A Little eBay Story....

With all the eBay news lately.... I thought I would reminisce..


We started selling on ebay in 1999. We started off selling anything around the house since at that time everything sold at a decent profit. We then migrated into Dollar Store, TJMax, Marshalls, Ross clearance and more. By 2001 we were Power Sellers but knew these goods were becoming saturated and we not right for us. We loved garage sale hopping so we started doing it more often looking for treasures to pass along. We grew..and grew...easily hitting 50-100 sales on a weekend, no joke. We built up an eBay store with over 350 vintage one of a kind items and overall were quite happy with what ebay was allowing us to do for our family. We were easily able to keep our PS status with never a lapse. We were having fun.

2004 we listed a Vintage Corning Ware Cornflower pattern electric peculator coffee pot on eBay. This coffee pot was posted on ebay by at least 15 other sellers so we had no reason to assume this item was not allowed. Within one hour, our listing was canceled *thank the competition* and we were informed this was an against policy item and we would be getting another email explaining why. We never got that email...however, we did some snooping and found out this highly desirable pot was recalled; thus, rendering it against listing standards on the eBay site.

After numerous emails back and forth to ebay, we were finally told how we could fix the problem. We could list the parts, just not the pot.

So we did.

An hour later, the auction again was pulled. Our store was gone, and we were suspended for 30 days. Every item was canceled, leaving us no copy..........see what I am saying?

All we got was an email telling us we would be getting another email explaining why. We never did. We were left to worry and stew.

How eBay works:

No one at ebay bothered to actually look at the auction. Their *bot* found the word *Corning* and pulled it down started a horrifying chain reaction. Our ID is still on *bot* mode to this day. We recently had another rediculous experience...again, turning out for the good but damn annoying. More about that later.

Now, we spent hours searching for the right contact info / emailing / phoning ebay and the people we actually got through to even said it did not sound right, but no one could help us. Come to find out, once you have been suspended, any emails you send are on hold for 30 days. So you don't even have a way of having eBay view your concerns.

In one way; it turned out for the good. At that same time I found out my grandparents had sold their 50 year, 4 acre, 3 home estate and had no one else to move them. They sold the house a month prior, and now had to be out in four short weeks. God works in mysterious ways. Being the only able bodied grandchild in the state; we took 6 trips 200 miles away to get their place moved. I cherish those painful memories, especially now since my grandmother past away last year, but it was still a horrible ebay experience to go through. Not knowing; as we are moving my grandparents off the land every good childhood memory I own came from, that we had no idea what was going to happen to our eBay income, was very draining.

Needless to say, now that my trust in eBay was totally demolished. I never relisted those 350 items. We used the store for arranging and added other stuff, but I just did not have the heart or energy to do it all over again knowing with a click of the insanity button, all my work would be gone.

Over the next 3 years on eBay, the eBay experience kept getting worse...and worse. What started out as a tremendous idea...to have a venue where individual sellers could share their cool stuff with others; become a micromanaged worry pit. We found we no longer loved what we were doing. We had buyers who bought vintage because vintage was in, but did not realize, vintage means OLD....really OLD. If you buy a WildCat Phonograph record player, learning how to operate one is a prerequisite...duh.

We have seen am lot of control and manipulation tactics over the years with eBay. Maybe I will write more about that later..but recently we noticed; eBay started ad campaigns saying that people can find happiness on ebay through widgets.

Umm..no...no they can't:

"At that point, cost isn't usually a factor," said Kalyn Johnson, of New York City-based Style by Kalyn Johnson. "They say, 'If I can have these wonderful shoes, I'll look better, and feel better.'

"But on the back end, I've seen buyer's remorse. This kicks in after they realize that new pair of shoes, or iPod, or whatever, didn't make them feel better, and then there's that sense of, 'Oh my God, why did I spend money on this?"'

Read CNN's article on why Sadness can blow your budget...


I dunno about you...but I sell old stuff. Really cool old stuff...but still...old stuff. I don't think it's truly possible to sell happiness to people who think a widget will provide enough happiness to make up for all the unhappiness in their lives................ Make sense?

Part 2 will come after my 3rd cup of coffee..thanks for reading!