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

[frankentall]

eBay's fee-free fashion listings are presumably because they have noticed people using other selling apps, but if they win people back from those platforms I fear they will abuse their position as a virtual monopoly supplier.

I doubt they will

I’m feeling very sour towards eBay after seeing how much they’ve deducted in fees on my last sale.

Even dropping sellers fees for clothes won’t tempt me back from Vinted. That the postage costs are nothing to do with me is a huge attraction there.

I thought the same, but I think it's been beaten. As a seller vinted is far easier, the postage is a lot better and I don't have to faff around working out what to charge to cover the fees etc.
As a buyer vinted is easier to find what I want, recommends items based on brands, themes I like and remembers the sizes, and it's a lot easier to scroll through than the ebay listings.

I’m so disenchanted with eBay. When I first started selling with them, it would be unusual for items not to sell. Now I have most items go for weeks without any views, and I’m convinced it’s because I refuse to pay the absurd fees to “boost” my listings, and therefore they are just not seen at all.

I find Vinted less convenient but at least stuff sells.

There's no abuse of position here. eBay isn't a monopoly supplier. If they bought Depop, Vinted, Gumtree, Threadup, Craigslist etc they might be a monopoly, but they certainly aren't now.

Of course eBay will be competitive and try to win back customers from Vinted. They're a business. It's no different to, eg, Sainsbury's price-matching with Aldi or McDonald's starting to sell a bigger range of coffees to compete with places like Starbucks.

Personally I find Vinted much easier, as a seller, than eBay.

I wouldn’t use EBay to sell clothes again if they paid me to use them. A nightmare with scamming buyers.

I haven't used eBay for years. Vinted is way easier.

There is no abuse of position here, OP, eBay are keeping up with the market.

I sell quite a bit on eBay and have had 98% good experiences, whereas I’ve heard quite a few nightmares with Vinted, mixed in with the good stories.

A few months ago I sold an item vie eBay, and months later, the buyer complained they hadn’t received the item. When I refused to post a new one, the buyer raised a complaint with eBay. Even though the buyer’s bank sided with the buyer, eBay ensured I did not lose any money under their Seller Protection policy. It turned out that delivery had failed multiple times as seller wasn’t home and didn’t respond to instructions.

Would be interested to hear how Vinted would have dealt with this.

eBay is so, so user-unfriendly. They can’t compete at all.

Vinted is much cheaper but I find it worse to use, the filters are really limited and I've had a few purchases where the seller has ghosted (got a refund, but it's annoying). Personally I think they serve slightly different markets (Vinted much more cheap and cheerful) so whilst I'm sure Vinted will take a chunk of the market, they'll coexist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

Nah, eBay is dead in the water