There is quite a bit of discussion that takes place complaining about eBays fees, shill bidding, proxy bidding, and disagreements with certain eBay policies.

It is my personal belief that these problems can not be corrected without an alternative auction house option. Complaining to eBay will do nothing and the rates are going to rise regardless. eBay has to do everything it can to satisfy it's stock holders so you end up with the current environment that you have now.

There are a number of different options available for eBay sellers to choose from depending on what they are selling. Etsy caters to hand made arts and crafts and antiques for the most part. No room for coin collecting there it would seem.

Some have abandoned ebay only to jump from the pot to the kettle. I have seen some of the fee schedules that nameless auction houses charge and it is not cheap. This alone has kept me from venturing into the registration process at any of those auction houses.

I did find an alternative to eBay as well as the common auction houses that I felt was a good set up.

1st - There are no charges for a store front like the one that you currently might be paying eBay monthly for.

2nd - There are no listing fees withing the given parameters. They afford you 4 pictures for free and if you need to upload more to better describe your item then additional pictures are .05 cents. Sound fair to me.

3rd - You only pay a final value fee based upon what level of service you selected. There are five service levels and the first two are free. Gold, and Gold Plus. They allow you to sell up to 2000 or 2500 items monthly with no charges.

If you happen to be of the power seller type then maybe ebay is for you but Atomic Mall also offers plans for those type sellers as well and the max plan allows selling 20,000 items monthly and a monthly fee of $19.00. The final value fee schedules are listed in their FAQ located here: http://www.atomicmall.com/faq.php , It would be beneficial for some to actually shop around and see what else is available and at what price.

4th - You still have Buyer Protection through the use of PayPal for transactions. That being one of the major selling points of eBay however by using PayPal (yes I understand eBay owns PayPal) as a buyer you are protected.

5th - Even at the lowest free Gold level the fees are very reasonable. The higher in the plan tier the lower the final value fees become.

6th - There are automated functions that allow you to transfer your entire inventory from eBay as well as your Feedback. This is a real nice feature for those that have built a solid reputation on eBay as an honest, non-misrepresenting seller who takes care of their customers.

7th - You can list an item indefinitely and never pay a dime unless and if it sells. You can set a regular price and set the discount price that is reflected in the listing as the actual savings.

8th - Now this one is the best part of it once a person understand the process and reasons behind it. The items put up for bid are not set by a time limit. They are set by the number of bids that has to be received. It is also a closed bidding type auction format. If you list an item for auction and set it for 5 bids then once 5 people have bid on that item the auction ends, and if the reserve has been met, if you even place one on there, then the highest bidder is then revealed and they have won the auction. Even the seller does not know what amount the bids are until after the auction.

There are a number of reasons why this is a much better system but right off the bat the main advantage is that it eliminates shill bidding (friends and relatives or alternate screen names falsely upping the bid right up to the point of the outside bidders top bid through back door communication), Snipers are no longer a problem. Since there is no clock ticking down they just have to bid under the same parameters as any other bidder is required to bid under. In a nut shell; it levels the playing field.

Try as you might I challenge you to come up with a reason why this type of bidding is not better than that which is currently happening over at eBay.

I think I have outlined enough positive points about this AtomicMall site and it's systems and procedures that one that is truly tired of eBay acting like Ma Bell before the break up and essentially a monopoly will go to this web site and investigate, for your self, what this alternate method has to offer. It is time to be a leader and not continue as the good sheep eBay wants you to be.

www.atomicmall.com