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high ebay fees + bad rules, are there alternatives???

Consultant

Consultant

macrumors G5
Original poster
Jun 27, 2007
13,314
36
Due to the impending increase of eBay fee, and change of terms which makes it scammer friendly (seller unfriendly), now looking for alternatives to ebay for selling electronics/computer stuff such as iPhones. Please suggest some options, and plus/ minus, ease of use, payment, amount of scammers. Thanks

Ebay will increase Final Value Fees (with some nominal "decrease of listing fees" designed for the ones who cannot do math) on 2/20/2008:
http://pages.ebay.com/sell/update08/basic/index.html?ov=004KO


Amazon marketplace seems like a decent option but their cell phone store needs some kind of pre-approval.

KNOW ALREADY
Craigslist. Knows the ins and outs. I do sell on it. Don't have to discuss it. Thanks.
 
Interesting. Looks like the biggest increase is for the first $25 of the selling price (an extra 3.5% - or an extra 87.5 cents for the first $25). After that, it's just a marginal increase.

All this means is that people will build in an extra buck into the shipping costs to cover the increase.
 
Good call, reason people are not happy is because ebay's press release highlights "decrease of listing fees" when overall it's an increase.

One of the main areas for contention is the rules change.

"Sellers can only leave positive feedback"

Deadbeats can no longer receive negatives! (Not like many people leave those anyway for fear of retaliatory neg, but some people do leave them). How are sellers going to know who is legit?
 
Yeah, the new rules for sellers is not a good change. I definitely agree with that.
 
ok. i understand why people would not want the change to sellers leaving feedback.

but in a normal non ebay environment how do you ever know who a good buyer is? just playing devils advocate.

to be honest though i havent bought anything from ebay in a long time. i still look alot. but rarely is anything cheaper than retail anymore. if it is cheaper it's used or refurbished, and only like 2% lower. hardly worth it.
 
Solesk said:
ok. i understand why people would not want the change to sellers leaving feedback.

but in a normal non ebay environment how do you ever know who a good buyer is? just playing devils advocate.

to be honest though i havent bought anything from ebay in a long time. i still look alot. but rarely is anything cheaper than retail anymore. if it is cheaper it's used or refurbished, and only like 2% lower. hardly worth it.
Click to expand...

In a normal non ebay environment there aren't people that can hold up your products for weeks because they bid only for fun / do not intend to pay / changed their mind / do not have the money. If they don't have the money, they do not get the product, there is no listing fee on my own web site.

With ebay, it costs time and money to have a bad buyer. Part of the fee MIGHT be refunded by ebay after a long process, but ebay still takes your listing fee. Longer process if the other party is a scammer. Cost of your time is not refunded.

In a normal environment a scammer would have no way to smear your name by leaving a permanent untrue feedback. (I have 100% mind you).

Yup. Because eBay increases its fees every year. eBay + PayPal fees combined is about 7 or 8% of the final price for items in the few hundred dollar range. Compared to CL, products on ebay has to sell for more to get the same amount of money for seller.
 
Consultant said:
Yup. Because eBay increases its fees every year. eBay + PayPal fees combined is about 7 or 8% of the final price for items in the few hundred dollar range. Compared to CL, products on ebay has to sell for more to get the same amount of money for seller.
Click to expand...

It's the PayPal fees more than anything that tick me off. It's getting to where you're better off getting your own CC merchant account.
 
I sell through Amazon 1st, a local B&M store 2nd for used music/movies/games, and only sell through eBay as a last resort. I've also sold games on cheapassgamer.com, and have offered things for sale here.
 
I can tolerate eBay fees, but what ticks me off is the fee that Paypal slaps on you just for receiving the money. I remember I just sold something and the Paypal fee was actually more than my actual fee to eBay. I was like how is this possible, but I'm going to start to look at other means of selling.
 
Just sold a Macbook on eBay:

Final Selling Price: $860
eBay Fee: $14
Paypal Fee: $26!

