When Did Ebay Become Such a Rip Off

soolin

motorguy wrote: »

Indeed, though from memory i got a certain amount free from having an ebay store. Cant really remember.

Not saying its not viable for business btw, just that for private sellers, a good percentage of the time its not worth the hassle, and is no longer the only or default option.

The basic store which is just shy of £20 a month gives the business seller 200 inclusive BIN listings. There are other levels of shops all which give inclusive listings.

Flyonthewall

motorguy wrote: »

Indeed. Though personally, the thought of pitching up for a morning at a car boot sale to have someone pawing over my stuff and bidding me 10p doesnt appeal much. But if thats your bag....

I wouldn't say people paw. If they're pawing through it all, especially media, you need to set it up better. I make it so people can see the titles (and anything else) without having to touch them. They only pick them up if considering to buy them. If they bid you 10p you say no, it's not difficult. Most will ask the price, you tell them, they pay up or leave it.

And then you factor in the cost of your pitch at the car boot sale, your fuel to get there, your time lost on a saturday morning when you be doing other things, that coffee you bought to keep warm, etc, etc and there may not be much difference in flogging to an online buyer.

£10 tops I'd say. You can probably find one between £5-£8. Cheaper than paying fees on Amazon or ebay, especially if you sell a fair amount. 5 DVDs at £2 and you're breaking even, if not over.

Fuel, obviously varies but you'd have fuel costs driving to drop off parcels. Possibly multiple drop offs. Then you have packaging costs too.

I have never bought a drink at a carboot. Wrap up warm, take a flask with you if you need to. Not that you need that in summer (and before you say cold drinks, take a drink with you). There's no reason at all to spend extra.

You spend a one off few hours at a carboot. You can spend many hours over several weeks writing out listings, taking photos etc. Then there's time spent waiting for the sale (could be days, weeks, months) and time spent packaging boxes. Overall time is a lot less for a carboot. And carboots are on Sundays generally (not that it really matters, but still).

I sold games for a couple of months on ebay - buying up console bundles and splitting them. To be honest, it wasnt worth the hassle selling the games on ebay - one in ten said they couldnt get the game to work on their console, so you'd end up either accepting a refund and the hassle or letting them keep it. I found that 90% of the time you could get as much after fees and postage costs as you could from a buying site anyway.

Then we have very different experiences of selling games. Although, if so many really weren't working I'd have to wonder why that is. Did you actually test them yourself? If they were tested and working I'd be wondering why you ended up with so many dodgy buyers - perhaps you need to reword listings and/or check your buyer preferences. Seems strange to have so many bad buyers.

Also, did you just buy any bundles and did you sell elsewhere? If yes to any bundles and/or no to selling elsewhere, that's where you went wrong.

Heres the trouble i went to - i bought an industrial disc scratch remover (not some £10 thing from ebay) and a supply of brand new cases. All games were checked and if at all scratched were polished and then tested. Cases were replaced if damaged, worn or scratched. Games were advertised with actual photos and genuine honest descriptions.

To maintain a 99.99%+ feedback you had to "put up with" people who you knew were chancers returning duff discs in place of your refurbed one, or chancing their arm saying it was faulty and hoping for a refund without return.

Games controllers - got a dirty faulty one back when i sent out a clean working tested one.

And then on top of all that, ebay were stiffing you with fees. :eek:

Not worth the hassle. When i saw a bundle that was underpriced i'd sell the hardware off all seperately (and just take my chances on the odd return) and sell 90% of the games to online buyers.

You do know that every time a disc is cleaned your taking off a layer of the disc? If it's been done two or three times before it may look all nice and shiny when you "clean" it, but there will most likely no longer be a game on it!

Yes, there are some chancers and some do lie. There are also many decent people out there.

motorguy wrote: »

Uh huh. And if you took 100 items to a local auction, someone would have to examine, catalogue and store that, then process your details as a customer, then auction the item, then process the buyer then process the payment to you. All done manually.

All done automatically by ebay, so why the big fees?

Do they manually process each and every item? No
Do they catalogue each item manually? No
Do they have a storage warehouse to store your stock and hold the auction? No
Do they manually take a payment and process it? No

Genuinely cant believe (a) you're justifying ebays pricing and (b) you cant see the economies of scale they have. :rolleyes:

Do you know how much servers cost? How much sites cost to keep updated and running, especially big ones like ebay? How much it costs to have enough staff on chat and the phones and dealing with the site?

Ebay have hundreds of thousands of items stored with items being added constantly, hundreds at a time. That's not free you know. Every single item, every detail, every photo of them is stored in massive databases. Systems are constantly working and being monitored and updated so that they can be displayed to you.

Just the site itself costs a fortune to run before you even include staff and their offices.

