fleabay screwing its users again.

I havent listed anything on fleabay for a while but i need to sell some items for my sister.
I noticed now they are no longer allowing sellers to offer shipping insurance as a buyer's option. Fleabay holds the seller totally responsible for delivery so if you dont insure you can be screwed. You have to either include insurance in your shipping and raise your shipping cost (which fleabay penalizes you for) or add the cost into your item so you make less money (and fleabay makes more).
Fleabay's play to grab some extra bucks hurts buyers too.
Now I will have sellers charging me an extra $1.75 shipping on a $5.00 trade card.

All the bottles I have bought recently on fleabay I have paid by check or money order.
I buy from know good sellers. Most are glad to take a check or money order and not give fleabay a cut.
I also noticed now when entering a listing they require you to state the handling time to shipping. It seems a bit meaningless to me. If I say 1 day and people pay me on a friday , its not getting mailed till monday. Handling is always ASAP.
I thought feedback scores for sellers were supposed to mean something? Seems like fleabay is saying "your 100% feedback over the last 10 years means nothing, all sellers are not to be trusted". What a bunch of crap.

I recently got scammed by not insuring a package, perhaps if this was an option I could see I would have thought of it in the first place and avoided that situation?
You bring up some good points Gunther, and there are better auction sites out there but they just don't have the name and recognition of eBay so I won't be using them to sell my items, fearing I won't get their full prices. Something should be done, but will it?
Doubtful.

I made the decision a while back when fleabay first started thier little money making schemes to try to sell most of my bottles on my own web site. It takes longer but I am starting to get quite a few regular customers. Feels great to sell something and not have the blood sucking jackboot of corporate fleabay on my neck.[]

Is the insurance requirement a brand-new policy? Less than a week ago I won a bottle, paid via paypal, and left the seller a quick message:
"I don't think insurance is necessary if the bottle is wrapped securely, Thanks, Jason"

The seller was fine with that, wrapped my bottle securely and I received the item in undamaged condition in a few days. I always buy from
Known Good Sellers, or otherwise sellers with a very high feedback rating.

Although I don't always get feedback, I always leave feedback of a positive nature.

Two ebay transactions where I felt a seller - and once a buyer - were less than ideal in their respective dealings I left no feedback at all. When each of them emailed me asking why I hadn't left any feedback I explained to them I felt leaving No Feedback was better than leaving Negative Feedback for shoddy packaging or very untimely payment. And they both had a lot of nerve asking why I hadn't left any feedback; I've never asked anyone I sold to or bought from why they failed to leave feedback.

To me having to write out a check/buy a money order (extra expense/stand-in-line time right there), address an envelope, buy a stamp, drop the letter off, wait for the seller to receive the check, then eventually deposit the check, wait for the check to clear, and finally send my package is a waste of time. At the very least a week's wait, almost always more than that.

So looking at ebay there are both positives and negatives whether paying by paypal, personal check or money order...and the same goes for when I sell on ebay. Would I rather be paid (almost immediately) via paypal with a small fee taken out (either way ebay takes a cut) or wait for a check or money order to arrive, make an otherwise unnecessary trip down to the bank, deposit the check/M.O, etc...?

One thing I agree 100% with is that the people running ebay are greedy, always looking at the bottom line rather than making ebay an ideal
place to buy and sell primarily, and even if they weren't greedy they'd still be making money hand over foot...but with a corporation they've always gotta make more than the last quarter and too much is never enough.[]

I sell a lot of stuff on ebay and I think the new insurance policy is gonna hurt both sellers and buyers. I understand their reasons for it though. If you bought anything off of the TV, would you take the excuse "it got lost in the mail", or would you want your money back? If you bought something from amazon.com, would you take that excuse? It's the sellers responsibility to make sure the product reaches the buyer. So like you said Gunth, the buck's gotta get passed on. That means that sellers feedback will be affected though (less 5 star ratings for shipping cost). I've had things I sold get broken and lost in the mail, several times, and if not insured I usually still issue a refund.

PS: Has anyone ever filed a claim with USPS or UPS? It's almost not worth it most of the time. It's a long slow process in which you must prove values. I had an antique apothecary jar brake and UPS would not honor my claim because they said I could not prove the value. I'll never ship with them again. USPS will take an ebay receipt for proof of value, but it still takes weeks to get your money back.

"I don't think insurance is necessary if the bottle is wrapped securely, Thanks, Jason"

Click to expand...

This is true....sometimes. Things do get lost. I had a box that I sent to Florida arrive in a plastic bag because the box was so smashed up. Amazingly the fruit jars inside were ok.

Is the insurance requirement a brand-new policy?

Click to expand...

It starts next week. Sellers cannot offer insurance as option to buyers.
If you offer insurance it has to be included in the shipping cost.
How do you do this if you dont know the final selling price until the auction ends?

The buyers are having a field day for pennies on a dollar. I have had it with selling, I'd rather give it away to a good home and collection than sell it to some bone picking parasite on greedBay. Incidentally the bottle in this package was undamaged. Thank God someone wrote FRAGILE on the box or it might have been mishandled.

looks like it went through one of those car company front end crash tests.[]

What I thought ware really rich was fixing the maximum shipping costs for antiquarian and collectible books to 4 dollars.

4 bucks via media mail to ship a 18th century leatherbound bible? 4 bucks to ship a 500 dollar 1st edition? WTF?

Are they f'ing serious? Media mail materials undergo a great deal of deleterious forces and are subject to pressures that many of the things shouldn't be subjected to. I know why they did it, but just the same, one can understand why a retard does a lot of stupid things. The issue is that they went ahead and did it. I have some decent old books and paper items that need far more adequate (and speedy) shipping care than can be provided by media mail, and I don't particularly care to pay for it when the buyer should be doing so.

12% for BIN items (plus paypal fees) is a pain in the butt too. Good thing I have some highly profitable smaller items in stock in great numbers that help cover the fees on the less profitable items I sell. Otherwise it would be a total waste of energy.