EBAY another perspective as a buyer

[Wowabunga]

FEES FEES FEES lobbed onto the seller... they have gone up from 6% in 1999 to a good sized bite out of my pocket to now 19% today.     Just mailed a 1962 Impala guage set from Maryland to California, and shipping was a rite bit expensive.   Because shipping was so much... the seller gets wacked one extra time at fee time.  

 

 

Buyer paid $118 total, on a buy it now price of $80

 

-$38.00  Fedex Ground

-$8.00  ebay final value fee on $80
-$3.94  ebay's insane final value fee on shipping cost of $38
-$3.76  paypal fees

 

19.6%  to eBay

 

The Joy is Gone.  

 

 

[cahartley]

I have no illusions about paypal fees remaining stagnant after the big split either....... 

Very recently I listed some things for sale and selected 3 days as I always do only to discover a 3 day auction would cost a buck now.

I changed it to 5 days which is still free but I like, and I think most people like, shorter duration auctions.

I HATE waiting a week to find out if I won something I want........ 

[Wowabunga]

I HATE waiting a week to find out if I won something I want........ 

 

 

Remember those days when we used to wait all year and mark off the days on the calendar till the next flea market........

[cahartley]

^ Yes I do and there isn't enough money on earth to wish me back there........ LOL

[trickydicky43richard]

I see new comment about eBay adding import charges to sellers (and buyers) shipping costs especially by eBays Global Shipping Program.

In the last two years buying stuff for my 1939 Chrysler I have never been charged import/customs duty"s by any Australian Govt or Customs Authorities

So why does eBay add import duties when they don't exist.?? I also notice an increasing trend of sellers not wanting to send items Internationally because of 'Yankee" Customs, eBay and USPS Intl Shipping paper work, all mind boggling bull's twaddle.

Beats me, but thankfully I still have the opportunity to fill my Chrysler spare parts bin even if the paper work and shipping costs me more than the item itself.

I have got around the measly sellers who wont help out an overseas buyer seeking rare parts by having a number of new State wide friends take delivery for me and then trans ship to me.

Thanks to Bill, Ted and Dave, you know who you are, Luv's ya all!!

[1912Staver]

As a mainly buyer rather than seller I see ebay as a declining resource . Many of the sellers of old items {as opposed to current or recent manufacture} seem to have given up.  This applies not only to Auto hobby items but also the vintage bicycle and other areas of collecting I am interested in. I still run several searches a week; and still buy a couple of things a month , but nothing like several years ago.

 Between the rising cost of shipping and the reduced offerings, Ebay for me is a shadow of what it once was. I doubt Ebay really cares about us " fringe element" collectors of old stuff. The amount of modern electronics that ebay sells must make the collector segment look miniscule to say the least. So I don't see anything improving from "our" point of view. But as several have pointed out there is for the time being at least no real alternative. Perhaps in time a collector oriented marketplace will evolve ;along the lines of what Ebay was, without the scammers and other pitfalls that were too common in the early days. Just don't expect it to come from Ebay, they have it too good with the current model.

Greg in Canada

Edited June 7, 2015 by 1912Staver (see edit history)

[cahartley]

^ You're right but since ebay went public all they think about is the next quarter as does every other AMERICAN company. 

ANYTHING to keep the share values up.

The goose can produce only so many golden eggs.

[JV Puleo]

I think that its inevitable that ebay will eventually fail. Who would have predicted that Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward or K-Mart would eventually either fail or shrink to a shadow of their former selves. It hasn't happened yet, but with every new incremental charge they make themselves less attractive to sellers and eventually this will open the door to an alternative. I expect they are blind to this. In fact, virtually all big companies are blind in this fashion... think IBM or Wang Labs. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened yet.

 

I've sold a few things on ebay ... the last round was cleaning out my box of brass car parts that I'd bought over the years and will never use. But, I wasn't trying to make a profit. I'd had all of these things so long I don't even remember what I paid for them. I still buy quite a bit but usually odd machine tool related things which can still be fairly inexpensive. I'll also add that many of the early car things I look at are priced outrageously... I tend to take that as an insult, as if the seller thinks all old car enthusiasts are stupid and will pay anything for their (often) junk. In my other collecting field I often remind buyers that they almost always know more about what is for sale than the seller does. If something has been on ebay for a year with a "buy it now" price 5 times what it could reasonably be worth maybe that should tell them that we aren't all dolts.

