Friday, April 11, 2008

How do we hate thee, eBay? Let me count the ways.

Ok, we haven't been blogging in a while, but we have a reason.

In case you've been keeping track--and judging by our site stats, you haven't-- we sell digitally deliverable goods on eBay. All our stuff is written by gamers and freelance writers we hire so we know we are producing a quality product. Unlike a lot of the garbage out there, we put time and effort (and even money) into our guides. It's a pride thing. We sell them through our website and through eBay, the website run by fine purveyors of all kinds of douchebaggery...

Sorry.

We're a little upset. Back to the post...

Now, eBay has decided that ebooks can no longer be sold on eBay. They can only be listed as 'classified ads'. This basically means they can't be listed.

We have no idea why ass-clown extroardinaire Brian Burke (director of eBay Global Feedback Policy) decided to take this ridiculously assanine action. According to his statement, it's because 'digital goods are re-produced at little to no cost to the seller.' We truly have no idea how to respond to that. Is he saying that goods need to have high-reproduction costs to sell on eBay? What constitutes 'little to no cost to the seller'? Not even counting listing fees, final value fees and no-questions asked returns, our product development process involves writers, editors, gamers, web designers and lots of time spent creating these projects (not to mention time spent playing the game, researching the game and doing everything needed to make a reader-friendly product), which means the cost to produce these items is nowhere close to 'little to no-cost'.

Yes, we ship digital goods. But because of that we don't have to charge our customers for our shipping, printing or manufacturing costs. All our costs are front end, not reproduction related. But apparently, someone at eBay is a business model nazi. Or nazi-commie. Or perhaps nazi-commie-monarch-luddite. Yeah. Probably that last one. (Note: we cannot confirm or deny that anyone at eBay has ever had any relationship with any nazi, nazi-commie, nazi-commie-monarch-luddite organization. Yet.)

Well, we're done with eBay. Look for our products through our website exclusively.

And if you ever see someone who works for eBay, kick them in the teeth once or twice for us.

'Till next tie, true believers!

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