new ebay fees or new hobby

repeatoffender

As a small private seller this years increases in postage have already dented my buying and selling as the extra postage inevitably meant that items sell for less. With the new fees in September it will now cost me £3.62 more to sell the same item as it did before April this year. And with the introduction of the ridiculous star system ebay is just no fun any more.

There are no local courier drop offs and I've tried vacuum packing and squeezing stuff into little boxes but it's just too much hassle.

Looks like i will have to find a new hobby and maybe use facebook selling pages. I know that ebay is all about business and not for the little people anymore but i do find it rather sad:(.

Not really a question, just a lament.

Road_Hog

repeatoffender wrote: »

As a small private seller this years increases in postage have already dented my buying and selling as the extra postage inevitably meant that items sell for less. With the new fees in September it will now cost me £3.62 more to sell the same item as it did before April this year. And with the introduction of the ridiculous star system ebay is just no fun any more.

There are no local courier drop offs and I've tried vacuum packing and squeezing stuff into little boxes but it's just too much hassle.

Looks like i will have to find a new hobby and maybe use facebook selling pages. I know that ebay is all about business and not for the little people anymore but i do find it rather sad:(.

Not really a question, just a lament.

I joined ebay in Jan 2003. It was lovely then, a nice community, Paypal wasn't owned by ebay and you weren't forced to offer it for payment. Buyers were nice people and you'd get paid by things like postal orders. The current CEO of ebay has a favourite saying, I can't remember it exactly, but it is something like destructive change - he thinks that is good. He has a consultancy background.

soolin

I've been selling since 1999, there wasn't even an ebay.uk when I opened my account. Things have changed constantly since then and every time there is a change we get the 'ebay is finished' posts and the warning that it is all over. We all seem to carry on, but matbe a few people get lost by the wayside and a few lines get dropped.

I certainly gave up a few lines with the RM introduced pricing in proportion, remember the fuss then? It was generally reckoned to be the end of online selling and ebay in particular.

repeatoffender

soolin wrote: »

I've been selling since 1999, there wasn't even an ebay.uk when I opened my account. Things have changed constantly since then and every time there is a change we get the 'ebay is finished' posts and the warning that it is all over. We all seem to carry on, but matbe a few people get lost by the wayside and a few lines get dropped.

I certainly gave up a few lines with the RM introduced pricing in proportion, remember the fuss then? It was generally reckoned to be the end of online selling and ebay in particular.

I do not think that ebay is finished - nor did i think it was the end of ebay when RM changed their pricing. Businesses always reinvent themselves to survive.

I think your comments of we all seem to carry on are referring to business sellers and the few people that get lost by the wayside are people like me - who do not matter - and this seems to be in line with the way ebay is progressing.

But for small sellers - who enjoyed ebaying and never had any intention or desire to compete with the big boys - the changes do add up and chip away just as Road-Hog has mentioned.

lisa701

I've been using ebay for about 10 years now for both buying and selling but rarely use it now.

Buyers want something for nothing, silly postage costs thanks to the RM and increases in charges make it hardly worth listing items I would have happily listed 10 years ago.

Hezzawithkids

I agree with the OP. I started selling as a private seller on eBay in 2005 and used to have great fun. Nowadays I'll only sell if I think I have something that is in particular demand or is new/unused. The costs and the hassle from buyers don't make it worth my while any more.

PasturesNew

It's like any business, you choose how you do business and see if it's profitable. If things change then you look at whether your business model needs to change, you take less profit, you get smarter with marketing, or you decide it's no longer worth it.

Business changes and evolves. Some adapt, some don't and die.

If somebody is selling the same items as you and making a business/profit then there's something they're doing that you're not.... and you need to find out what that is, decide if you can work that way or not ... and move on.

For some this may mean laying off some help/staff; for others the way forward might be automation and becoming a bigger outfit.

I'd never had a burning desire to do anything with ebay since I sold one book .... which took me an hour to photograph, sort out the photo, write the description, choose the categories etc. Amazon was a 2 minute operation to sell a book.