 

As to their international shipping — about half my "buying" is for a friend in the UK...

Edited June 7, 2015 by JV Puleo (see edit history)

[1912Staver]

I don't see them failing , at least for a very long time. They are evolving into one of the major on line discount retailers . But of new things rather than the internet swap meet/ garage sale they started out as. As old car people we tend to underestimate just how large the market is for consumer goods. Ebay has the best of all retailing worlds, a huge market, a huge inventory {at no cost !!}, and a built in finance system  in paypall.< no interest but a piece of EVERY transaction thru fees, no real estate overhead. I really don't see how they could fail.

Greg in Canada

Edited June 8, 2015 by 1912Staver (see edit history)

[39BuickEight]

FEES FEES FEES lobbed onto the seller... they have gone up from 6% in 1999 to a good sized bite out of my pocket to now 19% today.     Just mailed a 1962 Impala guage set from Maryland to California, and shipping was a rite bit expensive.   Because shipping was so much... the seller gets wacked one extra time at fee time.  

 

 

Buyer paid $118 total, on a buy it now price of $80

 

-$38.00  Fedex Ground

-$8.00  ebay final value fee on $80

-$3.94  ebay's insane final value fee on shipping cost of $38

-$3.76  paypal fees

 

19.6%  to eBay

 

The Joy is Gone.  

The buyer obviously felt it was worth buying.  No matter what any of the fees are, if a person needs something and sees value, it will sell.  It still and will always be supply and demand.  Clearly this buyer felt $118 was a good price for whatever they were buying, and the seller set their buy it now price at what they wanted.  It's a win-win.  If a seller doesn't like the fees, simply raise your prices or don't sell the item on eBay.

 

and, the $38 for shipping isn't eBay's money, that's FedEx's money

 

As a seller, for items I ship, I just use the USPS.  I pay 10% to eBay based on what an item sells for, and a miniscule fee to Paypal.  I never use eBay shipping.  I set my price taking it all into consideration, and if a person thinks it's too high, they won't buy it.  If a person thinks it's something they can use at the price, they'll buy it, and we both win.  If the fees are so high that the sellers must price items out of market, then eBay will suffer.  They can either adjust or make less money.  The buyers and sellers dictate what the fees are based on whether the site is successful.  People are still buying and selling, so the fees are what they are.

Edited June 8, 2015 by 39BuickEight (see edit history)

[John348]

^ I agree, everything comes with a price of some sort. The only time I vend at a swap meet is Hershey and I am paying all sorts of different fees, hotel, meals, fuel, tolls, cost of spaces, supplies and so on I am about $1500 in the hole before I even leave my driveway. Only to get insulted by half of the people who come to "spectate" trying to get everything for next to nothing.

With ebay I don't deal with the insulting hagglers, and story tellers, if people think it is too much they don't buy it, and it does not cost a dime if I don't sell it. 

I found ebay is for buyers and the bottom feeders are sort of left on the bottom. 

I never found the antique car guys to be a problem when they buy, we know what we want and we know what it cost,,,,, however other antique people are never happy.

 

But ebay is still much better (fees and all) then having to deal with trying to sell a $1000 part marked to sell for $600 and have some bottom feeder clown offer $50! 

[trickydicky43richard]

With every transaction there is an element of risk, in my 3 years of buying car bits off eBay only one item has gone missing and that was a local Aussie purchase.

I do get peeved though when an International seller of a rare vintage car part that I need so desperately wont deliver to Down Under.

The States is a relatively plentiful? source of American vintage iron and it frustrates me immensely when I have no chance of finding the part here in Oz. Overall though I've done pretty well finding parts thanks to eBay and in doing so I have developed some great friendships with many a Yankee seller.

My wife and I have been to the US of A  a "cupla" times and cant wait to get back. Any of you guys been here?