Ebay have far more costs than any auction house.

Doesn't mean I like their fees or don't wish they were lower. However, I am aware of the massive costs they have.

Uh huh and my example was on a £2.00 buy it now item - the price of a typical CD, which totals over 25% in fees.

You really are an ebay apologist arent you?

Yeah, your original example may have been that, but then you said "Ebay is all online so how come they still need over 25% in fees?". Not everyone is selling a CD and paying 25% and you can't base an entire debate about the high price of fees over one CD example.

RFW

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Ebay have far more costs than any auction house.

He's right, you know. The overheads for an auction house are insurance, storage space and labour. In most cases they'll employ the odd full time staff and have casuals for around auction days. Ebay will employ the same amount of staff, and then there's all the tech management, plus everything else. Comparing with Ebay is not really comparing like businesses.

motorguy

Flyonthewall wrote: »

I wouldn't say people paw. If they're pawing through it all, especially media, you need to set it up better. I make it so people can see the titles (and anything else) without having to touch them. They only pick them up if considering to buy them. If they bid you 10p you say no, it's not difficult. Most will ask the price, you tell them, they pay up or leave it.



£10 tops I'd say. You can probably find one between £5-£8. Cheaper than paying fees on Amazon or ebay, especially if you sell a fair amount. 5 DVDs at £2 and you're breaking even, if not over.

Fuel, obviously varies but you'd have fuel costs driving to drop off parcels. Possibly multiple drop offs. Then you have packaging costs too.

I have never bought a drink at a carboot. Wrap up warm, take a flask with you if you need to. Not that you need that in summer (and before you say cold drinks, take a drink with you). There's no reason at all to spend extra.

You spend a one off few hours at a carboot. You can spend many hours over several weeks writing out listings, taking photos etc. Then there's time spent waiting for the sale (could be days, weeks, months) and time spent packaging boxes. Overall time is a lot less for a carboot. And carboots are on Sundays generally (not that it really matters, but still).



Then we have very different experiences of selling games. Although, if so many really weren't working I'd have to wonder why that is. Did you actually test them yourself? If they were tested and working I'd be wondering why you ended up with so many dodgy buyers - perhaps you need to reword listings and/or check your buyer preferences. Seems strange to have so many bad buyers.

Also, did you just buy any bundles and did you sell elsewhere? If yes to any bundles and/or no to selling elsewhere, that's where you went wrong.



You do know that every time a disc is cleaned your taking off a layer of the disc? If it's been done two or three times before it may look all nice and shiny when you "clean" it, but there will most likely no longer be a game on it!

Yes, there are some chancers and some do lie. There are also many decent people out there.



Do you know how much servers cost? How much sites cost to keep updated and running, especially big ones like ebay? How much it costs to have enough staff on chat and the phones and dealing with the site?

Ebay have hundreds of thousands of items stored with items being added constantly, hundreds at a time. That's not free you know. Every single item, every detail, every photo of them is stored in massive databases. Systems are constantly working and being monitored and updated so that they can be displayed to you.

Just the site itself costs a fortune to run before you even include staff and their offices.

Ebay have far more costs than any auction house.

Doesn't mean I like their fees or don't wish they were lower. However, I am aware of the massive costs they have.



Yeah, your original example may have been that, but then you said "Ebay is all online so how come they still need over 25% in fees?". Not everyone is selling a CD and paying 25% and you can't base an entire debate about the high price of fees over one CD example.

You know you're right - You've totally convinced me.

They're completely bang on with their fees and in reality they're doing us all a favour. Wonderful chaps at ebay and paypal

Go Ebay! Yay! :T

motorguy

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Do you know how much servers cost? How much sites cost to keep updated and running, especially big ones like ebay? How much it costs to have enough staff on chat and the phones and dealing with the site?

Sorry - cant help myself - thought i could.

Yes, i do know how much a datacentre costs to run. Where i am currently IT contracting is a IT service management company that runs two datacentres for a major high street retailer with a large web presence and at least one bank, among 35+ other major customers.

My core speciality is IT Service Management.

Yes, i do know what it takes to run a call centre. My wife is a Senior Contact Centre manager for an 800 seater centre. I also live approx 25 miles from ebay / paypals contact centre. I have friends and ex colleagues who are agents and managers there.

I could get you prices to the penny as to what an agent hour rate would be for someone like ebay.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Ebay have hundreds of thousands of items stored with items being added constantly, hundreds at a time. That's not free you know. Every single item, every detail, every photo of them is stored in massive databases. Systems are constantly working and being monitored and updated so that they can be displayed to you.

:rotfl: The minute amount of data it takes to store the information in some big datacentre somewhere across the world would be close to neglegable.

