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You are touching on a point that Benedict Evans has made quite eloquently in the past:

>There was a joke a few years ago that rent is the new [Customer Acquisition Cost], and that now applies to everything. The [Total Addressable Market] for search ads is not ‘advertising’ (let alone online advertising) but everything that is spent to reach and serve a customer, starting with retail rents. This applies to Amazon, but even more to Google - you can ask whether Google’s ads are ‘advertising’ or ‘marketing’, but also ask whether the TAM for buying placement in Google search results is ‘advertising’, ‘marketing’ or just its customers’ operating margins. How do you reach a consumer? Do you spend your budget on TV ads or search ads, or on retail rents, or on giving retailers a margin versus selling direct, or giving the retailer a better price for better placement, or free shipping, or a better returns policy? Everything below P&G’s COGS line is up for grabs.

https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/3/6/ways-to-thi...

There will be no site that does not offer advertising, because advertising allows the site to determine which sellers can afford to pay more while still being profitable. It's a scaled version of the same way a landlord will raise rents on a profitable storefront.

It's going to be a bit harder to win on this end I think. Manufacturer's require retailers to agree to this type of restriction all the time time (and it's mandatory, not voluntary) like it is with Amazon.

>There will be no site that does not offer advertising, because advertising allows the site to determine which sellers can afford to pay more while still being profitable.

It's still possible that people exist who charge "what it's worth" rather than "what they can get". Those people can still make a fine living off of a two sided market place through flat transaction fees. Craigslist is an example that comes immediately to mind. Smart market participants are already punishing providers that maximize profit with payola, which is leading to success of new smaller niche markets - reverb.com comes to mind, or bricklink.com or alibris.com. That is not to say the market of markets is "solving" this problem - we probably want more consumer protection law - but it does show that your startement about ads is, strictly speaking, false.

But you need the entire marketplace to follow that rule.

You cannot charge "what it's worth" on amazon because you either pay the ad tax or you compete for the lowest price.

Craigslist is a hell hole. I stopped selling there because even when I was practically giving electronics away (to prevent buyer’s remorse), people still emailed insultingly low offers. I just gave up on the site maybe five years ago.

CL has gotten much much worse over the last few years. So has FB Marketplace. Perhaps a hidden value of the payola approach is to avoid these outcomes. Or perhaps every marketplace declines like this. It may be that private secondary market online market is simply not a sustainable business. That would be unfortunate, but interesting.

I think that reflects more on your sales strategy than CL in general. If there's negotiating expectations in a market (Middle East or Craigslist) you gotta start higher to arrive at the desired "halfway point" (think Ross pricing for clothes) and you gotta ignore spam/lowballs altogether. In fact pricing things too low undermines the quality of the item you're selling perceptually and attracts lowballers disproportionately.

CL has gotten worse since FB Marketplace has gotten foothold people visit it much less. FB Marketplace on the other hand is a race to the bottom due to ease of sales by laypeople.

The problem is that "what it's worth" can only be determined via "what you can get". Flat fees are just operational costs + capped profit. And the next question would be, where do you place that cap and why there?

Thats not the only thing I caught, at least with Ebay.

During the pandemic, I decided to sell a bunch of a component I had stockpiled. (Im not a scalper. I got the parts when my dad died.).

I put them for sale with $100 minimum, auction. They ended up selling for $300. I was definitely happy.... until Ebay refused to send me my money, and instead demanded access to a bank account, after the sale was complete. Fuck that.

I found the user who bought it, traced to a business. Cool. I contacted him, explaining what happened. Turns out they did the same to him since he too was a seller. I told him that I'd honor the same price Ebay told me....

Ebay told me (seller) $300. Ebay told the buyer $350......!! Mind you, the fees are taken out of my $300, yet that $50 difference is Ebays scrape off the top.

Obviously, I sold it to them for $300, and provided screenshots of what I was being told, and they did the same. We arranged the sale over Paypal and worked like a charm.

And sure, Ebay's scamming as far as I can tell, everyone. But it's also reminded me to check on websites with a private mode browser and logged in, to see if there's funny games.

It's amazing how quickly I recognized eBay descending into this sort of stuff from its inception. Maybe Amazon did so quickly too, but it's so obviously scummy that even as a teenager I got this impression. Kudos to you for going the extra mile

Wow, this is wildly unethical and shitty. I'm never using ebay again.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/investigation-ebay-employees-st...

They also allegedly hired someone to stalk and harass a couple who posted negative reviews of them online.

That was supposedly rogue execs. Not taking their side, but I don’t think it was company policy.

This statement is very meaningful in our current society, but one I wish sounded as insane as it is. I hope more people will think about the basic dogma of corporatism in the coming years...

Well, what if we translate this into a very different society?

You live in a big mansion. Your live-in cook heads into town one night and ends up getting into a fight in a bar. He breaks the other guy's leg.

What should happen to you?

Now imagine a legal entity represented and managed by several officials.

One of them heads into town, hires a bouncer to break a guys leg using the legal entities money, letterhead, and declares that this is work on behalf of the legal entity.