[trickydicky43richard]

I've tried to post comment twice recently and the haven't appeared,this a test post 3rd time lucky,R

[trickydicky43richard]

I take it back, so sorry, my previous posts have now appeared, no compehenday !!

[1912Staver]

Hi Tricky, I am right next door to the good old USA ; infact about 4 miles north of Washington State but in Canada, and many ebay sellers will not ship to me. Started slowly about 5 years ago, a few stated no "international " sales. These days it seems like about 90 % of sellers have jumped on the bandwagon. I am lucky in that I have a U.S. address available to me, and it is easy enough for me to pick things up from there and bring it thru customs myself.

Otherwise my ebay  purchases would be almost nil. I realize there are many internet scams out there but at times it strikes me some sellers are either lazy or paranoid.

 

Greg in Canada

[John348]

My problems with international shipping are there is really no way to track it, and damn near impossible to estimate cost

[Cordguy]

Tricky, I don't know about OZ, but New Zealand Post have a forwarding warehouse in Oregon. U.S. only items can be forwarded there, then re adressed to NZ without a problem. Website www.youshop.co.nz. Maybe there is something similar over there.

[Wowabunga]

This might be worded like one of those scammer emails but it's the truth..... drum roll.....  someone PLEASE bring up the house lights...

 

I've SAVED $500 DOLLARS in ebay fees the past 6 months by utilizing smaller niche websites.  

 

I'm charting on the office wall how much of my sales no longer go towards unnecessary fees.  With the ever rising cost of shipping, dragging all this stuff to the swap meets is starting to make sense again.

[Wowabunga]

But ebay is still much better (fees and all) then having to deal with trying to sell a $1000 part marked to sell for $600 and have some bottom feeder clown offer $50! 

 

 

Learned from a old time Carlisle vendor how to respond to the bottom feeder clown:  Gene would turn bright red and kick and scoof that he'd throw the manifold in the river before he'd sell anything to such a person.   It helped that he was 300 lbs and looked like the cartoon Mr. Clean.  

[John348]

Learned from a old time Carlisle vendor how to respond to the bottom feeder clown:  Gene would turn bright red and kick and scoof that he'd throw the manifold in the river before he'd sell anything to such a person.   It helped that he was 300 lbs and looked like the cartoon Mr. Clean.  

 

Sounds like me, but I am only 275 lbs, I respond by telling them I did not get this fat by selling stuff cheap

[Harold]

This might be worded like one of those scammer emails but it's the truth..... drum roll.....  someone PLEASE bring up the house lights...

 

I've SAVED $500 DOLLARS in ebay fees the past 6 months by utilizing smaller niche websites.  

 

I'm charting on the office wall how much of my sales no longer go towards unnecessary fees.  With the ever rising cost of shipping, dragging all this stuff to the swap meets is starting to make sense again.

I've found the same thing.  I post on whatever classified bulletin board caters to the type of stuff I'm listing.  I've had people contact me on ads I posted several years prior and buy the item if I still had it.

 

Do you have any niche websites you'd care to share?

[trickydicky43richard]

G'Day Cord Guy in NZ, us "Skippy's in Oz ( a land of droughts and flooding rains ) as far as I know  dont have a similar system as you " NZ Kiwis" do in the "Land of the Long White Cloud" !!

I have been relying on some very special "Yankee" friends to help out by taking delivery and trans shipping to Oz, but it is not always economical all of the time.

Say do you have a Cord ?? I'm Jealous, beats my 1939 Chrysler, but I still love it,

Tricky (Rich)

[padgett]

If you don't like e-Bay, don't use it. Of course it is easy for me to say, everything winds up in Florida & in my part, rust must be imported.

[danleblanc]

Here's my recent experience with eBay and PayPal that have prompted me to stop selling outside of Canada or the United States.

 

I sold a 1961 Cadillac cruise control to a chap down under.  This was complete and working.  So complete it even had the rubber grommet to plug the non-cruise speedometer cable location.

