Is Ebay dying?

emmbrook

I've sold quite a lot of music this year but only rare stuff generally shifts. I also sell on Discogs but I think that I've pretty much sold all I'm going to there now. Some has made really good money - but none of it was Top 40 stuff. Similarly DVDs - anything deleted makes great money but other stuff is lucky to make 99p.

The only books I've sold in recent months have been quite rare - though that is very up and down. I listed one book starting at £19.99, no takers so tried at £8.99, still nothing so one more week at the same price - it made £31. Go figure.

Compo88

I have found over the years ebay shops have flooded the site. Too many products with not enough
buyers.

mrcol1000

Missed the original post but found auctions on Ebay are dying. People just want to buy now, they aren't interested in bidding. The only time you can make auctions work is if you have something a lot of people want and start it really low, even then it can go horribly wrong.

Its a real shame as seeing an item slowly go up as bids come in was half the fun of selling on Ebay.

googler

mrcol1000 wrote: »

Missed the original post but found auctions on Ebay are dying. People just want to buy now, they aren't interested in bidding.

Even the 'buy it now' and 'buy it now or make best offer' ones are dead slow stop...

lush_walrus

It's the Chinese sellers mixed in with and pretending to be UK that drives me bonkers and now stops me from bothering to buy on there. If I wanted to buy from China I would and do on occasion but not through EBay and most certainly not through being tricked into it.

Pierre_De_Grenoble

I usually put everything up as BIN but very recently I auctioned a highly collectable item that should have made £600++ no problem. (no ean's/whatever apply )


It wasn't an absolute disaster, but it suffered from lack of views / watchers etc (and there are no defects worth talking about on my accounts.)


It made short of £400. Not the end of the world but disappointing)


even now, if I google the exact item title, google does not show the item, but it Does show a 3rd party auction result site with that item.


IMHO, the google/eBay search row is killing eBay.


eBay seem to think that everyman and his dog goes straight to them & their tilted search engine. but the sad fact remains that anybody interested in anything collectable and doing a general google search will NOT be shown anything relevant on eBay.


eBay will not pay google to index their site properly, and will not invest in their IT and get rid of glitches.


Myself I think eBay are down the toilet. I suspect that google will hoover eBay up. I look forward to it. at least the search engine will work.......

forgotmyname

When searching obscure items i tend to get ebay.com, nit the UK site.

The issue there is the items dirt cheap but they either wont ship or assume the UK is somewhere near Mars and its costs millions of $ to post anything.

Just come off ebay now, having to buy something because i ordered the wrong one.. oops.

I seem to be a guinea pig again with some special offer crap taking up most of the screen. 2 thick and intrusive adverts telling me that the seller will do a 0.0001% off if i buy an extra 3 of some unrelated junk.

Why me? Another session with NoScript to block it.

Nesty

There bank account probably not dying! I mean you are paying approx 14% now on everything which is sold via paypal.
I think a lot of buyers don't really pay much attention to what they actually getting shafted for each item.
I saw a item once for £100 including postage with buy it now. It was kinda local. I offered him £85 cash & I would collect. He declined, it until I explained to him minus the EBAY fees I am offering him in effect more money!

PasturesNew

For clothes more people have more local options - e.g. Facebook local buying/selling pages, where they can see it and pick it up later that day or the next day from the actual person, just a mile away. More "comforting" than paying online and wait for a stranger to package it up and post it to you, hoping you're in when it arrives and it's as described.

curty510

i choose Amazon over fleabay all day long as a buyer. I find Amazon prices to be a little cheaper on most products i purchase, plus the site is a lot easier to use.