Buying items listed on ebay off ebay?

Just for ***** and giggles, eBay does allow obvious shilling of items on their website which has cost me lots of money in the early years of my eBay use. I did not know what shilling was at first and got taken for lots of money……… Shilling by definition is illegal yet eBay still allows it (or just won't do anything about it) Bigboyd, Probstein, really, the majority of consigners auctions. To me this is blatantly stealing. And eBay reaps the rewards of a higher FVF. Maybe this is why eBay doesn't crack down on people ending auctions early? If they did it would be HIGHLY hypocritical.

Dilferules said:

How many times do I have to say you aren't stealing your own item, you're stealing the service ebay provided to you? Can you not understand at all where I am coming from? Do you not get that a service has a monetary value?

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Just because you list on ebay doesn't mean they get a share of your sales if you don't sell there but use them to promote your item. Your not stealing if they have done nothing to list the item. If they listed every item they would get all the fees. People list there own the item and use a service from ebay that cost you a set fee even if they give you free listings they have chosen to do that and you don't owe them nothing if you don't sell on there site. No matter if you list it there or not. Stealing from ebay is not paying final value fees and that is pretty much impossible.

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So, can someone explain to me which fee is for the exposure? Is it the listing fee or the FVF?

predatorkj said:

So, can someone explain to me which fee is for the exposure? Is it the listing fee or the FVF?

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I say it would be the listing fee.

predatorkj said:

So, can someone explain to me which fee is for the exposure? Is it the listing fee or the FVF?

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I think that's the crux of the whole argument. No one can or agrees.

chris19978 said:

Just because you list on ebay doesn't mean they get a share of your sales if you don't sell there but use them to promote your item. Your not stealing if they have done nothing to list the item. If they listed every item they would get all the fees. People list there own the item and use a service from ebay that cost you a set fee even if they give you free listings they have chosen to do that and you don't owe them nothing if you don't sell on there site. No matter if you list it there or not. Stealing from ebay is not paying final value fees and that is pretty much impossible.

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I don't agree with you (and won't bother writing my reasons since we've both said the same things 50 times in this thread and it's long been going in circles, you can go read my previous posts if you want to see my position and reasoning) but I do appreciate that it's an argument against a service having been performed rather than an argument against anybody stealing a card, which nobody has ever said was happening.

predatorkj said:

So, can someone explain to me which fee is for the exposure? Is it the listing fee or the FVF?

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I answered that question a few days ago down at the bottom of this post, however it may not have clearly conveyed my thoughts. http://www.freedomcardboard.com/for...his-card-1-1?p=2293730&viewfull=1#post2293730

Essentially, finding a buyer for your cards is the overwhelmingly most important service ebay provides and any fees you pay are going towards this function. Why ebay splits their fees in two, you'd have to ask them, it's a business pricing decision to do both listing and FVF fees rather than simply one or the other.

Like I've stated before, the listing fee is for their services. IF your item sells then you pay the FVF. At any point, ebay allows you to end the auction from a list of 5 different possibilities therefore alleviating your responsibility of owing anything further. (Yes the reasons are nondescriptive and generic) They've provided the exposure (which you've paid for) and you owe them nothing. They have to give you the out, and nothing they can do about it. They Aren't Losing Anything.

michaelstepper said:

Like I've stated before, the listing fee is for their services. IF your item sells then you pay the FVF. At any point, ebay allows you to end the auction from a list of 5 different possibilities therefore alleviating your responsibility of owing anything further. (Yes the reasons are nondescriptive and generic) They've provided the exposure (which you've paid for) and you owe them nothing. They have to give you the out, and nothing they can do about it. They Aren't Losing Anything.

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Their rules do allow you to end an auction early. Also in their rules at http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html :

Some examples of activities that aren't allowed include:

• Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay
  
  
• Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who found the item on eBay
  

Meaning.....ebay rules do not allow you to end an auction early to sell it to a buyer who found it on ebay, they're not giving you an "out" to do that. If you use their services to find a buyer you owe ebay an FVF. They earned it.

