Great news. Ebay drops seller charges!

[bikeworkshop]

Thought I'd give the eBay postage option a go, buy their label so to speed up the process. Wrong. Postie has arrived 2 days running with no label. Cheers eBay - now I need to buy more expensive postage to make up for lost time. Guess I'll stick to purchasing it myself and denying you the shares.

Rant over.

I sent a pair vintage wildgrippers through evri (hermes) ebay postage - i use royal mail but tyres and wheels are too big for them.
When the item wasn't collected by 3pm, I checked tracking, to find i had cancelled the collection - which i definitely hadn't.
EBay?

As a result I had to detour to drop it off at a shop, and then got trapped in a 2hr motorway closure. All for £3.60!
That's value!

 

[M_Chavez]

The only carrier that I still can rely on, especially for large-sized boxes is UPS. And they even do a same-day booking & collection if you book before noon.

 

[Canuk]

Yup, it sucks that they hold on to your money once the item has been delivered but I've noticed that now, the amount earned (in your balance) can still be used against eBay purchases even before it's eligible to be withdrawn (which I haven't noticed before).

They've actually copied line for line the buyer protection and 'buyer pays the fees' from the well known French sales site 'Leboncoin'. It's embarrassingly identical!

Leboncoin holds your money for 3 days after it's received! But it's nowhere near as brutal and brisk as eBay - which is not at all popular in France, as they see it as 'foreign interference ', which essentially it is

They also have a thing called automated feedback, where if the buyer leaves no feedback after 4 days you get an automatic positive. Very helpful.

This move is a surprise, but perhaps a reflection on the popularity of sites like Leboncoin and Wallapop in Spain which are hammering eBay in the used goods and garments markets. I've seen a few stats saying that the split is 80/20 in France, but then again eBay has never been popular here.

Prices on Leboncoin are very competitive and always less than you'd pay for a similar item on eBay. Plus teyt use shop to shop delivery, and also Mondial Relais which has thousands of brand new lockers throughout France, it's a very reliable service and takes the post office out of the equation. The average price for a 2-3 day delivery is about 3 quid. Big items like frames and wheels only cost a tenner.

I've heard there are similar new big outfits taking on eBay in Germany and Italy, so it looks like eBays stranglehold on the market is finally at an end. Poor wee lambs.

 

[M_Chavez]

From my finger in the air estimate & talking to others, the number of ebay punters appears to have dropped significantly in the last few years.
There's also a ridiculous amount of chancers trying to shift absolute crap at crazy prices, which ruins buyer's confidence in everyone who's selling there.
UK gets the double whammy as I don't think folks have any spare cash in their pockets over here. The country's broke, as are the people living in it.
Ebay has been great in offering to manage insured worldwide shipping - I reckon at least 70% of the stuff I sold over the last couple of years went overseas, shipping, import taxes and all.

I'm not a business seller by the way, just been out of a job for 5 months last year and had to jettison a lot of the stuff that I own but don't really use that often.

 

[bikeworkshop]

There are similar new big outfits taking on eBay in Germany and Italy, so it looks like eBays stranglehold on the market is finally at an end. Poor wee lambs.

Let them sob into their 7billion profit,

while their almost complete lack of liability:
for product legality and sales taxes
isn't keeping them awake at night.

Poor little tech billionaires.
Barely enough private islands to share between them

 

[Canuk]

Unlike eBay they can't take money OUT of your account, their buyer protection generally pays for any sales which go wrong. My son's a professional sports photographer and he buys and sells cameras and lenses on leboncoin all the time. When he was a student it was his main source of income, better than working a shitty bar job and the tax threshold here is a lot higher so he never paid any tax on the earnings.

It's pretty much viewed the same as a boot sale here - just people recycling stuff they no longer want or need. There are professional sellers also, who have to register for tax but again they pay no fees to sell. I don't think there's much scrutiny of small time sellers, and sales you make offline, face to face are actually encouraged, which no one makes any fees from. All in all it's an excellent service. The only thing you can't exchange is email addresses, but you can arrange a meet with a buyer and telephone contact without any problems.

 

[M_Chavez]

Oh yeah. Protection money. I nearly crapped myself when I read it first time.

 

[Canuk]

Just for an example, I bought 3 nice frames, recently in a Face to Face. A clean SLX with good chrome, a Giant Cadex Carbon and an Italian Wilier , (no forks) for 80 euro the lot. Met the guy halfway in a car park after work, cash/goods exchanged a quick chat and deal done. Twenty minutes out of my day. No fees either way. No feedback possible on the site. The guy was glad to get rid of them.

Facebook Marketplace must be really hurting eBay also. They'll probably find a better way to monetize it soon, so fill yer boots!

 

[Twozaskars]

The only carrier that I still can rely on, especially for large-sized boxes is UPS. And they even do a same-day booking & collection if you book before noon.

Parcelforce still best for me, frames/forks/wheels can be picked up from my house on a 48h service and they bring a label. They often get delivered next day. On the rare occasion he doesn't have the label he writes on the box and takes it anyway. The driver at my old house also did this at times. £9.65 up to 5 kilos. Only serious problem I had was using 24h service, they absolutely destroyed the parcel but did pay up after a week of communication.

 

[Fifthgrace]

Nobody has mentioned 'Brexit', but I used to find my main market for bike sales and purchases was with fellow Europeans. The import duties have killed it both ways...