From a seller's perspective it has only gotten worse over the years too. And I don't even sell much.
Yep, there are 50 free listings per month now, but after that you'd need to pay to list more (35 cents?) or wait until a new month to get your 50 listings refilled. Or get a promo offer from them.
Someone has mentioned the eBay fees on final price and shipping, which is around 10%. There are also PayPal fees added as well, which could be from 2-4%.
Shipping costs increase with Canada Post almost every year. It is at least $18 for me to ship anything in a box in Canada (outside of my province which would only be around $12). If you don't do flat rate shipping, then you need to spend time calculating the final boxed dimensions and weight. And then you'll lose 10% on the shipping fee percentage.
So if you do go with flat rate shipping, as a seller I would lose $4 for example, to ship anything to Ontario (because as a CP small business seller you pay the GST/HST for the province you ship to!) if you don't set the flat shipping properly. I don't overcharge on shipping so if the buyer isn't in Ontario I need to go to PayPal and refund a small portion of the shipping cost.
The seller program recognizes 100 sales (per last 12 months) by bumping your final value fees down 20% (so 8% instead of 10%). I have chased that number for months and still haven't gotten close.
As for auction versus BIN, there is no comparison. Unless you have a unique item with dozens of watchers the auction will never end at a price you want (and now you need to pay for a reserve price to protect your $100 item for selling for $1). With BIN if you don't accept offers, your item will sit. If your BIN does have offers, you never get the BIN price (always undercut by 20-25% on first offer).
All this and I haven't even gotten to the users/buyers.
I've had scammers reverse charges. If you didn't get a tracking number, you're toast and your money is gone. I had a buyer start a return on a new and sealed item (because they claimed there was internal damage) and eBay forced me to accept it even with "No Returns" set on my listings. Buyers will use different accounts to send different lowball offers. Buyers will buy an item and then ask to cancel it (cancels affect the seller rating). To eBay now, buyers are untouchable.
