Watch for ebay sellers ordering cheaper from 3rd parties..

misterbarlow

My wife bought a hardback book last week on ebay, listed as brand new, for £7 buy it now, with free p&p...

today a parcel came from Asda direct..
weird i thought, never bought anything on Asda...
opened it up to find the book she bought, sent direct from Asda with an invoice for £5..
When i went on Asda site, the book she had bought was sure enough listed as on offer for £5 with free p&p from them...

So basically the seller she bought from just ordered it from Asda for £2 less than they listed it for and had it sent to our address...

When I checked their feedback which my wife obviously didn't do, they have a lot of comments saying the same thing..
"Item came direct from asda/amazon/tesco etc for £2 cheaper than I paid..."

Seems like they are using this system to make small profits from every sale by doing very little but shopping around for deals and then relisting the item on ebay for £2 more and getting it sent direct.... very clever!!

Worth watching out for and make sure you shop around before buying anything on ebay....

holgate79

It's drop shipping and it has been around years.

TKPeters

I wouldn't worry too much about it, as the seller would only make 89pence after fee's

Awful lot of work for nothing & you could claim INR, as I doubt there is any tracking

RFW

TKPeters wrote: »

I wouldn't worry too much about it, as the seller would only make 89pence after fee's

It's possibly less than that. Even if they don't pay for listing fees they'll still be paying a shop fee. After all expenses are taken into account it would probably be about 10% of the selling price. As you say it seems a lot of effort for not much profit.
I'm sure they won't last long doing it if buyers keep getting annoyed when they see the invoice.

pennyago

Your wife should shop around. I always check Amazon for books, then Asda, Tesco etc.
Sorry just noticed you said that.

nonnatus

It's a great business model!


Saves the seller holding a load of stock.

Stoke

What's wrong with it? You got your product for the price you paid? In a lot of ways, it's no different to these geezers who sell Poundland products on eBay for £4.99, then when you buy one walks down with a jiffy bag to his local Poundland to buy one.

You got your book, be happy

mrcol1000

The seller is just cashing in on lazy people who just buy an item without first checking to see if they could get it cheaper. You were obviously happy with the price you paid otherwise you would have not brought it.

fozzeh

The counter-productivity of having to have a moan about what you were happy to pay for an item on a forum could have been spent looking a bit more for a better price

sequence

I wouldn't be surprised if these sellers have fully automated systems to make these purchases and adjust prices. Free money, except for all of the risk of items not being available / lost / SNAD etc.

mrcol1000

sequence wrote: »

I wouldn't be surprised if these sellers have fully automated systems to make these purchases and adjust prices. Free money, except for all of the risk of items not being available / lost / SNAD etc.[



But surely if the buyer claims the item does not arrive and gets a refund. Then the seller can just contact Asda to say the item has not arrived and please refund me. You wouldn't even lose the cost of posting an item. It is genius.