When Did Ebay Become Such a Rip Off

fuzzgun19

I know Ebay fees have gone up over the last few years, but they are still cheaper than selling at auction houses.

An example - I sold an item for £20, and ended up receiving £12 and pence. That's at least 35% comission fees.

Brooker_Dave

motorguy wrote: »

It started off being about private sellers, then there was a balance point where you had a mix of private, small businesses and large businesses. Now they're just heading toward business sellers and making it more and more difficult for private users.

Ebay and Amazon are just full of business sellers undercutting each other based on the dream that if they sell enough at a loss one day they'll become milionaires.

Brooker_Dave

fuzzgun19 wrote: »

I know Ebay fees have gone up over the last few years, but they are still cheaper than selling at auction houses.

An example - I sold an item for £20, and ended up receiving £12 and pence. That's at least 35% comission fees.

With an auction you get paid, with ebay you might get paid.

motorguy

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Depends what you're selling. For media, if you want the best price you need to check around as it can vary greatly between buying sites, trading in, amazon, ebay, carboots, facebook, gumtree etc.

Yes. As i have already said, check all the buying sites.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Although usually buying sites offer very little and are usually not worth it - they only appear to offer more if you're going to put everything up at 99p on ebay and assume it'll sell at that price. If you try and get the best price, you can most likely get more than any buying site is willing to offer.

Naff old CDs are only worth pence no matter where you sell them. I've found quite a strong variance in good cds, blu-rays and console games between online buyers and definitely in the past it has been worth my while to sell to them rather than bother with ebay.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

As for no hassle, you could get numerous buyers on ebay who you have no problems with. You can also sell to a company and them lose the parcel or say you're stuff is worth less due to the condition (even if you know the condition was fine).

Of course - and some people enjoy selling on ebay. Personally, i've had that knocked out of me in the last year or so.

I tend to do a clear out every three to six months of stuff i've lying around and am not using - cds, blurays, console games, consumer electronics are usually the sort of stuff. I know all the disc based stuff will be accepted by an online buying company because they have machines that clean the discs so as long as its not cracked, they dont care really. Little johnny buys a game off you, declares it scratched and all of a sudden its YOUR problem

Each to their own but ebay definitely isnt what it used to be for private sellers.

motorguy

RFW wrote: »

I've no idea why anyone would sell to Music Magpie or companies who offer even less.
You'd be better off offering a joblot on Ebay or cherry picking the best ones for Amazon and giving the rest to charity.

Price across ALL online buyers and sell each specific item to the best buyer. There can be £s of a difference on CDs and games.

I used 5 last time and just cut and pasted the ISBN number to each.

And dont forget, naff old cds or dvd movies arent going to be worth money anywhere, so you cant really complain if you're getting 70p for it from an online buyer when its only worth £1.99 including "free" postage IF you can sell it on ebay.

motorguy

fuzzgun19 wrote: »

I know Ebay fees have gone up over the last few years, but they are still cheaper than selling at auction houses.

An example - I sold an item for £20, and ended up receiving £12 and pence. That's at least 35% comission fees.

Yes, but the point is, they should be a lot cheaper - it all online and they dont stock your item. An auction house has a physical auctioneer standing there, they have to have premises and storage to stock the items and admin people to handle the buyers and the sellers.

Ebay is all online so how come they still need over 25% in fees?

motorguy

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

With an auction you get paid, with ebay you might get paid.

Or you might get paid, and then the buyer decides they dont want it / bored with it / decided they're going to send you back their old broken one, etc, etc, then ebay favours them as its all about the "buying experience".

Well, sorry ebay, its all about the "selling experience" for sellers, so make it !!!!!! for sellers and they'll go elsewhere as they now have options.

motorguy

fuzzgun19 wrote: »

I know Ebay fees have gone up over the last few years, but they are still cheaper than selling at auction houses.

An example - I sold an item for £20, and ended up receiving £12 and pence. That's at least 35% comission fees.

Facebook groups and gumtree are FREE

motorguy

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

Ebay and Amazon are just full of business sellers undercutting each other based on the dream that if they sell enough at a loss one day they'll become milionaires.

Yup, and "little johnny" selling widgets from his bedroom and making pence in profit.

I remember one guy on a forum describing how he wanted to "expand his portfolio" into other lines. It transpired he was buying some widget or other via his mate in japan and the ONLY way he was making ANY money was by avoiding paying taxes due on the postage.

Great business model.

"Expanding his business portfolio" meant his mate sending him another jiffy bag of widgets every six weeks or so.

Flyonthewall

motorguy wrote: »

Yes. As i have already said, check all the buying sites.

Buying sites is not the same as all sites. Buying sites, at least to me, are those like Music Magpie. Set price for specific items. Sites who buy off you.

To get the best price, you need to look at all sites and ways of selling. Those who buy from you, those who offer trade ins, those you sell on, carboots, sites where you post adverts and social media.

Getting the best price from buying sites is very different to getting the best overall price.

Naff old CDs are only worth pence no matter where you sell them. I've found quite a strong variance in good cds, blu-rays and console games between online buyers and definitely in the past it has been worth my while to sell to them rather than bother with ebay.

I said in my last post that CDs have lost their value. Regardless, it is still possible to get more. It applies more to other forms of media, but a lot of CDs are 10p or less on buying sites whereas selling elsewhere you could get more. Carboot, even at 20p you're getting double the amount.

If you've got, for example, 100 CDs. You may only sell half at a carboot, but then again the buying sites will probably only buy half anyway. 20-50p at a carboot. 10p most from the buying sites. May only be pence, but it adds up.

May not always be worth selling CDs on ebay, depends what they are. Certainly worth it sometimes for other media though and certainly almost always possible to get more money for them elsewhere than through buying sites. Games especially.

Of course - and some people enjoy selling on ebay. Personally, i've had that knocked out of me in the last year or so.

I tend to do a clear out every three to six months of stuff i've lying around and am not using - cds, blurays, console games, consumer electronics are usually the sort of stuff. I know all the disc based stuff will be accepted by an online buying company because they have machines that clean the discs so as long as its not cracked, they dont care really. Little johnny buys a game off you, declares it scratched and all of a sudden its YOUR problem

Each to their own but ebay definitely isnt what it used to be for private sellers.

I agree that ebay isn't how it used to be for private sellers. I think most buyers are genuine though and it all depends on how you list your items.

Stating a disc is in good condition, for example. Can look good, doesn't mean it works. I had a new disc, not a scratch on it, but it didn't do a thing. Also good condition to you may not be the same as good to someone else. You may think a bigger scratch isn't that bad, they may have just expected a few light scratches. If you state it has that big scratch then they're aware of it and if they open a not as described case you can point out that you did mention it.

So many people don't bother with (proper) descriptions and then they get annoyed and think ebay is all a big scam when they're buyer isn't happy.

Not always the case, of course. However, as much as ebay side with buyers and certain terms/features make it harder for private seller, there are some private sellers out there who make it worse for themselves and then they blame ebay.