eBay's Trying to Fix What Aint Broken Again!

[RDPipes]

I don't know about the rest of you but, I'm so dadburn tired of eBay's constantly trying to fix what aint broken over and over again.
If you sell on eBay I know you'll know and understand what I'm talking about. I mean its like moving the furniture on a blind man and this time I feel it is at its worse. In fact seeing last week I didn't have one item sell tells me somethings up because my phones have always sold. A whole week went by and I got 17 views on one and 1 on another and NO watchers. And this is just since the cockamamie change of their "Create a Listing".
After 20 years of putting up with their *@?&%$!I'm seriously thinking of leaving eBay and going to Etsy, I can't afford to have a repeat of no sales.

[LarryInMichigan]

A year or two ago, I had a couple of listings default to free shipping, and I didn't notice right away.  I ended up having to sell and ship one item with about a $.50 profit.  I caught another one before anyone bought it.  Selling things is a pain.

Larry

[TelePlay]

I don't know. I haven't listed a phone in a few weeks. But looking at just phones and phone parts on eBay, I see 42 items have sold so far today (11/25) with another 10 hours to go. Don't know if that is a lot or not. The above search was just for "eBay - Collectibles - Radio, Phonograph, TV, Phone - Telephones" and selecting the "sold" option.

Could be sales are dropping off due to inflation, people spending money on other stuff needed for life first.

eBay seems to have employees and department managers who feel they have to constantly "improve" their site to justify a paycheck for writing code.

Over the years, I have not enjoyed the process of learning a "new" layout every few months just to list another item. Some of the stuff they have done is really an improvement but other changes they could have just knocked off early that day and left it the way it was.

They also upped their seller fees a bit to pay for the employee salary increases to write code not really needed. Justification of salary by writing something new is just bad policy, rather they just get paid for getting the few remaining bugs out of the existing code rather than write new code full of new bugs.

[Doug Rose]

eBay is great for buying...NOT selling!

CL and FB are great for selling.....and buying. Audiences are smaller but there are zero headaches!

Just my humble opinion.

Sold on eBay for twenty years. Five years in remission ...Doug

[RDPipes]

eBay is great for buying...NOT selling!

CL and FB are great for selling.....and buying. Audiences are smaller but there are zero headaches!

Just my humble opinion.

Sold on eBay for twenty years. Five years in remission ...Doug

Craigslist SUCKS! out here. Unless your giving something away for free and are willing to deliver it you aint going to move anything. Of course unless you have a John Deere that's only a week old for a $1. And then you'll get people who want to haggle the price. Facebook I reckon is just fine for as is items but for refurbished phones it aint the place for me to go. I really don't know where else to go I just know from my experience its getting harder to find a good place.

[Contempra]

Hi, do you have to pay anything on Ebay when you want to sell an item ? I have an account on Ebay but have never sold an item except to buy and still can't even remember my login details. I haven't seen eBay for at least years

[Contempra]

CL and FB are great for selling.....and buying. Audiences are smaller but there are zero headaches!

Just my humble opinion. ...Doug

Yeah you're .. on Marketplace ...

[RDPipes]

Hi, do you have to pay anything on Ebay when you want to sell an item ? I have an account on Ebay but have never sold an item except to buy and still can't even remember my login details. I haven't seen eBay for at least years

They take a percentage of your sale and any listing fees, I think close to 10% nowadays.
I always list in Collectables or Antiques and they never charge a listing fee for those categories.

[TelePlay]

This notice was circulated  last month to sellers about internet sales platforms:

"Starting January 1, 2023, eBay and other online marketplaces will be required to report sellers who have more than $600 in annual sales to the IRS. That means millions of eBay, Etsy, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace sellers, including those who may only sell a few items a year, will have their sales reported and will need to keep careful records of their transactions—even if no taxes are owed."

This has nothing to do with eBay code issues that started this topic but having been taken on a tangential site comparison course, avoiding eBay will no longer be a way to cheat the tax man in that all platforms will be legally required to report sales.

eBay is still the best buying and selling platform available today. Working with their code changes just makes listing more of a challenge.

[markosjal]

I just amazingly Sold 2 phones within 10 hours of each other.


The first one was listed less than 15 hours before it sold an AE model 80 dated 1959

Then the SAME buyer came back and bought My 1958 WE 554 Yellow that had been listed for about a year.

However, I have noticed that when I have more than 25 items listed, sometimes I can only see the first 25 "active" items. When I try to go to the second page it loads the first page again. If I select 100 or 200 per page it usually (but not always) shows me only the first 25. That is on multiple browsers on Multiple Ones Linux, Mac and Windows!

