[Milsurplus] Scarce Items and the Coming Demise of Ebay "Hobby" Selling.

[David Hollander]

Something is seriously wrong if you paid $40 to ship an ARC-5 Dave.

I believe you are in Texas which I would consider the middle of the 
country, Fed-Ex ground should be no more than $20 to the most distant 
points and less depending upon mileage. I ship all my larger items with 
Fed-ex ground and all small items with the post office.

The post office does have longer lines lately but they do an excellent 
job in my opinion and the overseas rates on small stuff is hard to beat. 
Ever ship a small item overseas by Fed-ex or UPS? It will cost you 10 
times what the post office costs and you will fill out several pages of 
paperwork where the post office has a pretty simple customs form.

What is going to kill hobby selling is ebay itself.

Ever since that SOB Donahoe took over two years ago, they continue to 
impose more and more draconian policies on sellers and they continue to 
raise their fees.

They also continue to allow sellers like you know who in Kentucky to 
continue despite all his problems. Why? He generates a lot of money in 
fees. They look the other way if it is a big seller.

Although this does not really affect us selling radios, they have opened 
it up for large Wal-mart type sellers to dump their entire inventory on 
ebay while letting them negotiate fees and play by a different set of 
rules. They allow these big sellers to commit violations that would get 
smaller sellers kicked off which is their ultimate goal.

Shortly after taking over, Donahoe publicly referred to the smaller 
sellers as noise.

Ebay was crewed up royally by Meg Whitman who is now running for 
Governor of California.

I don't sell much ham gear on ebay anymore. I prefer to use QTH, eham 
and the boatanchor mailing lists.

Just for the record, I have not been kicked off of ebay and I am still a 
preferred seller although I just barely meet the requirements for that.

Dave N7RK
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Dave  N7RK          Boatanchors Home Page: http://members.cox.net/n7rk
Phoenix, Arizona         *DXCC Honor Roll*    *WAZ#22 - 75 Meter SSB*

ex-XE2/N7RK, N7RK/ZB2, VK2ERK, ZM0AJN, WB6NRK, WN6IWX

Boatanchor and Antique Radio Collector