Ebay: The rules change again!

1998 was the time to buy shares, thats when Pierre floated it IIRC and everyone said it would never work and Yahoo Auctions were seen as the obvious market leader.

Yahoo did loads of things to try and stop the things people complain about on eBay, such as sniping, shilling, etc. and guess what, nobody used it...

I've hrard of a couple opf people setting up rival auction and trading sites for specific types of product, there was a UK based one for car parts, theres a HUGE one for Lego (a mate of mine makes a good living just selling lego on "bricklink" and there are a few options for books, records, CDs, etc.)

The problem is unless theres a critical mass of buyers and sellers it doesn't take off. (not enough buyers/viewers means not engouh bids, obviously, and the sellers don;t come back, so the buyers give up going to see) People will just use the proven alternative....eBay. eBay got where it is because it set out to be a trading forum for Pez dispensors and grew from there, small community of interested buyers, all it needed. The problem with a lot of the other sites which have come and gone is they've tried to be eBay all in one go and failed. To start a rival it would need to be in a specific area (like Bricklink is with lego) and would have to have well thought out rules and decent support. We all complain about eBays cuustomer support but hell, think how many auctions, how many issues, and how many stff you'd need to police that... Blimey. If you set up oldcarpartsauction.co.uk and had even just 10,000 items on at a time then you'd need to check all them and deal with customer queries....

To be fair to the bay, I dobbed a blatant shiller in last night, this morning the object has been pulled, 3 hours from the end. Ha!

But in this instance it's those who bend / break the rules who benefit, to the detriment of the honest trader.

I agree that eBay is a good way to make a few quid... but I pay them ~£70 in fees every month, plus what they sting you on the paypal... If they weren't making such huge profits you might be able to forgive them the shocking lack of respect they have towards their clients.

I agree with both Pog & MWF.

Thing is name any large company that gives good customer service these days? I've been chasing the council since Wednesday because my lockup does't, erm, lock up. Its saturday, they do nothing over the weekend, there "our hours of business are 8:30 to 5:00 PM Monday to Friday" message was on at 4:50 PM on Friday and the emergency repair line thinks that my garage being open to all and sundry to steal / vandalise my stuff over the weekend is not an emergency issue.

I spend too much of my week doing battle with BT, NTL, Vodafone, Carphone Warehouse, other mobile provider, etc. and I am typically putting £40K to £80K business with these companies and still they don't keep their promices, phone you back, etc etc etc.

Ever try challenge an incorrect gas or electric bill? Even when they admit there is a mistake... JHC.

eBay is least of my worries, although a general low level annoyance.