Ebay sellers...

[kevin b]

The saga continues. **LINK**

All of a sudden the other bid has been retracted and I'm winning again !

I do hope somebody outbids me. If not it will cost me about another £3.00 in fuel to go get it. I'm not sure I can afford that !!!

kevinb. Bargain dept.

Edited By kevin b on 14/09/2013 13:57:36

[Ian Jones]

Wow Kevin, it was for £2.00 an'all , no wonder he took it back, he would have been done from what I can see.

Happy motoring .

Ian

[Erfolg]

I have made my first sale, for definite.

The guy and charming daughter came with cash, and put the item in their car.

I then received advice on how to avoid Paypal for pick ups, accepting cash, to avoid paypal payments, and being sure of receiving your cash.

Interestingly the daughter was into tractor renovation and is at agricultural college.

Just need to sort out the Binoculars now!

I trust you will all keep an eye out for all the "tat" that I hope to clear from my garage. It is of the finest quality tat.

[Daithi O Buitigh]

Look at it this way Kevin - for 4 quid you're getting a lot of firewood

[Paul Marsh]

98.9% of people are just like us - want the best deal, but not to be dishoninst. Just the rest, that give any organzation a bad name, although more and more are trying to have us on...

[David Davis]

Posted by kevin b on 14/09/2013 13:56:58:

The saga continues. **LINK**

All of a sudden the other bid has been retracted and I'm winning again !

I do hope somebody outbids me. If not it will cost me about another £3.00 in fuel to go get it. I'm not sure I can afford that !!!

kevinb. Bargain dept.

Actually Kev, if you get it for £1 and have to fork out £3 for fuel you'll still have a bargain. Those Maj-Maj wings don't look too bad and if you've got a plan too you could soon knock up the rest of it for far less than the cost of a kit and half of it is already built for you!

Ditto the Jabbawok!

[Bob Cotsford]

and if the Jabberwok fuselage is half decent I'd give you £2 for it, halving your costs.

Come to that, if the Panic was fit to be resurrected.....

[sharpy1071]

Hi, one draw back with cash is that the buyer arrives looks at the item and try's to bid down by say things like its not as described/he though how it should be/looks for damage or wear. Stick to your guns and send him home, he's got the journey not you! If on the other hand you agree to meet halfway your at a big a disavantage as he is so again be aware. It happens a lot with full size cars.

[..]

Posted by kevin b on 14/09/2013 13:56:58:

The saga continues. **LINK**

All of a sudden the other bid has been retracted and I'm winning again !

I do hope somebody outbids me. If not it will cost me about another £3.00 in fuel to go get it. I'm not sure I can afford that !!!

kevinb. Bargain dept.

Edited By kevin b on 14/09/2013 13:57:36

Kevin, Maybe you could offset your fuel costs by offering the guy a deal including your old school dictionary?? looks like he could do with one

[Erfolg]

I do wonder how people make any worthwhile money on small value items. The reason being is that postage is not low, particularly if Parcel Force is used, which is twice the price as the carrier i have decided to use.

As a previous person has mentioned in this thread, there are an awful lot of charges along the way, from Ebay, who make two, then there is, Paypal , then P&P where boxes to me are not cheap, plus protective packing and then the carrier charges and finally the tax people have their VAT charges as part of the services used.

It is making me think, if it will be less hassle to just take my "tat" to the dump. I cannot see me getting even moderately remunerated. I have also, now been told by some one I know, that they managed to end up out of pocket using Ebay.

[Peter Miller]

You can reduce your fees by listing on free weekends. Then you should prepare your packaging and weigh the itme and packaging and set the postage rate according to the postage rates plus a bit for packaging.

You can always insist on payment by postal order if you want to avoid Paypal charges although that will reduce the number of people prepared to bid.

Another thing. Put in a search in the advanced search looking at completed listings. YThat will give you a good idea of what many things go for. Then you can decide if it is worth it.

Be careful where you list an item, List it in the right place can find more buyers, even listing in two places can be helpful.

Your "tat" can be someone elses collectable.

[Erfolg]

Peter

The points you have made, are something that should make up a introductory note to Ebay trading, I am not sure where it could be lodged though. Ebay would be in no hurry.

In General

I am slowly learning these lessons, well one or two, to date.

It is only looking at Post Office charges for either letters or parcels, that has high lighted how expensive they are. Without a hefty post and packing allowance, the selling price on Ebay can easily be wiped out.

From some comments made, some believe that some sellers are greedy. From my recent experiences, I have come to the conclusion that the sellers overheads are not a minor fraction. Again as one poster suggested, it can easily be true, that for every £1 taken, anything from 30-40% disappears to others. At the worst, your profit is negative, which can be easier to achieve than you would expect, as I have seen Binoculars for sale where P&P was given at £3. Yet it would cost approx £14 min to £34 for Postal Force, without a £3 box from Staples, then there is the packing material another few pounds.

In short I am surprised how anybody would offer anything for sale without it being worth at least £10 or more. Why those clapped out bits of aluminium oxide appear on Ebay, I cannot comprehend either.

[Masher]

I am surprised that people spend so much time moaning about things that are optional! If you don't like it, don't use it!

[Peter Miller]

OH Dear! Buying boxes?

I never buy boxes. I go and look in my Co-op or scrounge them and I save any useful boxes and packaging that comes in. Screwed up newspaper or Radio times works well for padding. I do buy brown paper for wrapping but look for the rolls of about 5 meters, not the small packets with labels etc. I also look around and buy parcel tape from market traders. Also check office supplies against your local shop.

