The reason for astronomical eBay charges, and retaining buyer payments, for several days, is free sites like FB Marketplace and Craigslist, have meant significant numbers of buyers and sellers alike, now have viable alternatives, which has reduced revenues by maybe 25%?

Instead of adding features, as well as making eBay more attractive, simpler to use, and lowering prices, there now seem to be fewer features, more complication, and all prices increased across the board?

I would guess that before long, Musk is almost certainly going to be adding a Marketplace feature to his X operations, and I get the feeling that when he does old style highway robber operators, such as eBay, will have a very finite shelf life?

The biggest draw back on eBay is not having a phone number to call. 

a

Shady people Crooks always screws things up for us. Trying to beat the system and costing us more money and headaches SOB’s

I don’t think FB Marketplace & Craigslist are nothing more than a drop in the bucket of eBay’s online sales, both of those sights are 95% scammers, eBay has a very good buyer protection program and return policy, one of the many reasons they are successful (think of Sears in the old days & Amazon today) Right now no one is able to compete with eBay on their selection of sometimes obsolete and hard to find parts. I think the ship has sailed on the chief Twit @ Twitter, he will never get back his money.

Isn’t that the truth… there are peeps that just have to skirt the rules and regulations, then call the ones that call them out names… Freedom isn’t free…
Suck it up cupcake!
Sneezles61

I'd think Musk would think twice about opening himself up to federal scrutiny regarding their share of money transfer. He'd have to separate the two entities to protect the free speech board, which they have under their radar.

It’s not the person or people who skirt the system correctly or incorrectly that raises the cost of selling.

It’s the corporate greed trickle down system that causes anything that use to be good to go bad. NASCAR is a great example of how something nearly perfect can be ruined.

As long as nearly every day I go to the post office and drop something off - I believe that the shelves will clear themselves and my other irons in the fire will present equity. I don’t look for the bad anymore. The bad is watching my friends drop dead…,,

asco

I have a friend that buys wholesale lots by the pallet and sells them on ebay.  Some customers cheat him.  Several very easy ways to do it that I'm not going to mention here.  Ebay almost always gives buyer a full refund. 

Two things he does now.  He WILL NOT sell to anyone new with less than 10 feedback ratings and he HAD TO RAISE HIS PRICES to cover the losses.  It's to the point that he's thinking of quitting after over 20 years of selling on ebay.  He works lots of hours, has to pay rent in an industrial park, has a couple part time employees, and after all expenses makes about $20/hour if he figures 40 hours a week...  probably more like 60-80 hours a week.  It's not worth it.  He's actually received emails from buyers who cheated him that say something like "you're a power seller, you can afford it". 

(Believe it or not but even if you get an email from a buyer that admits fraud, ebay won't do a thing after they made their decision to give a refund.)

It's naive to think that theft and fraud is not paid for by raising prices to everyone else.. 

Mark I always enjoy reading your posts. 

a

Others mentioned in previous posts that eBay has made thousands of parts readily available that previously required classified listings, phone calls, swap meets to find. While that's true, having such high listing fees makes small parts less realistic to list. Who wants to put that much effort into so little profit? We see the big-ticket items get listed but the little parts get tossed out or only sold locally.

I did a search on eBay alternatives. Bonanza in the US and eBid in UK look promising.