[MMikeJBenN27]

I can't stand it when a site decides to make themselves "New and Improved" when they are fine as is, yet if something IS lousy, it NEVER gets fixed.  I say, "If it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!"

Mike

[RDPipes]

I can't stand it when a site decides to make themselves "New and Improved" when they are fine as is, yet if something IS lousy, it NEVER gets fixed.  I say, "If it ain't broke, DON'T FIX IT!"

Mike

Sounds like eBay to me Mike.

[tubaman]

This notice was circulated  last month to sellers about internet sales platforms:

"Starting January 1, 2023, eBay and other online marketplaces will be required to report sellers who have more than $600 in annual sales to the IRS. That means millions of eBay, Etsy, Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace sellers, including those who may only sell a few items a year, will have their sales reported and will need to keep careful records of their transactions—even if no taxes are owed."
...

Personally I have no issue with this. If you are buying things with the intention of selling them for a profit then that is business activity and you quite rightly should pay tax on the profits.
The issue with this comes when you are selling personal items that you no longer want, but I suppose if you can demonstrate that you sold them for less than you bought them for there shouldn't be an issue.

...
eBay is still the best buying and selling platform available today. Working with their code changes just makes listing more of a challenge.

I agree. For the largest exposure and the best sale price potential eBay is hard to beat.

[TelePlay]

The issue with this comes when you are selling personal items that you no longer want, but I suppose if you can demonstrate that you sold them for less than you bought them for there shouldn't be an issue.

This applies to everything sold. Who kept sales receipts for that $800 Panasonic stereo purchased 30 years ago that now went for $40 plus shipping on a web sales platform to demonstrate a loss (actually, the IRS will claim the item has depreciated to $0 over that time so the $40 was indeed all profit - depreciation rules vary on the item under consideration).

Buy a 10 speed bike for $700 last year and sold it this year for $200? That's a $500 loss that can be applied to other sales to determine the past years total profit but was that $700 receipt kept?

Or bought that phone at a flea market receipt? Get a receipt?

Or the money put into a $20 barn fresh find to make it a $200 sale but an actual loss of $50 becasue the parts needed were very expensive? Kept all those records?

I've accepted the fact that everything I sell has no cost basis and after deducting shipping and fees from the amount eBay will show on a 1099, the rest is pure profit and taxed as such.

Keeping complete accounting records of everything purchased for decades is something a normal person does or did not do. An incorporated business does and their books accurately show the cost of everything they sell right down to overhead (light and heat), salaries, employee benefits, cost of goods (time and materials) sold, travel, sales expenses, promotional material, shipping, discounts, returns, packaging materials, write offs for losses and plant and maintenance expenses. Businesses have people to do that so only profits are taxed (income statements and balance sheets).

We buy stuff to "fix" a phone in this hobby but how much of that $20 can of polish, or that $30 roll of bulk wire, or that pack of screws and nuts do we recorded as being part of the cost of a refurb on an item we sell?

Then there is cost basis versus accrual accounting. Does one write off the cost of that crimper when purchased or amortize its depreciation over the allowed number of years. Bought a Panasonic 616 for testing? How was that costed against sales?

It's a real can of worms since the IRS has now determined every one who sells on eBay to be a going business and not only keep but be able to provide all costs taken each year to be subtracted from sales to determine the true and correct profit on which income taxes are charged.

And does everyone who sold anything keep the eBay sales details to support shipping costs and fees? I keep a spread sheet, have for years, to determine my "profit" after shipping and fees are subtracted but am now faced with not knowing, not having the sales receipt, for the cost of the item when purchased. I think I can reasonably justify saying everything I've sold was at least $20 (even though I know they were a lot more) and hope the IRS will take my word for it and if not, will have to pay taxes on the sale price less shipping and fees.

And since everything on the internet is archived somewhere, the IRS will know who is selling what and for how much regardless of which platform is used. Only way around it is to sell and buy for cash at a flea market. Otherwise, everyone is a going business and keeping complete books will be the order of the day for sellers.

It's going to be a real headache if the IRS comes calling for justification on what we sold? And if they don't come calling, if they find in an audit going back 5 years that profit was not declared, that's back taxes plus interest.

Would be nice if the IRS said the past is the past and from now one give guidance on what they want sellers, on any platform to keep, and how to place a cost on items purchased before this year. It's an unexpected sea change in accountability here to fore unknown and now being implemented with the fact that the IRS always wins.

[RDPipes]

I keep NOTHING as records, the money I make either goes to cover what SS doesn't or back into phones to resale and maybe one ever so often for myself. If Uncle Sam wants to come after me he knows where I'm at.