How does someone make a profit on ...

soolin

RHemmings wrote: »

At a cost to Ebay, coming out of their fees then, I presume. So, Argos and Ebay are sharing their cut of the £1.25.

I was interested to note here: http://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/click-and-collect#optout that sellers can opt out of Argos Click and Collect. But, there are other threads in this forum discussing what becomes click and collect and what doesn't. Doesn't the opting out work reliably?

Opting out seems to work OK

soolin

ballisticbrian wrote: »

Yes it works for me, too many people thought it meant they could pick their item up that afternoon, and when we got our second item back uncollected, I opted out.

I think the Argos option has confused a lot of people, both buyers and sellers. We've had sellers on here who strongly believed it meant that they could drop their items off for free at Argos and even argued with regulars when they were told they had to post as normal.

buglawton

The clever bit for Argos is, it gets footfall into their stores, hence Argos charges little to EBay for the service.

ballisticbrian

The clever bit for Argos is, it gets footfall into their stores, hence Argos charges little to EBay for the service.

I've always had a theory, rightly or wrongly, that Argos hope the buyer will "think Argos" and whether to go ahead with the eBay purchase at all, and so technically, could be paying eBay to operate the service.

RHemmings

As in: if someone is picking up an item from Argos they might buy other goods at the same time? Not happening for me. I go in, pick up my ebay items, and leave. Whether it makes me subconciously more likely to buy stuff from Argos, I don't know.

PasturesNew

Until now some people were protected and didn't need to make any money.

They just run an ebay shop, flogging stuff for the price they buy it for ... making no profit, then getting all the WTC top ups - work that one out for somebody with 3-4 kids and you'll see how lucrative it is to run a "£0 profit" business.

They're being paid by the taxpayers to put things in envelopes.

soolin

I'm a browser so I think there would be the possibility that whilst walking through the store to the back desk to get my ebay item- my eye might settle on a widget that I just 'must' have.

ballisticbrian

As in: if someone is picking up an item from Argos they might buy other goods at the same time? Not happening for me. I go in, pick up my ebay items, and leave. Whether it makes me subconciously more likely to buy stuff from Argos, I don't know.

No - not at all, say you're buying a push chair on eBay, quite a big purchase, and you have to wait for your item. At a critical stage in the purchase process, you are asked if you want to pick it up at Argos. And then you think, hold on, if I'm going to Argos, let's see what they have in store locally and at what price. eBay could get a referral fee, to be honest it could be a better business than selling on their own site with all the pit falls.


I think eBay make no secret of the fact they are working on other revenue streams such as advertising for other competitors on their site. But this is quite a good one when you think about it; sellers think they are helping out the customer, but actually they are loosing the sale, and eBay take their cut from Argos.

soolin

ballisticbrian wrote: »

No - not at all, say you're buying a push chair on eBay, quite a big purchase, and you have to wait for your item. At a critical stage in the purchase process, you are asked if you want to pick it up at Argos. And then you think, hold on, if I'm going to Argos, let's see what they have in store locally and at what price. eBay could get a referral fee, to be honest it could be a better business than selling on their own site with all the pit falls.


I think eBay make no secret of the fact they are working on other revenue streams such as advertising for other competitors on their site. But this is quite a good one when you think about it; sellers think they are helping out the customer, but actually they are loosing the sale, and eBay take their cut from Argos.

I hadn't thought of it that way, although most of my items are never likely to be sold in Argos. I do have one line that I actually buy on the High Street though (not from Argos) and I mark it up and take a good profit- but I haven't ever had a buyer opt to collect anything from that line from Argos.

Brooker_Dave

PasturesNew wrote: »

Until now some people were protected and didn't need to make any money.

They just run an ebay shop, flogging stuff for the price they buy it for ... making no profit, then getting all the WTC top ups - work that one out for somebody with 3-4 kids and you'll see how lucrative it is to run a "£0 profit" business.

They're being paid by the taxpayers to put things in envelopes.

But nobody can sell thousands of packets of batteries at a loss for any length of time without going bust?

Tax credits or not, why bother?