Dilferules said:

Their rules do allow you to end an auction early. Also in their rules at http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html :

Some examples of activities that aren't allowed include:

• Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay
  
  
• Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who found the item on eBay
  

Meaning.....ebay rules do not allow you to end an auction early to sell it to a buyer who found it on ebay, they're not giving you an "out" to do that. If you use their services to find a buyer you owe ebay an FVF. They earned it.

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It is a rule. And I concede that, so is shill bidding and numerous other items talked about here that ebay does absolutely nothing about. Allowing the things that they do they have to concede a few. They've outgrown the necessity for such an item to be an issue. If they fought back the backlash would be sizeable.
They've moved beyond being a "auction house" to a listing platform to get the viewership the internet demands. The item sells through them they get said fees. Pay with paypal, they received more fees. Technically the two are seperate now but your still paying Peter

Dilferules said:

I don't agree with you (and won't bother writing my reasons since we've both said the same things 50 times in this thread and it's long been going in circles, you can go read my previous posts if you want to see my position and reasoning) but I do appreciate that it's an argument against a service having been performed rather than an argument against anybody stealing a card, which nobody has ever said was happening.



I answered that question a few days ago down at the bottom of this post, however it may not have clearly conveyed my thoughts. http://www.freedomcardboard.com/for...his-card-1-1?p=2293730&viewfull=1#post2293730

Essentially, finding a buyer for your cards is the overwhelmingly most important service ebay provides and any fees you pay are going towards this function. Why ebay splits their fees in two, you'd have to ask them, it's a business pricing decision to do both listing and FVF fees rather than simply one or the other.

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I guess I get your point. I guess mine is I feel like the first fee you pay, the listing fee, ought to be it. The fact that they choose to split it up seems to be the main problem and it's going to cost them money. And it's fixable in my opinion. Hence why I'm not entirely feeling sorry for their lack of securing their investment.

In any case, none of this really has anything to do with me. I'm too busy buying stuff. I don't sell anyhow.

You might as well add everything that's wrong that people have mentioned with you thoughts. They don't care about shill bidding because they make more money off of it so why would they stop it. Again when I start an auction at 99 cents I generally don't care about the card and will let it go through the process unless I don't like the viewers price it's at with a day left and might end it and list it as a Buy It Now. Like another said ebay might not make your item as viewable as others so it get less attention which is wrong as well from a sellers stand point case in point I had a 1996 Mirror Blue Roberto Alomar BGS 9.5 card listed for $300.00 Buy It Now for a long time ended up dropping the Price and sold it for $100.00 the buyer immediately relisted it for a $300.00 Buy It Now and sold in less than 24 hours. How come he had so much more success when he basically copied and pasted what I listed it as, my only reasons we I could think of was he had a ebay store and I didn't so they let more people see his listing. If thats the case it's not fair for people who don't have a store so I don't care if they sell on or off ebay.

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Dilferules said:

Their rules do allow you to end an auction early. Also in their rules at http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-spam-non-ebay-sale.html :

Some examples of activities that aren't allowed include:

• Using member contact information obtained from eBay or using any eBay system to offer to sell any listed item outside of eBay
  
• Canceling a listing to sell to a buyer who found the item on eBay
  

Meaning.....ebay rules do not allow you to end an auction early to sell it to a buyer who found it on ebay, they're not giving you an "out" to do that. If you use their services to find a buyer you owe ebay an FVF. They earned it.

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Seems pretty obvious to me. Still don't understand why people see it different than you and me.

Example.

You and I agree for you to list my house for sale. I agree to pay you a listing fee. I also agree to pay you a percent of the sale after buyer is found because of your service
You expose/list my home for sale on line for the world to see.
Due to YOUR exposure a buyer comes forward.
Buyer asks me to sell house directly even though he found me through your exposure/listing.
I agree and cut out the company that put buyer and I together.

