Today we received confirmation from eBay that we won’t receive commission payments for successful bids and orders placed through our free app GarageBuy (macOS version, iOS version) anymore.

Since these commission payments paid for GarageBuy’s maintenance and improvement since 2006, we have to decide whether or not its worthwhile to continue offering GarageBuy at all — or if we can come up with a sustainable alternative business model to keep it alive.

Unfortunately, eBay’s communication on this issue was all but crystal clear, making us believe we’d simply need to change GarageBuy to use a new eBay API to keep receiving commissions. Only after several inquiries from our side, we were able to receive confirmation that we won’t receive any compensation at all by mid-September (that’s next week).

We know that there a a lot of collectors that spend a lot of time in GarageBuy searching and bidding on eBay listing, in turn generating a revenue for eBay itself. It seems eBay decided it is better off without that business…

If you have any idea about GarageBuys future you’d like to share with us, please let us know here.

We completely redesigned GarageBuy 4 for iOS, our free app for searching and bidding on eBay, to make finding the items you are looking for even more pleasant.

GarageBuy Touch is optimized for iPhone and iPad, and will synchronize your saved searches with GarageBuy for Mac.

Download GarageBuy now for free from the AppStore and head over to the GarageBuy page.

If you were using GarageBuy on OS X Yosemite, you probably noticed that the pop-over windows for displaying search options and suggestions looked at little odd.
Version 3.2 of GarageBuy fixes this problem. Unfortunately we had to raise the minimum system requirement to OS X 10.9 in the process. Therefore GarageBuy 3.1 will remain available from the downloads page for user running OS X 10.7 and 10.8.

Our all-new GarageBuy 3 for OS X is finally available from the Mac App Store, making it as efficient as never before to search eBay and bid on your favorite goods on eBay.

No matter if your are using GarageBuy on your Mac, your iPad, or your iPhone – you will always work with the same set of saved searches and viewed listings.
You can now start reviewing your favorite eBay searches at home on your Mac, and pick up right where you left off with your iPad on your commute to work or school. Never look at the same listing again, wondering if you have seen it before!

Here is a short video tutorial introducing you to GarageBuy 3:

Major changes for the GarageBuy 3 release:

• Uses iCloud to synchronize saved searches and viewed items with GarageBuy for iOS.
• Redesigned interface
• High-resolution graphics on Macs with Retina display
• Marks eBay listings as read automatically while scrolling
• Outbid notifications on OS X 10.8

GarageBuy is also available as a direct download from our website. Since this version doesn’t have access to iCloud, you have to pair it manually once with the version on your iPod or iPhone.

Happy searching and bidding on eBay,
the iwascoding team

We just posted Beta 3 of GarageBuy 2, our free tool for keeping track of your eBay searches and purchasing items, to our website.

GarageBuy 2 has been re-engineered in almost every area:

• We needed to move GarageBuy to an entirely new eBay API for the second time in its history to prevent it from breaking once eBay shuts down the old API. GarageBuy 2 is now using eBay’s new Finding API.
• Searches in GarageBuy 2 can be modified directly from within the main window. Previously, you had to open a separate window to setup your search’s attributes.
• New back and forward buttons make it easy to switch between two versions of a search.
• You can now specify domains and aspects when setting up searches. This feature was available for some time on the eBay web page. Domains, like ‘shoes’ or ‘digital cameras’, let you search for a certain type of goods without having to specify a certain sub category first. Aspects, like Style, Color, and Shoe Size let pre-select certain item attributes for your searches.
• GarageBuy 2 will run in 64-bit on supported Macs for maximum performance.

If you run into any bugs with this beta, we’d like to hear from you.

And yes, GarageBuy 2 will be available for free.