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Andrew Benbow

Andrew Benbow

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Andrew
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TL:DR it's bloody expensive and too many muppets asking for buy it now prices or if I'll ship to Outer Mongolia! *

I recently had a clear out of things I no longer used. I'd upgraded to full frame and had a couple of lenses I didn't need and I had a couple that I wasn't using

I stuck them on eBay and they sold, I was happy with the prices I got. And then I had to post them! Because of the insurance, Royal Mail charged me a total of £62 for 3 lenses**. PayPal and eBay fees have cost almost 15%

For the second batch of items I got quotes from MPB and Wex. MPB were slightly better so I arranged for them to collect a box of goodies and 5 days later they paid me slightly more than the original quote

I did a price comparison with eBay and the money from MPB was better after taking on to account postage, eBay fees and PayPal fees

* I said UK shipping only in the description. One guy asked me for a buy it now price with 2 hours left on the auction.

** it's the insurance that drives up the cost but I really don't want to send a 70-200 uninsured etc !
 
eBay is risky too - there's a lot of fraud going on, and there are some cowboys out there that know how to work the system to their advantage. I'm very sceptical about sending goods to people who like leaving negative feedback. And also sending to unusual addresses in the UK. I never sell abroad on eBay.
 
Fees depend on when you sell - if theres something big to go I always wait until I have a £1 max on eBay, but yes everything else is very steep.

I found out only yesterday just how scary when I discovered the PayPal registered delivery address I shipped to was a courier that drops to Romania! Completely normal looking address too, I only found out when I looked on google maps after it had been delivered and it was an unlikely name that signed for it.

Still looks like it was legit as they have the lens and are very happy, just gave me a day of grumps and a lot of worry - but thats eBay, in my core I know its risky and they are so so may tools out there!

BTW on this item I did try MPB, they offered £760, I got (after postage and fees) just under £1020
 
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You have to be very careful on eBay but they do provide a level of protection and so do PayPal.

Key things to note with eBay:

Every week or two they do a deal on selling fees - usually either 50% off or £1 selling fees no matter what the value.

Secondly - I wouldn't send anything by Royal Mail - The courier industry is competitive and websites such as parcel2go and parcel hero will give you cheaper postage with insurance most of the time and let you compare different courier services.

Lastly, make sure you stipulate in adverts that you will only sell to people with over 10 or 15 positive feedback and only ship to the UK.

These are all things I do when selling anything on there.
 
If you have several things to sell then it's easier to sell to a shop if they organise collection.
 
I don't mind eBay at times. Often I get more than expected when selling but yeah, the fees then cripple it.

There are scammers on there too. I've found this recently with listing my MacBook. It can be very off putting.

I only ever sell to the UK too.
 
Andrew I don't understand your point about postage. I always list items with their actual postage costs, thus posting only costs me packing materials (which I recycle) and time.
 
droj said:
Andrew I don't understand your point about postage. I always list items with their actual postage costs, thus posting only costs me packing materials (which I recycle) and time.
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Well, I hadn't realised the insurance was going to add quite so much to the postage cost! I'd have had to charge around £15 per item for the postage cost. eBay actually quoted about £1.99 IIRC, I added £5.99 for 2 of the lenses and £8.99 for 1
 
Tom Green said:
You have to be very careful on eBay but they do provide a level of protection and so do PayPal.

Key things to note with eBay:

Every week or two they do a deal on selling fees - usually either 50% off or £1 selling fees no matter what the value.

Secondly - I wouldn't send anything by Royal Mail - The courier industry is competitive and websites such as parcel2go and parcel hero will give you cheaper postage with insurance most of the time and let you compare different courier services.

Lastly, make sure you stipulate in adverts that you will only sell to people with over 10 or 15 positive feedback and only ship to the UK.

These are all things I do when selling anything on there.
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Isn't there still the 10% final value fee though?

I should definitely have chosen another courier.
 
I sold a few things on eBay last week, mainly phones and an iPad. I know for sure the postage costs would be at least £11 for RMSD.
When listing, eBay wouldn't let me set the postage higher than £9.99 as it seemed to think that's how much it would cost.

Sure it's only a few quid difference, but add that up over hundreds of sales and you loose a lot of money through postage. They also don't take into account extra insurance. Standard rmsd only covers up to £500, so if I'd have wanted more, the postage cost would have been nearer £15, yet eBay have a max limit of £9.99

Just another way that eBay is screwing sellers and one of the reasons I closed down my successful eBay shop a few years ago.
 
Hi, Due to my location now I find many things on Ebay that are affordable so do use it quite a lot.
IMO Ebay postage costs are way way OTT and not so much the price of them but the delivery times with there postage option is really notwhere near that of Royal Mail and other carriers from the UK to Greece.
I have bought item/s from sellers that use the Ebay postal option and had to wait on occassions over two weeks, there packages seem to go all over Europe before landing in Athens but when buying and the seller uses Royal Mail or other I have had packages take from 4 days UK to Rhodes and up to about 7 working days. The expediate postage option from Ebay is really and again IMO a way of someone out there making a lot of money for very bad service. I now when buying look for those who offer an alternative to Ebay's postal even if it costs a couple quid more the time from seller to me is worth it. Thanks. Russ
 
I have had to take out 4 seperate County Court summons on fleabay in order to get matters sorted. The problem now is that flebay don't give out the address of the sellers like they used to so it's difficult to CC.

In one case the address of a seller was 5 years out of date (summons to people at house he had left 5yrs ago). Fleabay just said if the members don't notifie change of address "we cannot do anything about it sorry" (indian sounding voice). Another sellers address turned out to be a unit at Heathrow Airport (Nikon lens). Another seller vowed to me and fleabay he would never refund my money (£600) no matter what! and said he would move from his address if need be, and did ! (fleabay or paypal covered the £600 loss)

The fees for selling are far to high now. It used to be around £80 max now it's £250 a massive and disproprtionate increase.

