4 Feb
2004
4 Feb
'04
7:04 a.m.
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed recently? I've had an account for
over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email address. Looks like the
b******* have decided to forcefully change all of us using email addresses for our
ID's so as to better control the flow of information to us.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
4 Feb
4 Feb
7:57 a.m.
they forced me to do it like a year ago. Perhaps they are just now getting
to the Z's :)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh(a)aracnet.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 12:04 PM
Subject: Forced eBay ID Change?
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently? I've had an
account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against
using an email
address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change all of
us using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the flow of
information to us.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
8:12 a.m.
I was forced to change mine yesterday... I guess it wasn't done in
alpha. order, maybe by date of signing-up or ???
-j
On Feb 4, 2004, at 1:57 PM, Jay West wrote:
they forced me to do it like a year ago. Perhaps they
are just now
getting
to the Z's :)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh(a)aracnet.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 12:04 PM
Subject: Forced eBay ID Change?
Jeff Brendle Office: 313 EESB/(814)865-3257/fax 865-3191
Desktop Support Spv. Home: #210 Parkgate 349 Toftrees Ave.
Penn State - Coll. of E&MS State College, PA / (814)861-8180
Mailto:bli@psu.edu AOL/MSN/Yahoo! IM - JSBrendle
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently? I've had
an
account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email
address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change
all of
us using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the flow
of
information to us.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
9:12 a.m.
They just don't want people directly talking to one another, God forbid....
only through their controlling environment, sheeez people can't even talk to
one another without evilbay watching over them.
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jay West" <jwest(a)classiccmp.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: Forced eBay ID Change?
they forced me to do it like a year ago. Perhaps they
are just now getting
to the Z's :)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh(a)aracnet.com>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 12:04 PM
Subject: Forced eBay ID Change?
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently? I've had an
account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against
using an email
address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change all of
us using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the flow of
information to us.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
---
[This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus]
9:23 a.m.
Curt vendel wrote:
They just don't want people directly talking to one another, God forbid....
only through their controlling environment, sheeez people can't even talk to
one another without evilbay watching over them.
I think they are trying to make it harder to harvest email addresses.
Kind of like hoping that people as incompetant as they, are doing the
harvesting and can't find a way around it :). It is still legal AFAIK to
use an email ID such as twerps_at_ebay_com.
Dwight, I have some *strong* opinions about the way ebay effectively
took advantage of those of us who helped promote the site, and then
screws them :)!!!
10:04 a.m.
Well, I doubt thats gonna do any good as it seems someone from the inside is
feeding/selling user accounts, I've never used my email address anywhere on
ebay, yet I've received plenty of ebay related scammer emails with some
personal ebay only info contained within them....
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Marvin Johnston" <marvin(a)rain.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 3:23 PM
Subject: Re: Forced eBay ID Change?
Curt vendel wrote:
>
> They just don't want people directly talking to one another, God
forbid....
> only through their controlling environment,
sheeez people can't even
talk to
one another
without evilbay watching over them.
I think they are trying to make it harder to harvest email addresses.
Kind of like hoping that people as incompetant as they, are doing the
harvesting and can't find a way around it :). It is still legal AFAIK to
use an email ID such as twerps_at_ebay_com.
Dwight, I have some *strong* opinions about the way ebay effectively
took advantage of those of us who helped promote the site, and then
screws them :)!!! 
12:14 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Curt vendel
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 1:05 PM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Forced eBay ID Change?
Well, I doubt thats gonna do any good as it seems someone from
the inside is
feeding/selling user accounts, I've never used my email address
anywhere on
ebay, yet I've received plenty of ebay related scammer emails with some
personal ebay only info contained within them....
Curt... hmmmm.... I changed the email address on my eBay account about three
months ago due to too much spam on the old address, and sure enough, spam
started showing up in the new address almost immediately (a
not-easily-guessed address, BTW). --Patrick
9:02 p.m.
At 15:14 04/02/2004 -0800, Patrick Rigney wrote:
Curt... hmmmm.... I changed the email address on my
eBay account about three
months ago due to too much spam on the old address, and sure enough, spam
started showing up in the new address almost immediately (a
not-easily-guessed address, BTW). --Patrick
I think it depends on how popular your email provider is. I've created
accounts at free mail providers, and NEVER USED THEM, and still had spam
appear in their mailbox. Similarly for the major ISPs over here. If you
use a "normal" first part, e.g. a single word, a common first or last name,
or initial & the same, or an AOL style address of any of the preceding
followed by a number, then you'll get hit by the blanket "let's make up as
many addresses as we can and see which ones get through" spamming. I see
them being bounced in my maillog all the time! (Tip - don't ever let a
spam open and show you it's web-linked images - then they know one got
through!)
