New Ebay rates!! Ouch!!

Peggy wrote:

I agree, Marjean. People will follow you and buy off your website if you
let them.

OMTP

OM3P

-Su

--
Tillerman eBay shop: http://stores.ebay.com/thetillermanbeads
Tillerman on JustBeads:
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=tillermanbeads
Tillerman website: http://www.tillerman.co.uk

overstock now has auctions, i've gotten some really lovely things there. and
there is lampwork there. as well as beads, jewelry and jade.

love jade.
pat

pat moses-caudel
http://members.aol.com/patmcaudel/2index.html

Ebay Cons:

1. Ebay has dismal customer service. Their Live Help is all but gone, you
can't call them and their email response time is usually non-existent. It's
been that way for at least three years now.

2. Their servers glitch *all the time* - even with weekly maintenance
outages, they have a lot of technical problems which effect both buyers and
sellers every single day.

3. At this time, they are the only game in town (really, there's no equal
competition, but that will change hopefully) so they can charge whatever
they want and get away with it. Monopoly. Almost as bad as Microsoft.

4. They cater heavily to larger businesses now, where 4 or 5 years ago, they
catered to the people that got them started - mom and pop businesses and
people selling things out of their home.

5. They've already raised their prices very recently.

6. Their "Stores" set up is awful. No exposure, klunky maintenance, still
have a lot of bugs even though they have been trying to fix things since
they started "Stores" a couple of years ago. Better than they were at
first, but still not worth the price increase.

7. They keep acquiring companies, and keep building in features that they
think people need, but are worthless. (My Ebay 2.0, Anything Points, to
name just a couple) Instead, they need to concentrate on fixing the glaring
errors that still exist after YEARS)

8. Their billing department is TERRIBLE. Several large snafus have prompted
class action lawsuits which have been settled for large amounts of money.
And problems are still happening everyday.

9. Their pic hosting department is TERRIBLE - and they charge money for it!

Ebay Pros:

1. Their VERO program is great, I speak from personal experience.

2. Their auctions are still fairly decently priced for a lot of people,
although the rising price for "extras" on the auctions makes it hard to
sell.

3. They do have a lot of traffic.

Feel free to add to the list.
It's not that ebay is horrible - it's just that people who have been doing
business with them for awhile can see that the money they are charging is
not going to help the problems that exist.

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net

I'm not meaning to sound like I'm against what you guys are doing (or
mean,
or judgemental, or anything) but why shouldn't eBay put their prices up?
I
mean, they have to pay thousands of staff all over the world, they have to
keep updating their servers and their equipment, they have to pay for
massive amounts of advertising (at least over here they do). And it costs
us what, 70p to list a £20 item in all (and accept a credit card)? I'd
say
that's pretty good considering the cost of websites, e-commerce, merchant
accounts and so forth. For the service that eBay provide us, I'd say it's
quite justified. But I could be wrong. I'll go get my flame resistant
suit.

Charlie.

"Kandice Seeber" wrote in message
...
Just a heads up - there's now a petition you can sign if you are against
the
ebay fees. There are over 1500 signatures so far. Please, if you are
against
these fees, go over there and sign! It might not do any good, but at
least
it might help some of us feel better.

http://www.petitiononline.com/ebayfee/petition.html

Kandice

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net

Yep - exactly. Lampwork Beads as a medium is starting to move away from
ebay, even though that used to be the best venue for it online (bead shows
being the best venue offline). A lot of artists are moving to their own
websites now. And I am sure Justbeads is on the verge of becoming more and
more popular, if the buyers follow the sellers.

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net

Kandice wrote:

This is a really good point. Having a website is only beneficial if you
can
get the word out to your customers. Having a weekly newsletter can help
a
lot. And posting ads here and other places which allow it helps, too.
Get
business cards printed up from Vista Print for a really good price, and
put
your website and ebay ID both on there. There are so many things you can
do
to advertise which cost next to nothing. People are buying online so
much
more these days.

That's one thing I plan to do this week, offer a newsletter. I get
several
from beadmakers and I love knowing what is new with them.

eBay has its uses for putting your name in front of the public, but I
think
we're reaching that break point where we can offer more on the website and
not rely strictly on eBay for all the traffic we need.

I think the lampwork world will be shifting a lot anyway as eBay really
has
ignored all the messages about categories, which would be such a simple
thing for them. All the trash they let be listed really cheapens the good
art that is there.

We're going to be moving away from relying on eBay and only listing basic
sets to keep our name out there, as for the rest, here's hoping the
website
will bring them in.

-Su

--
Tillerman eBay shop: http://stores.ebay.com/thetillermanbeads
Tillerman on JustBeads:
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=tillermanbeads
Tillerman website: http://www.tillerman.co.uk

It's a balance - ebay is good for periodic auctions to help keep things
going and help bring new customers. A newsletter, business cards, word of
mouth, all will help customers follow you to whatever venue you like.

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net

vj wrote:

]We're going to be moving away from relying on eBay and only listing
basic
]sets to keep our name out there, as for the rest, here's hoping the
website
]will bring them in.

i really, really prefer buying direct from an artist's website!

The hard part is getting your name out there to bring people in. It's a
slow process but eventually we hope that we have more business from the
website than eBay.

Even Marks & Spencer's started out small...