Yeah, it really, really sucks.
 
There's been threads about this before and they always turn out the same: sadly, there's no real alternative to eBay.

Yes, there's niche things like Amazon or even Craigslist for some things (partially eBay owned, anyway) but there is nothing else that even comes close to the buyer exposure one gets on eBay, so even if you save a few bucks in listing and final value fees, you probably lose out on a lot of item interest.

It shouldn't be this way, but it's what the market wanted. There was a point in time when eBay was big, but there were a half dozen similar (albeit smaller) sites. Yahoo! Auctions was a very good options, as were a few others.

But buyers and sellers kept increasing their eBay business, knowingly giving them a virtual monopoly despite their constant fee increases (this is far from the first controversial rule change or fee increase from eBay) and despite their continued proprietary practices (purchasing PayPal, limited alternate payment methods, preventing promotion of external web sites, etc.).

Now, it's gotten so large that buyers were never leave because of all the seller offerings and sellers will never leave because there's no buyers anywhere else.

:(
 
Yahoo! Auctions. I used to use it, before they started having problems. They've fixed a lot of the old problems, and it now rivals eBay for options.

TEG
 
This whole buyer/seller feedback could have been left more or less as it was but with the comments remaining hidden until both had left a feedback. Until both feedbacks are given it should say "Seller has left feedback, awaiting sellers feedback" or visa-versa.
This would have solved the problems we have right now of how people only give posatives because of fear of negatives.

I have 1 negative, given to me by a seller who could not provided the goods. Im my case I had arranged to collect the goods in person, a 300 mile round trip and when I got to his place at the appointed time he was not there He wouldnt answer his phone and eventually I discovered that he didnt have the goods, so I gave a negative. No apology or explanation from him, just slammed with a negative myself.

Anyhow, I got my revenge later as he was trading from and using a member name of a national mobile phone retailer, so I wrote to the head office and asked them why they were selling phones on E-bay if they could not supply and gave full details on member name, shop address auction number and the sellers telephone number and name. a few weeks later, the member had been deleted. :D
 
Good one for you

A woman who never bought anything from me, ever, was able to leave me negative feedback and ther's nothing I can do about it. :mad: and she defaulted on the item she bid on. Sellers can't feedback about her. What a crock. Makes a person wonder what the h**l is going on here. Where's the justice?
 
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I looked into ebay alternatives. There are a few alternatives out there, but they all suck.
Back in college I used to have a good little side business on ebay. But now the fees are ridiculous. And the shipping cost are crazy too. Sure they offer initial low shipping quotes. But once you add in value protect, delivery confirm, sig required etc, it adds up quickly.
 
Everybody wants everything for free. Consider yourself lucky if you can sell items without paying some sort of overhead costs.
 
After reading a post here about an ebay seller faced with a buyer who claimed he was not sent the computer that was advertised, but the indications are that he was, I posted a message in the ebay sellers forum about ways to protect yourself and this is the message I got

Don't sell anything on ebay that you can't afford to give away.

This is based on a policy that is skewed 100% in favor of the buyer. If a buyer says item is "not as described" or "broken" as far as Ebay is concerned, they (the buyer) gets a refund regardless.

I am looking for online alternatives before I sell my current MacBookPro. I realize there is the marketplace here in MR. So far I have located the Bonanza.com which I am considering. Any other good alternatives?
 
I have not sold anything on my 100% feedback account since then.

Been selling locally on craigslist mostly.
 
Huntn said:
, I posted a message in the ebay sellers forum about ways to protect yourself and this is the message I got

Don't sell anything on ebay that you can't afford to give away.
Click to expand...

does this occur with video evidence sent to the buyer and ebay?

i had one of these situations as prevailed due to video evidence that the item was working, was what i described it as, and shipped with correct packaging.

one should not have to do this but it is what it is. people do what they can to game every system to their advantage.

maybe ebay went down the road of protecting the buyer because ebay was losing money?
 
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