"The problem is Paul that vendors charge their fees into the final cost"

What retailer doesn't calculate all their costs into the prices they charge. I know from my personal experience, the final value fees I get charged pale in comparison to cost I would incur if I had a brick and mortar shop. It enables me to charge extremely low prices for hundreds of items in my eBay Store.

"less hassle and more prudent to now buy directly from companies rather than the hassle of Ebay and their rules and regs."

I just purchased a couple of pairs of shoe trees from Woodlore because they were having a BOGO sale but otherwise, on any given day, I can pick up Woodlore shoe trees new from sellers on eBay for less that it would cost buying them directly from Woodlore. Yes, there are times when it is easier to buy directly from the manufacturer. When it is, I do. However, I would never suggest that it is the only way to buy something.

And, like I said in my earlier post, I don't understand what rules and regulations eBay hassles it buyers with? I know I require my buyers to pay through PayPal. It helps me from a bookkeeping standpoint to have all of my payments coming through one source. For the buyer, even if he doesn't have an account with PayPal he can still use his credit card through PayPal as a guest. So, no one is really turned away unless they refuse to provide payment information to PayPal.

The other requirements I have of buyers are as follows:

They cannot have more than 2 non paying bidder strikes against them in 360 days and they cannot be in countries I don't ship. The non paying bidder restriction that I impose on buyers is because too many buyers will either win an auction or click Buy It Now and not pay. This ties up my merchandise for a couple of weeks while I go through the steps contacting the buyer, engaging eBay in the problem and ultimately receiving a final value credit with a free relisting of the item. This is yet another expense that has to be factored into my cost of doing business.

Finally, Kernow is right, eBay was started in the fall of '95. It was not even called eBay back in those days. PayPal (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and the rest of what became known as the PayPal mafia) was created in 1998 under a different name and really didn't gain traction until 2000-2001. I joined eBay in 1999 and PayPal in 2001. Do they drive me crazy, of course (no more so than some of the buyers I have to deal with). Could I do the amount of national and international sales without them, pretty unlikely. Am I, begrudgingly, thankful for them as a buyer and a seller, yes.