To suspect ebay is trying to drive Viinted and Depop out of business?

I won’t sell on eBay again!

Listed a quite expensive pair of boots for sale on eBay and also on marketplace - they sold on marketplace. Buyer collected in person so I cancelled the listing on eBay

As someone had bid on them at the time of cancellation I was charged a final value fee regardless - utterly ridiculous as no ‘transaction’ had actually taken place. They refused to cancel the charge. Complete rip off.

Vinted wins with it's much better website. I love how easy it is to find the relavent postage label when your buyer has paid....

That said, after initial success my vinted sales have really stalled (massive clear out ongoing). I've been moving stuff over to eBay where it's been selling, usually for more money too.

If someone likes an item on eBay it often turns into a sale, whereas an item on vinted can have tonnes of likes but just sit there. And I've had people try and offer less on stuff I've priced at 3 or 4 quid.

As a buyer it’s vinted all the way. I hate auctions and having to wait for days and the uncertainty. And the buy it now options are often really pricey. I need to stop my shopping habit though so need to stay away from all of them 🙈

Ebay aren't trying to drive them out of business, they're trying to compete. But they dropped the ball a long time ago and I don't think they will win people back.
I think it still has a place, if they look at what Vinted is doing right and make improvements. But not so much for the secondhand clothing market, especially the auction format.

I use both.

Ebay's only advantage, imo, is generally higher price points. Possibly because if you google an item, you may get an eBay link. Things are much cheaper on Vinted. So anything even slightly niche or valuable - off to eBay I go.

But:

• uploading process is much much clunkier than Vinted
• likewise selling/posting
• queries/customer service are a headache to deal with.

I'd rather take less money and more time, except for unusual items.

On Vinted, it's a race to the bottom on prices. I buy on that platform to sell on eBay. It is truly ridiculous what sellers are prepared to accept for all the time and trouble of listing and posting their goods. eBay will always win.

I haven't looked at eBay for clothes for donkeys yonks.
It's far easier to find things on Vinted, as well as being cheaper. I can search, e.g. "Cos" and select size 14 and see all the latest size 14 Cos listings, whatever type of garment; with eBay I have to pick a main category, then one or two sub categories before I'm allowed to pick a size. And if I change something, it'll wipe all my previous filters. Pain in the bum. Also, I've lost the patience for auctions.

Vinted isn't perfect, but it'll remain my go-to for the foreseeable.

It would be nice if there was a site for private sellers and small-turnover businesses. A retro version of ebay. But that's not how the world seems to be.

I feel vinted has the mass market now. I only ever use it as it's so much easier

Nah, eBay is dead in the water

Thanks, but I can’t quite face the lack of anonymity of FB. Gumtree I could do!

I’m surprised that it took eBay this long to act. It’s rested on its laurels and become shit over the years.

There is no monopoly here- no single company has the ability to buy and prevent other selling platforms like Facebook marketplace which is now my favoured platform because its cash based.

@ClaudiaWinklepanda sorry just realised you’re selling not buying. Might still be worth a shot.

Have you tried Facebook. It was ages ago now (my kids are teens) but I got an immaculate Bugaboo from the bugaboo selling group for a really good price. Came with loads of extras. There used to be a few on their that would collect all the models and used to swap them out barely used regularly.

I need to sell a buggy, would Vinted be good for that, or is it really much more clothes based?

I sold something on eBay recently, first time in years, and was horrified by how much I lost in fees and postage.

Also agree that vinted search easier - I was looking recently for a very specific item (smart dress, size 14, tartan) for an event I was attending and found something on Vinted within days. BNWT and paid the price the seller had set - no offers - think all in it was £25 and retail price was over £100.

I'm not going back to eBay. The Vinted app is so much easier, no drop-ship crap, and the sellers generally seem more legit.

Obviously if everyone moves I'll move, but the recent change to fees hasn't changed anything for me.

eBay Became a horrible platform for sellers. Terrible uploading process, always favoured the buyer even through obvious scams, biased feedback options, high fees. I think they’ll have a job on convincing people back. Unfortunately for eBay fewer sellers mean less buyers and lower profits for them. They should’ve sorted it out before Vinted and Depop became so popular.

people putting clothes on for 99p to avoid the listing fees and then getting very low bids and then hit with the selling fee. It was barely worth the time to list something. At least with vinted if it’s not gone after a few weeks you can take it to the charity shop.

No, they're just responding to teh competition. 10 years ago, Ebay was the only place to sell second hand clothing. Now, it's all on Vinted who do it much better and there are far fewer listings from crappy chinese drop shippers. Why would you actively choose to pay a fee to sell on Ebay when you can advertise to a bigger audience on Vinted free? Ebay will still be there, still selling all the rest of the stuff, but Vinted has a good niche. No idea about Depop!

Vinted much quicker to use and no maths required to work out how much you have to charge to cover the postage and fees.

Ebay no doubt losing business to them but I think it’s too little too late now.

I did get really good prices selling my MIL’s old clothes on eBay. As they suited an older market I thought it might be more suitable and it was - brands like Joules and Crew Clothing.

I saw this the other day. It reeks of eBay desperation.

I don't know how Ebay can claw its way back now - they've allowed the site to be dominated by dropship/shein esque clothing sellers who would mark their clothes as being from popular brands when they obviously weren't, which made the women's clothing section a real drag to trawl through. They ruined the search, it used to be solid but now the more you filter the more out it gets, it will tell you that there's (for example) 200 blue fatface shirts with a pelican on, then when you actually start scrolling through, there's only 40 listing, what's that about?
And it's way too complicated to list something, which used to be fine as lots of people would use Ebay to look for a specific item, but now they've somehow messed up the search and filtering you think- why bother?

It's big and unwieldy - vinted makes it quick to spend/make money, that's ultimately the key to it all.

But do you get good prices on Vinted?

I had some Spanx leggings for sale, new without tags. I put them for sale on both Vinted and eBay and on Vinted I got offers for £20 whereas on eBay someone offered £65, which I accepted.

Tbh, I would have been hesitant to accept an offer on Vinted, as I’d heard stories of people not marking the item as received.

This is an effective example of market forces - eBay had a monopoly for ages but it’s really clunky and time-consuming to use so no surprise people stopped using it. I can list a whole bag of clothes on Vinted in the time it takes to list one item on eBay and half of them will be sold within a few days. Vinted has its flaws for sure but it’s now my first place I look for clothes as the sheer volume of stuff means you’ll always find what you want - I wanted some new sandals and had some money put aside but got three pairs on Vinted (black, brown and tan) BWNT for less than the price of one pair new.

That’s interesting, I might give eBay a whirl again. I have been using vinted to sell clothes for a while but it’s difficult to get enough money to make it worthwhile. I used to always use eBay for selling clothes and got decent money for them. I don’t like that with vinted people can always make offers, usually piss-takingly low, at least with eBay you can turn that feature off and the buyer can take it or leave it. I have a bunch of stuff to list now so maybe I’ll list 10 things on each site and see how they do in comparison.