the prices are. way back when, i saw a second bidder on a rare item that i had - no one else was selling - and i contacted the seller, and offered (via email) to pay ebay for this. they refused and said contacting is 'against ebay's policy' (this was before it was 'written'). -> similarly...ebay's VeRO program is wacky, inconsistent, and terminates (not 1% of the time, but more than that) items which aren't illegal / against ebay policy / etc. becaues of improper VeRO reporting. the improper reporters don't get terminated, unfortunately. those are some of the things off the top of my head that you won't get on the "ebay is wonderful" trip. despite it, i still use them from time to time. i also use auctions.yahoo and some others as well. but ebay is the top dog. yahoo had 2 chances to get a chunk of ebay's customer base, and both times dropped the ball. it's unlikely that ebay will lose their mainstream appeal any time in the next 5 years.
gaj, Great stuff, thanks much. I have alwyas been nervous about letting paypal have bank account access, but how else can you get "verified" or whatever they call it, so you are not limited to a small amount?
yeah, they deliberately have those low limits. i believe this still works, but not sure. i had one account which reached its limit; closed it, cancelled the credit card on it and opened another. when that almost was at its limit, paypal upped the limits if you hadn't had any problems... however, you had to jump through hoops to close the account. not sure if that's true anymore... a brief history of paypal's misleadings: -> "join paypal, get someone else to join, we'll give you $10!". -> same as above, we'll give you $5. -> same as above, but you must have a verified checking account. this last part wasn't told to people, so paypal had tens of thousands of unclaimed referrals to people because of that (and an uproar). when all this was happening, and people said "duh...how can you make money when you're giving money away, have no advertising, and are not charging", paypal said 1) we'll make money on the float and 2) we'll ALWAYS BE FREE. (my emphasis). then, paypal moved to a "we're going to charge money on credit card transactions; you have to have a business account to get c.c.'s, but we're still always free for things that don't cost us money.". then, they went to a "if you have a business account, to simplify things for us, you'll be charged on all transactions. by the way, for personal accounts, we're still always free!". some suspect the next move is for personal accounts to get whacked if you have under a certain amount in the account, or inactivity, or variants on that formula, with paypal still saying "always free!". there are other online payment houses as well. i forget them all, but there are articles on them; billpay, paydirect (?), and some others; if you google for those 2 and paypal, you can find it. one of the banks - wells fargo, or someone - has a similar thing to paypal, with real customer support.