ebay question

From: Rob O'Donnell <classiccmp.org_at_irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Thu Nov 6 01:53:18 2003

At 00:41 06/11/2003 -0500, Teo Zenios wrote:

>Last time I checked there were onyl 112 listing at the marketplace, and a
>few of the prices seemed kind of high to me. The whole point of EBAY is that
>there are 100,000+ auctions going on and good deals are still there to be
>found. Of course EBAY will do anything to please the seller because thats
>what keeps their money coming in. If people quit selling items there what
>would the multi billion dollar EBAY stock be worth? If a seller on EBAY
>screws up the dsecription then get your money back (assuming you iused a
>credit card). I wouldnt even bother with EBAY's or sellers runaround call
>your credit card company and just reverse the charges (have a good story).
>
>I dont see how a small closed group of collectors can reach critical mass to
>rival EBAY for sellers attention.


Back in July, eBay UK decided to whop up their prices significantly; they
said it was because we have to pay VAT on their fees now, but what angered
many people was the way they took the opportunity to bump everything up a
the same time, and issue a press release to tell people "some prices will
go up, some will go down". yeah, only one never used feature price dropped
by a few pennies.

This action caused, well, not quite a mass-exodus, but certainly a
noticeable one over to www.eBid.co.uk - another general purpose auction
site, but free to sell on basic listings. Number of members is now up to
114K, 14K of auctions listed and over 1000 with bids as I write... Nothing
to rival eBay, but enough traffic to mean we now sell everything we list,
eventually. (My wife sells miniature Russian glass animals, though we've
not got much up at the moment.)

and eBay? Did they notice? They apparently ignore it. BUT there have
been rather a lot of free listing days since the exodus... like every
couple of weeks recently. (albeit restricted "if your listing is x and y
and z") We didn't have one for ages before then...


Rob.
Received on Thu Nov 06 2003 - 01:53:18 GMT