I was an Oracle database admin for ten years, and from memory Ebay use Oracle servers at the back end for their data storage.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Just the site itself costs a fortune to run before you even include staff and their offices.

Ebay have far more costs than any auction house.

No? Seriously? Gee i wonder if that is offset by the billions they get in FEES.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Doesn't mean I like their fees or don't wish they were lower. However, I am aware of the massive costs they have.

You have no idea what their cost base is but i can tell you per item sold its minute compared to a bricks and mortar auction house.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Yeah, your original example may have been that, but then you said "Ebay is all online so how come they still need over 25% in fees?". Not everyone is selling a CD and paying 25% and you can't base an entire debate about the high price of fees over one CD example.

Uh huh, because the original question related to selling CDs or DVDs did it not? And whats the average price of a second hand CD? Let me take a stab in the dark and say... £2?

HENCE why i was talking about a £2 typical sale for a private seller on a used cd / dvd

Oh, and MORE than happy to validate where i work, who the companies customers are, and my Oracle database background to anyone who wants to know - send me a PM.

RFW

It's not just IT and staff that Ebay's expenses are. There's marketing and customer retention and more besides.
None of which is that relevant. To sum up this thread, if you can't afford to sell a £2 CD on Ebay, then don't.
If you're into costs, then it costs Ebay the same to manage a £2 item you sell as a £200 item Argos sells.

Flyonthewall

motorguy wrote: »

No? Seriously? Gee i wonder if that is offset by the billions they get in FEES.

Exactly. Hence why fees are so high. So why ask why fees are so high if you know the answer? Obviously they want to offset the costs and then make a profit (as much profit as they can, as any company would). They're not going to manage that with stupidly low fees.

Uh huh, because the original question related to selling CDs or DVDs did it not? And whats the average price of a second hand CD? Let me take a stab in the dark and say... £2?

HENCE why i was talking about a £2 typical sale for a private seller on a used cd / dvd

It did, but ebay fees are high for all items, it is just worse for low value items. Not just CDs, but anything of that price. You asked why their fees were so high, but as they're not just selling CDs you have to consider everything, especially as you were comparing it to auction house fees who would also be selling other items.

It's stupidly high for CDs because they're low value and the fees are a fixed rate (keeping it simple). The reason why fees are that much is because of the above (costs and profit), but you know that anyway.

Flyonthewall

motorguy wrote: »

You know you're right - You've totally convinced me.

They're completely bang on with their fees and in reality they're doing us all a favour. Wonderful chaps at ebay and paypal

Go Ebay! Yay! :T

I never said that. I wait for listing offers for a reason - I don't want to pay higher fee costs and I want to end up with more money for what I sell. I also said to get the best price you need to look at different ways of selling.

However, their fees are around the same as others like Amazon (if not lower) and I get why companies charge what they do. They have costs, they're offering a service, they want a profit.

You seem to think I worship ebay or something and I can't work out why. At no point have I said they're all amazing and we must all sell on there because their fees are such good value. I simply answered why the fees are the price they are - something you already knew anyway.

We both agree they have costs and the fees are there to cover it. Same goes for the auction houses. Doesn't mean either of us like the fees.

motorguy

RFW wrote: »

If you're into costs, then it costs Ebay the same to manage a £2 item you sell as a £200 item Argos sells.

Not quite -

• Argos have to buy the stock
• Argos have to store the stock
• Argos have to worry about depreciation on the stock
• Argos have bricks and mortar retail outlets
• Argos have to finance the purchase of their stock
• Argos have to deal with price fluctuations
• Argos are a bricks and mortar company with an internet bolt on

motorguy

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Exactly. Hence why fees are so high. So why ask why fees are so high if you know the answer? Obviously they want to offset the costs and then make a profit (as much profit as they can, as any company would). They're not going to manage that with stupidly low fees.

Because it doesnt cost them anywhere near in fees what they charge consumers. Simples.

They've been able to stiff sellers for years with high fees when sellers effectively had no choice. However now private sellers have choices.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

It did, but ebay fees are high for all items, it is just worse for low value items. Not just CDs, but anything of that price. You asked why their fees were so high, but as they're not just selling CDs you have to consider everything, especially as you were comparing it to auction house fees who would also be selling other items.

Ebays fees are high. Period. Unnecessarily high for private sellers.

Now you can be a bleating lamb and continue to support an organisation that is going out of its way to stiff you, OR you can do what lots of people are doing and using other options - of which there are now many.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

It's stupidly high for CDs because they're low value and the fees are a fixed rate (keeping it simple). The reason why fees are that much is because of the above (costs and profit), but you know that anyway.

Ah but they're not a fixed rate - they're only a fixed rate for private sellers. Big business sellers get a totally different rate. If they wanted to be fair, why not charge a blanket charge for everybody?