Is Ebay dying?

soolin

curty510 wrote: »

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.

As a small seller my fees are higher if I sell on Amazon compared to eBay, so if you are paying less on Amazon it rather suggests it is not as good from a sellers point of view if they have to pay higher fees and sell at less than on eBay.

Stoke

I hope so.

Wizzbang

It's the same for me- pretty dead. Although I had a sudden rash of sales on Black Friday, so I think people were online shopping anyway or something. I'm put off eBay more and more by the stupid buyers who dream up defects. You read so many horror stories about eBay siding with them and innocent sellers losing hundreds. I also hate all the crap from China that you have to sift through when you want something, along with keyword spammers.

I also hate that it's not a fair bidding war anymore, for those of us who want to keep our passwords safe and not use an automated bidding system, to crash in at the last seconds of a sale. You hardly ever win anything you bid on these days, so why bother.

Postage is a big problem too, it adds so much to the sale and with eBay taking a cut of that too - it's terrible for sellers, with packaging costs on top. You can often go to a charity shop and buy clothes for half the price because no postage.

DD265

My sales are doing OK; I'm kind of at the point where of the stuff I have listed, the really desirable things have gone. And as a previous poster mentioned, some of my prices are high because I am offering free postage and trying to cover the Ebay/PayPal fees so these items might be available cheaper in charity shops etc.

As a buyer, a lot of the time I'm struggling to wade through multiple identical shop listings for items. And I can't always filter them out which is frustrating. I am not averse to buying from the shops but I want to see one of the listing not 15 that look identical.

soolin

jondav wrote: »

My tuppence worth is that I completely agree with this. Ebay treats its sellers very, very poorly and there are far too many idiot buyers out there who play the game because they know that the seller doesn't stand a chance.
I've seen a lot of times on here people say things like "it's only a few quid so it's not worth fighting over" but for me, I often use Ebay to sell items because I need the extra money to get by that month. So when an idiot buyer rips me off, I end up worse off than I was before. So even if that's only a fiver....it's a fivers worth of electric that I can't top up, or a fivers worth of food that I can't buy.
I've more or less given up on Ebay now in favour of local collect sites like Gumtree or FB pages - Ok the audience is smaller but it's much less risky

Facebook might be brilliant for people selling off their unwanted items, but for a business it's pretty rubbish. If I put anything up I can usually expect people not to bother showing up, not bothering to tell me they aren't coming and then if they do come they come at a completely random time when I was not expecting them. Whilst waiting for one elusive buyer to actually bother turning up after a dozen no shows I have meanwhile sold a couple of hundred things on ebay, posted them and got the money safely in my bank balance.

In balance I think that perhaps ebay is slow for private sellers selling off unwanted items, but perhaps still going well for businesses who know what sells.

mrcol1000

jondav wrote: »

I do agree with you in that respect, but I am using Ebay as a private seller so how businesses do isn't really a concern.
To be honest I'd rather deal with a few no shows and inconvenience than lose both my item and my money to a con merchant.
I think the reason it is dying for private sellers is exactly as other people have said above - the sellers (private sellers) are treated very badly by Ebay and so are choosing to go elsewhere. After all it's the sellers that make Ebay it's money so we should be better protected.

I am so busy at the moment that I can barely keep up. I am a small seller on my own. I think it is very easy to blame Ebay but you just need to read some posts on this forum to see the kind of attitude some sellers have to buyers and then they wonder why no-one buys from them.

Before you starting blaming everyone else you need to check everything. Your photos, the wording of your listing, the angry terms and conditions in capitals, the price you are charging for the item, the price you are charging for postage. If all that is okay then you need to make sure the item you are selling is actually wanted. Really though, if you can't sell anything this time of year then you really need to look at hard to see what you are doing wrong.

motorguy

jondav wrote: »

I do agree with you in that respect, but I am using Ebay as a private seller so how businesses do isn't really a concern.
To be honest I'd rather deal with a few no shows and inconvenience than lose both my item and my money to a con merchant.
I think the reason it is dying for private sellers is exactly as other people have said above - the sellers (private sellers) are treated very badly by Ebay and so are choosing to go elsewhere. After all it's the sellers that make Ebay it's money so we should be better protected.