Most here seem to think that is ok and justify because listing company has flaws.

Shaking my head............

Kennesawsportscards said:

Seems pretty obvious to me. Still don't understand why people see it different than you and me.

Example.

You and I agree for you to list my house for sale. I agree to pay you a listing fee. I also agree to pay you a percent of the sale after buyer is found because of your service
You expose/list my home for sale on line for the world to see.
Due to YOUR exposure a buyer comes forward.
Buyer asks me to sell house directly even though he found me through your exposure/listing.
I agree and cut out the company that put buyer and I together.

Most here seem to think that is ok and justify because listing company has flaws.

Shaking my head............

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Nowhere have I seen anyone say that it is an ethical act. We are simply saying it's not an illegal act. Just like the house analogy. Not necessarily ethical, but certainly not "stealing".

I am pretty sure that's a hole different aspect a company dose work to show your house and try to get it sold, ebay doesn't list your item they provide a service for you to list a item there. You can say COMC is like a housing market as you send the item they take the picture add the card name list it on the site as well as ship it. They to me are considered a real middle man as all you need to do after its listed is look at offers and accept or not then they ship and both parties are paid.

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But with the house for sale, or selling on eBay, in both examples, the initial fee was for the exposure. It really was. Your house or your card, get no exposure without the fee. The FVF or the commission the agent makes is if a sale occurs through them. But only through them.

It's a foolish thing to do if you want to make money for your service you're providing. You need to have a contract with wording(which I'm aware eBay does) and you need to have consequences for breech of agreement. Right now, the consequences are: "That's not fair".

I suppose I agree from a gentleman's agreement point of view that it's bad form. But, the reason I sort of remain on the fence is that I can totally see someone saying to themselves: " Look, I paid them to list the card for exposure of said card. But if I choose, as the owner of the item, to sell it off their site because a buyer is willing, then I have not completed the full deal through them and therefore I owe them nothing further. There are no consequences for this and I am aware they want me to complete the sale through their site per their wording, but their desire for me to do so does not mean it's wrong to do otherwise."

And I'm pretty sure that has run through most of their heads. And when it comes to money, people are quite self serving. So I'll agree, yes it's bad form, but I'd be surprised to see people stick to the agreement. Nine times out of ten, if you look at most business decisions that are made, they tend to be made with an eye on the bottom line.

michaelstepper said:

It is a rule. And I concede that, so is shill bidding and numerous other items talked about here that ebay does absolutely nothing about. Allowing the things that they do they have to concede a few. They've outgrown the necessity for such an item to be an issue. If they fought back the backlash would be sizeable.
They've moved beyond being a "auction house" to a listing platform to get the viewership the internet demands. The item sells through them they get said fees. Pay with paypal, they received more fees. Technically the two are seperate now but your still paying Peter

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Right, that's why I listed the rules; I understand that many on your side of the issue argue that you are simply breaking rules and not stealing and I've addressed my side of that many times, but you seemed to be saying ebay allowed you to pull down an auction for this reason; I just wanted to clarify that they did not. Beside the point of the stealing/not stealing issue, I think it's debatable what the backlash would be like. I'd hope that most people realize that they are breaking ebay's rules when they end an auction early to sell off ebay, and if ebay cracked down on it and started enforcing it vigilantly they'd be like "well that sucks I liked getting more money but I guess I can't really fight against them enforcing their own rules, I better decide whether it's still worth it to sell certain cards there." Is avoiding FVF's really so incredibly widespread that a huge amount of sellers would choose to stop selling on ebay because they somehow made it impossible to avoid FVF's?

chris19978 said:

You might as well add everything that's wrong that people have mentioned with you thoughts. They don't care about shill bidding because they make more money off of it so why would they stop it. Again when I start an auction at 99 cents I generally don't care about the card and will let it go through the process unless I don't like the viewers price it's at with a day left and might end it and list it as a Buy It Now. Like another said ebay might not make your item as viewable as others so it get less attention which is wrong as well from a sellers stand point case in point I had a 1996 Mirror Blue Roberto Alomar BGS 9.5 card listed for $300.00 Buy It Now for a long time ended up dropping the Price and sold it for $100.00 the buyer immediately relisted it for a $300.00 Buy It Now and sold in less than 24 hours. How come he had so much more success when he basically copied and pasted what I listed it as, my only reasons we I could think of was he had a ebay store and I didn't so they let more people see his listing. If thats the case it's not fair for people who don't have a store so I don't care if they sell on or off ebay.

