[FS] all of my eBay stock

[setq]

It's a marketplace but it's a monopoly, which is bad. You can't compete against them and you can't run certain classes of business without them. That's the service they provide. I'm resigned to the fact that isn't going to change any time soon.

To confirm my points earlier, I have no problem with Royal Mail reliability at all. I haven't had a single consignment go missing in 20 years myself.

What I have a problem with is that the person receiving it isn't necessarily honest. If I send something via standard 1st/2nd not signed, I will get a ~20% failure rate of auctions i.e. the person says "item never received", the only viable outcome being refund. However this ONLY occurs with people who purchase via eBay and I suspect this is becase it's pretty easy to scam the system as a buyer. I have NEVER had a problem outside of eBay even when I did sent literally hundreds of packages every year.

As for any recourse if anything goes wrong, even if it's insured, it's probably only worth dealing with it if it's £50+ loss. And if RM aren't responsive, gov.uk Moneyclaim works like lightning apparently (my father has used that a few times on high value items that were nicked from his local sorting office).

[Simon]

Yes ebay has built it's reputation and trust on abusing sellers. It's ok if your a huge seller but smaller people will just get fed up if they have better things to do with their time. the reputation and one stop shop ebay is is down to us sellers providing the service and the fact that e sign all of our rights away to ebay. They charge us a huge 10% fee much of it used to refund claims for lost, stolen or damaged items many of which may well be false claims, so not only does the seller loose the case and pay the costs he has also paid a second time (so screwed 3 times over) in the form of the extortionate fees we pay. Ebay don't refund "lost" item immediately out of the goodness of their hearts, that's my money being given away. Royal mail are also incompetent, i once had a card put in my door to say my parcel was left with the neighbour when they just dumped it on the neighbours doorstep in more plain sight than if they had dumped it on mine. So i claimed the item  missing and they had to pay farnell back and fucking screw them!

[setq]

Perhaps people need to stop playing the game? I've had enough of it even on the buyer side of things as I'm getting screwed for carriage all the time. If you play in a marketplace you're in a race to the bottom as the only competition is price and there are market-wide mandated policies in place. This happened in traditional physical markets as well, particularly during the 70's and 80's corporatisation when shopping centres turned up on the scene and a small space was given to traditional market traders. This marketplace has China in it as well which has a few massively unfair advantages particularly when it comes to cost. What I'd like to see is independent shops back that compete on quality of service, because I'm fucked off with having to deal with the likes of RS and Farnell who seem to screw everything up on nearly every order in the last month. The small independent guys (hat tip to bitsbox.co.uk here as they supply all the odd transistors I tend to buy in small quantities for repair jobs) tend to get this stuff spot on. Which is exactly what I see you are doing with your storefront!

Amazon Logistics (Yohell) do that to me regularly. They dropped a 512Gb Samsung 850 Pro disk on my doorstep which got nicked instantly. I live in London FFS - if it's not bolted down it'll get nicked before it touches the ground! So they delivered another one. Then I found out two days later that it hadn't been nicked and had been placed in my bin (WTF!?!?!).

[grumpydoc]

They charge us a huge 10% fee

Have a look at Amazon if you think ebay is expensive - for low volume sellers there's a per item fee of 75p, a referral fee (7-15% but mostly 12 or 15%) and, for some items, a closing fee as well.

[setq]

Yep. Amazon are terrible. I sold one thing on there and didn't realise the shafting multiplier afterwards. One HP 50G calculator went for £52.99 and the return on that was about £28!

[MK14]

I have heard that ebay, on purpose, were trying to move away from people selling low value stuff, on ebay. But it sounds like craziness to a number of people, because they are basically getting rid of a huge pile of potential business, by doing that.

Well I have not heard anything specific but that has always been my suspicion. The system was always rigged against low value sales and now they are taking actions which do make things even more difficult. Yes they will lose a lot of business, as I said I once turned over £1900 in one month that quite a lot of eBay fees I mean let's face it what the fuck do they do for me except take the money and provide a standard website? But naturally there are run by experts who know better and I now know better than to sell small items on eBay they can go and screw themselves for all I care. I did put all my stuff up on eBid but nobody seemed to be interested

This is one of the websites which explains a bit about what Ebay did to small sellers. Other website(s) explain why it was done by ebay. I can't remember where that article was, and can't quickly find it sorry.

http://hubpages.com/business/Ebay-Secrets-That-People-Need-To-Know-About

I have a degree of sympathy for Royal Mail though.
Disclaimer: I'm NOT an expert on Royal Mail, so could be slightly or entirely wrong.

In modern/changing times, their delivery service boils down to one of two methods.

(1)...By automatic machinery (mainly), so there is a huge one off cost, for each big machine. But after that payment (and its maintenance etc), it costs about for same for it to handle 1 letter or small packet, or a million, per day. (All figures are extremely approximate). So it is viable for Royal Mail, to charge LESS for letters and smaller items. I.e. Ones that can go through mainly fully automatic machinery, with minimal human contact.

