Ebay has lost it's way. What to do.

RFW

soolin wrote: »

I assumed there is a different site to alibaba than the one I am registered on.

All I get is Mega sellers offering me 1,000 items for 30 cents each with shipping quotes from China. Is there a small auction site as well then where UK sales are possible for private sellers?

Not as far as I know. You can register to sell on there but it isn't that straightforward and certainly isn't for private sellers.

soolin

RFW wrote: »

Not as far as I know. You can register to sell on there but it isn't that straightforward and certainly isn't for private sellers.

Thank you, I hate to miss a trick and I wondered why we suddenly had newish users suddenly posting about alibaba, perhaps my 'radar' should have gone off ....:o

I also noticed this from the OP that I missed on the first read

You can choose to go with a unverified, possibly fake TomTom if you like but the
main thing is that you were able to use the word that you wanted to find a sat
nav which in plain English is called a TomTom

To me that completely devalues any legitimate point being made as I would not touch a site that blatantly broke UK laws of fake advertising. If I want a TOM Tom (and I do) then I search for TOM TOM, if I want a Garmin I search for that. Am I supposedly so feeble brained that I need to use a site that would tell me that I didn't mean to search for one item- and in fact I really want an inferior item instead?

Sorry but any site that treated me as an idiot would not be one i wanted to use.

RFW

The problem with the OP and many people who tell people that Ebay are doing things wrong is that they rarely think anyone else has a differing opinion.

Business sellers think private sellers get a better deal and vice versa. Some think everything should start at 99p, others think there shouldn't be anything for sale at 99p.

Over the next few years there will be a growing list of items that aren't worth selling on Ebay, whether that's good or bad is immaterial.

dktreesea

Surely people using EBay are free to set up their own web site and pay Google their search engine fees to get the site up towards the top of any search while they get themselves established?

RFW

dktreesea wrote: »

Surely people using EBay are free to set up their own web site and pay Google their search engine fees to get the site up towards the top of any search while they get themselves established?

Don't bring common sense into the debate;) For some reason there appears to be a sector of Ebay users that think it is some kind of public service and they have an entitlement to use it.

prowla

I don't sell a lot on ebay anymore - low value items ren't worth the effort, so I either bin them or give them away.

Flyonthewall

jago25_98 wrote: »

I remember back in the early days how ebay really got our attention. You could sell next to anything back then. Used panties, breast milk, whatever.

Although on one hand that was good, on the other it's rather disturbing what people thought to list and buy. You can still sell/buy a very large variety of items.

It was great because before that point the everyday person just didn't have access to this size of market.
It was a revolution and actually I think it has done a lot of improve our lives and bring the price of things down actually. It also allowed people to buy things they wouldn't have been able to before. That's an important thing to remember as well as the price action for moneysavers.

It still does allow people to buy things they may not be able to otherwise. I'm not so sure about improving out lives. Sure, you can get almost anything from almost anywhere in the world delivered to you and yes, some things may improve people's lives. On the other hand, it has led to people expecting everything they want to reach them instantly and often it's not something they need at all.

Bringing the price of things down isn't always a good thing either.

Unfortunately this free market has and is being eroded. Increasingly small sellers are frequently complaining of preference to bigger sellers. There is a large swathe of things you can no longer sell and many of them make absolutely no sense at all why those restrictions are there.

There are good and bad points to being both a private seller and a business seller.

From thinking back to when I last looked at the list of items you can't sell, I can't think of anything on it that didn't make sense.

The market is becoming less of a bizarre for ordinary people and more of a meta-supermarket. This is not what Britain needs right now. We need access to the cheapest things. What we need is the ability to efficiently trade with one another freely and uninhibited. We cannot afford pay to restrict things in order to reduce crime or good taste - we cannot afford to pay that hidden massive expense right now.

All shops, online and on the high street, are trying to bring down their prices and show they're the cheapest. Ebay is no different. Sellers are always competing to be the lowest, which means by using ebay you are surely getting access to cheaper items?

I don't see that there are any hidden expenses as such. Still, I'd rather be paying to reduce crime otherwise who's going to keep buying? Less crime means less scams and more happy buyers who keep buying and more sellers to keep selling. If there were no rules and restrictions and no expenses I wouldn't be buying or selling for fear of constantly being scammed.

Imagine there was a competing site called "Compare the auction".
When you search for what you want the results on ebay as listed side by side with other sites.

I wouldn't use it. I'm really fed up of all these compare sites. They're never completely accurate and as far as buying items goes, there are always sites missing from the comparison or it doesn't find exactly what I want or whatever.

You buy whatever you want and you can see items that would normally be restricted on ebay listed on other sites across the world. You are also allowed to search for a sat nav for your car by searching for TomTom. You can choose to go with a unverified, possibly fake TomTom if you like but the main thing is that you were able to use the word that you wanted to find a sat nav which in plain English is called a TomTom. Or a Hoover. Or Perspex. Or Selotape. That is, trademarks which have entered the dictionary in everyday use are reclaimed from censorship for your use as a customer but it is your option if you want to use the word that way or not.

I've never had any problem with searches not showing what I wanted. If it's not on ebay I use a normal search engine and find it elsewhere within seconds. However, I wouldn't ever want a fake item and I wouldn't want to have to go through all the fakes to find the proper item, nevermind risking buying a fake if it wasn't advertised correctly.

Ebay isn't what it used to be. For some things that's good and other things it's not. It is, however, still currently a pretty good platform for anyone to buy and sell on and every site needs some restrictions.

paulofessex

de va ju........I'm sure l have seen and read this thread at least 12 months ago

soolin

paulofessex wrote: »

de va ju........I'm sure l have seen and read this thread at least 12 months ago

Yep, we get this sort of thread very often, it rarely achieves anything.