yeah, where? I opened this thread because I’m about to become an ebay seller for the first time in years (a watch, of some value) and I’m a little concerned by all the negativity I’m seeing here. But if not ebay, how do I sell the watch?
There’s probably isn’t much alternative.
Ebay is still OK, it’s just not the exciting and vibrant flea market it once was - but in eBay’s shadow, nothing else seems to be able to establish itself to fill that lost niche.
I’ve been a recent convert to Etsy. It focuses on handcrafted/vintage goods and it generally isn’t as cheap as ebay once was, but I like the “antique” store feel of it. I buy and sell on it and haven’t had any problems.
The free shipping thing has effectively killed eBay for my purposes.
I sell quite a lot of CDs. How it worked up to now: I start the listing at 99p, so there are no listing fees, and charge from £1 for domestic postage, £1.50 for EU and £2 for USA. (Those prices are the minimum for a single disc in a card slipcase.)
Maybe half of them get bids on first listing. If they don’t sell I can relist and it doesn’t cost me anything.
How it will work from October 19: I can’t start the listing at 99p, because a lot of CDs only get one bid and I will lose money if I sell for 99p. So I’ll have to start the bidding at £1.99, say, which attracts a listing fee. So no free relisting. Then, of course, the final selling price is higher (because it includes p&p) which means eBay’s final value fee is higher, taking more money from me. (In the past, the FVF did not take shipping costs into account.)
It’s utterly ridiculous for eBay to say “you must offer free postage”, unless they sign a deal with Royal Mail that lets me send items for free!
Totally transparent money-gouging by eBay to increase the fees they collect. Except they won’t, because no small private sellers will use the site; and if they’re not selling they won’t be buying either.
I predict auctions will disappear from eBay within two years. The CEO has basically said he wants to abandon the auction model in favour of becoming an online store.
I guess in future I’ll be trying to sell via Amazon, which actually charges a fair shipping rate and passes most of it on to the seller.
I’m completely with you - if we are to believe that this move is to prevent people avoiding fees by hiking the postage, it’s a terribly heavy-handed and broad-brushed change to deal with a problem that is really easily identifiable and directly targetable - if someone charges excessive postage, penalise them, not everybody.
What I also don’t quite understand is all the people that come rallying to eBay’s defence. If you say you’re concerned that seller’s can’t now leave appropriate feedback in some circumstances, they assume you’re sore at not being able to hold the buyer to ransom with threats of retaliatory negs.
If you say you’re struggling to be able to sell some small items now that you can’t charge appropriate postage, they assume you’re sad because you can’t overcharge.
You have to watch it a bit with Amazon. For one thing, they do take a cut of the shipping amount, and also you can get badly stung if you sell a large, heavy book at a bargain price - because the shipping cost is the same as for a slim paperback.
I have heard this is something to watch, but I’ll mostly be selling CDs, where this isn’t so much of an issue.