Conversely, we have a domain name we sell stuff on, (www russianglasss co
uk - waaaaaaay OT for this list,) and have use a sales@ address on ebay for
the last nine months - and have never had any of the normal sort of spam
arrive at any address on there.
Viruses, yep.. Easily traced idiot who added us to their mailing list,
yep. SPAM, nope.
My very first email address, which I still poll for emails, but never use
for outgoing any more, must get over 150 spams a day. At some point I'll
have to trawl through and see what legitimately still writes there, and
kill it completely, but I've still got a bit of sentiment about that
address. It's an ISP address, but they've been taken over in turns about
six times, and the original tiny ISP I contracted to (sixteen dial up line)
no longer exists...
[BTW, Above mentioned idiot address-harvested us from a unique contact
address on an ad on ebid.co.uk auction site. A UK Limited Company, very
easily traced! We requested they desist mailing us, advised future
transgressions would incur a processing charge, received two more emails,
and so invoiced them :-) They've not paid yet, so I will be issuing court
proceedings at the end of the month. Not only do I have record they opened
our emails, they actually replied to one of them asking what address they
were writing to. I'd have dropped the matter there, except I got more spam
a week later, to the same address! As I said ... Idiots! :-) ]
Rob.
5:54 p.m.
Subject: Re: Forced eBay ID Change?
Well, I doubt thats gonna do any good as it seems
someone from the inside
is
feeding/selling user accounts, I've never used my
email address anywhere
on
ebay, yet I've received plenty of ebay related
scammer emails with some
personal ebay only info contained within them....
My wife regularly receives mail from eBay (at least, that is the alledged
sender), talking about special offers, account verification, threats to
close down her account, etc. The funny thing is, that she never has even
_looked_ at eBay.
Nico
7:47 p.m.
On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Nico de Jong wrote:
My wife regularly receives mail from eBay (at least,
that is the alledged
sender), talking about special offers, account verification, threats to
close down her account, etc. The funny thing is, that she never has even
_looked_ at eBay.
It's not eBay, it's scamspam.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
8:15 p.m.
--- Vintage Computer Festival <vcf(a)siconic.com> wrote:
On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Nico de Jong wrote:
Yeah, this reminded me of the way to hack
your ebay
account: direct you to the fake site and let you log
in to verify your account.
My wife regularly receives mail from eBay (at
least, that is the alledged
sender), talking about special offers, account
verification, threats to
close down her account, etc. The funny thing is,
that she never has even
_looked_ at eBay.
It's not eBay, it's scamspam.
--
Sellam Ismail
Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger
http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business ||
Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at
http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
8:09 a.m.
"Zane H. Healy" wrote:
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed recently? I've had an account for
over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email address. Looks like the
b******* have decided to forcefully change all of us using email addresses for our
ID's so as to better control the flow of information to us.
Yes, mine was also changed *without* my permission. IMNSHO, they are
attempting to divert attention from the incompetant operations people.
They are idiots.
9:07 a.m.
My, what a shiny tinfoil hat you have!
g.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Marvin Johnston wrote:
"Zane H. Healy" wrote:
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed recently? I've had an account for
over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email address. Looks like the
b******* have decided to forcefully change all of us using email addresses for our
ID's so as to better control the flow of information to us.
Yes, mine was also changed *without* my permission. IMNSHO, they are
attempting to divert attention from the incompetant operations people.
They are idiots.
8:23 a.m.
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently?
I've had an account for over 6 years and I predate the rules
against using an email address. Looks like the b******* have
decided to forcefully change all of us using email addresses
for our ID's so as to better control the flow of information
to us.
Create an "About Me" page with your email address. That will
bypass their control, until they start scrubbing those for
email addresses.
--
Eric Dittman
dittman(a)dittman.net
10:53 a.m.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Zane H. Healy wrote:
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently? I've had an
account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email
address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change all
of us using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the
flow of information to us.
Typical eBay. I think they play a game there where they come up with new
and creative ways to piss off their users. If there were competition in
that particular market sector then you better bet they would change their
tune in an instant.
eBay makes Microsoft look good.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
11:14 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vintage Computer Festival" <vcf(a)siconic.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 4:53 PM
Subject: Re: Forced eBay ID Change?
