Goodbye, eBay

As of May, I’ll have been a member of the on-line auction site eBay for 10 years. During that decade, I’ve done a lot of business on the site, both buying and selling. But the one item I have posted for sale right now could very well be my last.

Like many others, I’ve become disillusioned with eBay. No longer is it the place to realize the best possible price for almost any item, from collectibles to clothing to cars. It’s now the place people look for bargains almost exclusively. I’m just as guilty as anyone, having sought things at a low price rather than go elsewhere and pay the real market rate. What this means as a seller, though, is that most of the things I’ve put up for auction in the past two years have either failed to get bids or resulted in sale prices way below what they realistically should have.

Arguably, this could represent the market setting the price, and in some categories, that seems to work. My field is comic books, and what eBay has done in this category is drastically depress the price of your everyday, average well-read comic book, because that’s the condition of most copies that people have dug out of basements or pulled down from attics trying to cash in on the on-line auction craze. Even 50- or 60-year-old comics in “good” condition often fail to get bids, because there are so many out there or the buyers are waiting for a better bargain.

Where eBay has changed the comic collecting field is in the realm of the high-grade collectible. These comics go for higher prices, but still, the price is often less than the value listed in price guides.

The last few times I’ve posted comics for sale, if I’ve sold anything, it’s been for the minimum amount. Perhaps I set my minimums too low, but judging by the fact that many others don’t get any bids at all, I think the market is just saturated. I’ve gone from highs --- in 1999, I sold a comic for which I paid 25 cents for more than $200 --- to the lows of not getting any bids at all on pretty good condition 50-year-old comics.

OK, so it’s sour grapes. But eBay itself has helped with the souring. Earlier this year, the company increased the final value fee it charges, a percentage of every sale made on the site. On my most recent sales, eBay took a cut of more than 17 percent. The company also recently eliminated the ability of sellers to leave feedback on buyers, significantly hobbling the ability of sellers to police the site.

And then there’s PayPal, the payment processing website that eBay owns. It’s almost impossible to sell on eBay and not accept PayPal; buyers demand it, and the site pretty much thrusts the option down the throats of sellers. While it offers the convenience of accepting immediate payment without having to set up a credit card account, PayPal also takes a hefty chunk of every transaction it processes. Between the two, eBay and PayPal can take more than 20 percent of each sale, which doesn’t leave much when you’re talking items that sell for less than $10.

Security is another issue. At Thanksgiving, I happened to check my email while out of town. I discovered a bunch of PayPal transactions I knew nothing about. Somehow, my account had become compromised. I immediately called my local bank and froze any PayPal transactions, and ultimately the only thing I lost was a lot of time straightening the situation out and reconfiguring my account. I was unable to use the account for a month while PayPal investigated the situation, and lost out on several eBay items I wanted to bid on because the sellers would only accept payments through PayPal.

To do well on eBay, you either need to have really good items that people really want, or sell high volumes of low-cost things. Many sellers have resorted to padding shipping costs to make up for the low sale prices, charging $10 to ship something that costs a couple of dollars postage. EBay says it is cracking down on such practices, but as yet I have seen no evidence of this.

My split with eBay is probably not permanent. I’ll still flirt with it, I suspect, if I come across something I need to turn around for a fast buck or find a listing for a comic or book or CD I really need for my collection. I’ve found another way to sell comics online, through a website devoted to the hobby that allows a seller to list issues for sale until someone comes along and buys them, and only then is a fee charged. I’ll be listing all the comics that didn’t sell on eBay, and then not spend a week worrying about whether I’ll get any bids. Shedding eBay anxiety can only make my life better.

And Then There Were Two

When I moved to the Cape and began working for The Chronicle in 1982, there were nearly a dozen independent community newspapers covering the peninsula from Falmouth to Provincetown. With last Friday's annoucement that the Provincetown Banner has been acquired by Gatehouse Media, there are now exactly two independent papers left on the Cape, The Cape Cod Chronicle and The Falmouth Enterprise.

Just a few years ago, Gatehouse acquired Community Newspapers, publishers of The Cape Codder, Register, Harwich Oracle, Sandwich Broadsider, Bourne Courier and other Cape weeklies, as well as more than 100 papers throughout the state. Speculation is that Chicago-based Gatehouse may be eying the Cape Cod Times, Barnstable Patriot and Nantucket Inquirer, now that Rupert Murdoch has made it clear he plans to cut those and other properties loose from Dow Jones now that he has his paws on the Wall Street Journal.

Last week's Banner announcement came as something of a surprise, especially since Gatehouse last month said it will cut 60 jobs and not fill vacant positions at its papers, including the Cape properties.