(2)...By partial/full manual handling, and/or delivery by postal van (rather than by the postman on his/her rounds). This applies to bigger items, especially. Inevitably, this is more expensive than the automated systems, and also can cost more, if the number of items increases. Since more staff and/or overtime might be needed.

Also many of the costs (for Royal Mail), are fixed, even if only 1 letter, or a million are handled. E.g. Business premises, permanent staff, vans/trucks, etc etc.

So the modern trends, of emails/texting, online services (some of which use to be more paper based, and hence letters would have needed to be sent out), have potentially drastically reduced the numbers of certain types of mail deliveries.
E.g. Sending Birthday/Christmas Cards/Bills/Bank Statements by email, rather than by post. Hence the business costs of running Royal Mail, can go up dramatically, as a result (i.e. It needs to cost a lot more to send each letter, in order to still make a profit). They also lose business to competing couriers, such as UPS/DHL/FEDEX etc.

I've not been too happy with the Royal Mail sell off in the UK (privatization). I suspect that is a factor in some peoples disappointment in Royal Mail and/or the (apparently) higher prices, that people have been experiencing.

tl;dr
Ebay seems to have gone BADLY downhill since about 2008, because new management, decided to disallow sellers giving buyers negative feedback, and other later changes, which ruined it for small/medium sized sellers.

But Royal Mail issues, may be as much to do with modern times (e.g. dramatic email usage increases, over paper letters) and modern automation machinery, and hence the economics of letters/small packets, versus large parcels, which may need much more human intervention, and hence costs.

[IanB]

Royal Mail has the advantage that while many letter communications can be sent electronically, the delivery of goods and parcels can only be done physically. It has been my observation that for parcel delivery they just load up a van with parcels in the morning and then drive around the local neighbourhood ringing doorbells and handing them over. Granted I have been resident in a town with a dense population, but the service has seemed very efficient to me whenever I have received postal deliveries. There are also two Post Offices within walking distance to send parcels from.

[Simon]

Royal Mail has the advantage that while many letter communications can be sent electronically, the delivery of goods and parcels can only be done physically. It has been my observation that for parcel delivery they just load up a van with parcels in the morning and then drive around the local neighbourhood ringing doorbells and handing them over. Granted I have been resident in a town with a dense population, but the service has seemed very efficient to me whenever I have received postal deliveries. There are also two Post Offices within walking distance to send parcels from.

Royal mail do indeed owe to me and other sellers the fact that they are now in profit and not deficit. Of course when the government was selling off we were told all about how unprofitable they had been but because of the rise of small-scale selling like me and others on eBay they are the de facto choice and they have made a profit on us yet we also are kicked in the teeth by them.

As for eBay I would happily boycott them. You have no idea of the quality of what you are buying and there are plenty of unscrupulous sellers on their which often give people like me a bad name. As I said before I will spend hours replying to messages and helping people with their projects which I'm pretty sure are often uni projects been made by people who haven't got a clue what they are doing just to make a change! EBay also do not pay tax in the UK it is only since recent changes in rules that they are paying VAT to the UK government at which point of course prices went up, surprise surprise. Their fees used to be 8% but then rose to 10% and there are often technical problems with the website which I have had to point out over and over and over again and they still won't do anything about it.

[MK14]

Royal mail do indeed owe to me and other sellers the fact that they are now in profit and not deficit. Of course when the government was selling off we were told all about how unprofitable they had been but because of the rise of small-scale selling like me and others on eBay they are the de facto choice and they have made a profit on us yet we also are kicked in the teeth by them.

As for eBay I would happily boycott them. You have no idea of the quality of what you are buying and there are plenty of unscrupulous sellers on their which often give people like me a bad name. As I said before I will spend hours replying to messages and helping people with their projects which I'm pretty sure are often uni projects been made by people who haven't got a clue what they are doing just to make a change! EBay also do not pay tax in the UK it is only since recent changes in rules that they are paying VAT to the UK government at which point of course prices went up, surprise surprise. Their fees used to be 8% but then rose to 10% and there are often technical problems with the website which I have had to point out over and over and over again and they still won't do anything about it.

The "new" ebay, can help when you buy stuff through ebay.

About a year or so ago (very roughly, it was around Christmas time, a year or two ago), I bought some computer bits, for around £40 total. What I received was basically non-working "junk". It is very likely the seller was lying about the items.
I got absolutely no response by emailing the seller.

So I claimed/complained using the "new" ebay system, and ebay agreed (a number of other buyers had the same or very similar problems, and had left bad negative feedback about it). So I was able to (no cost to myself), print out a postage return label.
I then fairly promptly got all my money back, including postage. N.B. I did not even have to pay, for the return postage either, because of the return label, via ebay. I would NOT abuse such a system.

