Prices on eBay Lately

[7milesup]

If I put them out at yard sales or CL or FB , there's no shipping costs , and the buyer is holding it in his own hands when making an offer .

I have pretty much given up on Craigslist. The number of scammers is unreal. As soon as I put something on CL I get a text message about them sending me a code to "see if I am real". So tired of that BS. Sometimes I will start texting them back and having a little fun with them if I am bored. Things like "you want me to ship that snow blower to LA, sure I can do that. Give me your credit card info and shipping address" That usually shuts them up.
I believe too that nearly all the spam calls I get now ( a few every day) are the results of CL over the years.

 

[Masterjuggler]

So, as an eBay seller, there are quite a few scammers out there, and it seems to be getting worse. I have never had an eBay purchase go bad on me yet though.

I've definitely had some ebay purchases go through buyer protection. Just recently I won a 3 phase motor for practically nothing, payed the guy, and he never shipped and wouldn't respond to messages.

I bought a "jacobs ball bearing super chuck" a few weeks ago that ended up being a regular 6A, so I put in for a refund. I was never sent a return label so I sent a message asking if he wanted me to return it, and he quite rudely told me to keep it, obviously upset that I wasn't dumb enough to think it was a super chuck.

 

[mmcmdl]

I have pretty much given up on Craigslist. The number of scammers is unreal.

Check out the number of Kubota ads in the Baltimore region ! I don't even bother looking anymore . Seems like all these girls/women are selling their late uncle's tractor for 993.87 . Just send your Email address and we'll hook you up !

 

[Suzuki4evr]

I find that I have MUCH more success with best offers whenz I include a few words in the comments section about why their product isn't worth as much as the listed price lol.

And this works ?

 

[Suzuki4evr]

That said the seller of my rotary table accepted my 20% offer straight away. So who knows.

That said the seller of my live center also accepted my offer of 20% less immediately and then cancelled my order after I paid, thus paying bank fees. Reason.....something about the factory sending them wrong stock or some lame@$$ answer like that.

 

[C-Bag]

I love these threads because I learn of the myriad of possible ways to be scammed. But almost every time for some reason one of my long range search’s finally hits. I’ve been on a search for a batch of steel tube big enough and cheap enough to cover the projects I’ve been wanting to do. And yesterday I hit paydirt. This popped up and CL about 45 min south of here. 51 pieces of assorted tube around 800# for $300. It’s rusted, but in this case that’s no problem.

 

[Janderso]

I would rather sell privately thru websites and yard sales but I have used the bay in the past . Nowadays , I'm concentrating on more specialty tools such as drills , taps , end mills etc and it's not worth the 20% Ebay and PP take out of the deal . For the small stuff , if it doesn't sell , I'll either re-pack it away , bury it in the back yard , or scrap it . I sell quite a bit of stuff on Craigslist and do most of my purchases there . People who are buying and selling can see the actual part and set the price ……………………..most of the time over a cold beverage .

What else you got buried in the back yard?

 

[Barncat]

I sell a fair amount of stuff on eBay. They charge me a flat 10% sellers fee. PayPal gets another 3% on top of that.

Bruce

How the heck did you get it down to 10%? Mine is 13% plus the 2.75% managed payments fee. As a seller, what some other people have said about the make an offer is true. A couple of years ago, eBay just decided to add it to all of my listings. Also, eBay will do promos where I can list something without paying an insertion fee, as long as it has make an offer option. I don’t mind having it on my listings, since only about half of people actually use it, and usually the offer is realistic. I also may not accept an offer if I just put the item on there in the last week or two, and instead wait a little to see if I can sell it for more locally or for a higher best offer later. In regards to the original intent of the thread about prices, yes, some are ridiculous. But if you check sold items, sometimes people actually buy things for crazy high prices, so it is worth it to someone.

 

[Aaron_W]

I've noticed lately that when I put an item on my watch list, it has been common to have some sellers offer me a reduced price, many only like 5% but some significantly lower. The ones to reduce their price substantially have done pretty well getting me to buy it, but that is often because their initial asking price was more than I thought it was worth.


I'm also finding ebay is all about making it easier for them. If bots can handle 99% of the work, great.

I tried to buy a book a while back, the seller had 0 feedback, but it was a good price on a book I was having trouble finding and it wasn't a lot of money ($20 at most) so I the 0 feedback issue wasn't a concern. It also looked like the seller might have been the author of the book (it was a niche fire apparatus book).

I did my paypal, and nothing happened, the seller never even accepted the money. Probably 2 weeks go by, and paypal cancels the transaction because the seller never responded. I opened a report with ebay, with the intent of letting them know that I think that is a dead account, thinking they might want to look into it and save other people the hassle of trying to buy from a seller who is absent. Never got a human response, and once I marked that I got my money back ebay automatically closed the case. Complete waste of my time trying to help them weed out an unresponsive seller.

The other one I've found is shipping. Recently I've had it happen twice, I'm buying multiple items from a seller who says they combine shipping. I put the items in my cart, and click ask seller to update shipping costs. Ebay immediately replies that the seller does not combine shipping. Well the first time I put back everything except the two items I really wanted (had about 10 picked out). The prices were good but I wasn't going to pay $5 shipping on $6-10 items that could all be fit in the same package. The next day seller refunded the excess shipping. I went back a few days later and bought the rest of the stuff I wanted, same deal, seller refunded the excess shipping.
Easy enough to assume the seller checked the wrong box, except I had it happen with a different seller as well.
Ebay doesn't like the buyer and seller talking, so I'm wondering if this is just one more thing where they have decided to get rid of the feature. I don't see where a seller benefits from having to to a partial refund on every transaction and it likely causes a loss of sales when people like me decide it isn't worth the price to ship. If he hadn't had the brochure for 1958 Dodge trucks (I own one) which is not easy to find for a decent price I would never have found out he really does combine shipping, like he says he does.

 

[Grinderman]

Why do some sites like Shars sell things cheaper on eBay than on their site? I was looking at some carbide inserts the other day and they were the same price on eBay and their site but offered free shipping on eBay and $12 to ship from their site.Doesn't make sense to me with eBay fees.