This increasing corporatization of community news creates a blandness that is evident to anyone who picks up a Gatehouse paper. Sure, they look good; the printing's crisp and the layout is clean, though often uninspired. Content may come from any of the region's papers and is often not specific to the town paper it appears in. I can see the advantage of this. Short on local copy this week? Just pull something from the vast miasma of articles produced each week by the chain's other papers.

What these papers lack, however, is perspective. Staff turnover is high. I need both hands to count the reporters who have cycled through Chatham for The Cape Codder during the past few years. The focus therefore tends to be on bigger picture stories, since nobody running the papers has any insight into the community nor the connections to understand what is meaningful to the people who reside there.

While The Chronicle does not compete directly with The Banner, we shared a bond as small, feisty papers that more often than not scoop the local daily, thanks to the fact that our staffs live here, have many years of experience reporting on the local scene, and are part of the fabric of the community. I'm sorry to see The Banner go the way of the Cape's other weeklies, though if Gatehouse is smart its corporate editors will leave the paper alone and let it continue to cover Ptown the way it always has. And what about those often-racy ads? Will those pass corporate muster? Hey, as long as the client is paying, there's likely to be no big fuss.

What's happened and continues to happen on the Cape mirrors the fate of small weeklies across most of the country. Those that haven't carved out well-established niches for themselves --- which The Chronicle and The Enterprise have done, both papers having held back the corporate barbarians at the gate for many years --- are ripe for plunder or unfair practices by chain competitors who can afford to almost give away ads until the local independent dies of economic anemia. With fewer editorial voices and sources of news, the readers lose.

It could be argued that this is a fight among dinosaurs, that news is migrating online and print newspapers will be gone in the very near future. Sure, an online presence is necessary, and we're working to overhaul and upgrade The Chronicle's website to be more responsive to the needs of the community, but until readers become accustomed to looking up school lunch menus, real estate ads and other features of local papers online, there will be a place for the local weekly.

Chamber Contretemps

Who's at fault for the dual massacres that have occurred within the Chatham Chamber of Commerce and the Chatham Merchants Association? It's impossible to pin responsibility on any one party; there's enough blame to go around, and most of it lies square on the shoulders of the leadership of both organizations.

Short background: In January, the chamber board, in a split vote, basically demoted the merchants from an association to a committee. This was widely seen as a punitive move to punish the merchants officers for failing to toe the chamber line. Earlier this month, the chamber leadership agreed to reinstate the merchants but with conditions, including the election of new officers. At the same Feb. 20 meeting that the merchants agreed to name new interim officers, members of the chamber, led by former merchants members, handed in a petition seeking the resignation of Chamber President Ray Braz and Vice President John Taylor. At the next chamber board meeting, last Wednesday, Braz, Taylor, Executive Director Danielle Jeanloz and three other board members resigned.

Merchants officers had for a long time angered Braz and Taylor by ignoring some chamber bylaws, which as a subgroup of the chamber, the merchants association was obligated to adhere to. It all appears to have begun with the merchants push for the Chatham Gift Card, which the chamber first sought to assume control of and later required that the merchants sign an agreement exempting the chamber from any liability due to the program. The merchants' efforts to deliver prescription drugs to local residents after Stop and Shop closed the town's last pharmacy also left the chamber open to liability, chamber officials said in a letter explaining their actions in dissolving the merchants association.

Clearly, there was more than just technicalities like bylaw infractions and liability concerns. Braz and merchants president Gus Johnson reportedly screamed at each other on a regular basis. Several members of both boards said being in the room with both men was often excruciatingly uncomfortable. Johnson, and at least one or two other merchants board members, had also not paid their chamber due by January, yet continued to hold their positions. Sure, that's a technicality, since they could have paid any time, but if I don't pay my car insurance, I'm legally not supposed to drive. Insisting on participating while not being a member in good standing was like sticking a middle finger into the face of chamber officers and saying, "Dare ya!"

Fire and water personalities and that old rubric, a failure to communicate, are, bottom line, responsible for this mess. A clean sweep of both boards was probably necessary before reunification could be realized. Even so, the bad taste left by the abrupt departure of Braz, Taylor and others, will linger. Those behind the petition will claim victory and may feel their oats a bit, something that risks a backlash.

The entire contretemps has had a negative impact on the reputations of both the chamber and merchants organizations. Largely because of the situation, the board of selectmen balked at the chamber's proposal to take on more of an economic development role in the town, with attendant town funding. While the professionalism of the chamber under Jeanloz and Braz was criticized by many merchants, it helped the organization be more effective, via a better web presence, more targeted events, and just a more business-like way of doing things. With the right replacements, that can continue. It will be up to the remaining chamber board members to handle that, as well as continue mending things with the merchants. Neither, alone, is an easy task. Together, they will be a challenge, to say the least.