Typical eBay. I think they play a game there where
they come up with new
and creative ways to piss off their users. If there were competition in
that particular market sector then you better bet they would change their
tune in an instant.
eBay makes Microsoft look good.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer
Festival
Considering that eBay is nothing more then a middleman between a buyer and a
seller I can see why they would not want it to be easy for people using the
system to communicate between each other through eBay. You can easily ask
any seller a question you want for any active auction.
My only problem with eBay to date is not being able to browse auctions more
then a month old to find out the selling price history (or availability) of
things I want to add to my collection. I haven't been burned by them yet so
I cant comment on their customer support over disputes.
3:37 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Teo Zenios wrote:
Considering that eBay is nothing more then a middleman
between a buyer and a
seller I can see why they would not want it to be easy for people using the
system to communicate between each other through eBay. You can easily ask
any seller a question you want for any active auction.
Right, and with a valid eBay account you can always directly contact other
users to offer stuff. True, some of the more goody-two-shoes users may
turn you in, but I wouldn't doubt that eBay has some filters in place to
flag these messages for review and then restricts accounts where this is
happening.
My only problem with eBay to date is not being able to
browse auctions more
then a month old to find out the selling price history (or availability) of
things I want to add to my collection. I haven't been burned by them yet so
I cant comment on their customer support over disputes.
Yes, that sucks majorly. Wired a couple issues ago had a top 100 ideas
kinda article, and one of them was for eBay to keep the listings up past
30 days. Such an unfriendly company...
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
3:54 p.m.
Yes, that sucks majorly. Wired a couple issues ago
had a top 100 ideas
kinda article, and one of them was for eBay to keep the listings up past
30 days. Such an unfriendly company...
Lots go away after 30 days for a good reason - it cuts down eBay's
liability. The company is a middleman, and as soon as they can wash their
hands of a deal, the better.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
5:03 p.m.
Well, not only that, but think of the costs involved keeping that data
online and accessible, we're talking terabytes...
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Donzelli" <aw288(a)osfn.org>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Cc: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 9:54 PM
Subject: Re: Forced eBay ID Change?
Yes, that
sucks majorly. Wired a couple issues ago had a top 100 ideas
kinda article, and one of them was for eBay to keep the listings up past
30 days. Such an unfriendly company...
Lots go away after 30 days for a good reason - it cuts down eBay's
liability. The company is a middleman, and as soon as they can wash their
hands of a deal, the better.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org
5:39 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Curt vendel" <curt(a)atarimuseum.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 11:03 PM
Subject: Re: Forced eBay ID Change?
Well, not only that, but think of the costs involved
keeping that data
online and accessible, we're talking terabytes...
Curt
I know people who have a few TB online in their homes, they don't make
billions a year in sales. The pictures are what take up space and quite a
bit of those are not even hosted on eBay anyway.
What they could do is sell dvd's custom made showing specific items over a
specific time period including price sold, pictures and descriptions. I used
to be into coin and stamp collecting and one of the things I liked was the
beautiful color catalogs they sold (at a decent price) showing the items, a
brief description, and pricing expected or realized. I bet allot of people
would buy a DVD with the highlights of the years Hummel, coin, baseball
card, videogame, car, etc auctions.
It would also be cool to have a section where people post what they want to
buy and have dealers bid on what they will sell it to you for (reverse of
the here is my junk hope somebody wants it way it works now). If the lister
liked the price he would then buy the item, there should be a reserve so
that if a dealer goes below it then the lister has to buy the lowest bid
item. Or do it like priceline.com where I post a want list and my price,
first guy with the goods at that price gets my money.
Face it eBay owns the online auction market, for them to grow revenue they
have to come up with another stream of income other then the standard
auction (some of the stuff I mentioned, jacking up the listing fee's,
selling my email to spammers, etc.) They already purchased Paypal.
6:04 p.m.
--- Curt vendel <curt(a)atarimuseum.com> wrote:
Well, not only that, but think of the costs involved
keeping that data
online and accessible, we're talking terabytes...
Terabytes, big deal, whats that 5 $120 drives? Or one
$1000 drive. With one of those I can fit 5 terabytes
in a tower PC. Petabytes is practical and exists
currently in industry. Its all ASCII text anyhow with
links to pictures(which would be lost), maybe 2000
bytes per auction on average? Ebay had 1 billion
auctions listed last year. Thats 2 Petabytes of data.
Now if you wanted to store pictures your talking
yottabytes.
I'd imagine the search fuction is the limiting factor,
but I could wait for a slow seach of the previous 2
years of auctions.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online.
http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html
7:44 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Curt vendel wrote:
Well, not only that, but think of the costs involved
keeping that data
online and accessible, we're talking terabytes...
