Why Auctiva Isn’t Worth Your Time OR Your Money
Note: If you are currently an Auctiva member, please read this very carefully so you won’t be charged.
If you’re frequently on Ebay, then chances are that you would’ve seen the occasional Auctiva logo among some listings. Basically, Auctiva is a site that helps you sell your things on Ebay. You can do everything from posting large pictures in your listing, offer dozens of templates, offer counters, and a lot more to your Ebay listings! To get all these things from Ebay, you must pay their ridiculous fees. With Auctiva, everything was free.
Until now.
Actually, July to be exact. Auctiva, the largest Ebay developer site around, mostly popular for offering free services, will begin to charge it’s customers starting in July. They’re prices and other changes will appear starting the first week of June (talk about short notice – today is the 29th!).
To be honest, Auctiva was hard getting used to, a complicated web site, terrible customer service, but it was free and did have a few perks. So a monthly fee isn’t unreasonable at all. The thing is, they’re adding fees to transactions too, which I can’t really begin to understand since they don’t take any part in transactions?
To make matters worse, current Auctiva account members must move and delete all of their listings by July or else they’ll be charged. Imagine all the sellers that sell hundreds or thousands of items a month – trying to copy and move all their info in time! It doesn’t even matter if you used to use Auctiva months or years ago, you’ll still be charged for every 1 mb (which is like 6 pictures) you use!
If you currently have any listings that are scheduled in June, I strongly recommend against it. Lets say that your listings end in mid-June. The majority of buyers don’t always pay for the items they bought right away, some even take weeks so its not as if you can delete a listing that has ended but hasn’t even been paid for.
Let’s face it. People are PISSED. Head over to the Auctiva forums to see for your self. There are dozens of post and polls already stating that they’re leaving Auctiva for good. Not only that, tons of Ebay forums are discussing the outrageous Auctiva demands.
Why Auctiva REALLY Isn’t Worth Your Time:
- Plenty of Auctiva clients aren’t aware of the new pricing plan. How? Auctiva didn’t bother telling them. Many are finding out through Ebay forums! Thanks for caring about your clients?
- Plenty of other sites like Auctiva that are a whole lot cheaper, if not free alternatives.
- People are leaving for a reason. Many to InkFrog.com. This many people wouldn’t leave if Auctiva was really cheap and worth it.
- If a company really cared about their customers, they wouldn’t spring a sudden HUGE price plan and give you only a month to clear out all of your listings. Nearly everyone in the forums mentioned that a modest monthly fee is no problem at all. Its just not reasonable to charge so much for pictures, listings, store fees, template fees, in addition to transactions! One listing is easily $4. Only giving a month for all of their customers to remove their images, find a new place to host them, and figure out a way to use a different listing service, or deal with eBay’s clunky SYI form is ridiculous.
- Lets say you put 10 pictures per listing and around 10 listings per month (very conservative example, most people have around 30 listings a month if not more) then the pictures ALONE will cost you $15! For 200, it would be $24.95 a month..
- Is there really a way to justify charging customers transaction fees, image hosting fees (for every 1 mb!!!), listing fees, store fees, averaging at about $36 a month for casual sellers while up to $200+ for PowerSellers?
- Misleading their customers – they’re claiming that a good amount of their clients will pay fees less than $10 when that is not the case at all. Nearly everyone on Auctiva uses the templates, which are now going to be $4.95. Also, they can’t predict how much your fees will be because not everyone sells items for the same cost all the time. I usually sell clothes but I’ve sold an expensive purse and Tiffany & Co. jewelry before so obviously it varies. There is also the cost of images. Some items require more images than others for detailing and etc.
- Thousands of Auctiva customers received a VIRUS from using their toolbar!
- Cost of templates alone is $4.95! (+ transaction fees + image fees + listing fees + $4.95 store fees = us broke)
- CEO Jeff – Not that mature of a guy. He recently slammed their new competitor, InkFrog.com, saying something along the lines of, “they’re just a bunch of guys working from a garage”. Since when is working from a home a negative thing? Ever heard of Apple? They’re revenue in July of 2008 was over $7.6 billion. CEO Jeff is also pretty rude. He comments on the Auctiva forums quite often and in several cases, downright unprofessional. He spends his time complaining about the waves of unhappy customers speaking their mond on the discussion boards. Did he expect us all to jump for joy and throw confetti in the air?
- Auctiva claims they’re far superior than their competitors for reasons such as offering 24/7 live support, watermarking images, etc. Well I’ve dealt with their support on a number of occasions only to receive a response days later. Watermarking can be done easily with free programs, no big deal.
- Lots of people are actually giving up Ebay altogether. With their insane 8%-15% fees, the last straw was Auctiva implementing THEIR fees. Hello Ecrater?
Why stick with a site that is just satisfactory that charges you transaction fees, listing fees, template fees, store fees, and IMAGE fees PER 1mb! There are so many cheaper, if not free alternatives.
Here is a list of sites I composed that are decent Auctiva alternatives:
- Evendor / Free / Everything Auctiva is – but FREE. The site even looks like its more user friendly than Auctiva, major plus.
- AuctionSplash / Free / Loads of options, very similar to Auctiva. Only difference is that you have to download it to your computer since its not an online program
- Supreme Auctions / $? / You can either download or use their online service, over 400 template designs, free auction pictures, scheduled listings, and a lot more. I can’t find a price anywhere on the site so if this program is free, it seems like the best choice if not Evendor. * Make sure your popup blocker is turned off.
- Ebay Turbo Lister / Free / CEO Jeff keeps mentioning how Ebay is going to change in the next few months. Whether or not this is a good thing or not, Ebay Turbo Lister is pretty decent. It’s also FREE, which is the best part. You do have to use a image hosting site, which is really easy. I recommend..
- Photobucket / Free / Great site, free, unlimited, REALLY use to use, fast, list goes on and on. They’ve recently remodeled their site so its asthetic as well. =)
- InkFrog.com / $9.99 a month / Pretty much everything Auctiva has to offer, 1 GB image hosting (12000 images), lots more for a FLAT rate of $9.99 a month – no hidden fees!
- SellerSourceBook /$8 a month, if not less / Simple and straight forward, great templates, image hosting, etc for $8 a month – Even cheaper if you decide on a quarterly or annual subscription.
- Vendio / $ Varies / Vendio is Auctiva’s biggest competitor for good reason. They also actually CARE. They’re offering a special deal for former Auctiva members. Stay tuned for more info.
- WebSolutions / Free / Free Ebay Templates, site looks overall promising.
I’m currently testing all of these options and will review them soon so keep checking my site for updates!
