To think selling on Ebay is a bit rubbish?

[KitKat1985]

Made it one of my resolutions this year to clear out some clutter around the house. I thought I'd set up an Ebay account as a good way to do this. But honestly I think I'm done with it. Even if it goes smoothly if I'm only selling some bits for a couple of pounds by the time Ebay take 10% of the final bid and P&P, and then paypal charges, it's hardly worth the effort that goes into walking to the Post Office.

And there are so many cheeky fuckers on there I honestly can't be bothered anymore. I sold a couple of maternity dresses for 1p (yes, 1p - I was hoping if I started bidding low it might encourage more bidding, but it back-fired, hey hum) and the person who bought the dresses still felt the need to quibble about the £4 P&P, for two dresses that she bought for 1p each.

The latest incident that has taken the proverbial is I offered to sell an item for DH. It's a piece of sound-engineering equipment which cost nearly £1500 new, but he no longer needs it and so he has decided to sell it as it's large and heavy and is taking up a lot of space (obviously therefore being sold as a collection only item). Someone won the bidding for £100 (which was dirt cheap, so they got a bargain). However they haven't paid or responded to my messages about when they want to collect / how they want to pay for the item. I've opened an unpaid item case but from what I can gather all that will happen if the buyer doesn't pay is the buyer will get a ticking off and that's it. In what other auction in the world could you bid on an item and then get away with not paying if you are the winning bidder?

I think I'm just going to sell the rest of our clutter on the Facebook selling sites. At least if people muck you about on there you don't get charged listing fees for the privilege.

I only use buy it now as well, and don't list anything that will clear less that £5 in profit. Under that I give it away. I wait until I've got about 10 items and list them all at once which makes the process much quicker and buy cheap postage bags to make the parcelling up easier. I do the labels at work. I've only ever had one thing 'go missing' but accept it will happen again. It's still worthwhile as I'd get nothing for the stuff otherwise.

I send everything to the charity shop now well BHF as I love seeing how much has been made from the gift aid emails.

I found I was making a loss with eBay or pennies waste of time!

Recommend doing an advanced search to see how much similar items have sold for to see whether it's worth it and what price to set.

"99% of the time side with the buyer even if you do everything by the book they often get to keep the item and get a full refund."

Sigh...... NOT true.

Yes, if a buyer reports a problem with the item eBay will make you refund but ONLY when they have returned it.

The only time they won't have to return is it is if the seller ignores all communication about the problem / return request.

Certain items get more chancers in my experience. Dh sold 2 high value items a phone and speaker and both unpaid. Annoying. I think they hope you post without paying in error?? Local selling on Facebook has different issues, v low offers, sob stories and wanting delivery. Again selling a tv on there brought out all sorts of chancers.

You can set a reserve price on auctions, it's invisible to the buyer and you can list the item for auction starting at 99p. That way you get more interest.

Also the best time for an auction to end is a out 7 or 8pm on a Sunday (people aren't busy then usually) and while it costs money to set the end time, you can avoid that by starting the listing exactly at the right time of day. In fact the best bet is to do it on a Thursday evening and pick the 10 day option to get maximum exposure. Also hold stuff over till it's not in the shops. I sold my maternity cost for 5 quid more than I paid for it new when I stuck it on eBay one year at the end of January.

Reserves are a minimum of £50 so no use for anything less than that, plus I think they tend to put people off.

19lottie82, I suspect the "always side with the buyer" comments are from people who've had items stolen ("not received") who then have had no back up from ebay, even when proof is submitted.

I have done a bit of selling on there in the past - I've had good and bad experiences, but it's the sheer cheek of people that gets me riled up. Whether it's people who expect to collect the item in person, even though you made it crystal clear that it's postage only, those who bid then don't pay (and don't get any reprimand from ebay), through to other sellers reusing your photographs and descriptions on their own sales...

eBay is crap now, I have been on it for 16 years and now only use it for buying.

Use Gumtree for now, but unfortunately eBay have bought it, do no doubt it will turn crap too at some point.....

Yes, but ebay and PayPal state that to maintain your seller protection you must use a method of postage with a proof of postage to maintain their seller protection. If sellers choose to ignore this then they only have themselves to blame.

I've recently sold seven items. One buyer refused to answer any messages so I opened a case. He'd done it to several other sellers this year too so was clearly a real time waster. Three weeks on, he's still on eBay. They're pretty toothless.

One buyer asked me to end an auction for an armchair and we handled the transaction in person away from eBay, last night. I didn't feel any guilt in light of the above (if eBay hadn't been so useless I'd have refused her request as per the rules). They're happy to take the commissions but they are not sufficiently robust with time wasters and cheats, so tough luck.

I sometimes get asked to end an auction and sell outside eBay. I've never done it though.

Why not use Paypal for collection items?

ThatWasThat - if a dodgy buyer claims they never received/picked up the item and the seller cannot prove otherwise, PayPal will often take the buyer's side and refund them.

I think that there may be PayPal fees to pay too, but not sure (I always take cash)

Thanks, I hadn't considered that .