What should happen to the legal entity wrt acts commisioned in its name?

They denounce the official and sue to recover the money he spent without authorization?

What happens if someone with no affiliation of any kind with the company hires a bouncer to break a guy's leg using company letterhead and a sworn declaration that the work is commissioned on behalf of the company?

If he's an official representitive of the comapny he is the authorisation - we're not talking about the janitor here, we're talking about people with fiduciary responsibility between themselves and the company.

A lone wolf acting alone and falsifying documents is entirely different to a direct representative who is authorised to act on behalf of a company acting in bad faith.

Otherwise company officials are free to do henious crimes in the name of and on behalf of a company with no blowback on the company when those actions go pear shaped and get exposed.

Commanders are responsible for the actions of their men, companies are responsible for the actions of their principals.

So your answer is that the guy in the mansion whose cook gets into a fight should be punished for personally breaking the other guy's leg?

A cook is a bad analogy for the rank held by the people involved. It's more like "son of the estate owner" or "head guard", except it's both of them because it was multiple execs. So, yes, the estate owner should be held accountable. And in most civilized societies, he or she would be.

Nope.

At this point I'm merely questioning your ability to parse and undertand English in good faith.

I’m not great/don’t have time for a good metaphor dance, but that’s definitely a good one IMO! I guess I’d say the big difference is that you’re asking “what should happen to rogue execs”, and I was more interested in the general “who is culpable for the actions undertaken by an organization? Can the organization itself be culpable?”

In that metaphor, I see it like this: you live in a big estate that operates as some sort of business (wine, tourism, B&B, w/e), and your live-in cook breaks a guy’s leg while working for the estate (say, in a case of kitchen negligence, or just plain-old kitchen assault). I come along and propose that maybe you and your other owners should be forced to sell the estate or seriously rework things, since the assault was so bad.

In this world, do you share my intuition that at some level the estate itself should be made to answer for the actions of its employees on the job?

Beyond just fining corporations for damages, I feel there’s an unaccounted for intuitive sense that corporations should forfeit their autonomy and very existence in light of serious or repeated malfeasance, even if it wasn’t voted on by every member of the board before being enacted.

Ok maybe I did have time for a metaphor dance lol. Hope all this was somewhat clear!

> rogue execs

What is a company if not a collection of people? I fail to see the difference between "rogue execs did it" and "the company did it", except for who gets thrown under the bus.

> That was supposedly rogue execs. Not taking their side, but I don’t think it was company policy.

rogue employees is not company policy. rogue exec? maybe that isn't company policy. rogue execs!? that IS company policy.

> rogue execs

That's not 'rogue' that's completely and utterly unhinged. It's a walk-in position, not a 10th generation family firm. Why would you even think about it?

I recently sold some items on ebay. ebay will not release the funds for 3 weeks. They give no reason for this. However I think the real reason is that if you do this over a large enough user base you can use the "time-value" of money to make extra money. It's nefarious, and I too will never use ebay again.

The reason they give/non-cynical take is that it's a hold for potential buyer dispute. If they do, and eBay decides in their favour (to refund or partially refund) then it ensures they already/still have your money, they don't have to try to bill you back for it. (Which would also have an associated cost, but surely the main aspect would just be already having it, you haven't run off with it, not unable or unwilling to pay it, etc.)

Isn't that open and shut fraud on the part of ebay?

How is that fraud? Ebay is brokering a deal between two parties. It doesn't seem inherently fraudulent to offer differing prices to each party.

The deal I make with eBay is "I sell X for whatever the highest bidder pays, and then pay a percentage of that to Ebay for services rendered" (10% IIRC). That is: I would get $315 and eBay $35, but instead what happened is that I get $270 and eBay $80.

Note that it DIDN'T list a "higher price for the buyer"; people were bidding so that price was correct. What it did was list a LOWER price to the seller.

This is like you giving me your guitar and telling me "Martin, sell it for me and keep 10% of the price for your trouble" and then I lie to you about the price I sold it for so I can keep the difference.

I don't know how else to describe this than fraud. This seems wildly illegal in most jurisdictions and I'm surprised they're getting away with it.

I see what you mean and indeed that does sound fraudulent. Initially it had seemed to me sort of like ebay acting as a middle man and buying from you/selling to the buyer but them saying they sold your item for X price when they did not sounds cut and dry.

Are you in a state with sales tax? eBay is required by law to collect sales tax from the buyer, and it does not get passed on to you (nor does it go to eBay, it goes to the state taxing authority). As you are currently describing the issue, it makes absolutely no sense otherwise.

Tax was being collected, on top of the $350 being told to the buyer.

Ebay told me $300 for the completion of the auction. There was the normal fees associated with listing, which again, are understood.

This $50 discrepancy was not accountable anywhere. It just went poof into Ebay's gaping maw.

Like I said, we both compared notes and what our respective screens said. The numbers absolutely did not add up. And Ebay reallllly doesnt want the buyer and seller to talk directly. It's why the "ebay mail" is so limited and crippled, to prevent actual conversations like this from taking place.

