I closed my ebay account

natehorn · 2022-09-23T08:44:57.957Z

sabana:

It feels extortionate.

Works out at less than 10% total at Reverb, that’s very modest - although I’m sure we’d all like it to be free.

They actively market your listings with PPC, handle payments and processing (which as an individual would cost you at least 3-4% on their own) and they manage and host an entire web experience that probably needs an office of 80-100 people.

I don’t think running a physical auction house is neccessarily more expensive either.

As comission goes it’s pretty modest - if there was room to undercut it, someone would. But they would likely provide a service you’d post here complaining about

darenager · 2022-09-23T08:48:10.851Z

Even worse they demand photo id and bank details now, this was the last straw for me as a seller. Not to mention a lot of their pages simply don’t work properly, regardless of if I was using the app or in a browser, I’d too often get pages hanging, endless loops, and the “oops something went wrong” message.

It does not inspire confidence, and no way would I upload financial and personal ID to a company that can’t even get the basics right.

sabana · 2022-09-23T08:53:49.041Z

Hmmm. But £130 in Reverb case for one days online experience as you put it is like a day at a hotel resort. And when you have to factor in your the one paying for postage it feels money lost rather than a bargain.

darenager · 2022-09-23T08:57:01.165Z

sabana:

It feels extortionate.

I agree, for all intents and purposes it costs ebay no more to host an item that sells for £2000 than it does for an item that sells for £20. So it should be a flat fee really. That they take fees from postage cost is a piss take too.

A physical auction house does a lot more for their cut, although they often take a chunk from both buyer and seller. A lot of auction houses now have online reach with digital auction aggregators too.

sabana · 2022-09-23T08:57:56.334Z

Absolutely. Physical auction houses have to store and insure the items. Online dont.

darenager · 2022-09-23T09:01:57.927Z

Plus you can check items out before bidding, or ask for a condition report if you can’t make it to the auction.

“Auctions” on ebay always bugged me too, a flurry of bids in the last seconds allowed sniper tools to exploit bidding, rather than the bidding being continued as in a real auction or in proper online auctions. This scenario is worse for sellers, worse for buyers and worse for ebay, but great for snipers exploiting the silly limitation.

natehorn · 2022-09-23T09:15:22.743Z

sabana:

But £130

darenager:

it costs ebay no more to host an item that sells for £2000 than it does for an item that sells for £20.

Yea there is a point to this that I don’t disagree with - having some kind of ‘cap’ on the fee would make more sense - however these rates will be balanced to make it simpler - there’s a good chance that if there were flat fees that you would be paying more on the smaller items you sell. Ultimately the company still needs to generate the same turnover, however you slice it.

Reverb probably treat small sales as ‘loss leaders’ and make back some of that on the larger sales through the flat percentage.

darenager:

A physical auction house does a lot more for their cut, although they often take a chunk from both buyer and seller.

I think that this is wrong personally. I suspect a lot of people underestimate the work and money that goes into creating and maintaining online products like ebay/reverb - they’re far more expensive operations than any auction house I’ve come across, apart from maybe some of the larger ones that also have their own online products and charge higher comissions.

This conversation always boils down to the same conclusion - that if you didnt find their service valuable, didnt enjoy their reach or featuresets, then you wouldnt use it. Someone better, cheaper would have come along in the last 25 years. You always have Facebook marketplace.

Which to be fair is your point @darenager - as you are quiting - so you are at least having conviction in your opinion so I respect that

DoS · 2022-09-23T09:29:33.550Z

natehorn:

if you didnt find their service valuable, didnt enjoy their reach or featuresets, then you wouldnt use it. Someone better, cheaper would have come along in the last 25 years.

There’s always Audiofanzine - certainly here in France I’ve used it far more than eBay these days and much more than Reverb - and it’s free for buyers and sellers (unless you opt for their secure Looper payments, which I have not as yet). There’s a reputation score for participants, and so far it’s been great.

natehorn · 2022-09-23T09:32:47.088Z

DoS:

There’s always Audiofanzine

Not heard of that one will check it out - some places do seem to have more localised options.

‘Free’ tends to come with a lot of drawbacks in my experience - but it is possible to run these things properly with enough cooperation

Symian · 2022-09-23T09:33:03.313Z

I wish there was much more stuff to snipe at personally, I’ve never used tools to do it but the thrill of winning something in the dying seconds of an auction is pretty good especially if you get a decent price… few and far between now…

natehorn · 2022-09-23T09:35:47.468Z

I kind of don’t want to promote it too loudly but I actually get most of my good deals as ebay auctions. It’s by far the worst way to list anything as a seller - it guarentees you a sale at the end date, but you will almost always make less on it. In the UK anyway, may vary regionally.

There are tactical ways to bid on auctions too, as the amount in which you need to bid to outbid someone else needs to exceed a certain threshold that’s relative to the cost of the item. With more expensive items you can sometimes lock yourself into a good price way before it’s ended as the only way for someone to outbid you is to overpay.

