ONLINE AUCTION POWERHOUSE Ebay is doing away with its listing fees for part-time auctioneers in a bid to get users to sell yet more unwanted stuff to buyers making daft impulse purchases in moments of drunken madness.
The company has announced that it will be ditching the setup charge and will only take a slice of the selling price instead.
From: Aurora [#2] 28 Jan 12:28 To: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#1] 28 Jan 12:32
That is indeed a great move. I have three storage units full of stuff that was once useful to me that I would love to unload. The greatest problem I had when selling stuff on eBay was that with so much stuff selling at rock bottom prices by the mega sellers I was just wasting money putting things online to sell when it would be less effort to take it to the dump or put it on Craig's list.
From: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#3] 28 Jan 12:49 To: Aurora [#2] 28 Jan 14:18
The dump won't pay you anything for it, where at least on ebay you've got a chance somebody will pony up a few bucks and pay the shipping as well. And now that there's no listing fee, if nobody's interested then it doesn't cost you anything.
Unfortunately, they still want the lesser of 9% or $50 if it sells, plus you've got paypal fees. Then, if you don't have a big account with paypal, they'll make you wait up to three weeks for your money to make sure the buyer doesn't want to renege. Ebay is getting less attractive all the time, which is why they keep tinkering with things.
Craig's List has been pretty good to me over the last year or so. I've sold a number of things, and it's all painless. Buyer gets to see what he's getting on the spot, there's no boxing up and shipping involved, you get your money immediately, and the ad's free. The only downside is you have to deal with the buyer, who will sometimes try to beat you up on price, but that's no biggie. I just say I gotta have what I asked for, take it or leave it. So far, they've always taken it, except for one time when I couldn't get the damned device to work. I ended up just giving the thing to the guy because I felt bad for him having to come as far as he did. I was just going to toss it after he left if he didn't take it, so I figured let him fill up his trash bin instead of mine <grin>