But I suspect, some other people, may change their mind, or other nonsense, and mis-use the returns system. Hence selling stuff on ebay, is extra worrying, these days. As others have said in this thread already.

[ez24]

There are also two Post Offices within walking distance to send parcels from.

You are lucky.  The nearest two, driving distance, POs to me were both closed.  The next one, 5 miles, has no parking.

[MK14]

There are also two Post Offices within walking distance to send parcels from.

You are lucky.  The nearest two, driving distance, POs to me were both closed.  The next one, 5 miles, has no parking.

I think they are talking about, within the UK.

[ez24]

There are also two Post Offices within walking distance to send parcels from.

You are lucky.  The nearest two, driving distance, POs to me were both closed.  The next one, 5 miles, has no parking.

I think they are talking about, within the UK.

IanB has a US flag, that is why I was surprised that there was somewhere in the US like this.  Maybe wrong flag?

[MK14]

There are also two Post Offices within walking distance to send parcels from.

You are lucky.  The nearest two, driving distance, POs to me were both closed.  The next one, 5 miles, has no parking.

I think they are talking about, within the UK.

IanB has a US flag, that is why I was surprised that there was somewhere in the US like this.  Maybe wrong flag?

I could easily be wrong, but earlier in this thread...

Aren't you in the US?

Yes, but I was visiting England at the time.

So (presumably) he/she is still referring to England/UK ?

The UK has a huge population density, especially in London. So having many post offices, in walking distance, for many households here, works out quite well. But I think the US is both bigger and much more spread out, relatively speaking.
In some cases, the post office, is just one counter top in a small shop, which sells many other things.
E.g. A Newsagents (which sells newspapers, magazines and sweets and stuff, and is very small, about the size of a persons front room).

[IanB]

There are also two Post Offices within walking distance to send parcels from.

You are lucky.  The nearest two, driving distance, POs to me were both closed.  The next one, 5 miles, has no parking.

I think they are talking about, within the UK.

Indeed. One advantage of towns in the UK compared to cities in the USA is that British towns tend to be very compact and densely populated. Where I stay in the UK there are several supermarkets and convenience stores within a five minute walk and many other shops and services within a mile or two.

Here in the US I also have various supermarkets and convenience stores within a five minute walk. I do have to drive to the nearest post office, but a UPS store within walking distance offers some postal facilities.

[IanB]

IanB has a US flag, that is why I was surprised that there was somewhere in the US like this.  Maybe wrong flag?

I have a US flag because it is where I am geographically located. But I have roots in England and visit often (family there).

[ez24]

I have a US flag because it is where I am geographically located. But I have roots in England and visit often (family there).

Just curious - where are your post offices ?

[batteksystem]

I would say that ebay is not really friendly to those who sell used goods, as the return process and SNAD put major risk on the seller's side. Eventually, rational seller will rise they price and margin to cover the risk and kill the market.

On the other hands, it is not much of a problem for people selling new items with detailed specifications, as these would be difficult to challenged with.

[Kjelt]

Delivering physical mail packages to your door step is so 20th century, it just does not work if there is no-one home.
The petrol waste alone for each and every package is rediculous.

They should open large distribution points with 24/7 lockers that have a 16 alfanumerical pincode on them.
The postal service only has to deliver the packages to the distribution points and sent an email to the addressee with the boxnr and the pincode to open it.

[setq]

We have those and can collect from Argos (large warehouse front retailer here) and shops as well. Problem is that a lot of us are in most of the time so that doesn't actually make much sense.

[Kjelt]

What do you mean with " a lot of us are in most of the time " you mean you are at home? Most people that complain about packages are working, now we have to work till we are 70 before we can collect pension that group will grow and grow.

[setq]

No I'm at work and I'm complaining about running a business through the services.

[Seekonk]

Ebay wants to be like Amazon, having sellers sell from their fulfillment centers.  The one of a kind stuff doesn't fit well into their guarantee process.  They want people that sell the same thing hundreds of times.  I had sources that I got stuff for free almost and had a couple thousand small orders under my belt when ebay and post office conspired against me.  Can't compete whith china when selling the smallest part for 10 cents cost over $3 for postage, packing, and fees.  I gave up selling on ebay a year ago.

I own that same HP generator on the shelf.  The chassis bends on it are really crude.  Also have one of the first HP desk calculators (only basic functions) with a CRT.  Takes so long to calculate that it mechanically locks the keyboard.  Memory is a delay line.

[batteksystem]

On the other hands, rare, one of a kind, used, second hand items are moved to specialized venue like etsy, tindie, bonanza, etc I can't say it is bad for ebay, because financially these items may only be a very small part of ebay's business.

[Kjelt]

You actually would like a small community with dedicated and committed people that have an affection with the products.
Like here on the forum, you know who is serious and can be trusted even to ship an expensive piece of testgear.

[Simon]

Ebay started out making money by helping people shift second hand stuff, but now they just want to have new stuff sold over and over with big corporate sellers. Small people are not welcome.