a big fat fuck you to e-bay

I normally try to keep swearing to a minimum in my blogs - just to keep them basically polite, as if I'm talking to an acquaintance, rather than a friend.

I'm not going to do that in this entry, because I'm extremely annoyed.

E-bay are a bunch of cunts.

Why the rage?

Because e-bay have done something extraordinarily retarded - they've capped postage costs.

Now fair enough, you may think, people that charge £20 on postage for a single DVD are clearly arseholes. But the problem is the way they've gone about it.

Rather than have some simple system of maximum charges based on weight of the item (since that's what the cost actually depends on) they've set a single maximum price.

What's more, like a bunch of douches, some of these max prices are ZERO - notably on DVDs. That's right, you have to have a free postage option for DVDs.

How fucking stupid is that?

So someone like me who specialises in things like box sets and collections of manga now has to have a free postage option? When it can cost up to £10 to send the thing?! I don't fucking think so, you bunch of shit-eating mother-fuckers.

It becomes patently obvious how retarded this system is if you think about sending a single DVD.

If you put a DVD on at a starting price of less than £1 e-bay doesn't charge you a listing fee. However, popular DVDs (so there's lots of copies in circulation) can often sell for less than a £1. Guess what? It costs more than £1 to send the thing.

I think many e-bayers are reasonable enough people to not mind selling DVDs cheaply so long as it doesn't cost them anything. They've already bought the DVD after all!

But with e-bays new retarded system you have to add the postage cost into your initial price, which is bound to make it more than £1. That means you get charged an insertion fee.

It then becomes patently obvious what they're doing - they're trying to suck even more cash out of buyers and sellers.

Because not only are their insertion fees, remember, e-bay also charge you % of the final cost. Plus they own paypal, which if your buyer uses that will also charge you a % fee! Now previously they couldn't charge for the postage, but by forcing you to include it in the initial price, they can charge you.

Plus they're screwing you up the arse because buyers will see that your initial bis is somethign silly like £2.50 but with free postage. Psychologically people will instinctively not go for this - I've found this in my own experiences that I've blogged about before.

What a bunch of cunts.

I think I've found a way around it, though, by using the "courier" option. This seems to allow me to not have silly starting prices, though I've no idea if I will then get charged at the end. I probably will.

I mean seriously - if they wanted to make even more money (not that they aren't dripping with it already) then they should have just put the fees up. Be honest about it. Being stealthy just makes you seem like a bunch of cunts. Which they are.

Oh - and btw, just to add insult to injury they've done this under the pretext (i.e. total fabrication) that buyers "have told them they want these maximum prices". Any buyer that thinks this is a good idea is a bigger retard than e-bay and should clearly be disregarded (if not shot out of a big cannon into the middle of the Atlantic).