Look, I don’t mean to turn this blog into a girly frenzy, nor do I like to advertise anything, but Etsy truly is the best place to shop in the entire world. I don’t know if it’s because I really like the idea of having an alternative place to buy from independent sellers, or because I know that most of the items are handmade and one of a kind but in the past year or so I had to watch myself and not buy every single item tagged as “steampunk”.
This is my latest purchase from AlliesAdornments - at 6 pounds, I consider it a bargain.
Notice that Etsy is also about three hundred times better than ebay at using their members for promotional content, not to mention they even have a journal showcasing DYIers’ work and many articles about lots of interesting topics. After their incomphrensible new rules and the mess/boycott that insued, maybe ebay could sit and learn.
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2 Responses for "Goodbye, ebay - Hello, Etsy!"
my goodness. maybe i’ve just been drinking the koolaid but i sort of want to defend ebay a little bit (and yes i should mention i work for ebay, and also i love etsy and buy things from there too).
the thing about the new policies, especially the one where sellers can only leave positive feedback, is at first you’re like wow that sucks, but when you think about it, it starts to make more sense.
not speaking for the company here but as a buyer as well, i know how it feels when you buy something that ends up not being what you expected, but you don’t want to leave negative feedback because the seller will just do the same to you. if you’re leaving a negative for a mega power seller, it’s probably not going to affect their overall rating a whole lot, but if you’re just buying a few things here and there, one negative is probably going to hurt you. no idea how they got the numbers but they found that sellers leave retaliatory feedback 8 times more often than buyers do, and it was scaring people off the site. it only takes one bad experience to get people to leave, and if there are no buyers, then no one is going to be able to sell anything.
people who use ebay are absolutely ridiculous when it comes to feedback. some sellers don’t even want to sell to people who have 0 feedback (i have to remind them that people all have to start out at 0…).
and the thing about the feedback change that gets me is… it’s the douchebag sellers who should be worried. good sellers probably won’t even really be affected. if they get a shitty buyer they can file a dispute and give the buyer a strike, and/or report the buyer instead of leaving a negative. but as long as they offer good customer service, the buyers shouldn’t really have any reason to leave a negative.
the other thing is seller non-performance is a way bigger deal than non-paying bidders anyways. in one case, you have someone actually getting ripped off when they buy something and it either doesn’t show up or it isn’t what they thought they were ordering. if a buyer bids and then doesn’t pay, yeah it sucks, but the seller has other options. they can get a credit for the final value fees when they file the dispute, they can send a second chance offer to another bidder, or they can relist (and if it sells successfully the second time, ebay credits the insertion fees as well).
wow. i’m writing a novel.
anyways, i get that people are all mad and stuff but ebay is really just trying to improve the buyer experience, because without the buyers there are no sellers, and without the sellers there is no ebay. and no one is forcing the sellers to stay. you have no idea how tempted i am to tell people that ebay (partly?) owns craigslist when they threaten to sell there, or how amazing it would be if i could tell them to go ahead and have a garage sale instead and see how well that goes over. but from my own personal standpoint, the less people i have to help because they got ripped off, the better.
Darlin…how like you europeans to discover everything trendy eons before us backwoods canucks!
Just discovered etsy myself and ADORE ir…can’t stop buying stuff!
I love love love your kitten…please move to BC!
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