Post by Claire on Oct 19, 2009 11:37:34 GMT 1
Well folks have finally closed my ebay shop
I may sell the odd thing on there but for me ebay has rapidly gone down hill lately. Not such as a seller but as a buyer toom as I never seem to be able to find anything now without ploughing through endless stuff from merchant shops in China!
I'm not sure if anyone is aware but ebay have now forced sellers to charge free postage for all media items including books. Now this might sound like buyers will be getting bargains but in reality I think that the bargains will be getting fewer and far beween. We all know that sellers who charge free postage have just included it in a higher item price and this is what will be happening on ebay in the case of the business sellers. In fact as ebay will also be getting extra comission as sellers put their item prices up to cover postage costs, some sellers will also add that extra commission to the item price making prices actually go up. There also seems to be some worry that it will be nigh on impossible for sellers to offer mutliple item postage discounts.
At the same time private sellers who took advantage of free listing if they listed their item for 99p or less on auction are now scuppered, as the listing price won't even cover the postage of most books if one is not allowed to charge extra for postage.
So all in all I predict in a few weeks the bargains and interesting stuff will start disappearing from ebay, and it will begin turning into another on-line shopping mall - which is no doubt their purpose. There is more money to be made from the big merchants than from the small businesses and private sellers.
I have now started moving my stuff onto ebid. You may not have heard of it, and at the mo its pretty low key. I think it has the potential to be a new alternative to ebay if enough people are made aware of it. Their advertising/marketing strategy is pathetic. If I were them I would be getting ads on the TV now in order to grab all the people leaving ebay. But instead we have to rely on word of mouth.
It is worth joining. It is free to list stuff and hopefully in the coming months there will be lots more people joiining and getting on the bandwagon.
For anyone who wants to check it out the site is:
ebid.net
I am squirrelnutmeg on there too!
I may sell the odd thing on there but for me ebay has rapidly gone down hill lately. Not such as a seller but as a buyer toom as I never seem to be able to find anything now without ploughing through endless stuff from merchant shops in China!
I'm not sure if anyone is aware but ebay have now forced sellers to charge free postage for all media items including books. Now this might sound like buyers will be getting bargains but in reality I think that the bargains will be getting fewer and far beween. We all know that sellers who charge free postage have just included it in a higher item price and this is what will be happening on ebay in the case of the business sellers. In fact as ebay will also be getting extra comission as sellers put their item prices up to cover postage costs, some sellers will also add that extra commission to the item price making prices actually go up. There also seems to be some worry that it will be nigh on impossible for sellers to offer mutliple item postage discounts.
At the same time private sellers who took advantage of free listing if they listed their item for 99p or less on auction are now scuppered, as the listing price won't even cover the postage of most books if one is not allowed to charge extra for postage.
So all in all I predict in a few weeks the bargains and interesting stuff will start disappearing from ebay, and it will begin turning into another on-line shopping mall - which is no doubt their purpose. There is more money to be made from the big merchants than from the small businesses and private sellers.
I have now started moving my stuff onto ebid. You may not have heard of it, and at the mo its pretty low key. I think it has the potential to be a new alternative to ebay if enough people are made aware of it. Their advertising/marketing strategy is pathetic. If I were them I would be getting ads on the TV now in order to grab all the people leaving ebay. But instead we have to rely on word of mouth.
It is worth joining. It is free to list stuff and hopefully in the coming months there will be lots more people joiining and getting on the bandwagon.
For anyone who wants to check it out the site is:
ebid.net
I am squirrelnutmeg on there too!