Ebay Seller Warning

[Sciuropterus]

You lose control when your sales volume exceeds the capabilities of your business structure.

Some common causes of failure are poor inventory control, unscalable logistics (shipping, accounting, etc. can't keep up with increased volume), unreliable product sources, and pre-selling, a practice where the seller intentionally lists an item for sale when it is not yet in their inventory- a bad thing if you do not have a reliable source.

In 2003, eBay electronics seller priceitwholesale was an eBay top seller- over $1 million in sales A MONTH. 10 months later they were kicked off eBay due to mounting negative feedback, a spectacular flameout caused by their inability to handle the volume. You can't hide your screwups and growing pains on eBay.


On a large-scale eBay business, it only takes a few problems to start a disastrous chain-reaction.

[bjcustard]

Thank you for the illumination. I was thinking of far-more nefarious things, such as account impersonation and such... ;)

[cessna152towser]

At the beginning e-bay was really good but as others have said it's now beginning to have problems with rogue buyers and sellers moving in and also some of the originally good shop sellers running into management issues - a recent British example was Leedsmodelcentre who at one time had a great feedback score but latterly were getting many negatives. I've done quite a bit of buying and selling model trains and 'planes and 'buses and enjoyed being able to change my collection round at the beginning. Indeed it was through e-bay that I got my user name - wanted to be Towser after a stuffed toy dog which my late mother made many years ago and which still exists but that user name was taken, then I tried Cessna152 which was the 'plane I was flying at the time and that was taken too, so I ran them both together. It made sense to keep the same user name when I started to do fora rather than try to find and remember another one. Lately e-bay's becoming a hassle with buyers having to be prodded umpteen times before they pay and sellers needing prodded before they deliver.