+1


As a private seller I just don't bother with ebay any more. I use gumtree and - given most of the stuff I dispose of is computing / gaming related - a lot of the buying sites where you just send them your stuff and they pay you. Theres about 5 I poll around and use the one whos offering me the most for each specific item.


Might I be down a few £ over selling on ebay? Possibly. Do I have a much better selling experience by not using ebay? Definitely.


I think ebay has forgotten its roots and doesn't really want private sellers, so either makes it expensive to sell, makes the terms too pro buyer, or jettisons the seller at the first opportunity over some "failing".

soolin

jondav wrote: »

We clearly read different posts on here because from what I can see, most of the posters are becoming more and more dissatisfied with Ebay so maybe check your facts?
I'm entitled to my opinion and that is my experience with Ebay (as it seems to be with many others). Don't make assumptions about people you know nothing about.....that's just rude

Regarding the posts on here, I think you misunderstand how boards like this work. People tend not to come on regularly every time they make a sale to say how wonderful it all went, otherwise we'd have tens of thousands threads a week that no one would read. We all tend to mention only the things that went wrong, or which annoy us. Reading this type of board therefore gives a very distorted view, and frankly, with a handful of threads a day at best it suggests that the vast majority of people here are not having issues.

As I said in my earlier post, I do think that private sellers seem to be doing poorly compared to businesses, but I believe that one minor reason is that buyers have perhaps got a bit fed up of sellers who don't believe they have any obligations towards their buyers, so it is easier to just go to a business seller . I suspect the main reason is just the type of items people sell, a true private seller will just have second hand unwanted items, perhaps a few vintage bits and pieces, but basically unwanted personal goods- is there a huge market for that anymore?

Things change and perhaps sellers don't always realise that and unfortunately it does advantage businesses. We can change what we sell when we see markets change, I certainly don't carry the same stock for sale year after year, once a market starts to die off I dump my stock and move on, something a private seller can't do.

mrcol1000

soolin wrote: »

Regarding the posts on here, I think you misunderstand how boards like this work. People tend not to come on regularly every time they make a sale to say how wonderful it all went, otherwise we'd have tens of thousands threads a week that no one would read. We all tend to mention only the things that went wrong, or which annoy us. Reading this type of board therefore gives a very distorted view, and frankly, with a handful of threads a day at best it suggests that the vast majority of people here are not having issues.

As I said in my earlier post, I do think that private sellers seem to be doing poorly compared to businesses, but I believe that one minor reason is that buyers have perhaps got a bit fed up of sellers who don't believe they have any obligations towards their buyers, so it is easier to just go to a business seller . I suspect the main reason is just the type of items people sell, a true private seller will just have second hand unwanted items, perhaps a few vintage bits and pieces, but basically unwanted personal goods- is there a huge market for that anymore?

Things change and perhaps sellers don't always realise that and unfortunately it does advantage businesses. We can change what we sell when we see markets change, I certainly don't carry the same stock for sale year after year, once a market starts to die off I dump my stock and move on, something a private seller can't do.

As above, although some business sellers are just as bad. Ebay is trying to get rid of the "fleabay" image a lot of people have of it. If tomorrow they decided to take the sellers side on every dispute, then it would be great for the dodgy sellers. However buyers would stop buying en masse and then Ebay would really be dying. I would rather be the loser in a few unfair disputes than sitting here twiddling my thumbs with no buyers.

anotheruser

The only thing that keeps it going is the reach of people.

With the rise of Facebook selling pages, I suspect this will become the new norm - no fees, no messing about with postage, simple and easy.

The charm of the auction won't ever die though. They're too much fun.