Bah! It costs pennies per megabyte these days (and getting cheaper by the
minute). They don't make it accessible because they want you to PAY for
it (just like with everything else).
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
7:39 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, William Donzelli wrote:
I think there are other reasons. eBay has already (successfully so far)
argued its immunity from being held as liable, claiming they are only a
marketplace (which I wholly agree with, though they should be held liable
on account of their policies).
I'm sure the real reason is because they actually do sell this data.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
Yes, that
sucks majorly. Wired a couple issues ago had a top 100 ideas
kinda article, and one of them was for eBay to keep the listings up past
30 days. Such an unfriendly company...
Lots go away after 30 days for a good reason - it cuts down eBay's
liability. The company is a middleman, and as soon as they can wash their
hands of a deal, the better.
11:17 a.m.
Whoa!!! Sellam must REALLY hate ebay to make that kind of comparision! :-)
Don't forget the other thing.... ebay raised its fee's to all the user
accounts Monday, they cut off some refunds and oh...but they did reduced
posting on their front page from $99.99 to $39.99 woo hoo :-P
Curt
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Zane H. Healy wrote:
--
Curt Vendel & Karl Morris
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Atari Museum
http://www.atarimuseum.com
The Atari Explorer
http://www.atari-explorer.com
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently? I've had an
account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email
address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change all
of us using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the
flow of information to us.
Typical eBay. I think they play a game there where they come up with new
and creative ways to piss off their users. If there were competition in
that particular market sector then you better bet they would change their
tune in an instant.
eBay makes Microsoft look good.
12:17 p.m.
Don't forget the other thing.... ebay raised its
fee's to all the user
accounts Monday, they cut off some refunds and oh...but they did reduced
posting on their front page from $99.99 to $39.99 woo hoo :-P
BLEEP! I hadn't heard about that one. Just as my wife is getting ready to
start listing a bunch of my excess computer stuff :^( At the rate they're
going it won't be worth the effort to use them, it'll be cheaper to dump
stuff on "BadWill".
Zane
12:45 p.m.
New subject: BadWill for Zane (was Re: Forced eBay ID Change?)
Zane H. Healy wrote:
If you're dumping an IMSAI or SOL-20, the back of my truck says
"BadWill" for your convienence.
--jc
Don't
forget the other thing.... ebay raised its fee's to all the user
accounts Monday, they cut off some refunds and oh...but they did reduced
posting on their front page from $99.99 to $39.99 woo hoo :-P
BLEEP! I hadn't heard about that one. Just as my wife is getting ready to
start listing a bunch of my excess computer stuff :^( At the rate they're
going it won't be worth the effort to use them, it'll be cheaper to dump
stuff on "BadWill".
Zane
12:49 p.m.
New subject: BadWill for Zane (was Re: Forced eBay ID Change?)
If you're dumping an IMSAI or SOL-20, the back of
my truck says
"BadWill" for your convienence.
--jc
Don't worry, I'd offer stuff for pickup before dumping it there, and the
IMSAI *WON'T* be dumped there (I don't even have a SOL-20).
Zane
1:15 p.m.
New subject: BadWill for Zane (was Re: Forced eBay ID Change?)
BLEEP! I
hadn't heard about that one. Just as my wife is
getting ready to
start listing a bunch of my excess computer stuff
:^( At the
rate they're
>going it won't be worth the effort to use them, it'll be cheaper to dump
>stuff on "BadWill".
4 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Zane H. Healy wrote:
This is just the thing to spur a competing service with much better rates.
I hope eBay keeps raising their rates. It needs to cause just enough
grief to spawn a mass migration to another service. I dream of the day...
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
Don't
forget the other thing.... ebay raised its fee's to all the user
accounts Monday, they cut off some refunds and oh...but they did reduced
posting on their front page from $99.99 to $39.99 woo hoo :-P
BLEEP! I hadn't heard about that one. Just as my wife is getting ready to
start listing a bunch of my excess computer stuff :^( At the rate they're
going it won't be worth the effort to use them, it'll be cheaper to dump
stuff on "BadWill".
9:59 p.m.
At 19:00 04/02/2004 -0800, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
This is just the thing to spur a competing service with
much better rates.
I hope eBay keeps raising their rates. It needs to cause just enough
grief to spawn a mass migration to another service. I dream of the day...
