After receiving payment for my latest puzzle sale I was a bit surprised to find that Paypal was apparently holding back the money that I was supposed to receive from the auction for "up to 21 days." The only apparent reason for this that I can tell is because my dad's account has a "limited selling history," which means that I receive account limitations because I haven't sold more than 25 items yet. After marking the item as shipped and adding a tracking number, the hold was generously reduced down to 10 days.

Is anyone else frustrated by this? It seems ridiculous to me that even after the ~13% that eBay and Paypal charge for my sales, they still feel the need to place further restrictions on my account simply because I haven't sold very much.

Though I know eBay and Paypal are the most popular options and probably help me get sales and bids and such, I'm beginning to wonder whether the cost to use them are worthwhile or not. Are there any good alternatives?

This is happening across the board as far as I can tell. Others have the same problem.
If you find a viable option, please let all of us know.

From my understanding, once the buyer leaves a positive feedback for you, the funds will be released. It might be worthwhile to also let your buyer know of your situation to receive prompt feedback.

I can tell you that eBay does this as protection to buyers (but mainly for themselves) so that fraudulent sellers can't just take money and run. I've spoken to a legitimate seller who understandably refused to ship $700,000 in rare collectibles sold on eBay because the money was held. As a result, he 'defaulted' on nearly 200 transactions and eBay lost thousands in fees that they could have been made. While this is an extreme case, I've heard of many new sellers being put off from selling on eBay for this.

Warning - Rant:

eBay is extremely biased towards buyers, and treat sellers with little respect. While buyers are important, sellers are the ones who essentially pays eBay. They raise their fees as they like and have borderline unreasonable terms and expectations. I've gotten a call from eBay with suggestions on how to improve my sales, such as offering free shipping on all my items and have $0.99 no reserve auctions, and I promise you I gave them an earful. Yes, you're sales figures will be much higher (and at the time, so will the fees) but you will occur a 100% loss with shipping. They are trying to be like Amazon, going as far as adding a shopping cart to their website.

If you think eBay fees are bad, you haven't seen Amazon yet. I've crunched numbers from my Amazon merchant account and I paid an average of 23.2% in fees. Mind you, this is with sales of $10-$100 books and media. If I sold books at $4 and under, I would be incurring losses even if I got the book for free. I can justify the extra fees with Amazon because media trades for much higher prices than on any other website I know. For example, I usually get $11 to $16 for common Pokemon Game Boy Color Games (Red/Blue/G/S/C) on eBay but get $19 to $26 on Amazon for those same games.

Lots of sellers have spent a lot of time figuring out the numbers and it looks like you won't win no matter where you go. Research what you are selling and choose the best venue to sell your item. Remember to consider reputable auction houses for rare and high dollar items, such as Christie's and Sotherby's. If you're selling something of extremely high value, you might be able to negotiate for lower fees and in rare cases, you can negotiate to receive 101-105% of the hammer price of your item (yes, the auction house is PAYING YOU).

As far as I can see, there are tons of alternatives to eBay and Amazon. Bottom line is, you don't get the eyeballs looking and bidding/purchasing your items meaning that your item sells very poorly or not even sell.

Good luck,
Ben

I've been considering to offer my own free online service for selling puzzles, similar to bedardpuzzles.com, but with auctions and offer-based listings instead of waiting lists. It would probably still have to use Paypal or another payment service of that sort, but it would be convenient and secure enough for a small community like this one. Most of my buyers seem to come from TP, anyway.

Would that interest anyone?

That is an interesting idea. I would be interested in hearing the guidelines on it.

Love it or hate it you won't beat eBay. Where else can you sell something to someone who doesn't understand a word of your language and vice versa?

I can see your point. I suppose language translations would be something good to implement into a website, though this forum (mostly) speaks English after all. I've been hard at work coding lately, and I think the finished product could be a success. Or a disaster, but that's what experimenting is for.

If anyone is interested in coding for the website (PHP, XHTML, etc)... PM me for details. I won't reveal too much more information about it publicly until I know the idea will work.