Richard…no offense, but charity begins at home….I ain’t feeling no charity right now LOL

Yes, because now eBay is responsible for your typos as well as your ability to make a living.

It disgusts me to see the selfishness here. Any sympathy I had for aggrieved eBay sellers is just about gone, and I AM a seller. As little as you care about people who are genuinely starving and have no means to support themselves, that’s how much the average person probably cares about your unwillingness to deal with change and insistence that eBay keep providing you a teat to suckle on.

Time to put on your big-kid PullUps and take responsibility for your own businesses. If you weren’t doing that before, it’s questionable whether you should be selling on eBay or anywhere. Rise or fall on your own merits now. Tough world, isn’t it?

My money won’t be going to unstable, crybaby sellers. It’ll go to reliable, sane business people and to any charity that supports those who are truly suffering, not to those who are wallowing in self-pity and resistance to change.

You can cry, or you can deal with it. I chose to deal with it.

DO ONE THING RIGHT EBAY– Where is the recycling initiative? You and I both know that every new electronic product you sell here will be leaching into the Shanghai water table starting in about 2012, especially with no small sellers left by then to list it on ebay. It saddens me that ebay is embarrassed by its ‘lowbrow’ connotation- the dollar stores Pat_1 mentioned certainly aren’t.

Management seems to believe that their monopoly, which is 100 percent of a personal-size pizza, can be traded up to a big slice of a Large. But everyone has a hand in that large, it is a jungle, and they were better off with the little Personal pizza, protected in its own little box.

I think what’s really going to happen is they will wind up with 1/8th of a medium pizza, made out of last years’ returned PC’s and stuff that no one wants. Point a heat lamp at it all you want– it’s still leftovers.

Social responsibility in the context of ebay starts with confirming the ID of each and every user on this site both buyer and seller alike, and then ridding the duplicates. I’m fascinated that ebay spends PR money but won’t pony up the advertising bucks on relevant campaigns, instead depicting footrace contestants knocking over people in wheelchairs, or Al Qaida kidnapping Santa Claus.

I wouldn’t give to Small Change Big Change I only trust the university-run, technology-based charities… a good example being Wellspring Africa, who teach tiny villages how to drill Artesian wells very cheaply: http://www.wellspringafrica.org

The economy has slowed down – we may or may not be going into a recession (depending on which expert is speaking about it). I kind of laughed at myself after shopping for condiments and cleaning items today ….at the 99 cent store! It occurred to me that true ebay auctions – the way they used to be sure would be successful today in this slowed down economy. Unfortunately, due to such back breaking fees and low exposure, the small seller who can offer bargains is being pushed off the site in favor of “fixed” prices. With Ebay’s appetite for fees I really can’t see how fixed prices are going to work any better the the current auctions are – between ebay and paypal what profit margin is left in a fixed price listing? and that listing is probably some widget that could be bought on sale at the local discount store?

Today I am getting what I hope is an error asking me to sign in to comment on this blog with a user name and password, neither of which I have.

The site hangs and is extremely slow loading today, hitting the stop loading button and then resubmitting appears to bypass the sign-in box.

Also, the website link (to my blog) in my first post is showing in my browser correctly but is directed to some bible study site.

Hopefully this is just another eBay glitch, not a sign of things to come.

Microplace incorporates a fee structure (it is an ebay company afterall). Kiva does not.

Kiva lenders do not get interest. When the original loan amount is repaid it is available to the lender to withdraw or recycle. Most of us recycle.