Tumbleweed rolling through Ebay

[PrimalScreaming]

I've had a break from selling unwanted items since the end of last year. Have got back to listings this week and finding it SO slow going! I think the new rules around postage, not to mention Buyer Protection are putting off both buyers and sellers.

I would SO much rather pay a 10% selling fee than this stupid new system. On Vinted it's fine as the Buyer Protection is listed separately underneath, but with Ebay adding it on to the seller's price ticket- it makes smaller items unsaleable and larger items have bizarre price tags. Hate it! Anyone else finding it so dead?

Yes. I have given up. About to remove my remaining items off the platform and take to charity shop! Or Vinted if appropriate

Agree. Have a listing on there now and nothing happening. I will let it get to the end of the 10 days then take it off and not bother listing there again.

Ebay is rubbish now. Whilst no buying/selling platform is perfect, Vinted is so much better for clothing/smaller items. Yes, you get the cheeky ones trying to lower an already reasonable price, but if you stick to your guns, you can do well on there.

I think the way people use eBay has changed a lot since 10 or 20 years ago.
Twenty years ago I used the bid feature and searched for specific brands of clothes etc.
Now I want instant purchases and wouldn't buy second hand clothes etc.
Other people probably similar, so a limited market.

Agree. I used to sell loads on eBay but it's become a real pain now. Also I suspect sellers are going to be railroaded into using eBay's postage soon. I prefer to support my local post office so will probably stop using eBay. It's a shame, but I'm reaching the stage where it's more trouble than it's worth.

There is definitely something weird going on with Ebay at the moment. Just recently the starting auction prices for items being sold by UK sellers in £ are strange values like £1.14, £3.84 or £4.77 instead of the usual 99p, £1.50, £5 etc.

The other thing is that I won an auction the other day and the business seller cancelled it and refunded me via paypal. I sent a message to ask why, and he replied to say that none of the variety of items he'd sold in that week had any buyers addresses available to him, so he had to void the whole lot. He was disgusted and is leaving Ebay altogether.

Yes I’m another who has given up.

Things have been going down hill since eBay split from PayPal, stopped charging sellers a listing fee, then had to devise other ways of making a profit such as holding on to money from sales for several days, introducing a buyers protection fee, and as of now rolling out what they call simple delivery, whereby you buy postage from them for either Evri or Royal Mail instead of buying it directly from whatever courier you choose yourself. Whoever named it simple must have been wishfully thinking because it’s about as far from simple as you can get. Similarly whoever penned the so called benefits of these new arrangements for buyers and sellers must have come from the same school as the Government Spin Doctors.

The eBay forums are jam packed with complaints at the minute, the general consensus being that rather than try and compete with Vinted they should revert back to charging sellers (and buyers) an upfront fee like Auction Houses do which makes buying and selling straightforward, rather than attempting to make money via the back door with increasingly complicated rules and procedures.

As someone who has sold and bought off eBay for several years I can say that the whole thing is a s… s… at the moment. Like a lot of people I’ve taken all my listing off and have got my fingers crossed that at some point common sense will return.

Thanks all... seems I'm not the only one then! Just hoping ebay see sense and revert back to what worked for buyers and sellers! Won't hold my breath though!

The trouble with eBay as a buyer, is that it’s full of loads of cheap crap. Not second had stuff, but weird eBay shops. I know you can filter to only search for second hand items but it’s really annoying.

I have stopped buying off there. It's so much easier to buy my second had clothes off vinted.

I do wish that 'inpost' had a speedier delivery time though!

@Ilovelowry I'm not entirely sure that vinted would be a good place for me though. I don't buy clothes, and it probably isn't the right place to buy vintage bonsai pots or early 20th century postage stamp collections.

@ohnowwhatcanitbe gosh yes I can see your point!
I'm at vinted for second hand Me & Em blouses, definitely not stamps!

The reason for the weird prices is because Ebay now automatically add their cut as a 'buyer protection fee' charged to the buyer.
So if I put something up at Buy It Now £3.99... it will show me it's at £3.99 on my seller dashboard... but when I click on the item (or a potential buyer clicks on the item) it will probably say £4.87 and there is Ebay's cut of something random around the one pound mark (so 88p in this case) added on. The buyer has to pay this and Ebay takes that before they give me £3.99.

So it's not at all transparent and makes small items not worth it... they become too expensive. As a seller I would far rather pay the 10% final value fee myself and have a buyer pay what I have set a price at.

Oh and I'm one of the people selling vintage stuff as a private seller. My Dad moved into a care home last year and I am clearing the house. Now ebay has become so un-user friendly, I'm not sure where to go with my random items like silver plate cutlery and a brass kettle etc etc etc!!

@PrimalScreaming I tend not to look at 'buy it now' though, as most of what I want is used/second hand so I only look at auctions. Some of the pricing is downright weird. You still see some things for 99p or other round figures, but for some reason £3.84 crops up a lot. I don't like it.

@ohnowwhatcanitbe it's the same for auctions - I just used a Buy It Now as an example... the £3.84 is undoubtedly items with a start price of £2.99... it will increase as the auction price increases.

@ohnowwhatcanitbe ... some are still at round figures as I think that's business sellers. I'm not sure but I think they have a different system and still pay fees instead.

I too would rather pay the 10% fee as well. It is makes the prices silly. I will probably reduce the price but will not lose money as I will not pay a fee so works out the same. The only Good thing is that you don't pay 10% on the postage now.

eBay are shooting themselves in the foot and I can't see it surviving. Tumbleweed gulch springs to mind. It's all over various forums about how sh#t it is now and eBay has bots replying with stupid obsequious AI stock replies to complaints and gripes, they really are not listening or prepared to rethink. I nearly died of shock today when something I've had up for sale for months at a vg price actually sold.

It is certainly making my hobby of collecting cheap 50's-60's costume jewellery unsustainable on Ebay.

I've given up on eBay as the app has stopped working on my phone; Android 9 is no longer supported.

DH sells a lot of stuff on eBay. He found the changes have made it very difficult. I don’t get what they have done. They got rid of the sellers fees but then just plonked them in somewhere else.

I had to stop using vinted when they stopped allowing my only postage option as a seller (Royal Mail collection from home, as I'm in a rural area with no drop off points anywhere near). Moved back to ebay, just decluttering, and now they are desperately copying Vinted in the postage options - from 15 April sellers MUST use ebay's postage (God forbid they don't get a cut of postage fees, the grabbing bastards). So off to Facebook marketplace then.

I’ve also realised that as a seller any ‘offers’ from buyers include the buyer fee - so if I accept an offer of £15 I will actually get £13.73 - so completely confusing and not at all transparent. Sales are extremely slow at the moment. They are shooting them selves in the foot.

I think I’ll be done with eBay soon. Shame, as I’ve been selling on there for 20 years.

Has anyone else found you only have a one time option to make an offer now? After that it's only pay extra for ebay promotion.
Also I'm getting lots of likes but very few sales. I'm now just accepting any offer to get rid of things.
Is Vinted any better?

Have taken all my items off eBay. Can’t be arsed with it like it is. I’ve been eBay selling for over 20 years.