I talked with them over text and email proper. There was no filter, or daddy ebay censoring all my messages.

This should be illegal misrepresentation of your selling price wow

eBay stole my money and made it impossible to get a refund fifteen years ago. I gave up and stopped using the site. Sorry I don’t have more details; it’s faded from memory. But it was dirty behavior, that’s for sure.

I used to sell items on eBay but I'm back to Craigslist and, for phones and other electronics, I've found Swappa to be a decent marketplace. On the latter products are moderated lightly for validity and, just like eBay, it was easy to build up a very positive reputation by selling items that are clean and have been taken care of well. I do go to eBay as a shopper for random items. But generally if it's on eBay I can find a better price by spending a few minutes looking for a site that specializes in those items.

I lost trust in selling on eBay due to buyers that have tried to scam me in the past. Not sure if it's still that way on the sell side for individuals but I felt like, for a while, eBay was favoring high volume users vs being fair. I sold some SFPs that were way under market value about 6 years ago and had serial numbers of each unit in the auctiom. A guy bought them to resell in his shop a couple states away and he claimed they were defective when he received them. I told him to prove it in a switch showing the serial numbers and the error condition he claimed. He wouldn't do it so I told him to ship them back. He shipped me units with way different serial numbers but eBay still gave him his money back and charged me. That's the last time I sold on eBay.

Thanks for the swappa.com recommendation! I see that I could have made $100 more on my MacBook there than on eBay. Also it was WAY easier to find the exact specs. Thanks again!

It’s the same as Airbnb and Uber and Netflix and literally everything else… they throw in hidden fees and play psychology (eg foot in the door technique) to get us to pay more and more without us realizing it. They preach convenience, but unfortunately use that to their advantage to get our guard down. You pay $X to not have to worry about something/get a service, but when you’re not paying attention they jack up prices.

I looked the other day and it’s like $19/month for Spotify Family now… when did that happen? It was like $14 when I signed up. But all my playlists are set up on Spotify… what’s more, all the fam’s are too. Huge PITA to move to Apple Music.

I hate to tell ya, but Spotify will eternally be stuck between unprofitability and price raises.

Spotify has to negotiate with record labels who mostly act as a unified block, and they have leverage because Spotify needs all major labels or else customers can’t find all their music. No one is a “interscope” loyalist - they’re loyal to artists. This gives them power to basically demand >100% of the profit margin. That’s why they’re trying to get into other markets like podcasts. Record labels get ~50% of revenue, then Apple/Google app stores get 30% from some customers - that doesn’t leave a lot of room for Spotify.

That’s also why YouTube music and Apple Music will be the only long term players - but they need Spotify. They can take a loss to keep customers in the ecosystem BUT they need Spotify to always be the first to break to keep rates tolerable.

> Finally I lowered the price enough to get it sold.

How much did you have to lower the price by? How did that compare to the ad-ransom you would have had to pay?

I sold it for $540 (without using ads). Same specs are selling on swappa.com for $620-$780. My eBay reputation is 100% and the MacBook was 100% clean. Perhaps I could have sold it for "more" using ads, but then all that money would just go to eBay, which I don't think is fair. They already take a final value fee anyway.

Terrible. Price gouging has been worsening the last couple of decades. Perhaps the last few centuries, or maybe it comes in waves, like resets when there’s a government revolution. People keep paying though. I’m at my city’s town center and I’ve never seen it so packed, except in the Black Friday-Christmas season. It’s a random Saturday. Some people have Monday off but that doesn’t explain the domestic shopping. Where is the money coming from?

Craigslist exists and used to be the main go to for stuff like that.

We gotta get the eyeballs back on craigslist

so many scams and fake people on Craigslist made me move to Facebook marketplace. They have better algorithms for detecting real people.

you either let a company like eBay manipulate prices or you have to put up with some of the human element of a marketplace which does include scams.

I have never once been a victim of a scam because I'm smart enough to identify them and be extremely careful when exchanging money on line.

It's not difficult.

FB Marketplace is better but still scams aplenty

> Please somebody make a site with no payola

Aliexpress?

Is that a joke? It's far more of a nightmare. Sort by price and it's only sorting on the 'from' price, which isn't even necessarily the same product, doesn't include the shipping, and doesn't account for wild variation (in not just base price but also inexplicably shipping) when you change quantity or colour.

I would love to see some regulation (/ enforcement) that if you're going to lump different variations of a product together into one product listing, they need to be substantially identical in function and build.

Two different colors of the same specification iPhone are fine to group together (arguably even different storage configurations), but it should be illegal to have a product listing show up on a search page with a price of $5 when the title and photos show the $100 actual product, and $5 is what you pay for the charger brick. This is extremely common on AliExpress, and obviously the FTC's reach is limited there, but it also happens not infrequently on Amazon and eBay.

Aliexpress has famously shitty search capability. Perhaps worse than Amazon's, and that's saying something.