As the story goes, Pierre Omidyar was just trying to figure out a way for his wife or girlfriend to buy or sell Pez dispensers. That's nice, but even eBay admits it's not true.

That little white lie may have been just the beginning of a string of deceptions, half-truths, outright fabrications, and commitment to collecting outrageously endless fees and fees on things that sellers would pay just to have eyeballs on their merchandise.

Back in the early days of online buying and selling, in 1997, after Omidyar renamed Autionweb to eBay, began hiring people and Beanie Babies were selling like hot diamonds on the site, the online marketplace was a place where buyers and sellers could congregate on chat boards, see their prized possessions sell for incredible prices and fees were almost too low to be true. It was truly Nirvana for people who worked flea markets, garage sales, and household auctions.

By 1998, eBay's fee structure was something on the order of 25 cents per item and 2.5% of the final selling price. That was also a time in which a USPS Priority Mail flat rate mailer was $3.20, and a burger and fries at McDonald's was still less than two bucks. As the calendar was about to turn over to a new millennium, so did eBay's fortunes, through the ups and downs of the dotcom boom and bust and into the arms of Wall Street and its focus on endless profits. That happened in February, 1998, when Meg Whitman became President and CEO of the company, which went public with its IPO in September, instantly making Omidyar one of the richest people on the planet.

Through the 2000s and 2010s and into the current decade, as eBay grew, so too did its lust for money and fees and ways to wheedle every last nickel and dime from sellers, to a point at which today, the place that used to be known for great deals on hard to find items in a fun experience became an increasingly difficult and painful experience for vendors.

The first instances of eBay's greed came early on, maybe around 2002 or 2003, when they disallowed outside links, casting something of a shadow over what used to be an "open" marketplace. The company also introduced a variety of measures designed to keep their "customers," the sellers of merchandise in line with the corporate greed machine. Communications with potential buyers were limited. In a restraint-of-trade manner, eBay ruled that sellers could not offer the same goods on their own websites for less than what they were selling for on eBay.

Feedback, the golden grail of customer service and good relations, was turned on its head. Sellers were disallowed from giving buyers negative feedback, even though the place was being overrun with scammers, phishers, and all manner of illegal, often stolen, goods. eBay's attitude toward sellers became harsh. Toward their beloved buyers, they were benign. Things just continued to get worse in terms of selling anything, despite all of eBay's bells and whistles, but buyers kept buying, sellers kept selling, making eBay a vastly profitable global enterprise.

Part of the reason eBay succeeded in spite of itself was its first-mover condition. They were the first and they were the biggest. Amazon and Yahoo! each tried to compete in the auction space, but eventually gave up. As a de facto monopoly, eBay was free to do as it pleased, and they pleased themselves and their shareholders the most.

While the company was practically printing money, they made numerous investments and acquisitions, one of which was PayPal, which was integrated into the platform in 2002, and spun off in 2013. PayPal, another Silicon Valley company, facilitated secure, speedy payments and added yet another layer of fees and a profit center for eBay.

In many ways, PayPal was a product of eBay's failure and inability to establish its own payment platform, Billpoint. Engineers at eBay simply could not keep pace with PayPal's innovations and technical know-how, so they did what every second-rate company does, they bought them, as they did most other competing platforms, protecting their monopoly.

Today, the level of corporate grab is excessive. PayPal is ancient history. eBay now requires sellers to connect to individual or corporate bank accounts and give eBay access. eBay holds funds until items are delivered, adding another layer of expense and uncertainty for sellers, especially smaller ones.

Fees have exploded. What started out at 2.5% quickly became 5%, then 10%, to what now is a standard 14-15% on the selling price, plus shipping and tax. Yes, eBay collects tax, even though many small sellers aren't required to do so by various state laws, and, they charge a fee on that as well.

Long story short, eBay has made life so difficult and expensive for the people who really built the site - the hobbyists, stay-at-home moms, garage sale hunters and the like - that many small sellers have moved on to other things, maybe more profitable lines of work, but eBay, in all its corporate glory, has survived.

Just an example of how bad the fee structure has become on eBay is this:

Say you sell an item for $20, and charge $10.10 to ship it, via USPS (which, BTW, hasn't helped matters much, with the cost of a flat rate Priority Mail now $10.10, triple what is was 20 years ago), eBay will calculate out your fees, which look something like this:

Selling price: $20.00
Shipping: $10.10
Tax (8%): $2.41
Total: $32.51
Per order fee: $0.30
Final Value Fee (15%): $4.86
Total fees: $5.16

So, instead of paying $3.00, which is 15% of the selling price, eBay manages to grab another $2.16 in fees by charging the seller 15% on shipping and tax, which are costs over which the seller has no control, in addition to the order fee and probably a hidden transaction fee, for eBay holding your money a few days before letting you have it.

It may not sound like much, but to a business or individual trying to keep costs under control, eBay takes full advantage. It's not unusual for sellers to complain that eBay makes more from them than their final profit.

So, if that $20 item cost you $5.00, say, your profit would be $15.00. At a standard 15% on the selling price, $3 leaves you with a profit of $12 and a profit margin (of sold price) of 60%. With eBay's fees, your profit is reduced to $9.84, or a profit margin of 49.2%.

And that's without any promotional fees or international selling fees that cut into your profit even deeper. eBay also charges an additional 4% on sellers whose performance is not above standard, so, when a scammer leaves you a negative feedback or opens a case against you on eBay, it's going to cost you money on every transaction after that.

Bear in mind, Amazon and laces like PoshMark and Etsy are just as bad, if not worse.

The bottom line is that corporations like eBay and others are there to enrich themselves, usually at the seller's expense. Their high fees drive the cost of everything up. They are inherently inflationary and add to people's misery, so that's how a company that began as a boon to small business has become a monstrosity of a money grab from the middle and lower classes.

Publisher's note: Having started selling on eBay in 1999, I've literally sold thousands of items there, with a very level of customer satisfaction, usually above 99%. A few bad apples, unscrupulous buyers, is all it takes to run a reputation, but I avoided that trap. However, as eBay's rules became more restrictive and fees spiraled higher, my sales dwindled over time. What used to be a profitable business for me was reduced to a few items a month, to the past five years, a few items a year, and now, nothing.

It got to the point at which whenever I listed an item on eBay, I felt like I needed to take a shower, so I stopped all together. I tried self-hosting an e-commerce site, but all the software out there is either too buggy or too expensive.

With that, Downtown Magazine Inc. is pleased to announce that the official Mostly Magazines online store of idleguy.com and dtmagazine.com is now located at dtmagazine.ecrater.com, where there are no fees, so I can offer better prices and better deals for my customers.

Regards, Fearless Rick