Would you really sell on ebay ?

[wraper]

I put a note with every ebay or amazon order inviting people to buy direct.

You can get banned for that

[ataradov]

You can get banned for that

Not if you just put this information into the package with the item. It is only the issue if you put it in the description of the item on the site itself.

[wraper]

You can get banned for that

Not if you just put this information into the package with the item. It is only the issue if you put it in the description of the item on the site itself.

Ah, read it wrong. Thought it was in listings.

[Simon]

Yes I put the note in the package, many sellers do but I'm blunt about the fact they just got ripped off as dealing through third parties actually costs me money and time which is money. I tell ebay every time that I have a problem with them I do this because of the hassle they are.

[olkipukki]

+ paypal also want to charge 46,50

eBay is going away from PayPal...
At least, if you're a business seller, you can setup directly and avoid PayPal fees.
Of course, you will need to agree eBay T&C such as give a direct access to your bank account and wait 3-5 days* until $ hit your account 

* assuming you're selling regulary and "qualified" don't wait the delivery confirmation + NN days 

[olkipukki]

When all is said and done, losing 12% - 15% in return for reaching a potentially world wide audience -  is actually not a bad deal when you are selling a single item.   If you are selling high volumes... you need your own site as well as (not instead of) eBay, because eBay can still bring in new customers that weren't aware of your business previously.

The funniest part of some high volume traders sell cheaper on eBay than through own website 

Either a competition is really tough there or they assume 'loyal' direct customers are .......   

[olkipukki]

Yes I put the note in the package, many sellers do but I'm blunt about the fact they just got ripped off as dealing through third parties actually costs me money and time which is money. I tell ebay every time that I have a problem with them I do this because of the hassle they are.

Well, is there nobody yet tried a trick such as - Return request "Don't like it" or "Doesn't fit", and eBay automatically approve this return with a shipping cost paid by you (as a seller)?
Later, a buyer went to your website and has bought cheaper there 

[Simon]

Yes I put the note in the package, many sellers do but I'm blunt about the fact they just got ripped off as dealing through third parties actually costs me money and time which is money. I tell ebay every time that I have a problem with them I do this because of the hassle they are.

Well, is there nobody yet tried a trick such as - Return request "Don't like it" or "Doesn't fit", and eBay automatically approve this return with a shipping cost paid by you (as a seller)?
Later, a buyer went to your website and has bought cheaper there 

I'd like to think customers are honest. I have indeed signed up to the ebay money management system, it avoids some fees but I am sure they will raise fees soon enough.

Yes some sellers sell cheap on ebay, it's probably due to extreme competition and the mark up that they have that allows them to drop the price for sales volumes. I am the opposite. I sell what I sell, I don't take the piss and if you don't want to pay go buy some cheap rubbish. If I sell on ebay it means I either add the ebay costs on top or don't bother.

I don't actually sell as much on ebay as I do on my own store.

[SilverSolder]

When all is said and done, losing 12% - 15% in return for reaching a potentially world wide audience -  is actually not a bad deal when you are selling a single item.   If you are selling high volumes... you need your own site as well as (not instead of) eBay, because eBay can still bring in new customers that weren't aware of your business previously.

The funniest part of some high volume traders sell cheaper on eBay than through own website 

Either a competition is really tough there or they assume 'loyal' direct customers are .......   

I've seen that too, on many manufacturer's sites the prices are the worst.  I guess they don't want to compete with their distributors/resellers...

[Simon]

No it's the actual sellers own sites are often marked up. But those are normally mass produced goods that are sold with a large markup especially if sold from china or from a rep on some european industrial estate so they have margins to reduce prices on ebay. My scenario is the opposite, the less it costs me to sell the less I charge.

[SilverSolder]

It's always tricky to find the optimal price.   https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/optimal-price-definition-meaning/

[Ground_Loop]

Yeah, it's expensive.  But I put stuff up on eBay anyway, because - who knows - someone might just desperately need the obscure item that perhaps doesn't have a high value to me.  I'm always grateful when someone has listed e.g. some strange transistor from their parts bin that I can't find anywhere else.

There you go.  I've sold $200K + on eBay in the past 20 years--including some pretty high-value items over $10K--with minimal problems and while I can complain endlessly about various things from silly policies to lack of customer service, I can't make the case that the service isn't worth the money.  I just sold two Tek CCD hybrids to a guy 2000 miles away with a spiky 2430A and he was even happier to get them than I was to sell them.  The odds of that transaction happening outside of eBay is quite low and both his and my scope would have just gone in the junk otherwise.

The biggest issue with eBay right now seems to be inexperienced sellers that don't know the rules nor how to pack anything.