My local post office was chargining 75p for a padded envelope. The Office supply shop was charging about 1/3rd that price.

I have one shop that puts out large boxes some FRidays for the rubbish. They will let me take what I want. Other shops must have smaller boxes.

Yes, people do charge far too little for postage. When listing it pays to mention that the weight with packaging has already been checked and is accurate because a lot of buyers see the other cheap rates and wonder why yours are higher.

I do wonder how things like one eg=ngine mount can be worth listing.

[Peter Miller]

Masher. It is a case of learning how to use something. To the uninitiated Ebay can look and be a minefield but with help and exxperience it can be and is very useful

[Paul Marsh]

I re-use all the packaging. The Jiffy bags get re-used when I get them from Amazon, ebay, etc. Re-taped and re-used. Green thinking - and cheap.

[001]

Effolg, for small items use recycled padded envelopes, bubble wrap, cardboard, cardboard boxes. The only expense apart from postage is then adhesive tape, ink and paper if you print the postage label, and brown paper if you use that. My local £1 shop sells brown paper, tape and bubble wrap much cheaper than the Post Office or W.H. Smith.

The buyer pays for the P&P so it should never eat into your selling price.

If you need to pack it in a large new cardboard box, add the cost of that to the P&P. When you list it! --- The buyer either wants the item or not. If they want it, they will realise that it has to be packaged and that the packaging has to be paid for. (You can explain that in the listing).

The important thing is to weigh items accurately, then calculate the postal and packing charges from there.

The only thing I don't factor in, is my time packing and sending. (Some sellers do.) It is a hobby and I take my walk to the Post Office as my exercise. I don't use delivery services other than Post Office for reasons I have stated elsewhere on this forum.

 

 

Edited By Chris P. Bacon on 15/09/2013 14:43:28

[Erfolg]

Masher

If your comment is meant for me, I am not moaning. I am taking the view, that all is not wine and roses, particularly for the uninitiated, on Ebay.

One thing has leapt out at me and is topical is the Government owned postal services. The quicker the it is made a listed private company the better for most UK citizens. I could not believe that their parcel services are more twice the price of the private carriers.

I am not moaning, just recognising how little I knew in this area and probably still do.

If anything my two exercises have shown to me that no one is forced to make an offer, even when the items are of good quality. I guess some have thought my stuff was rubbish, and did not bother bidding, they might have even laughed at my offerings, but am I bothered

Edited By Erfolg on 15/09/2013 14:55:04

[PMIKEY]

Look what i just won on the Ebay **LINK**

Just an example of bargains that can be had if you look outside of the preverbal box!!

Ebay is what 'you' make of it, whether your a buyer or a seller but here is a few rules i go by after using it for the last 4-5 years.

1. Always use PayPal if you cant use cash, yes as a seller you will lose 3% but as a buyer you will be protected against any sellers who rip you off and yes their are a few out there!!

2.Research: as a seller look around and try to find equivalent items to what you wish to sell, this will give you an idea of how much to ask or expect for your item.

As a buyer the more you look the more you will find, a good example at the moment is the Fatshark telemetery 3 fpv setup, it can be bought from Hobbyking direct for 199 dollars (around £125) yet people are bidding up the exact same setup on EBay to well over £225 which in my mind is just plain stupidity on the people bidding.

3. Ignore all requests to send to Jamaica or any other exotic land, stay within the EU, Australia Far East and US Markets.

4. Never bid an item up, there are many tricks a seller can use to give the impression of more people bidding on an item than there actually are, and bids can be retracted as long as there is more than 24 hours left to run on the auction. This effectively gives the seller an idea of your maximum bid to which he will then artificially bid the item back upto.

Always make your mind up how much you want to pay and enter your maximum bid in the last 24 hours of the auction.

5. Have fun with it!! a seller who has fun with his listing making the advert entertaining to read always sells his items for more money than a seller who cant be bothered. Its the sellers who cant be bothered that i target the most as i get a better bargain

Regards to all.

[Peter Miller]

Posted by PMIKEY on 15/09/2013 17:50:30:

Look what i just won on the Ebay **LINK**

I thought, "Is that a bargain and then I realised that they must use a comma between the Euro and the cents where we use a full stop!"

Erfolg

I notice that a lot of people refuse to send to Italy as well.

[kevin b]

Nothing wrong with the Italians. Great people, I have sold quite a few model plans over there and made a few friends. However, you don't post anything which could be considered valuable as a lot of post goes "missing" in their system. There are quite a few countries throughout the world where the postal systems are a lottery (I chose the word carefully). Sometimes we forget how lucky we are in this country. Our postal service is is fairly secure compared with most. That doesn't mean to say they won't destroy your parcel in the process though.

kevinb.

[Daithi O Buitigh]

I know in German thay say 'komma' where we say 'point' (decimal point) so that could be it

[David Davis]

I sold three Telemaster kits to Italian customers without a problem.

[John Privett]

Posted by Daithi O Buitigh on 15/09/2013 19:15:13:

I know in German thay say 'komma' where we say 'point' (decimal point) so that could be it

We're getting a little off-topic here (but still related to the original topic!) but in very general terms, English-speaking countries tend to use the dot as the decimal point and comma to seperate groups of 3 digits (eg. 123,456,789.01) whereas non-English-speaking countries do it the other way round. (eg. 123.456.789,01)

 

Edited By John Privett on 15/09/2013 20:41:24

[PMIKEY]

The question of 'comma' or 'point' was not really what I was trying to put forward as a point.