The Ebay discount culture

RFW

It's probably the auction culture but I find it interesting that I sell thousands of items on Amazon and don't get any requests for discounts. I sell a hundred or so on Ebay and have several.

It's the same prices, in fact I'm a bit cheaper on a few on Ebay, also several sellers are dropshipping my items from Amazon to Ebay so there are quite a lot on there at 40% + of my Ebay prices.

Not a complaint, just an observation.

FatVonD

If someone has 'or best offer' then I feel almost obliged to make an offer! Otherwise I wouldn't other than asking them to combine postage.

RFW

FatVonD wrote: »

If someone has 'or best offer' then I feel almost obliged to make an offer! Otherwise I wouldn't other than asking them to combine postage.

I've not got best offer on. One was a multiple purchase, so I was quite happy to give a discount but I've sold more on Amazon and never had any offers.

It's interesting that prices of items tend to fluctuate more on Amazon yet customers, in my experience, never ask for a reduction.

JustAnotherSaver

I had someone contact me this week asking to strike a deal on one of my items.

I had it up at £10.50 in total including postage. They said to me that it sells for £14 brand new on Amazon so will i take £5.

So first off i'm thinking .... well you're saving yourself £3.50 then for an item that is the same & will perform the same. Plus nobody is making you pay. If you don't like it you can move on.

Anyway i responded ...

I asked them whether their £5 included postage or not as they hadn't specified.
I said i will assume that it was inclusive of postage. I politely explained that this would incur a fee of £0.50 to me. In addition PayPal fees will be £0.37 which makes £0.87. It would cost £3.90 to just post the item (2nd class recorded which is the minimum i use), that is without talking about packaging cost.

This would mean i would receive only £0.23 of that £5.00.

I said i am more than willing to discuss a price we can hopefully agree on but that £5.00 inclusive of postage will unfortunately not be it.


About 30 minutes later i had a bid for £10.50

zerog

I sometimes message if I see an item has been listed and relisted for months without any takers, whether it's auction or BIN

My categories are filled with a lot of "spam" listings where people seem to be willing to keep tens of thousands of pounds of stock at home, and hope to sell five or ten per year at triple what they are worth. It's actually quite irritating having to filter out all the useless listings to find things that are worth bidding on

mrcol1000

I was reading that Amazon are going to discount items sold by third parties. The seller will still get the same amount that they were charging but Amazon will cover the discount. US only but sure it will come over here.

I never get any offers and have given up adding Best Offer. People always pay the price. Although I do have it set up to automatically decline any offers below a certain amount. Maybe it depends on the type of item you are selling.

RFW

mrcol1000 wrote: »

I was reading that Amazon are going to discount items sold by third parties. The seller will still get the same amount that they were charging but Amazon will cover the discount. US only but sure it will come over here.

I never get any offers and have given up adding Best Offer. People always pay the price. Although I do have it set up to automatically decline any offers below a certain amount. Maybe it depends on the type of item you are selling.

Not heard about the discounting. I'm trying to work out where they would apply it. Amazon aren't fond of giving their own money away. I've supplied them with stock and they're happy to sit on it at a high price rather than sell it quick.

There may be some types of products that don't get offers on but I've sold a range on Ebay over the years and never found any.

F&L

None of my listings have best offer on them but I still get buyers making silly offers. I don't respond and block them. I've never had anyone on Amazon make an offer. The odd buyer used to complain about the default Amazon postage charges but I changed all my listings to free postage so that took care of that issue.