Today’s Blythe is a new custom I did for Plastic Fashions . She an extremely talented clothes designer that does both human size and Blythe size clothes. She was looking for a side part raven haired rbl girl so I turned her Saffy into one. As expected, a Raven haired doll is usually guaranteed to be quite stunning.
Well, it’s week 2 of the boycott against eBay. I’m pessimistic that they’ll change their ways because it’s obvious they want to push the smaller sellers out the door and align themselves with big companies like Sears and GM. You can read about all the dirty tactics they’ve been pulling here. They’re actually trying to make it hard for buyers to leave 5 star feedback ratings and testing out new page views that say in big red letters “This seller has low ratings for shipping time.” The seller doesn’t even know this is what their page looks like and this particular example showed that the Seller had 4 out of 5 stars for shipping time. 4 is said to be good when the buyer is selecting it and yet eBay is turning around saying it’s a low rating. Ridiculous isn’t it? Almost hard to believe but click here to see what I mean. And what’s worse is they’re advertising other sellers similar items to direct the buyer away from the auction. They’re advertising on that seller’s dime. So, as a sometime seller on eBay, I have to ask myself why on earth would I subject myself to that kind of treatment and actually pay for it? Well, I won’t. End of story. Their mission is accomplished. I’m not going to waste my money on them. And I’m not going to buy from them either. EBay will most likely completely change from being an auction site where you can find rare collectibles and hard to find items to just another online shopping mall where you see the same things you’d see in any shopping mall.
So what’s a doll collector to do? Check out the other auction sites. Sign up with a deputy service like Crescent so you can bid on Yahoo Japan. Check out doll forums like thisisblythe.com. A lot of people sell their dolls through there and the official This is Blythe shop has lots of great stuff and good deals on newly released Blythes right in the U.S. Check out the many handmade items on Etsy. I’ll start adding links to great sites for doll purchases and sundries. There’s online stores like Hobby Link Japan which has some great prices on Blythes and Momokos but they sell out fast so keep up to date with their pre-order sales.
To be honest, I haven’t been using eBay as much to buy dolls and accessories. I had a few small purchases here and there but I found better deals elsewhere and I think prices will only rise due to the changes.
The first week of the boycott showed a 13% drop in listings. Not too shabby. They attempted to get my business by offering me $5.00 off shipping on my next five purchases. I’ve never gotten a coupon from eBay so I did find that very telling. But I’m closing the book on eBay. Time will tell what effect this boycott will have and hopefully the doors will be flooded open with their competition so the consumers have more choices on where to shop and sell.