The ability to take your own legal action has been reduced by the removal/difficulty in obtaining the sellers address in private sales / auctions.

Where an item is sold at auction for a bargin price the seller can pull out of the sale without consequnces or any compensation for "loss of bargain" to the winning bidder. Complaints all over the web about that. At an outside auction house the seller could be sued for failing to sell at the price due at the fall of the hammer. I am still owed money for loss of bargin.

It took 15 years for fleabay to adhere to the distance selling regulation ( people selling rubbish and the buyer having to pay for expensive return postage or no refund would be issued) Now corrected. Fleabay made a lot of money on that.

There needs to be competion to flebay to encourage fees to come down.

With all the carry on I have had I have never lost any money only a bargain

The maxim of "If it looks too good to be true it pobably isn't" has never been so well founded as when buying on fleabay.

But selling on fleabay has to be considered a last resort at the current fees !
 
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shapeshifter said:
An outside auction house could be sued for failing to sell at the price due at the fall of the hammer.
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Not true, when the hammer comes down they will say they can not sell at whatever price and withdraw the item.
 
Andrew Benbow said:
But you still have to pay the 10% at the end don't you?
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Not for the £1 final fee, but you do pay PayPal.
If it's cash on collection then you pay eBay their 10%, but not PayPal, but do run the risk of the buyer saying they never collected.
 
Keith W said:
Not true, when the hammer comes down they will say they can not sell at whatever price and withdraw the item.
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It's not the auction house that is sued it is the seller. As they cannot refuse to sell at the value once the hammer falls if they do the can be sued for the prima facie value of the item.

The case that shows you can be sued if you refuse to sell at the fall of the hammer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_v_Davies
 
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I had a guy claim he never received the £900 lens I sent him, and this was on something like day 29 of the 30 he had to do that.

If I hadn't still had the RMSD receipt I would have lost everything with pretty much no leg to stand on. As it was I still had £900 frozen in my account for about 4 weeks whilst it was investigated, which at another time of my life would probably have ruined me.

I've never bothered but apparently it's really useful to chase for feedback, basically any evidence you can to acknowledge a transaction has actually taken place.

Another seemingly common trick is to claim some superficial damage on the item delivered. The seller has so little protection in terms of feedback so buyers know the ball is firmly in their court, they'll ask for a partial refund or they'll leave negative feedback (but careful not to word it so blatantly). I've had this a few times, I immediately start the eBay returns process, it would've cost me money in postage etc but I wanted to call their bluff, funnily enough they got in contact very quickly to say they'd 'cope' with the 'damaged' item.
 
When I ran my shop, I had a non delivery claim filed against me.
Sure items go missing, but considering that person he only paid for the item an hour previously, I thought it a bit premature.

I contacted eBay, genuinely thinking they would reverse the claim, as it was clearly an attempt at fraud. Upon checking the buyers feedback, although it was 100% positive, it was actually 100% negative, all from sellers saying the person claimed non delivery within hours of purchase.
Ebay in my utter disbelief sided with the buyer, asking for proof of postage. They wouldn't accept I hadn't posted the item yet, as the sale was only just made. They refused to check the buyers feedback and refused my plea of common sense.

I was told to either provide proof of postage or loose the claim. Even if I had have posted the item, I would have lost, so I just closed my sales account there and then.
 
lets be fair it is what it is.. 10% fees, yeah sure but look at the audience size. personally i find forums too much like hard work, people want something for nothing generally.

plus you can't really blame ebay for not calculating your postage costs correctly. you can also specify the blocking of non-UK bidders and those with feedback below a certain value.

take it for what it is, factor in all costs and fees before you list and you should be fine.
 
neil_g said:
lets be fair it is what it is.. 10% fees, yeah sure but look at the audience size. personally i find forums too much like hard work, people want something for nothing generally.

plus you can't really blame ebay for not calculating your postage costs correctly. you can also specify the blocking of non-UK bidders and those with feedback below a certain value.

take it for what it is, factor in all costs and fees before you list and you should be fine.
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No. 10% is fine up £85 like it used to be but up to £250 is not reasonable at all. Estate agent mentality.
 
shapeshifter said:
No. 10% is fine up £85 like it used to be but up to £250 is not reasonable at all. Estate agent mentality.
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So factor it in to your lowest acceptable price. It really isn't rocket science. As I say forum selling prices are often much lower so it generally works out fairly similar.

Plus £250 maximum isn't really that bad, considering some camera kit can go for much more its essentially from that point on a sliding DOWNWARD scale from there (i.e. selling £5000 worth of kit you end up with 5% fees)
 
JohnN said:
Fees depend on when you sell - if theres something big to go I always wait until I have a £1 max on eBay, but yes everything else is very steep.

I found out only yesterday just how scary when I discovered the PayPal registered delivery address I shipped to was a courier that drops to Romania! Completely normal looking address too, I only found out when I looked on google maps after it had been delivered and it was an unlikely name that signed for it.

Still looks like it was legit as they have the lens and are very happy, just gave me a day of grumps and a lot of worry - but thats eBay, in my core I know its risky and they are so so may tools out there!

BTW on this item I did try MPB, they offered £760, I got (after postage and fees) just under £1020
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I had this concern with a item I sent via one of these distribution centres. After realising what it was, I contacted paypal, and was told that as soon as the item was signed for at the distribution centre that the transaction was over. This is because the item had been successfully delivered to the registered address. Anything that happens to an item after it has left the registered address is of no concern to the seller or paypal. Always use a "signed for" service, with a tracking number that paypal can access.
 
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