WTF eBay What The Fuck!

I sell a lot of crap on eBay. I am choosing the word crap very specifically. I have made thousands of dollars on eBay and I have never sold anything I paid for. Back in olden times I used to sell Metro cards as collectibles and every single one of them were ground scores. Before the MTA explained to me that I was in violation of the law I made a few thousand bucks selling Metro cards for a discount. lately I just sell stuff that I find. Mostly in my basement because in my apartment building we have a table where people leave stuff that might have some value to someone else before it gets thrown out. I make a little money and I save things from the garbage dump.

There are basically three types of things that I save from the garbage dump.

• Items that are new in their box. They are easy to sell. I can use stock photos and list them at half the price other people are selling them for. They get sold kind of quick (or I can just return them to the department store where they came from and get a store credit. A few weeks ago I returned some weird thing to Ikea and then sat down and had a lunch and bought some candy to share with my friends).
• Items that might be antiques. That takes a little bit of research. But I've made some real money. Sewing machines... typewriters... Even lots of picture frames. I estimate the weight so the buyer pays the shipping. I also take a lot of pictures. I list the sale as "as is" and " Good for parts and might work". Sometimes I only make a dollar. But that's one more dollar than I had before and I saved something from going into the garbage dump.
• The bulk of what's in my basement are books. And unfortunately there's not much value in them and the big library near my house doesn't even want donations. I did make a friend that accepted a giant pile of them because she can send them to prisons. but there's a real limit on what they'll let you send to a prison ..  Just use your imagination.

But some of the books are easy to sell on eBay. I learned by trial and error it's not new books that sell. I don't think many people are buying new books anymore They are reading them on their devices. But it's the older books that are out of print that have more of a market. I see what other people are selling them for and I usually start my bidding at half of that. A few months ago I found a first edition of a book that was about 40 years old It seemed to be some sort of science book. Man and Time by JB Priestley. I took some pictures to show the book wasn't in perfect shape and started the listing at $5 when other people were selling it for 20. I didn't get any bids so I lowered the starting bid price down to 99 cents. It automatically relisted a few times and eventually it sold for 99 cents. The buyer paid immediately. They paid about $6 because they had to pay for the shipping label at book rate. I even used a padded envelope that I had found in the basement. Someone had left a whole box of them down there and I've been going through them one at a time to sell my crap on eBay.

But a moment after I printed the shipping label I got a pop up on my computer that I had an Internet on my credit card

What the fuck!

Ebay collected 99 cents for me and $4.47 for the shipping label. That's $5.46. but the sum of their fees was $5.61. So they charged me 15 cents to sell this book. 

I'm glad I don't do this for a living.

And now I understand why all the Uber drivers are grumpy and why restaurants that rely on delivery apps are going out of business