It appears that more and more good people are developing intense frustration with eBay. The reasons are clear, eBay is taking full advantage of the American unstable economy. They know that people are more likely to dig up things to sell to raise extra money. EBay’s response? Raise the final value fees to over double, doubling the listing fees and raise store fees to over $5. Not to mention the featured listing options have sky-rocketed.

Even after the fee hike, eBay couldn’t stop there… they had to take away the sellers feedback, leaving sellers vulnerable to buyers. While all eBay’s recent changes are detrimental and immoral, this change is downright absurd. Taking away sellers right to leave feedback opens the door for scandalous buyers to extort. And they do! Do a quick search online, it pulls up numerous examples of how buyers are undermining eBay’s new policies.

Some examples are;

Bait in switch (this is where a buyer will buy an item, then claim it was ‘defective‘, the buyer will then return a similar item that is broke, but not the one they purchased from the seller)

A buyer will demand a partial refund or shipping charge returned after the item is received.

After winning an item, demand express shipping on sellers expense.

Above are just a few examples of how a dishonest buyer will use the feedback policy to their advantage. In addition, buyers also know how to use PayPal to their advantage too. PayPal is owned by eBay. There is an alternative to PayPal as well, namely, Google checkout. Another great highlight about Google checkout is they’re fees are half as much as PayPal. This sounds great for you sellers, doesn’t it? If you use eBay, don’t get too excited. Ebay doesn’t allow Google checkout as a form of payment at all, try and list this form of payment in your listing, and eBay will have your account suspended quicker than you can say “wha…?”.

This leaves us ‘honest’ and ‘hardworking’ class of people to find alternatives to eBay to fit our needs. For example, Gear-Vault is a free classifieds/auction site exclusive for musical equipment. For general items there is ebid.com, which is another great site to use, though not free, yet cheaper and safer than eBay.

Whatever your venture may be, there are alternatives to eBay within one click away.