Ebay is not for me

[vernon]

I sold my tatty old leather motorcycle jacket to a punk boutique owner in Tokyo.

I got a crazily high price for some Lewis Leather motorcycle boots with a broken zip. They had leather soles and a metal kickstarter plate. I thought that I'd get £15 - £25 for them and they went for close to £200 when three Japanese bidders went into a bidding frenzy.

 

[Globalti]

The jacket cost me exactly £100 from Rivett's of London in Leytonstone in around 1982. I sold it about 30 years later for exactly £100 plus courier charges!

 

[Jody]

EBay's great for buying, crap for selling. The number of time wasters seem to be growing.

This. I don't want to sell n ebay anymore due to the hassle but am happy to keep on buying due to the ease and backup.

 

[fossyant]

Hard to get parts we tend to use it for.

Got a central locking actuator for £20 delivered, £35 from cheapest parts place.

Key fob parts for the car keys,

 

[swee'pea99]

Still does it for me...

 

[swee'pea99]

...I don't know where I'd even find one if it wasn't for ebay - the player's a decade old.

 

[SD1]

Had some great purchases on eBay but I follow some basic rules. Always use a bidsniper site so you don't get involved in a bidding war. Don't be in hurry to buy, sooner or later you will get it cheap. May take a year or two (rohloff equipped bike took 2years) but you will get a bargain eventually.

 

[postman]

Ok laugh if you want.But tomorrow i should get,Back to the Future Trilogy cost including p and p.£2-98p.E Bay for me.

 

[postman]

Back to the Future Trilogy dvd has just arrived.21st October 2015.I kid you not.Spooky.http://news.sky.com/story/1573149/great-scott-back-to-the-future-day-arrives

 

[Falco Frank]

Ive actually been on Ebay since the start

Selling is definitely more hassle than it used to be but buying does have more protection than it used to, even if I do still tend to use a credit card to buy more expensive items.

Re the OP, I really would not worry too much about it, seller would probably have multiple items listed and if you really feel about about it offer to refund all or a proportion of his fee as a good will gesture?

What bugs me about Ebay is the CONSTANT changes and revisions, improvements are always welcome but some things seem to be for change's sake only!

I would love to know how some items can be posted from China cheaper than I can post similar across the UK

 

[GrumpyGregry]

What are the current hassles with selling of which you speak?

 

[Vapin' Joe]

What are the current hassles with selling of which you speak?

Bidders who disappear after they've won the item is one I've experienced.

 

[jonny jeez]

Looks like I've made a bit of a bodge up on ebay.

I pressed 'buy' on a bike component, but then decided not to complete the purchase at that time.

The delivery date was a few weeks away, and I wanted to ask my bike shop if I could use them as a delivery address.

I've done that in the past for other online purchases, but it's only polite to ask first.

The ebay item was new, not an auction, so I don't think I did anything wrong by not following through with the transaction.

The trade vendor appears not to agree and opened a dispute, or whatever ebay calls it.

Cue several messages and emails.

I now have a long email from ebay customer services telling me I've done nothing wrong by cancelling at the early stage I did.

The vendor might be annoyed because it appears they may have been charged a 'final value fee credit', although crucially, ebay tells me that charge will be credited to the vendor's account following my cancellation of the order.

It all seems a lot of fuss and bother over nothing.

I'm not keen on ebay's general insistence on using Paypal, after my bank suspected Paypal was the source of a security breach on my current account a few years ago.

This latest episode - albeit of my own making - has reinforced my view that ebay is not for me.

I dont get it, you changed your mind, Ebay has supported you and yet you blame Ebay?

Eh?

 

[Andrew_P]

I am told that the Chinese government subsidise the outbound part of the postage and then, under international postal agreements, the Royal Mail have to swallow the cost of handling it here.

That is what I have heard as well.

You also have Chinese sellers with UK PayPal accounts using third party distribution in the UK for the heavier items even though the account that sells is registered in China. In real basic terms the minute someone buys it they are accepting all the EU liability on the product. Some real potential for major problems on electrical items or anything that could cause damage to a third party. Then of course you have the taxation issue as well. .

Lastly you have lots of bedroom sellers using dodgy software to port loads of items in eBay from Amazon images, description everything then they stick a margin on top and when you order it they to their prime Amazon account and send it you. I actually think this one is quite funny, but the eBayers don't..

I won't even start on the UK dodgy ones.

 

[slowmotion]

I use it a fair bit as a buyer, never as seller. I used to bid for some quite interesting stuff that is hard to find elsewhere, but now I tend to stick to Buy Now items. Quite a lot of technical equipment is ludicrously cheap from Chinese sellers if you don't need it in a hurry. Quite often you get sent completely the wrong item, you explain that postage back to China will be many times the item's value, and you get sent a replacement anyway. It all seems to get through HMRC without duty, Lord knows how.