Would you really sell on ebay ?

[Jan Audio]

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

[madires]

Have you tried their platform for small advertisements?

[wraper]

Would you really sell something and give them for then 150 euro for the service ?
crazy

Another option is to not sell at all. Good luck finding buyers by other means, especially internationally. You may sell something by other means of course, but you won't go far with that. Especially if you want to sell a lot of specialized items.

[Jan Audio]

Have you tried their platform for small advertisements?

No, i am looking to it now : https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/selling-classified-ads?id=4167
I have the feeling they still getting my money, with charging for the buisness-tool or something.

Thanks, i look into it.
Have you used that ?

[madires]

Have you tried their platform for small advertisements?

No, i am looking to it now : https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/listing-tips/selling-classified-ads?id=4167
I have the feeling they still getting my money, with charging for the buisness-tool or something.

Over here it's free as long as you don't post more then 50 ads in 30 days.

[Siwastaja]

They basically have the monopoly. All the buyers are there. It really sucks and shows how competition does not always work. One of the problems is that to give a good service, you need to couple the marketplace with the payment transfer service, and bank services are regulated and full of legacy issues, you can't just go and start up a new Paypal.

Yes, I have sold on Ebay; some $100 fee out of a $800 film scanner. At the time, the total fee for Ebay+Paypal was 12% IIRC. It's totally ridiculous. They are making some serious money out of it. But the buyers are there.

[AndyC_772]

Would you really sell something and give them for then 150 euro for the service ?

The fees aren't the issue. If you can sell the item for €150 more then you could otherwise by using a popular platform with lots of potential buyers, then you're no worse off. At least you know the fees in advance, and from time to time they do offer a £1 final value fee promotion.

The real problem selling on Ebay is there's next to no seller protection. I've had a couple of bad experiences recently, one buyer who was ridiculously picky about the condition of the outer packaging of the product they bought, and another whom I'm sure damaged a perfectly good product and returned it to me as defective; there's no way the dents and sharp scratches it had when I got it back could have happened in the post without the box also being damaged - which it wasn't.

Selling on a forum might be one option, but there seems to be an unwritten rule that anything sold that way must be at a price which is highly favourable to the buyer compared to what the same item might fetch on Ebay, more than wiping out any saving in fees. They're not free from dishonest people either; just ask the idiot who offered to sell me an alloy wheel some years ago through a popular car forum, then tried to disappear with my money.

If anyone knows a better place where I can sell a couple of repaired / serviced hi-fi amps and a PS3 console, do please let me know. I just want to deal with an honest buyer at a fair price... seems that may be too much to ask these days 

[bdunham7]

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

So figure out your total expenses for selling on eBay and compare that to any other method, like setting up your own physical store, website, whatever.   Or, sell on some free platform like Craigslist and see if you get the same money.  I sell on eBay all the time and although I try to use Craigslist and save on fees, it is only a fraction as effective as eBay and that is in a huge, huge local metro market, possibly the largest in the world for electronics and test equipment.

[ataradov]

Ebay is the only real option for international transactions, so yes, if I wanted to sell something like this internationally, I would pay them $100+.

If you are not selling multiple items, but just one thing you have, then local solutions are much better. In the US Craigslist is a very good option.

[james_s]

The fees are highway robbery, I'm particularly annoyed by the fact that they charge fees on the total transaction including the shipping cost which is inexcusable when you buy the shipping through ebay so they know exactly how much you paid and it's impossible to pad the postage cost. If you sell something cheap that costs a lot to ship you can actually lose money on the transaction which is a totally crap situation. Because of this I don't sell anything bulky unless I use BIN at a price that will make it worth my while. Then recently they disabled the version of the mobile app I had been using and the updated version requires a newer version of iOS than I have. Between these and the other issues people mention, I rarely sell anything anymore, only stuff that I really just want to get rid of and don't care if I make a profit or the occasional item that I think will bring top dollar. Blocking the mobile app that was still working perfectly drastically reduced the amount of time I spend browsing and the amount of stuff I buy too. Used to be my favorite way to kill time while waiting for something was to browse ebay on my phone, it's much more cumbersome in a mobile browser so now I don't even bother unless I'm really looking for something specific. Oh and the stupid sponsored items that get inserted all over the place, it makes the filters useless. Sort by lowest price and on the top, in the middle and at the bottom of each page you'll have a bunch of sponsored listings which are always the most inflated prices, it's infuriating.

[SilverSolder]

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.

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.

[bdunham7]

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.

[james_s]

The packing thing is exacerbated by ebay's fee structure and the way they encourage sellers to offer free shipping. There is very little incentive to properly pack things unless they are high value. Packing costs time and money and properly packing an item makes the packaging bulkier and heavier which costs the seller more in fees. I have had irreplaceable vintage items get smashed on multiple occasions, the dollar value was not high but it still meant one less of them around because the seller didn't know how or couldn't be bothered to pack it properly.