I'd imagine a lot of ebay sellers are using ebay alongside their other business (local shop/premises, market stall, warehouse/lockup) so it's a way for them to shift more stuff and/or grow their email list.

Road_Hog

soolin wrote: »

I've been selling since 1999, there wasn't even an ebay.uk when I opened my account. Things have changed constantly since then and every time there is a change we get the 'ebay is finished' posts

Well, it certainly does finish to an extent. There are about 180 customers a month that don't buy unlocked phones from me. Also a colleague (and competitor) delisted not long after I finished and he was doing 300+ phones a month. I've looked on ebay and there are very few independent mobile phone sellers selling unlocked and unbranded mobile phones these days.

I've popped into this part of MSE because I'm currently selling about 100 Airfix kits that I've been given and ebay seems the best place to sell them, otherwise I haven't sold an item in the last 5 years. I also never buy anything from ebay, I search it, contact the seller directly and buy from them directly. There certainly is less choice on ebay, and through myself and a colleague alone, there are 500 mobiles less a month on sale, which have not been replaced by other sellers - trust me, I know the market and have looked to see if other sellers have stepped in, they haven't.

I must admit, selling the Airfix kits is a much more pleasant experience (they're mostly 20+ years old and the buyers are collectors). Selling mobiles attracted some of the worst buyers and selling laptops attracted the fraudsters. I remember one message from a (UK) woman on a Bank Holiday Monday, saying 'I bought a phone from you on Friday, where is it I haven't received it yet'. She actually purchased it at 1:15AM Saturday morning, how she though it would be with her on Sat/Sun/Bank Holiday Monday I don't know, but that is the sort of person you were dealing with - try keeping your delivery DSRs high with that sort of buyer.

Then there was the nutty woman. She bought a SE phone and then complained and wanted to return it as faulty. She'd bought the exact same phone from another buyer (I contacted the seller) and done the same routine, so I asked for it back and refunded in full. But she kept phoning me up wanting to discuss it. In the end I said, look the phone was brand new and working fine, I've refunded you in full, now please leave me alone and Foxtrot Oscar you fruitloop.

earthstorm

PasturesNew wrote: »

If somebody is selling the same items as you and making a business/profit then there's something they're doing that you're not.... and you need to find out what that is, decide if you can work that way or not ... and move on.

This does not work in my field (web hosting). I can go onto ebay now and pick out a couple dozen what are called kiddies host. selling everything unlimited for daft prices that are only out for a fast £ and dont care about clients and have no hosting knowledge so wont be around in a few months after they have taken peoples money. these hosts increase over the summer school holidays. as a genuine host i know come sept i will get an influx of clients who will have been victims of these hosts. These are also hosts that seem to get away with duplicating posts

RFW

I think Ebay made an attempt to recreate the community feel of its origins in buying Gumtree, not really sure why they don't cross promote more. Then again their communication has always been poor.

I can also remember ten years or more, I remember sellers boasting about how bad they were treating buyers, leaving them negs, telling them to 'lump it' if there was a missing item, etc. It needed to be slicker to survive and grow.

I can still manage to have a 'community' with my customers on Facebook and Twitter and via email.

The bigwigs must think John Donahue (Ebay's CEO) is doing a good job as he's been there for over 5 years now and their figures (sales and users) are growing.

I'm glad some people are realising that they can't make it pay to sell on Ebay so have to look elsewhere. Whether there ends up being a gap for someone else to step in is another matter, most likely that will be in Cash Converters type retailers. Royal Mail will be pushing a lot of items that once went by post back on to the high street.

jetplane

I don't think the OP is referring to business sellers, but small sellers of everyday items like baby stuff, bags, shoes, ornaments etc must be losing out. I don't sell it's too much hassle but I do know that I buy at similar prices as before as I have always included postage cost when calculating my highest bid, so now I bid less on the actual item. I have also noticed that some sellers do not check their parcel costs before listing and I have had a few things over the last few months where the postage cost more than my entire bid. I have noticed that other small sellers are explaining the high postage in their listings.

A small private seller does not have the sales to absorb losses or low dsrs and where's the fun in that?