Temp? Coming off ebay

[Rob D]

We are pulling our items off the ebay shop - it has become too painful working on ebay these days... Everything is bent towards the customer with little protection for sellers. It's a great platform if you have high volume large margin goods that you can punt out but it is hard work to list the stuff we have to sell.

 

x2 recent negatives from buyers and it's x2 last nails in the ebay coffin!

 

May go back to listing some items in the future but we also want to bring more stock control onto the website which is not possible if you have the same items on ebay.

 

 

[spuddog0507]

Ebay has changed so much over the last 4/5 years, they are making it difficult for sellers s you say, but who pays the fees ! its the bloody seller, so as more sellers shy away Ebays income is going down, i dont sell any thing on it now, just have a look for certain items and 7 times out of 10 if there is no contact number on the add i dont bother with it, as you say all buyer protection, Had a conversation with a Ebay employee and i asked him why i could not put a contact number on my add and be charged say £10 - £20 a month for the number being on the add ???? oh no we cant do that, well good look then i wont be selling with you no more,

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, Rob D said:

We are pulling our items off the ebay shop - it has become too painful working on ebay these days... Everything is bent towards the customer with little protection for sellers. It's a great platform if you have high volume large margin goods that you can punt out but it is hard work to list the stuff we have to sell.

 

x2 recent negatives from buyers and it's x2 last nails in the ebay coffin!

 

May go back to listing some items in the future but we also want to bring more stock control onto the website which is not possible if you have the same items on ebay.

 

 

That makes sense as you've established a name. It never ceases to amaze me how ebay and amazon reached such a dominant position when in a competitive world you would expect cheaper services to challenge them.

[HuntingHicap]

Rob your website is excellent. I've been perving at the new cannon superlight 36" bar on there, but the £250 is ?

[Ian C]

I don't blame you Rob, I sell very little on there now as the costs are silly and like you say there are too many people taking the pee.

[Dan Maynard]

Deep down I don't trust eBay for new stuff, so even if something comes on a search I always skip across to the companies own website to check them out. Recently done with some paint.

[spudulike]

Done a bit on eBay and purchased all sorts, they are indeed skewed towards protecting the buyer and having tried to purchase hair clippers recently, nothing arrived fecking Chinese and got reimbursed so glad for their purchase protection. 

I am old school, you sell something and it should be as you described. The issue is when you sell a saw and it is flagged as faulty and comes back with half its parts missing. Not something I have had but it has happened or you sell something and the purchaser says it never arrived etc.

I have been lucky so far but prefer to have purchasers turn up so you can show it working and drive in two strokes need oil in the petrol etc.

eBay is a double edged sword, good on some occasions and a pain if it ever goes wrong.

Best you can do Rob is to use it as free marketing....£30 on eBay, £20 from online shop, that sort of thing and don't expect to sell anything on the Bay but use it as a redirection to your site!

[Rob D]

9 hours ago, openspaceman said:

That makes sense as you've established a name. It never ceases to amaze me how ebay and amazon reached such a dominant position when in a competitive world you would expect cheaper services to challenge them.

Ebay and Amazon make the buying process simple - legally it is very very hard for a small business to store peoples information and card details - as in you would not believe the red tape around it. Hence we have to make people put in their card details each time. Paypal is a little better I suppose.. Ebay and Amazon are one click and buy - and it shows the power in this as all our stuff on ebay was 10% more than our website.

 

People will pay more for convenience and ease of purchase - and that's what ebay and Amazon offer.

 

 

[Rob D]

2 hours ago, spudulike said:

Best you can do Rob is to use it as free marketing....£30 on eBay, £20 from online shop, that sort of thing and don't expect to sell anything on the Bay but use it as a redirection to your site!

Yep - we may go back on there but with say only a dozen listings and plenty of indirect advertising to the website. But at the moment we are off it - hopefully business will stay busy enough where we never have to.

[openspaceman]

3 minutes ago, Rob D said:

legally it is very very hard for a small business to store peoples information and card details

I see, so that gives the big two a form of monopoly and that is what the monopolies commission was formed for, it has since morphed in a few steps to the Competition and Markets Authority and a case should be put to them.