Have used eBay for 20+ years but feel people aren’t viewing / watching as they used to…

[applepiesuxx]

are people moving to Vinted?

has anyone else noticed less movement / views etc on eBay in the last few months?

@tectonicplates the buyer pays for postage, but only set amounts, and they choose, though you can turn some options off (can't turn off ups though).
If you wanted royal mail you would turn off everything else you could, and have to set as medium parcel. This is set price of £3.30, you can't add extra for signed for. This gets 'held' in pending until the buyer confirms receipt, so you have to lay it out too

If you have an Evri drop off point nearby, it's a lot better process, as the label is bought for you

Do you have a breakdown of eBay costs please
e.g. Thinking of selling x item.
for e.g. £10 for the item and £3 postage
But not sure where ebays costs get factored in ?
much appreciated in advance for your help.

I've moved over to Vinted. More bargains and easier to use as a buyer and a seller.

So basically offering UPS is compulsory? So the buyer chooses UPS and then it gives you a label to print, so you don't have to pay for it? Are there enough UPS dropoff points in big cities? It all sounds a bit complicated.

I wouldn't want to use Evri (aka Hermes) as they are the worst courier company and have a reputation for losing parcels. I never understand the MN view on this - loads of people say they hate Evri and will refuse to buy something online if it's being sent by them, and yet as soon as you ask for advice about the best way of sending Ebay/Vinted parcels out, suddenly everyone recommends them as they're cheap.

I find it very strange that they don't have an option for Royal Mail Signed For as that would be my preferred method.

I haven’t bought anything used off EBay since I bought a short wool coat that was an absolutely vile colour nothing like the photos and not true to size. The seller refused a refund and EBay turned down my appeal. Strangely I had felt that EBay was moving to favouring buyers and found it less appealing to sellers so haven’t sold anything on there for ages either.

Sorry, another question: On Ebay I give free postage (which I factor in to the item price) as it gets you better visibility and a lot of people here say they'd only buy things with free postage. Do I take it that the attitude towards this is different on Vinted, i.e. that there's an expectation that buyers pay for the postage?

Also how much commission do Vinted charge the sellers? A few Google searches have suggested that it's free and you receive the full price, but surely that can't be right?

I barely use eBay now anymore. Because it’s been taken over by stuff that takes a month to be delivered from China. I know you can adjust the settings to second hand only but vinted is much better for second hand stuff. Also, I don’t like the auction format.

tectonic, on Vinted the buyer pays all fees, not seller. So yeah, that's why you get stated full price. I don't know anything about best postage options on Vinted, though.

Sellers get 100% of the fee, buyers pay a buyer protection fee (a small percentage of the sale price) and given that most sales will have no issues this is how Vinted make their money.

You can do custom postage if you want to send it a different way to the pre-set options given by Vinted but I buy ones with cheaper postage (usually Evri) and with the option of pick up points. I wouldn't pay for first class signed for when there are people offering cheaper options.

I have bought and sold lots using Evri and Yodel options and never had a problem.

I have sold a few empty gin bottles too.

Used to use ebay a lot, but now it has too many sellers from China and even if you search for UK only they can still be from China. Unless you check the ad thoroughly you can easily miss it.
Also no longer seems to have genuine bargains. its more like an alternative storefront for a lot of shops, loads of things on buy only, not actually an auction anymore.

I use ebay a reasonable amount, nothing much seems to have changes other than I'd say if you're selling with a 'buy it now' in place if you aren't the cheapest in the search listinga then it won't sell, but that's common sense and I often drop whatever it is a few pence below that and it then sells. Clothing seems to stay on there for ages and doesn't sell for a lot unless it's branded.

I always run whatever I'm selling through one of the online ebay fee calculators to make sure it's actually worth my while but we are right next to a post office so no travel cost or inconvenience and I just package in recycled packaging from parcels I've had prior.

I mainly use ebay for buying 2nd hand books. You can get them for two or three pounds delivered which is a good saving on buying full price. I read an awful lot so it saves me a fortune.

Hmm. Maybe I'll try putting one or two things up on Vinted to see how it goes, rather than moving everything over from Ebay straight away. I'm still really confused about the postage issue.

I stopped selling on eBay when they started including the postage fees in the amount they charge their fee on.

The only items that were really worth putting on there for me were large furniture items which people would come and collect and pay cash for.

These days I sell on MarketPlace. Most items are collection only, but happy to post smaller stuff. It works well for me as no fees.

So if you put item at £10 and postage, eBay take a cut of each ? What's the percentage rate please ?

@Hawkins001 - sorry, I couldn’t tell you what it is anymore, as haven’t sold on there for over 7 years now.

eBay take a flat 10% of the entire transaction. If I sell something for £6.50 + £3.50 postage, that's £10 total & eBay take £1.
Actual postage is £3.35 (unrecorded , 2nd class)
Pretend my time is worthless & parcel tape is free.
Payment handling (Adyen?) takes 3-5% (complicated fee structure).
So £10 - £1 - 50p - £3.35 = £5.15 received on a sale nominally for £6.50.
is best case scenario.

Most the stuff i sell is for charity & ebay waives their 10% on the sale price for charity items, so on a charity sale, if I put postage fee up to about £3.80, I can obtain the full £6.50 for the charity.

Any refunds (due to problems, I'm dealing with a failed delivery now) comes out of my pocket, though I can get committee approval on reimbursements when that happens. And it took 9 months to set up the charity.

The reason why eBay started taking a percentage out of postage fees was to stop people from evading fees. Before they started doing this, people frequently used to do things like selling a small item for 99p and then charging £9 for postage.

Anyway, so many buyers prefer free postage that I switched to free postage a few years ago and just put it into the item price instead. So if I want £9 for an item and the postage will cost me £3, then I just list the item for £12 with free postage. It also means that you can't be marked down for postage costs in the detailed seller ratings, since everyone who offers free postage gets an automatic 5 out of 5. It's actually reduced a bit of the stress for me.

I'm still amazed that people are deluded enough to think my postage is really free, but there you go.

But anyway, it does sound like Vinted have found a way around this by getting buyers to pay separately for the postage so that postage money doesn't go through the seller's account in the first place. I'm just really nervous about using Evri. Everyone seems to want the cheapest postage yet there's frequent posts on here complaining about Evri losing parcels.

That's understandable

Much appreciated thank you

Bad experiences as a seller have put me off ebay so I don't use it nowadays.

@tectonicplates I've just checked, and I've sold 122 items on Vinted. I would say 100+ of them are Evri/ Hermes. Plus whatever I've bought. In that time, I've had one parcel go walkabouts that turned up about 5 days later. I've had about 10 yodel, and 1 of those went missing too.

The buyer pays the fees. So if I want to sell an item and clear £6, I list it for £6, or maybe £7.50 then send out an offer for £6 when it's favourites. The buyer has £6 item, a buyer protection fee of 30p + 3-10% of the item price, depending on what it is, plus their choice of postage on top. If I was buying a ladies top for £6, it would cost me about £8.75 for it to be posted to my local collection point. The seller would receive £6 into their pending account until the buyer or Evri marks as received. At that point they have a few days to raise an issue, if it's not raised quickly it's assumed okay and the money clears in the sellers account