 

When listing it, I had accurately input the item weight and dimensions.  The buyer hit the buy-it-now button, and eBay's shipping calculator worked out the shipping to be $103.50 USD on top of the $500 for the setup.  I shook my head.  Since I live in a bordertown, I checked with USPS, FedEx, and UPS in the US, and Canada Post, Purolator Courier, FedEx, and UPS up here in Canada.  Couriers and USPS were in the $300 USD range (I wasn't about to take a $200 hit after taking a $90 hit on the selling fees), so, Canada Post was the best option with only a $30 impact to me.

 

So, off it goes.  I emailed the buyer with the tracking number and expected delivery date from Canada Post - 8-12 weeks via International Surface.  Obviously, the buyer didn't pay any attention, and the eBay shipping estimator put the transit time at 4 weeks.

 

The parcel made it across Canada in a week and was loaded onto a container ship.

 

4 weeks + 1 day, the buyer files a non-receipt claim with PayPal and they immediately deduct the 603.50 USD from my account ($754CAD) and I had to cough it up, even though we were still within the shipping standard set by Canada Post (heck, we still had 1-2 months left).  PayPal investigates, and closes the claim in the buyer's favour.  So, I appealed and they granted an extension of 1 month.  After having regular updates forwarded from Canada Post to PayPal, we were able to keep the dispute open.  I made several calls to Australia Post and Canada Post as Paypal was threatening to close the dispute if a resolution wasn't found.  What a bunch of headaches, long distance charges, etc.

 

So, finally 10 weeks in the item delivers and the buyer asks if I got paid by Canada Post for the item because it wasn't insured.  Of course I didn't - the item delivered, so why would they?  Anyway, after providing tons of documentation and finally getting the buyer to admit he had the item, PayPal finally closed the dispute in my favour.  It still took two weeks for them to collect my money.  For 10 weeks, I had $754 tied up on this sale and spent about 24 hours in phone calls, emails, and about $100 in long distance.  Simply wasn't worth it.

 

The other time I shipped a carburetor spacer out of country.  It never arrived at its destination.  I had moved a couple months after sending it.  A year after I shipped it out it was forwarded to my new address in 18 pieces.

 

Shipping in Canada or the US, I've never had something go missing or damaged.  If it's going to a US destination, I take it across the border and ship it FedEx.  If it's going in Canada, I take it to the post office.  That simple

 

It's not that we don't want to send stuff out of North America, it's that most of us have been burned bad enough to say, sorry for the offer, but no.

 

Not to say I wouldn't ship to someone from outside Canada or the US who had a US address I could send to that would forward on the package.

[auburnseeker]

I ship international daily.  You are really missing the boat if you don't,  especially if you sell in any volume.  I do have a problem or 2 a year but I have a problem or two with items domestically shipped as well at about the same frequency. 

Unfortunately it's the cost of doing business.  The part I despise is the ebay fees on your shipping.  I often send a 10.00 item international so the shipping is 10-20.00 and they hit you on that.  It's really disgusting considering you aren't making a profit to any degree on that international and in the end your shipping amount doesn't cover the cost of shipping and the cost of the fee.

 

A new one I have been experiencing lately for about a week is a problem with the search function.  I always search by newly listed every night,  about 30 different searches.  Now it will keep flipping back sometimes right in the middle of the search in a page or 2 to best match.  What use is best match anyways?  I can list 3 nos 1965 Mustang parts with almost the same exact title then do a best match search and they won't come up together much less even  on the same page.   What determines which item is a best match?  Sometimes they don't even have my keywords in the title.   I even opened a thread on it on ebay community and others are having the same problem but ebay won't do anything about it. 

[trickydicky43richard]

G'Day Danleblanc, I am sorry you had a bad experience sending something to OZ, we are not all like that.

Besides how do we here "Down Under" find spares without the help of E Bay and our friendly US and Canadian sellers.

The old rule is "The more you sell the more complaints you will get" sad but true,

Any way my apologies and , Hooroo !!

Tricky Dicky

[trickydicky43richard]

OR is it "Murphy's Law" always prevails ??

