The death of eBay...

BFG_2

I post below, a comment I made on another posting ref eBay (which prompted me to start this thread)...

I feel that certain PARTS of ebay are already dying - it's those parts selling everyday items where the margins are small; they are also full of tat and rip-off goods so as it becomes more of a pain looking for something, less people will bother.

I believe that the areas of 'specialist interests/not everyday purchases' will continue and grow as it does genuinely bring buyers and sellers together who could not otherwise meet. The aspect that may reduce these areas is when more scammers are forced into these areas as other areas 'die off'. This is already happening in a very small specialist section where I buy regularly (possibly also targetted because there are high value items and high net worth buyers in that area?).

daveboy

There are a number of areas that are certain no-go areas, such as laptops, cars, high value electrical equipment. This means that the low value tat is the only thing you can realistically trust.

Every listing I've seen related to anything of value I've been suspicious of.

eBay will survive, because of the low value tat. Eventually everyone will notice the scammers (I laugh in disbelief sometimes at how people are still being fooled), and only a few die-hards will remain.

eBay must be the best profit making company in the world that does nothing in terms of customer service. Ultimately that too will be it's downfall, in time.

BFG_2

daveboy wrote:

There are a number of areas that are certain no-go areas, such as laptops, cars, high value electrical equipment.

Dave disagree on the cars bit - ebay can be an excellent way to buy or sell a car (COD obviously). If you mean the scammers offering you '£5k for a 1994 Ford Escort if you ship it to Nigeria, and worldpay me ythe difference on my fraudulent cheque' - then I agree, but providing you can avoid these mugus then you should be OK.

chubbybrown4real

I always wondered what happened to Yahoo auctions
I was into them more as there were no fees,they disappeared almost overnight.
damn shame as I had good feedback too :-(

ROBDOLPHIN66

It is such a shame because eBay is such a brilliant concept, but they don't seem to care about fraudsters as long as they still get their fees.

malolo

PASCALI wrote:

Everything will be Buy it Now, payment by Paypal only

Paypal has its problems... I personally wouldn't accept payment by paypal if I was selling something on ebay as I've heard too many stories about people receiving goods and then requesting their money back from paypal, who then duly oblige.

Paypal is great for the buyer but as a seller is risky, in my opinion.

biblejohn

Hermia wrote:

That's human nature for you. I have friends who are always raving about car boot sales, so I went to a few of them. I reckon two thirds of the people there were selling pirated DVDs or stolen goods - it was the most depressing day out imaginable.

Well, many years ago, i used to do 5 car boot sales every weekend and I used to buy tons of bargins. Then, once they got popular they got inundated with "traders" trying to sell new stuff. Everything from cosmetics through to electricial goods. Mainly because the ground rent on the car boot sale pitches is usually cheaper than they have to pay at sunday markets for example.

Add to that more and more people trying to flog pirate dvds/cds/computer software and it ended up turning all the car boot sales into sunday markets rather than people selling 2nd hand stuff.

I stopped going then as there just wasnt any bargins left.

I reckon ebay will go the same way. It will end up being just a one-stop-shop for traders selling new goods. Sort of an online sunday market!