I'm pretty sure I'm the one you sold them to. Thanks again.

[EEVblog]

Ebay is charging 105 euro if i sell something for 1000.
+ paypal also want to charge 46,50
according to this site :
https://finalfeecalc.com
Would you really sell something and give them for then 150 euro for the service ?
crazy

It's not crazy, you are paying for the huge search audience.
Most sellers charge more on ebay to compensate, I do.

[Simon]

Ebay is charging 105 euro if i sell something for 1000.
+ paypal also want to charge 46,50
according to this site :
https://finalfeecalc.com
Would you really sell something and give them for then 150 euro for the service ?
crazy

It's not crazy, you are paying for the huge search audience.
Most sellers charge more on ebay to compensate, I do.

That is the only reason I bother with ebay and yet I still sell around as much if not less that my own site does. They are not wortch the money from a platform perspective, they are just a massive referal fee agent. Try running an actual business and dealing with them. Invoices that come downloaded in a zip file and are in HTML rather than PDF - because they can not give a toss about customers who gladly come back for more punishment because it's the only way to sell.

I try to buy direct from peoples websites rather than through ebay/amazon but it can be hard and feels like they have just taken over anyway. I see Amazon are starting to call sellers partners, that is insulting! I am a ripped off customer, their back end is as complicated and hopeless as ebays but even more expensive to use so once again, note telling you how ripped off you are and how I am worse off as a seller.

[peter-h]

Ebay works. Yes it isn't cheap but it is hard to sell something secondhand any other way.

Ebay also have very good SEO and they pay google a lot of money for the ranking, IOW they pay to expose your advert.

Otherwise, nothing stops you knocking up a website and stick a page on it entitled "For Sale" and see what happens. I can tell you... nothing will happen I've been running a couple of websites; one for 20 years and one for 8 years and both have excellent SEO, but it took all those years, and above all a lot of relevant and verbose content.

The main thing to watch, IME, is stupid people buying something which they then don't want, or they thought it was something else. Paypal (mandatory for Ebay in the UK, at least) gives people 45 days to change their mind. And the world is full of truly stupid people So one needs to do

- very good photos, showing the entire item close-up
- a very good and honest description; not the usual Ebay one which is often illiterate and way too brief
- a clear statement of what is included ("you will get what is shown in the photos")
- reference reviews (ebay no longer allows URLs so tell people what to google)
- not sell junk

IOW, make it hard for stupid people to buy the item, and if they do, cover yourself so a Not As Described claim is likely to fail. Paypal are bast*rds anyway and protect mostly the buyer...

If selling IT gear (cameras etc) sell them FAST and as soon as you bought the replacement; if you sit on stuff like that for a year, it will fetch much less

I've had some problems but only a few, out of many hundreds of items sold.

BTW I had a curious one the other day: a buyer who bought a £200+ item, but has zero feedback and joined Ebay the same day. "Obviously" a fraud, but apparently Ebay now allows "guest" buyers and that is how they appear. Time will tell...

[Simon]

The old buyer is always right is a bit of a myth both with paypal and ebay. On both I have disputed claims and won. If someone is trying it on they generally get told to go away. I had one idiot buy a µCurrent off me. He claimed not as described because it did not turn up with the PCB screwed to the base. I went to town on the guy, I immediately escalated it to paypal and wrote back to him knowing that they would read it also that this is a piece of precision engineering equipment and if he was too stupid not to be able to put 4 screws in he had no business buying it in the first place. Guess who won!

[Jan Audio]

In my country we have marktplaats.nl its free.
Maybe this could be international also somewhere a free site ?

[tggzzz]

If selling IT gear (cameras etc) sell them FAST and as soon as you bought the replacement; if you sit on stuff like that for a year, it will fetch much less

I knew the person responsible for HP's PCs, before he defected to be a Microsoft VP. He explicitly compared selling PCs with selling bananas: if left on the shelf too long they start to smell.

BTW I had a curious one the other day: a buyer who bought a £200+ item, but has zero feedback and joined Ebay the same day. "Obviously" a fraud, but apparently Ebay now allows "guest" buyers and that is how they appear. Time will tell...

I explicitly state that I won't sell to people with inadequate feedback. I haven't had to invoke that, yet.

[james_s]

If selling IT gear (cameras etc) sell them FAST and as soon as you bought the replacement; if you sit on stuff like that for a year, it will fetch much less

I knew the person responsible for HP's PCs, before he defected to be a Microsoft VP. He explicitly compared selling PCs with selling bananas: if left on the shelf too long they start to smell.

BTW I had a curious one the other day: a buyer who bought a £200+ item, but has zero feedback and joined Ebay the same day. "Obviously" a fraud, but apparently Ebay now allows "guest" buyers and that is how they appear. Time will tell...