[Machinist_Bill]

A new one I have been experiencing lately for about a week is a problem with the search function.  I always search by newly listed every night,  about 30 different searches.  Now it will keep flipping back sometimes right in the middle of the search in a page or 2 to best match.  What use is best match anyways?

I have had the same thing happen to me. Drives me nuts! If you refresh it goes back to page one. I thought my JAVA script developed an attitude.

[auburnseeker]

This little glitch could just be the start of the demise of a company that's getting to big to fail  (we know how that all turned out for the ones that did)  The only thing they have on their side is very low overhead as absorbed by their millions of employees (independent sellers like me)  They don't seem to want to listen to regular users like me.  I buy around 20,000 in parts off their every year and my sales are around 100,000  plus.   I know I'm only a small guy but enough guys like me go somewhere else and they may feel it.

[K8096]

After hearing Danleblanc's experience with paypal just arbitrarily taking money out of his account for an international shipping problem he had absolutely no control over, can anyone blame the small time, occasional USA based e bay seller from only wanting to use the e bay international shipping program?  It's easier to just ship to the shipping center in Kentucky & wash your hands of the situation.  If the buyer doesn't get the item and complains, e bay or paypal can't take money from me as a seller since I'm not the one who shipped it overseas.       

[keiser31]

It all boils down to the fact that evidently, Ebay can charge whatever they want and add charges that they think (or don't think) is justifiable. We, as small guys/gals have nothing to say about it. Actually, we can say all we want about it, but those who run Ebay don't care to listen. They are making millions at this point, so why would they listen to us?

[1912Staver]

As for the "if you don't like it don't use it" comment , I don't think it is  realistic to see such a big part of the old car hobby in such Black and White terms.

 That would return us to the days where the vast majority of cars needed to be well preserved survivors ; needing at most  paint, chrome and interior, to be suitable for a Collector to own. Anything less was just a parts car or the basis for a street rod.  Trying to restore anything in worse condition was a near endless series of letters and phone calls, and was only resorted to in the case of the rarest , oldest , most valuable  cars.  Or the poorest and most delusional owners.

  Ebay made the sourcing of parts and project cars so much more practical , and really was a game changer for the hobby.  But it was never perfect; in the early days scams abounded, and today all the add on cost's and increased risk to the seller have much reduced it's attractiveness.

  But to say take it or leave it is a gross oversimplification of a complex situation.

  I will of course continue to use it, there is no practical alternative for the forseeable future. Some deals are smooth and at a reasonable cost, others not so smooth or at a near painfull cost. But it is really the only show in town, to turn my back on it completely because it is not as good as it once was would from my point of view be foolish.

 

Greg in Canada

[keiser31]

Greg....you are absolutely correct. "Can't live with it and can't live without it" comes to mind....

[Wowabunga]

When a good part of one's income comes from online sales, the little details begin to add up.  A sad shipping story, as the Paypal automated machine took/stole/grabbed/recinded $125 from my account ( overseas dispute ) two days before Christmas.   When that was the only money I had for last minute shopping well that really bit me hard.

 

After 2 months Paypal closes dispute in buyers favor.... but... but... but... the US Postal service says in black an white it may take something like 3 months to do their investigation.   Eventually find out just shy of 3 months package had been delivered, late but delivered.  Buyer took the paypal refund, took the nos part and ran, closed his account.

 

After 6 months...  I GET A EBAY REP ON THE PHONE.   SHE SAYS AFTER THIS TIME THERE'S NOTHING THAT CAN BE DONE.   So I'm balistic, and ask for a supervisor.  Supervisor does her thing and says "THIS HAS TAKEN TOO LONG, AND WE'RE GONNA GIVE YOU A COURTESY REFUND".  I promptly told the gal I didn't want a courtesy refund, I wanted my money RETURNED.  I told the gal hey I did everything by the book, have every receipt and document, and it was eBay who took money from my account ( Dec 23 of all days ) and put it in the hands of a thief.

 

I've used my fee savings the past 6 months and bought me a nice little single axle enclosed trailer to vend from.  Am doing a LOT more swap meets, and way lot less online selling.

 

 

Edited June 14, 2015 by Wowabunga (see edit history)