Around June last year, ebay UK did a bit of a price hike. What annoyed
people most was they did it in the name of having to comply wiht local VAT
regulations (sales tax). Their email said "some" prices would go up,
"some" down. All the prices went up except one never-used listing
feature. Many by more than the VAT rate! A lot of people migrated to
ebid.co.uk (http://connect.to/ebid if you want to earn me a referral
click)- a UK based site that offers free listings; not in the numbers to
make much of a difference to ebay, but enough such that you can actually
manage to sell things on there now, albeit usually at start price. They
cater for international members, so if you have some cheap stuff to flog,
they are worth a try.
As for us, well, we still use them, but to be honest, even with the
charges, we make more money through eBay, just because there are enough
people to bid things up. That's where all other services fail - there are
just not enough people using them, and you can't make the money selling on
them. So, no sellers, even less buyers..Rob
5 Feb
5 Feb
5:11 a.m.
On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Rob O'Donnell wrote:
As for us, well, we still use them, but to be honest,
even with the
charges, we make more money through eBay, just because there are enough
people to bid things up. That's where all other services fail - there are
just not enough people using them, and you can't make the money selling on
them. So, no sellers, even less buyers..Rob
Yes, that is the problem. eBay is the 800,000 pound gorilla, and to
unseat them will either require a rival with enough cash to launch a
serious marketing campaign, or a continued succession of errors by eBay.
The latter is plausible, as we've already seen. They always seem to push
users right to the edge but not quite over...basically they try to get
away with as much as possible to squeeze every last cent out of their
users and doing the least possible work. Yes, I understand that is
Capitalism, but there's honorable Capitalism, and then there's eBay (to
say nothing of some of its users).
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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4 Feb
4 Feb
4:02 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Zane H. Healy wrote:
BLEEP! I hadn't heard about that one. Just as my
wife is getting ready to
start listing a bunch of my excess computer stuff :^( At the rate they're
going it won't be worth the effort to use them, it'll be cheaper to dump
stuff on "BadWill".
Well, if it qualifies as classic stuff, list it on the VCM. No fees at
all (currently)!
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
3:38 p.m.
On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Curt Vendel wrote:
Don't forget the other thing.... ebay raised its
fee's to all the user
accounts Monday, they cut off some refunds and oh...but they did reduced
posting on their front page from $99.99 to $39.99 woo hoo :-P
Who the hell ever visits the front page anway? I have a link on my
personal links page to My eBay so all I ever see is exactly what I want.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
[ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ]
[ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]
4:01 p.m.
Who the hell ever visits the front page anway? I have
a link on my
personal links page to My eBay so all I ever see is exactly what I want.
Me, I've got links to canned searches on my links page for the main things
that my wife and I look at. I have to wonder if anyone who goes to eBay any
amount of the time bothers to go to the front page.
Zane
12:40 p.m.
If you used your email address for an ID, my guess is that they will ask
you to change it so that all initial communications between buyer and
seller will go through eBay. I am sure they read this mail, to find out
how much money they are loosing. But I am also fairly sure they treat this
as a statistic and will not act against any specific individual for what
that person says. It is clear that they know that many people make contact
through eBay and then go on to buy and sell off the eBay site.
Nick
At 10:04 AM 2/4/2004, you wrote:
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently? I've had an
account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email
address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change all of
us using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the flow of
information to us.
Zane
3:05 p.m.
Zane H. Healy wrote:
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed
recently? I've had an account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against using
an email address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change all of us
using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the flow of information to
us.
Zane
the short answer is yes.
Kelly
4:30 p.m.
I just had mine forcibly changed also. I know they've been "suggesing" we
change them for a while, but I would have liked some warning and an
opportunity to select the ID I want without the "shades" icon appearing
before they did it for me.
- Bob
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Zane H. Healy
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2004 1:04 PM
To: classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org
Subject: Forced eBay ID Change?
Anyone else have their eBay ID forcefully changed recently? I've had an
account for over 6 years and I predate the rules against using an email
address. Looks like the b******* have decided to forcefully change all of
us using email addresses for our ID's so as to better control the flow of
information to us.
Zane
--
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh(a)aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
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37 comments
19 participants
participants (19)
-
aw288＠osfn.org -
bli＠psu.edu -
bob_lafleur＠technologist.com -
classiccmp.org＠irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk -
curt＠atarimuseum.com -
dittman＠dittman.net -
geneb＠deltasoft.com -
gessler＠ucla.edu -
gkicomputers＠yahoo.com -
healyzh＠aracnet.com -
jcwren＠jcwren.com -
jwest＠classiccmp.org -
kelly＠fergason.com -
marvin＠rain.org -
nico＠farumdata.dk -
patrick＠evocative.com -
teoz＠neo.rr.com -
vax3900＠yahoo.com -
vcf＠siconic.com