Ebay Debacle

My husband and I have made a decision. I will only be doing ebay until right before our cruise in November. At first I was going to just take a few weeks off before and during our cruise but now the hiatus may become permanent or longer than intended. I will definitely be shutting down my store at that time. I decided to continue until then because I want to earn some extra money for the cruise but after that we will make due with my husband's job since mine was just extra anyway.

Why am I making this decision? Because ebay has changed into a monster. They have had two policy changes that have greatly hurt my business. For the first two years on ebay I just did the auction style and sold individual sets. But after many customers asking for special orders and not wanting the whole set and having a desire to just purchase one or two of several different dies I opened my ebay store. I sold my sets in there still but I listed over 300 individual dies that people could purchase 1 or 100 and they ranged in price from 5 cents to 50 cents a piece. I opened my store in October and it took me about two months to list everything. So around Christmas I was finally happy with the amount I had in there and had slowed down in adding stuff. My sales skyrocketed. Most people would buy several dollars worth of die cuts that way. They were able to create their own sets.

Then the end of February I receive an email from ebay stating a change in a policy. They were no longer going to allow store inventory or fixed price listing to be under $1. Most of mine are the store inventory kind. I freaked out because that meant most of my inventory. I emailed them with my concerns. From what I read in the policy the ones already listed would remain but just would not come up in searches after April 20. I was okay with that since I figured people would see them when they looked at my other auctions. The customer service representative that got back to me told me exactly the same thing. The ones under $1 would continue to relist until they sold out or I cancelled them, that they wouldn't come up in searches, and I wouldn't be able to add anything new for under the $1. I was okay with that. I was trying to decide to either create new sets (didn't know how that would work) or just end my store when it got down to only a few items. I figured I had at least a year maybe longer.

Than just over a week ago ebay cancelled one of my listings and when I read the email the reason was left blank so emailed them to find out why. It said that they would get back to me 24-48 hours. One day goes by. No answer. Another day goes by. Still no answer. Finally over three days later I get the answer it was because it was $1. By this time it is Wednesday night. I decide I better do something about my other listings before they cancelled them and I decide to email them to see why they misinformed me in the first place and to give me more time. But then I got the flu. I got a few of them switched over. I should have emailed them but I was afraid that might of made them aware of how many I actually had. I wanted to get more changed over before I said anything unless they just decided to be sticklers. It probably wouldn't of done any good anyway since the first one lied to me in the first place.

Well, Sunday evening I am just checking my email and I have over 300 messages all from ebay, all about cancelled items. I am furious. On top of that I have several emails from customers that had bought things the day before that were freaking out because they had already paid but the also received emails saying their items had been cancelled. I hurrily email these customers to let them know what is going on and that their items would be mailed first thing Tuesday morning.

Monday morning I email ebay a lovely little note telling them just what I think of the situation. Don't worry I know how to write a scathing letter without swearing. I also find that they cancelled three items that I had in compliance and maybe more. I have over 275 alerts still to go through. I should send them a copy of that scathing email in each of those alerts but I am not that vindictive. I demand them to refund the fees for the ones they should not have cancelled because they were in compliance. I may find more. Still not heard anything from them and we are going on two days.

Anyway, so now I have a two month task ahead of me if I am going to get those all relisted. Oh, and they only made 1/3 of them available to me to relist the others I have to start from scratch. I am feeling overwhelmed, sick (still the flu), agitated. My husband help me and we spent the entire day (Monday) cutting die cuts to make sure I could fulfill my promises to those customers. We did it. Yesterday I started picking up the pieces and started relisting some of the items.

Then I noticed that my feedback on ebay has dropped. It was 100%. I freaked out wondering who left me a negative. If something is wrong I always try to fix it. I have had some neutral that are over a month old (from people that didn't let me know what was wrong.) I open up my feedback forum and there is no negative. I clicked on the how is feedback figured and it now shows that neutrals count against you just the same as a negative. That is ludicrous. Why even have neutral feedback if it counts the same as a negative? So feeling completely defeated trying to uphold a reputation that doesn't even matter anymore since it has been tarnished by ebay itself I started to think about the whole picture. I am unhappy doing so much. I want to spend more time with my children and work on my other hobbies. I talk to my husband last night. He was helping with my business to help pay for his car payment so our budget wouldn't be so tight. But there is a couple of things we could do so we wouldn't need the extra money at all. We decided that I would work through out the summer so we can still go on our cruise and have some extra money for it and then I would shut it down. I may shut down my store before then and just do auctions depending on how my store sales are this next two months. I am only going to add back the individual dies that sold well before and put them for 5/$1 etc according to how much I sold them individually. When we get back from the cruise I may still do auctions but I think I will only do it twice a month and only things I have completely ready.

Ray and I also would like to add to our family after our cruise and so when the next baby comes I do think I will stop completely for several months. After my children go to school I will think about restarting my business and maybe I will just do my own website. I already know some of my customers are upset about the change and feel it is just ebay trying to make more money off the customers by forcing them to buy more. I will probably still do special orders during my hiatus.

Since making this decision I feel a weight lifted from my shoulders and I feel like I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I can make it five more months.

Anyway, farewell Ebay. Even though you messed with me I get the last laugh. Maybe I should send them a thank you for making the decision a lot easier on me.