Congratulations on your great success on Ebay. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for myself or many others. One can see this by visiting their seller forums, where the old timers who still frequent there have the motto, "don't list it unless you can afford to give it away"

You can also see this from many of the older sellers who ran good volume who quit because they found themselves in the same scenario.

I'm unsure what part category may have to do with this, as I have seen that suggested on those boards as well. But the fact is, when a buyer decides they want your item for free, Ebay will usually bend over backwards to ensure they get their wish. Having remained in sales in the real world via live auctions and swap meets over the years since I quit Ebay, I have sold to many regulars who were pickers that still sold on Ebay. So I do know it's possible and happens, but I have little patience for thieves and it takes more balls to steal something when the owner is right in front of you.

I wrote to the CEO, who responded in 20 minutes, and was invited into their office for lunch with the global head of seller engagement who gave me all sorts of perks (after all types of other proactive calls from other staff). The head of seller engagement told me he used my email company-wide and also said they'd be making changes to what impacted me in the upcoming Q2/Q3. Doesn't sound so bad to me...

Congratulations especially for this. I would say this is even rarer than selling with virtually no scammers, as I have never met nor encountered anyone before now that was a normal seller on Ebay that had access to the CEO, got through and was rewarded with lunch and other unspecified perks. I think you will agree that is not a common response for the head of a large corporation such as Ebay to have with the sellers on their venue, unless we are talking a large corporation such as when ToysRus was briefly there getting their negatives and metrics scrubbed daily so they wouldn't be punished as a normal seller would be.

I have to admit to being excited at the idea of a competitor to Ebay (and Amazon since they have been gating so many categories). Especially one that will allow alternate forms of payment to be able to bypass Paypal. I am not currently in a position to go to auctions, nor do I have a good flea market nearby to funnel items through. But I still have some of the collectibles I shipped when I moved to resell at some point, and will be moving hopefully this summer to an area that does have a good flea market. This venue would be a perfect compliment, and who knows, maybe one that would allow for a decent living.