Ebay: online shopping the hard way, or a great convenience?

[Siren2011]

Ebay isn't fun these days

B/c Ebay are total cock suckers.

Can someone be so kind as to fill me in on why Ebay is the web store from hell? I have had nothing but pleasant experiences buying shit for years, yet friends and acquaintances are unanimous: "Ebay is horrible."

Well, there was that one time when I bought a violin for my father's birthday, only to find out two things: that it was a real-sized toy violin, and I am retarded for not reading the product info section more closely. But this was my fault.

Oh and I would argue for the "Ebay is still fun" side, because I love bidding on something at the last 10 seconds of auction with a price high enough to throw everyone off. By the time they know what hit 'em and they click that bid box, the bidding has closed. That strategy never gets old. So simple, yet so effective.

Plus whenever I need rare shit like a Voodoo 3DFX graphics card, I can get one dirt cheap only on Ebay.

And before you ask, no I am not getting paid to say this.

[Casper<3]

Horrible fees upon fees. (insertion fees, final price fees, paypal fees)

Shipping price limit policy.

Because of the excess addition of fees upon fees over the years it has caused the availability and selection to diminish drastically.

Not to mention, it's hard to sell anything on the site because no one uses it anymore or wants to pay .01 for everything.

For buyers it's not too bad other than being forced to use paypal.

[rancor]

eBay is great for buyers. I still use it. It is terrible for sellers. I honestly don't see why anyone other than the powersellers (who get sweetheart deals) would ever sell on ebay. I tried it for a few months, and the fees upon fees upon fees were eating me alive. Between the scammers, cheats, complainers, and sky-high fees, the whole experience brought me nothing but heartache. I had to jack my prices up so high, and still wasn't making a very good margin. I'm much happier with my webstore. Less customers, more profit, and certainly less stress.

[burgerkingdiamond]

I've only sold a few random things over the years, so I can't comment from a seller's standpoint. But for a buyer, ebay is really the shit. Especially for stuff like cables, connectors, and random electronics parts. They are usually 2-3 times cheaper than what you could at Radio Shack for instance (except shit is always coming from Hong Kong).

I love eBay.

[GaijinPunch]

Selling back there in the old days was great. Simple fee structure, take any form of payment, etc. etc. I understand their business model, but I can't see it lasting forever. Then again, everyone that's tried to compete has faltered. Then again again, I never thought I'd see an American mobile phone in such wide use in Japan (and flat out be better).

[Elixir]

Ebay is great. Especially since a lot of stuff from different stores like Newegg and Amazon won't ship internationally.

However, trying to sell goods is a nightmare. I've tried it before, only once, when I had my Futari PCB. I had 3 different people lowballing my auction. It's the same deal for everyone, if I wanted to sell it for x price, I would have listed it as such.

[neorichieb1971]

Ebay is a good place to source things, I like being a buyer.


so as a rough guide.

I got 13 blu rays sold. This is the actual readout from ebay.

Sold (last 31 days)
Listed 13
Sold 13
Amount £114.64


My account fee's as so far -

Latest invoice amount (15-Jun-11): US $1.97
New activity applied to the latest invoice noted above: -US $18.28
Payments
-US $18.28
Total Amount: -US $16.31
New activity not yet invoiced: US $16.31
Current Balance: US $0.00


$1.97
$18.28
$16.31

Total $35.56 - £22ish.

for each item they only allowed me to charge £1.25 postage for each item. But each item cost £2.35+ for 1st class recorded (which is what is advertised on ebay). So I lost £1+ on every sale on the postage. So -£13 + £22 = £35. I got the mailers free, they could cost more.


So out of £114 invoiced. I got £35 less than that. If you added mailers at 50p a pop thats another £7.

add up all my time and effort to send all those out. And take into effect I didn't get paid the 2nd highest bid because the twat bought 2 items. It really pisses me off. Its a crappy experience really.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I love it as a buyer but only ever sold stuff once and that was about 4 years ago. I don't like the new feedback changes, whilst it does stop sellers leaving negative just because the buyer gave them negative, I'm not sure it encourages people to be more mature. The fact that you can't see the people you're bidding against anymore annoys me as well, sometimes it's nice to know if you're up against a persistent trader rather than someone who (like you) just really really wants the item.

I've had one issue where the game I bought was described "mint" and the CD was scratched to hell. But it worked and it was £1, I only really wanted it for replacement art so it didn't matter enough for me to kick off to the seller.

On the whole, I love it as a buyer because, as others have said, you can just randomly stumble across rare tuff on the cheap. Also, nailing the auction with seconds to go

[MR_Soren]

It's a great place to buy things cheap, but sometimes you have to be patient or lucky. I've bought at least a hundred items and only had 2 that never arrived and 1 that was not as described.

Granted, that is two auctions where the items never arrived, and the seller was crafty enough (and I naive enough) to string me along with false promises until it was too late to get my money back.

I've never had an item I purchased fail to arrive from any other online or catalog retailer.


However, the real ugliness is trying to sell on eBay. 9% final value fees to eBay plus another 3% + 30 cents to PayPal means you lose 12% and 30 cents on each sale. Really hard to get acceptable money at those rates. Ebay used to be closer to 4 or 5 percent at one time.

Also, PayPal (and more recently, eBay) even take those fees out of your shipping cost. That means you have to overcharge on shipping and factor in the cost of packaging to not lose money shipping your item... and you can't do that because eBay has a fucking Maximum Shipping Price on many items. That bullshit also makes it difficult to put Delivery Confirmation costs into the shipping rate you charge, and failing to do that means you get fucked by PayPal if the buyer claims the item didn't arrive. It's also a royal pain because you cannot charge proper shipping rates on a big-box limited edition video game.

As a result of these policies, the only way to not get totally fucked is to offer Free Shipping and start the item at a higher or fixed price that basically includes shipping and fees, which causes you to have a higher insertion/final value fee AND decreases the odds that anybody will buy your item.

I wish I knew of a good alternative.

[CStarFlare]

I started doing some selling on ebay early this year, and was having a good time with it. Fees weren't too bothersome because I was mainly selling to make space, not bring in cash. Then ebay sent me an email telling me that any funds I receive would be held for 2 weeks because my seller status wasn't good enough (perfect feedback, just not enough of it). I thought it was kind of insulting, though I'm aware that you can get instant access to your money if you upload a tracking number.

Since then, I've given away (and thrown away) things away that I would have otherwise tossed on ebay. I still buy on ebay when it's my best/only option, but I'm in no hurry to be a seller again.

[stuminator]

I only use ebay to buy, and have been very happy for the most part. Only had a couple of occasions where the quality of what I got was a lot worse than what was listed but this is easily fixed.