Where have all the sellers gone? (little people like me)

v0n

Shifting priority towards buyers means many of them developed very strange abuse patterns, I still sell 4-5 items monthly minimum, but find it more and more tedious. Buyers are under impression we are all Argos shops, with obligatory 28 day return policy and shipping agents all sprung to run outside our doors. It's all good when you powersell, but when buyer tries to return 1980ies Fender guitar after 2 weeks insisting "I don't have to provide any reason for return, you must refund my money" you get the feeling most of them forgot this is auction flea market, not customer services till in Asda.
And the rest just follows - 3 days between sale and delivery is now considered "slow", regular royal mail prices are marked in DSR as excessive postage, 8% of final value is now taken by ebay and paypal. Suddenly getting rid of your old junk at few quid a pop is no longer that appealing.

You know they screw it up badly when you have less people listing stuff in the middle of credit crunch and pre-recession. eBay should be overflowing with stuff right now. Instead it's just getting smaller and smaller.

What gets my goat is the fact competition has not waken up yet. One smart move from google or one of the big boys and you know we would all run to them with arms open. So where the hell are they?

soolin

What gets my goat is the fact competition has not waken up yet. One smart move from google or one of the big boys and you know we would all run to them with arms open. So where the hell are they?

There used to be a number of other players in the UK auction field and for a while in the late 1990s ebay UK were small fry. However the others all gave up as people migrated to ebay. I started selling on Freeserve and Friday auctions which both disappeared around 1997 or thereabouts, Yahoo and QXL have gone more recently.

Mayday

unrich wrote: »

And where do I go now to find the tat I used to get off ebay?

As usual, not a mention of eBid.co.uk with over a million listings - both on the UK & on US site - and sales are increasing all round for everyone.

You could also look at SpecialistAuctions.com, TazBar, Zolanta, even CQout.

eBid and TazBar also offer a bulk lister than can accept .csv files of Turbolister files which I use frequently to upload my listings.

eBay isn't the be all and end all, and all the other sites are picking up increasing trade because of the ongoing fall out.

AND, a big bonus, all the other sites offer Google Checkout as part of the integrated invoicing system.

To qualify - eBay gave me a good living for 6 years and wiped it out overnight with the changes last year beginning with not showing UK listings on .com site - and things have got steadily worse since then that I stopped listing at beginning of this year. Now I don't even bother to look on there when in a buying mood - I shop on eBid or one of the others instead - much less hassle and usually cheaper than eBay would've been

HTH

v0n

Mayday wrote: »

As usual, not a mention of eBid.co.uk with over a million listings - both on the UK & on US site - and sales are increasing all round for everyone.

It's because of their slightly insane pricing policies. £1.99 on top of 3% for a week of access to a basic features like thumbnails in listings, reserve price or "Buy it now" for a casual loft junk seller is just :eek:

And then there is the search engine that makes ebay's new search look like second comming of google:

"1015 Auctions Found For fender strat* "
and maching hits including gems like "500Piece Jigsaw - Stratford on Avon" or "Strata cat litter"

It is going to get popular ooooooffff the hook, yo.

Rage_in_Eden

I'm still selling one-bay - buit I have noticed that you don't get the bidding wars you used to (although I did get one over an avon eyeliner and a bbc food magazine - how strange was that? ). I did have one person asking where their stuff was 2 days after buying it - I explained that I've had a nasty stomach bug and got OH to go out in his lunchhour to post it and yet they still put "delayed delivery" in their feedback. Mind you, as everyone else says I post things quickly I'm sure people will not think a great deal of that. One person I have to send something to tomorrow which is 7 days late due to stomach bug - they've been fine about it! I also have stopped using buy it now - there's no point as nobody ever did!

imagia

I had a look for a newly released album the other day on e**y. The artist is very niche and usually after a release it's been fairly easy to pick it up from at least 5 sellers at a time, used and new.

This time around, the only one I can find is a promo!

I get the feeling that a lot of small sellers haven't moved to another site, they've just given up completely!