[wraper]

The packing thing is exacerbated by ebay's fee structure and the way they encourage sellers to offer free shipping. There is very little incentive to properly pack things unless they are high value. Packing costs time and money and properly packing an item makes the packaging bulkier and heavier which costs the seller more in fees. I have had irreplaceable vintage items get smashed on multiple occasions, the dollar value was not high but it still meant one less of them around because the seller didn't know how or couldn't be bothered to pack it properly.

Unless it's ultra chap and tiny item, in most cases crappy packing happens due to incompetence rather than packing costs.

[Alex Eisenhut]

I guess you could use Kijiji and post the ad in all the different countries?

[Scrts]

I remember long time ago they didn't charge much for a listing if starting price was <$1. So... I had a spare account ready to fake-bid higher than my expected sale price, however I sold the item for more, so didn't need to.

[eti]

I've sold a handful of items over the years, each time the experience was okayish, often tedious. Now I can hardly think it worth the time, everyone wants their cut, rude customers etc. Nope, you can keep it. 

[james_s]

I remember long time ago they didn't charge much for a listing if starting price was <$1. So... I had a spare account ready to fake-bid higher than my expected sale price, however I sold the item for more, so didn't need to.

That's called shill bidding. Not only is it against the rules and will get you kicked off ebay and permanently banned, it is a crime in many jurisdictions that can lead to arrest and jail time.

[CatalinaWOW]

My experience is that Ebay works.  It isn't fun.  It isn't cheap.  But it works.

If you are not a big seller there are no fees to list an item.  So it works to find out if there is a market for your widget.  Anywhere.  Some just don't sell.  And it is good to know that.

If you live somewhere other than Silicon Valley or someplace similar it provides access to a much larger market than Craigslist or other similar venues.  You can test this in reverse.  Pick your favorite DMM or O-scope and look for it on Ebay.  You will likely find several of them for sale, at a range of prices and conditions.  Now look for the same thing on Craigslist or whatever.  My experience is that you rarely find anything, and when you do it is priced as if made of solid gold.

The for sale area on this site has been second best for me, and generally is far less productive than Ebay.  There are exceptions.  Some things that just don't move on Ebay find avid buyers here.  But overall it remains in second.

While there are many things that can go wrong for a seller, in a couple hundred transactions I really haven't had any problems.  Maybe I've just had a very lucky run, but it seems like an acceptable situation.

So for me, the bottom line is that I have got more value out of Ebay than I would have from other venues, and saved more vintage stuff from the dumps than I could otherwise have achieved.

[tggzzz]

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

You need to compare those fees with other selling channels. I expect you will find they take a 15% cut as well - frequently from both the buyer and seller.

You need to compare the selling price with the selling prices on other channels. I have got some rather nice bargains from local auction houses.

[SilverSolder]

Keep in mind that it is the buyer that pays the fees, and the shipping, and the sales tax, etc.,  in reality...   Just make sure your price covers all the costs!

[james_s]

Keep in mind that it is the buyer that pays the fees, and the shipping, and the sales tax, etc.,  in reality...   Just make sure your price covers all the costs!

Easier said than done. If I end up selling the item to somebody who lives in the next town over it is much cheaper than if I sell it to somebody who lives on the other side of the country. Since I pay fees on the money I spend on shipping in addition to the money the item sells for I have to be really careful to not come out negative.

[jogri]

Apart from maybe one or two items i've used the regularly occuring promo codes to sell my stuff: Those give you a fixed 3€ sales tax, and you get 50 of them. If i was unsure about selling some gear i just put it up for a price way above market value so that no one is going to buy it in a hurry and either removed the listing or lowered the price when i knew if i would keep it or sell it.

The only real problem i have with ebay is the abysmally bad seller protection: I've sold a HV PSU that had a rather peculiar design where it had a power resistor in series with the output, and the buyer used it for electrolysis (he was probably too dumb to realise that electrophoresis and electrolysis are not the same thing), cooking the resistor in the process. Complained after two weeks that it arrived damaged, ebay refunded him completely and i got a negative review from him, a broken PSU and lost quite a bit of money in shipping charges for a 30 kg PSU. (Btw, the next buyer of the repaired PSU needed help finding the power buttom on the front of the unit [not sure if he should play around with HV if he fails at this], so maybe dangerous items on ebay attract quite a lot of morons)

[Simon]

sometimes they do deals but ebay is not cheap because they don't have to care. I severely mark up my products on ebay (the few that I can be arsed to put on there) I put a note with every ebay or amazon order inviting people to buy direct.

[wraper]

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

You can get banned for that