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1. You're listing a bunch of other stuff you feel ebay does wrong, or other ways they may rip off sellers and/or buyers. That's just getting into the area of morally/ethically validating your decision to not pay ebay what they are owed, it's not an argument that avoiding FVF's isn't stealing. If you realize you shouldn't be doing it but have reconciled it in your own mind because you believe ebay to be ripping you off in other ways, then that's good for your peace of mind but it doesn't change my feelings on the subject.

2. Are you saying on auctions if you have bidders with a day left but you don't like the price you cancel their bids and end it, then list it as a BIN/BO? I don't think I'd consider that stealing since you obviously didn't find a buyer you could agree to sell the card to, but it's an absolute horsecrap business practice as an auction seller and I would never bother bidding on a seller's auctions that did that since if I was about to get it for a good deal it would just be pulled and my time would be wasted on that bush league garbage. If you list something at .99 and it doesn't have any bids with a day left I believe you can end it and nobody is really affected, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong on ebay's rules about that. You should realize you're annoying bidders who maybe were planning to snipe it, though. The rule of thumb that is always thrown around is: don't start the auction for less than what you're willing to sell it for because an auction is never guaranteed to end for what you want it to.

chris19978 said:

ebay doesn't list your item they provide a service for you to list a item there. You can say COMC is like a housing market as you send the item they take the picture add the card name list it on the site as well as ship it. They to me are considered a real middle man as all you need to do after its listed is look at offers and accept or not then they ship and both parties are paid.

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So what is it that ebay does that makes you willing to pay them an FVF (when you choose to do so), when you can do the same work listing and uploading pictures here or on Blowout for free? It really sounds like they are ripping you off, providing nothing at all of value. You have to write out a description and upload pictures, you could communicate with somebody through email for free on a message board. Why sell there?

predatorkj said:

But with the house for sale, or selling on eBay, in both examples, the initial fee was for the exposure. It really was. Your house or your card, get no exposure without the fee. The FVF or the commission the agent makes is if a sale occurs through them. But only through them.

It's a foolish thing to do if you want to make money for your service you're providing. You need to have a contract with wording(which I'm aware eBay does) and you need to have consequences for breech of agreement. Right now, the consequences are: "That's not fair".

I suppose I agree from a gentleman's agreement point of view that it's bad form. But, the reason I sort of remain on the fence is that I can totally see someone saying to themselves: " Look, I paid them to list the card for exposure of said card. But if I choose, as the owner of the item, to sell it off their site because a buyer is willing, then I have not completed the full deal through them and therefore I owe them nothing further. There are no consequences for this and I am aware they want me to complete the sale through their site per their wording, but their desire for me to do so does not mean it's wrong to do otherwise."

And I'm pretty sure that has run through most of their heads. And when it comes to money, people are quite self serving. So I'll agree, yes it's bad form, but I'd be surprised to see people stick to the agreement. Nine times out of ten, if you look at most business decisions that are made, they tend to be made with an eye on the bottom line.

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It seems like we are never going to agree on the division of the fees. It might be a semantics issue over "exposure" and "finding a buyer". In any event, when you list an item on ebay, you are agreeing to pay them FVF if you find a buyer through their website. It's right there in their rules, which you agree to when you list a card.