-Su

--
Tillerman eBay shop: http://stores.ebay.com/thetillermanbeads
Tillerman on JustBeads:
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=tillermanbeads
Tillerman website: http://www.tillerman.co.uk

They have lampwork? Really? Oh, now I have to look......

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net
"WildPoppy1" wrote in message
...
overstock now has auctions, i've gotten some really lovely things there.
and
there is lampwork there. as well as beads, jewelry and jade.

love jade.
pat

pat moses-caudel
http://members.aol.com/patmcaudel/2index.html

Hmmm - only 5 listings in lampwork, and all imported, but it's a start. And
I love their layout, and they do have over 400 listings in Loose Beads.

Link:

http://auctions.overstock.com/cgi-bi...BROWSE&CTG=302

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net

overstock now has auctions, i've gotten some really lovely things there.
and
there is lampwork there. as well as beads, jewelry and jade.

love jade.
pat

pat moses-caudel
http://members.aol.com/patmcaudel/2index.html

BTW, the ebay protest petition I posted yesterday now has over 8000
signatures and is the 2nd most popular petition on the whole site (thousands
of petitions). This isn't going away, I think.

http://www.petitiononline.com/petition.html

Scroll down - it's #2

--
Kandice Seeber
Air & Earth Designs
http://www.lampwork.net

Kandice wrote:

Yep - exactly. Lampwork Beads as a medium is starting to move away from
ebay, even though that used to be the best venue for it online (bead shows
being the best venue offline). A lot of artists are moving to their own
websites now. And I am sure Justbeads is on the verge of becoming more
and
more popular, if the buyers follow the sellers.

The trick is getting the buyers to follow the sellers.

I think for a while still I'll list on eBay simply because of their coverage
but we're getting buried in the junk and they don't seem to care. It will
be harder to get people to JustBeads at first, and I do think that for some
sellers their sales will suffer badly because they won't have the volume of
people past their 'doorstep' elsewhere. It's a chicken and egg thing now I
think with JustBeads, will they bring in the casual buyer or will it take a
concerted effort on the part of the lampworkers to get the word out to the
larger world that there's a site for beads? And how much money is JustBeads
willing to invest in advertising, not to the bead world but to the other
parts of the buying public?

It's a shame really but I never thought eBay would turn out to be so dire in
some ways. Their lack of concern in some areas has always bothered me but
they do offer a big window onto the world for us newcomers. I just hope we
get the other traffic before eBay dies a death from the oversurplus of junk
on it. I see it sinking eventually like a Titanic full of yard sale tat and
fake gold watches.

I want to be on one of the lifeboats!

-Su

--
Tillerman eBay shop: http://stores.ebay.com/thetillermanbeads
Tillerman on JustBeads:
http://www.justbeads.com/search/ql.cfm?s=tillermanbeads
Tillerman website: http://www.tillerman.co.uk

"Kandice Seeber" wrote in message
...
1. Ebay has dismal customer service. Their Live Help is all but gone, you
can't call them and their email response time is usually non-existent.
It's
been that way for at least three years now.

I can't speak for the US customer service, but the UK one is excellent (from
my experience). They've always been helpful when I've emailed / phoned
them.

3. At this time, they are the only game in town (really, there's no equal
competition, but that will change hopefully) so they can charge whatever
they want and get away with it. Monopoly. Almost as bad as Microsoft.

So someone needs to rival them. The problem is, that no one can do it well
enough - just like Microsoft.

4. They cater heavily to larger businesses now, where 4 or 5 years ago,
they
catered to the people that got them started - mom and pop businesses and
people selling things out of their home.

Well, that's the market they've chosen to hit. They're the people that make
the most money for them.

5. They've already raised their prices very recently.

And so did Somerfield (supermarket) raise their chip prices recently, but
they did it again. All companies do that. I raised my bracelet prices
twice in a row very quickly. I felt I was giving a service/product and
wasn't getting paid enough for it. Perhaps I'm greedy. We're all human.

6. Their "Stores" set up is awful. No exposure, klunky maintenance, still
have a lot of bugs even though they have been trying to fix things since
they started "Stores" a couple of years ago. Better than they were at
first, but still not worth the price increase.

This one I agree with. Their stores are awful. But I guess if you promote
it enough then it will pay for the time you spend on it.

7. They keep acquiring companies, and keep building in features that they
think people need, but are worthless. (My Ebay 2.0, Anything Points, to
name just a couple) Instead, they need to concentrate on fixing the
glaring
errors that still exist after YEARS)

My eBay 2.0 is a good feature. I like it anyway. Anything points aren't
over here so I can't comment. People moaned when they took over paypal
though, but it made things so much easier.

9. Their pic hosting department is TERRIBLE - and they charge money for
it!

So why do people use it? Free webspace is not hard to find and we all get
basic free graphics programmes with out PC's/Macs.

Ebay Pros:

1. Their VERO program is great, I speak from personal experience.

Me too, definatly a good thing and easier and cheaper than legal action.

2. Their auctions are still fairly decently priced for a lot of people,
although the rising price for "extras" on the auctions makes it hard to
sell.

You know, I believe your basic listing fees are still cheaper than ours, and
our auctions genrally fetch less money. (I believe, I haven't cheked out
that current exchange rate for a while).

Feel free to add to the list.
It's not that ebay is horrible - it's just that people who have been doing
business with them for awhile can see that the money they are charging is
not going to help the problems that exist.

Maybe, just maybe, they've got something up their sleeves.

Charlie.