Btw grats on the 1999 account thing @darenager - even if you are abondonding. Mine is (nearly) that old and the last time I contacted support they treated me like a VIP because of it haha. It was a nice touch tbh

Fin25 · 2022-09-23T09:47:46.848Z

I sell a fair bit on eBay, but I only sell when there’s a discount offer on the seller’s fees, so I rarely pay more than about 3% in fees, which feels reasonable.

I’m not over the moon with all the managed payments bullshit, but I’ve learned to live with it.

My two biggest issues with it are that the app is still an absolute piece of shit to use a lot of the time. It is slowly getting better, but the amount of times that I’ve had to log in via a browser or speak to their customer services to deal with fairly trivial issues is a bit annoying. eBay have been around long enough and made enough money that their app should be the fucking gold standard of app design, but it’s like something from 2010.

Secondly, it’s way too easy for Barry Timewaster to return items when there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s happened to me twice where a buyer has claimed a fault, so I’ve had to fork out to have it returned and, lo and behold…it’s not faulty. There doesn’t seem to be much room as a seller to dispute these bullshitters when even I can smell their bullshit a mile away.

I prefer selling on here, but it’s a much smaller pool, so sales often require 1990s levels of patience, which I mostly don’t have.

natehorn · 2022-09-23T09:53:38.094Z

Fin25:

I rarely pay more than about 3% in fees, which feels reasonable.

That’s basically just the card processing fee - ebay are technically losing money in that case - so it’s a low benchmark for reasonable haha

But a good tip none the less - I always seem to miss the damn things but other people I know exclusively sell during the offers.

Symian · 2022-09-23T09:55:27.986Z

Yeah I’ve been at it so long on there I’ve got my own system for spotting stuff that will probably sell cheaply, I think most auctions that end cheaply now are also those of Inexperienced sellers, listing stuff at the wrong time of day with super low start prices that just encourage nibble bidder and chancers, sellers that know the market and understand it properly always start their auctions at a price close to what they’d like in hopes that the bidding will pick up and take it to what they really want for their item…

darenager · 2022-09-23T10:02:10.554Z

I think the managed payments system was the final straw for me as a seller, not because I love paypal, but simply because if I sold something for £500 the payment was instant and the funds available instantly.

Often I’d sell something to buy another thing, so I sell a synth on Saturday for £500, I buy the thing I want using my paypal balance immediately after selling, on the Monday I’d ship the item to the seller, and on the Tuesday 9 times out of 10 the item I bought would arrive too.

Now a lot of sellers, quite rightly, won’t post until the money is in their bank account, which can take longer than a few days, so it slows the whole process down.

I guess it is less of an issue for people who have a dedicated ebay bank account.

natehorn · 2022-09-23T10:05:08.707Z

darenager:

Now a lot of sellers, quite rightly, won’t post until the money is in their bank account, which can take longer than a few days, so it slows the whole process down.

I’ve never had this - in fact I’m fairly sure it’s against ebay policy isn’t it? Does that not impact the payout?

The money is held in escrow and is protected so there’s no reason for it anyway.

This is something that never bothered me but how you’ve explained it I can see it being an issue for some people. All my purchases are on a credit card anyway so my ‘IN’ doesn’t need to rationalise with my ‘OUT’ (until the end of the month anyway…). I can see that being an issue though for sure.

I guess they were giving a lot of money to PayPal, who were shouldering a lot of risk in transactions?

Reverb are good with this once you’re an established seller as the fund get approved as soon as you’ve shipped, although it does still take a couple days to make it to your account.

darenager · 2022-09-23T10:10:54.656Z

natehorn:

I’ve never had this - in fact I’m fairly sure it’s against ebay policy isn’t it? Does that not impact the payout?

Not sure, I had to wait longer for shipping when they first changed it, but I have not bought from ebay much since then though, only a couple of cheap things.

Mumdad · 2022-09-23T10:21:37.305Z

natehorn:

Btw grats on the 1999 account thing @darenager - even if you are abondonding. Mine is (nearly) that old and the last time I contacted support they treated me like a VIP because of it haha. It was a nice touch tbh

Haha yeah, I don’t think I’d ever used their chat support before the other week and they were almost saluting me for my ‘service’ since 2001. I felt old.

darenager · 2022-09-23T10:33:45.908Z

Hah, I just remembered they sent me a card once with a valued member exclusive phone number on it, and they did have a very good telephone support on the rare occasion I needed it, any problems were dealt with swiftly and instantly whilst still on the phone.

I think for me, all the things I valued about ebay changed, and in the meantime other better platforms which suit my needs better arrived. At one time though when it was at its peak, ebay was the only game in town for me.

sabana · 2022-09-23T10:34:19.953Z

Reverb bump is a sneaky way to make extra money as well. Do you need it? I never use it but still have loads of views.