The rest of your post sure seems to be saying that any action that you take is not "wrong" unless you suffer consequences for it. I know you cannot possibly be saying that because I'm reasonably sure you're not a sociopath, ha.

chris19978 said:

You might as well add everything that's wrong that people have mentioned with you thoughts. They don't care about shill bidding because they make more money off of it so why would they stop it. Again when I start an auction at 99 cents I generally don't care about the card and will let it go through the process unless I don't like the viewers price it's at with a day left and might end it and list it as a Buy It Now. Like another said ebay might not make your item as viewable as others so it get less attention which is wrong as well from a sellers stand point case in point I had a 1996 Mirror Blue Roberto Alomar BGS 9.5 card listed for $300.00 Buy It Now for a long time ended up dropping the Price and sold it for $100.00 the buyer immediately relisted it for a $300.00 Buy It Now and sold in less than 24 hours. How come he had so much more success when he basically copied and pasted what I listed it as, my only reasons we I could think of was he had a ebay store and I didn't so they let more people see his listing. If thats the case it's not fair for people who don't have a store so I don't care if they sell on or off ebay.

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Chris, you know my stance on selling off eBay.. I don't see a problem with it. That is ONLY on BIN's. To end an auction early because you don't like the end price after a bid has been received is NOT a practice that I could defend. Once I have an auction going and a bid is received then I do feel that that is now a binding contract with not just the Buyer, but to pay eBay for their services.

predatorkj said:

But with the house for sale, or selling on eBay, in both examples, the initial fee was for the exposure. It really was. Your house or your card, get no exposure without the fee. The FVF or the commission the agent makes is if a sale occurs through them. But only through them.

It's a foolish thing to do if you want to make money for your service you're providing. You need to have a contract with wording(which I'm aware eBay does) and you need to have consequences for breech of agreement. Right now, the consequences are: "That's not fair".

I suppose I agree from a gentleman's agreement point of view that it's bad form. But, the reason I sort of remain on the fence is that I can totally see someone saying to themselves: " Look, I paid them to list the card for exposure of said card. But if I choose, as the owner of the item, to sell it off their site because a buyer is willing, then I have not completed the full deal through them and therefore I owe them nothing further. There are no consequences for this and I am aware they want me to complete the sale through their site per their wording, but their desire for me to do so does not mean it's wrong to do otherwise."

And I'm pretty sure that has run through most of their heads. And when it comes to money, people are quite self serving. So I'll agree, yes it's bad form, but I'd be surprised to see people stick to the agreement. Nine times out of ten, if you look at most business decisions that are made, they tend to be made with an eye on the bottom line.

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The problem with the bolded statement is that you wouldn't have the buyer for the transaction that you agreed to pay listing and final value fees for ebay's service. The final value fees are a part of the service for completing the transaction that you, as a seller agree to by selling on ebay. The listing fee is for the initial exposure. Otherwise, the logic in the bolded statement is like me saying to you " Here's 50 dollars, bring me a buyer for my house and I will give you a percent of the sale, you doing so, and then me saying the heck with you, I will deal with the buyer direct. You get nothing. Is that right. Obviously, some here think it is just fine.

Kennesawsportscards said:

The problem with the bolded statement is that you wouldn't have the buyer for the transaction that you agreed to pay listing and final value fees for ebay's service. The final value fees are a part of the service for completing the transaction that you, as a seller agree to by selling on ebay. The listing fee is for the initial exposure. Otherwise, the logic in the bolded statement is like me saying to you " Here's 50 dollars, bring me a buyer for my house and I will give you a percent of the sale, you doing so, and then me saying the heck with you, I will deal with the buyer direct. You get nothing. Is that right. Obviously, some here think it is just fine.

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Maybe you should petition ebay to take a harsher stance against people selling ebay-listed items off ebay, because clearly they don't see it the same way you and others in this thread do.

sportscardtheory said:

Maybe you should petition ebay to take a harsher stance against people selling ebay-listed items off ebay, because clearly they don't see it the same way you and others in this thread do.

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I thought this was a discussion forum with differing opinions. Didn't realize that, just because I have a differing opinion, that maybee I should petition for different ebay policies.