eBay sucks now - scammers, outdated platform, fees, and more

I've used eBay a few times to sell old phones, a laptop, and some other miscellaneous items. Then I found the joy of selling on apps such as LetGo and OfferUp as well as the legitimacy of Craigslist (I was always kind of sketched out by it before) and the emergence of Facebook Marketplace, along with apps like LetGo, poshmark, Wallapop, OfferUp, and other similar apps. The last time I really used eBay on the regular was around 2013.

In February, my dad passed away, leaving behind two cars--a 2008 BMW 750Li and a 2006 Jeep Liberty 3.7L. I thought I could get more money if I were to auction the cars off on eBay than to set a price for it and try to sell it that way. It was my first time coming back to eBay in a few years, and boy, have things changed.

First of all, you can only have so many listings a month before you have to start paying to be able to sell. So if you happen to list an item, and it "sells," only for the buyer to end up backing out of the sale--it still takes away from your ration of listings. To be fair, to the average non-commercial entity, you'll probably never hit that quota (I think the limit was in the thousands), so I personally wasn't too affected by it in the long run. I just thought, by principle, it kind of sucked that they're putting this limit (among many others) on their customers now. Also, listing fees are $0 only for your first 50. 

Secondly, eBay takes a commission on what you sell, and takes a bunch of other sellers fees, listing fees, insertion fees--fees, fees, fees. If eBay took a commission before, I don't recall it being as high as it is now, which can be as high as 15% in some cases. eBay is charging you to be able to make money. Which, I get--eBay's gotta make money somehow, and I'm sure selling ad space doesn't generate as much as they would like. But I hope eBay recognizes that the fees are really driving people away. The last thing I think I sold on eBay was an iPhone 5S, which I made $140 off of, and I don't recall eBay taking a significant chunk out of that.

Thirdly--and this is the biggest problem I've had that's ultimately led me to boycotting eBay for life--they are overrun with spam accounts. It shouldn't be hard to send out a verification request, i.e. for clients to verify payment methods. I had to list my dad's car EIGHT times before I realized there is no hope in using eBay (especially if I'm not even gonna get the full amount of money for myself) due to all the scammers out there. Red Flag #1: If a buyer keeps using the word "kindly" in their communications with you, they are most likely a spam account. It sounds ridiculous, but:

"Kindly send payment now."

"Kindly deliver this item to me as soon as possible."

"Kindly respond to my e-mail."

It just sounds so contrived and forced, and I don't know a single nice person who speaks English to use the word "kindly" in regular interactions, actually.

I thought I found a great buyer for my dad's car when the first buyer decided to "Buy it now!" They e-mailed me, saying that they will even pay extra outside of eBay if it means I can surrender the car early. That was Red Flag #2: Offering to pay extra for a disproportionate benefit. Really, you're gonna pay me an extra $930 so you can have someone pick up the car for you in two days? Has anyone ever actually fallen for this? Not a rhetorical or condescending question, I'm genuinely curious: what happens if you take them up on the offer? Do they actually send somebody to pick up the item? Or are they just wasting your time and theirs for shits and giggles?

This person (and 6 others after him/her) didn't even give me a chance to respond anyway (i.e. if I wanted the extra $930 or not, along with the original). They simply said that they are gonna go ahead and pay me (because who can refuse such an offer, right? Extra money! Wrong.) Which leads to Red Flag #3: They tell you that they've paid you, but you don't see it yet in your PayPal. They might get antsy with you or weirdly, tenaciously insistent that they have indeed paid you, that maybe it'll take a few days to show up (note: that doesn't happen with PayPal). They might even send you a convincing e-mail that appears to be from PayPal. Check the e-mail address! Although the name may say something like "service@paypal.com" to trick you into think that that's the e-mail address, the e-mail address itself with say something not PayPal oriented, like "customerservice@electronicpaymentverificationteam.com." The domain name almost sounds legitimate--but it either is or it isn't PayPal, and it isn't in this case. I called this person out on their bullshit once I realized what was going on, and then they had the nerve to tell me that I was trying to scam them! They accused me of taking their money and not delivering the item, and then threatened to take legal action against me. Get real.

Red Flag #4: They keep trying to contact you outside of "their" eBay account. In most cases, when this happens, it's because the scammer has hacked into an existing user's account and doesn't want to leave a trail on said account of their intrusion. They might also try to pay you outside of eBay too. eBay is already linked with PayPal, but they'll insist on paying you directly from their PayPal to yours rather than going through eBay.

So this happened to me eight times in a row. With different names, accounts, payment offers, etc., I started to see a pattern. There wasn't gonna be a legitimate buyer, at least not for an item this pricy. So I tried to sell a smaller item--my 128GB iPhone 6 Plus.

Same thing. Sellers fees, insertion fees, listing fees, eBay's commission off of it, and then scammers galore.

F*** eBay and their outdated website. 

I might be really biased, and I definitely don't have experience being a seller on many sites, so I'm not sure if Etsy, Big Cartel, and Shopify have similar fees/limitations, but my guess is that even if they do, their customer service is better, and they're not completely overrun with scammers and spam accounts. Amazon used to have free Seller accounts, but now it's $39.99 a month in addition to sellers' fees, intended for commercial sellers. Amazon seems more responsive with their customer service, though, so it may be worth looking into if you plan on selling things on a mass scale.