Haven't Sold on ebay for a while..Well I nearly choked!

Brooker_Dave

cyberbob wrote: »

There seems to be this huge Paranoia about scammers etc. With most people I know we all have difficult buyers at points. The most important points is to make your listing/description as accurate as possible and know both Paypal/ebay procedures rules. If your listing sounds like you don't know what your doing you will attract them.

What you also need to remember is on these boards and on the ebay community boards there are some vocal people who have had problems on ebay. You need to think how many people actually buy and sell there and realise that very few actually have much problem and there is a huge number who happily and successfully trade with no problems

Also remember is on these boards and on the ebay community boards there are some vocal people who actually work for ebay, and thus try to excuse it's greed and suspect business practices.

Ever ramping up the fees, and making life easy for the scammers (sellers can't warn each other with negs etc) has sent sellers away in droves, meaning that ebay has to get more money from fewer users.

Thus buyers have to pay more as the sellers that are left have to charge more.

Brooker_Dave

soolin wrote: »

OK so realistically then where do we sell all our stuff?

Where people sold things before ebay came along.

Plus all the extra (many free) online sales channels that now exist.

soolin

eMa wrote: »

You could try selling your item on amazon under the used section - I think its called the amazon market place.

Something to remember for next time.

:santa2:

There is a long Amazon thread as many of us are sellers on there. However you can really only sell the items that are in the Amazon database so ti is no good at all for all the stuff many of us source and sell as a business.

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

Where people sold things before ebay came along.

Plus all the extra (many free) online sales channels that now exist.

Well that's me out then as the only place I ever used before ebay was Freeserve and a strange little site and they have both gone now. Before the days of selling stuff I just used to go out to do a full time job and take all my unwanted items to the charity shop. :rotfl:

Smart_But_Casual

cyberbob wrote: »

These rumours hit everytime ebay make a change. There's plenty of people around to take those leaving place. A lot of those who leave come back as they realise getting the exposure that ebay gives for there own site is more expensive

What makes me laugh is on the business ebay boards you have powersellers stating that the new rules are against them and make it easier for private sellers and on other boards you have private sellers stating the opposite! The majority of business and private sellers just work with the new rules and get on with it.

Different this time as the impact of change from PS to TS is massive for the majority high/medium sellers who stand to dip out of the many thousands.

I know 2 gold PS personally who who have spent the last two months tweaking their sites ahead of the ebay discounts ending in Jan' and even I've taken the plunge and built my own site ahead of Jan' and I have TS now!

david_burton

I have to agree with the opinion that the fees are too expensive nowadays. They don't seem to have gone up in small increments - they seem to have suddenly shot up an extortionate amount. Obviously this was back in the early part of this year.

The issue is I don't see a genuine reason for the prices to increase. They used to be just a few percent, and eBay keeps growing so what happened to economy of scale?

I won't be using eBay as a first port of call from now on, I'll try to sell privately. It's frustrating that there's no real competitor to eBay to keep the fees down for sellers.

I've also seen massive increases in selling on Amazon marketplace too. That's another load of books in the bin then, or given to charity. Sigh.

StaffsSW

The changes in ebay fees symbolise the phrase "you get what you pay for". Lots of people applauded the free insertion fees, but were they really that blinkered that they thought there was no catch? It's a simple business strategy of luring customers in with cheap deals/loss leaders on the assumption/knowledge that they will go on to spend more in the long term, just like all the BOGOF's in supermarkets - would Tesco ever have got the size it was if it permanently gave away half its stock for free? Do people really expect everything to be handed to them on a plate at no cost or effort to themselves?

One of the comments above along the lines of "How can I offer free P&P when I list at 99p to avoid insertion fees", is a great example of why the fees and site changes are the way that they are. Ebay is a business, a huge one at that, and not a charity. Everything they do is ultimately for their own gain. Of course it is geared towards buyers, it makes sense for ebay to make things attractive for buyers to spend more money with sellers, and in turn ebay make more revenue.

Ebay has relatively few employees, but accusing of sellers of "working for ebay" is naive at best. I don't work for ebay, but I make damn sure that ebay works for me. It's not a case of being pro or anti-ebay, it's a case of knowing how it works, and making the most of it for my own advantage.

Ebay is not for everyone, and this whole thread highlights exactly why.

cyberbob

Smart_But_Casual wrote: »

I know 2 gold PS personally who who have spent the last two months tweaking their sites ahead of the ebay discounts ending in Jan' and even I've taken the plunge and built my own site ahead of Jan' and I have TS now!

Thats 2 out of how many? Whether there own sites make the same income will be seen in time, but it takes along time to build up and get the sort of exposure ebay can give you

mavvysmum

grannytwice wrote: »

do you think ebay is still worth using for the small seller just for making a little pocket money i wondered about selling some kids clothes which wouldn't reach high prices but with postage prices and fees would it be worth it do you think there would still be buyers for these items,or is ebay only encouraging sellers of higher cost items now.

Kids clothes are probably worth selling as they tend to go quite well plus you can still charge postage and packaging for clothes!

Millionaire

I was just flicking through my invoices and I sold a phone in Oct last year. The Final Value fee was £9.27 on £375

On a recent one, £35 on £350 (£37.5 on £375), That's one hell of a mark up in a year on just 1 item. A 304.5% increase in fees.