I explicitly state that I won't sell to people with inadequate feedback. I haven't had to invoke that, yet.

I've had that problem a few times, I don't think they will let you enforce it though. I once sold a computer and I had a zero feedback bidder put in the high bid at the end and then vanish. I did a little poking around and realized that the next highest bidder had an almost identical machine listed for sale. After I gave a second chance offer to the next highest bidder and heard nothing I looked deeper. I'm quite certain what they did was create a fake account and use that to bid against themselves and drive the price up higher than the one they were selling, then abandon the fake account. I relisted it and it sold for about what I was expecting the next week.

[tkamiya]

I really don't have problems with fees.  But I had really bad experience with some buyers back 15 years ago or so.  Since then I have not sold a thing. 

The buyer contacted me at 45th day on 30day return guarantee.  No power cord.  Says doesn't work.  My posting said no power cable.  He argued over IEEE definition of cord and cable.  He says he won't agree to "your arbitrary" rule of 30 days.  He emailed to ISP, CIA, FBI, local sheriff, state attorney's office, post master general, etc, etc, etc.  Ebay was no help what so ever.  I just deleted my account and vowed to never sell anything there.

By the way, none of the agencies mentioned above ever contacted me.

[SilverSolder]

I really don't have problems with fees.  But I had really bad experience with some buyers back 15 years ago or so.  Since then I have not sold a thing. 

The buyer contacted me at 45th day on 30day return guarantee.  No power cord.  Says doesn't work.  My posting said no power cable.  He argued over IEEE definition of cord and cable.  He says he won't agree to "your arbitrary" rule of 30 days.  He emailed to ISP, CIA, FBI, local sheriff, state attorney's office, post master general, etc, etc, etc.  Ebay was no help what so ever.  I just deleted my account and vowed to never sell anything there.

By the way, none of the agencies mentioned above ever contacted me.

1) You ran into one out of a hundred thousand chance of dealing with a total fruitcake...

2) eBay has made major changes since 15 years ago, disputes are much easier to resolve now than in the "bad old days".

[tkamiya]

1)  You go ahead...  I'm staying put.
2)  That may be so, but fruit cakes are in season.

[james_s]

I really don't have problems with fees.  But I had really bad experience with some buyers back 15 years ago or so.  Since then I have not sold a thing. 

The buyer contacted me at 45th day on 30day return guarantee.  No power cord.  Says doesn't work.  My posting said no power cable.  He argued over IEEE definition of cord and cable.  He says he won't agree to "your arbitrary" rule of 30 days.  He emailed to ISP, CIA, FBI, local sheriff, state attorney's office, post master general, etc, etc, etc.  Ebay was no help what so ever.  I just deleted my account and vowed to never sell anything there.

By the way, none of the agencies mentioned above ever contacted me.

Sounds like the guy on this forum a while back who was trying to argue that an item that is missing any of the of the accessories that came with it or has any wear & tear or damage at all needs to be listed not as "used" but as "for parts or repair" 

[Simon]

1)  You go ahead...  I'm staying put.
2)  That may be so, but fruit cakes are in season.

Fruitcakes and crooks are still a problem. I sold some sensors to a guy using the stock image of that series, it had 8 pins in the picture yes he was distraught that it actually had 6 as now all of his boards were wrong  . I was like how could you make boards without looking at the datasheet (that also had the 8 pin image) which shows the footprint and the number of pins.

Ebay were helpless, there was nothing they could do. The guy then decided it was OK and went on to buy another batch from my website.

Bearing in mind i sell them for about what RS buy them for so no one in the world can sell them at the price I do and I don't even bother to mark these up on ebay such is my margin on that particular part. H saved more than I made but was still trying it on.

[CatalinaWOW]

1)  You go ahead...  I'm staying put.
2)  That may be so, but fruit cakes are in season.

Fruitcakes and crooks are still a problem. I sold some sensors to a guy using the stock image of that series, it had 8 pins in the picture yes he was distraught that it actually had 6 as now all of his boards were wrong  . I was like how could you make boards without looking at the datasheet (that also had the 8 pin image) which shows the footprint and the number of pins.

Ebay were helpless, there was nothing they could do. The guy then decided it was OK and went on to buy another batch from my website.

Bearing in mind i sell them for about what RS buy them for so no one in the world can sell them at the price I do and I don't even bother to mark these up on ebay such is my margin on that particular part. H saved more than I made but was still trying it on.

Clear violation of the accurate description rule mentioned earlier in the thread.  How hard is it to take a picture or two of what you are actually selling?  Or add a sentence saying it is a stock picture and what you are selling is the six pin version?