eBid.net A Genuine Alternative to eBay ??

[arkanoid]

I (like many, I guess) am becoming more and more peed-off with the eBay/PayPal combo as time goes by. This grousome twosome are just WRONG on so many levels that it beggers belief! The word extortion is used far too often and unjustifiably if you ask me but I'm afraid to say it's a word that fits eBay/PayPal perfectly.

For those who mainly buy from eBay and never sell, the level of their depravity isn't really apparent. eBay are _very_ careful to give the illusion of a relatively comfy environment for buyers. The reason for this, of course, is because buyers dictate the success of any auction site and so are (in their eyes) more important to "keep sweet" than sellers. Basically, sellers will follow buyers to the pits of hell - whether they like it or not.

Anyway, today was the last straw for me when I discovered PayPal have added yet another fee to their arsenal of robbery! They now charge sellers 0.30p + 3.6% of the total transaction amount of any eBay purchase paid for using a credit card linked to a PayPal account. So, if a buyer *chooses* to pay you with a CC, the seller is forced to pay this tariff. However, the worse part about it is that it is an eBay/PayPal "offense" to reasonably expect a buyer to take responsibility for his _own_ choice of payment method. You are not "allowed" to state in your listing (or even HINT) that you expect the BUYER to pay for this charge as part of your purchase agreement. Considering most buyers pay with their credit cards, this is a nice tidy sum that eBay and its parent company PayPal are wheedling from the seller's pockets. Not allowing sellers to justifiably pass these costs onto buyers keeps buyers in blissful ignorance, which means they will never look for alternatives (very sneaky tactic by eBay). The combination of their multiple listing fees, insane "Final Value" fee and now this new credit card payment fee is complete robbery. eBay has basically cornered the auction market and they are now running what can only be described as an extortion racket.

So what are we to do? What are the alternatives? The real purpose of this post is to get any opinions from Amigans on this eBid.net site. It seems to have a growing following and I've read quit a few posts from people praising the it. If you read their forums, or search for opinions over the net, people seem to be very happy with the service. They seem to play fair, with free listings and only a small 3% "Final Value" fee. Also, unlike eBay, they have not banned sellers from accepting payment via GoogleCheckout. So I'm thinking that an eBid/GoogleCheckout combo could be a far cheaper and pleasant solution for Amiga sellers?

It's pretty late here, so I've only really quickly browsed the site but it looks neat and tidy and there seems to be quite a few Amiga items listed, so I'm sure a few of you around here must be using it. Can you say what it's like? Would you recommend it?

I may list a few of my remaining Amiga items, to test the water but I'd like some opinions first...

[weirdami]

I like it when McDonald's has free food day.

[jj]

 :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

I prefer when my supermakret and local pubs/inns/taverns have free beer day.

[mike-]

PayPal has issues too, like currency conversion, i feel like i get riped off every time i transfer to a paypal account, many times have i found myself with a sum just under the price i need to pay because paypal doesn't have a proper currency overview, and to top it off, seem to make up their own exchange rate...

[WotTheFook]

There are alternatives already.....

Amibay doesn't specify a payment method, all that is asked is that the payment made is trackable in case of a dispute. Members can pay by any method they like, I have even used postal orders to pay for goods. There are no seller's fees on Amibay either, it's a not for profit site.

[Astral]

mike- wrote:
PayPal has issues too,...seem to make up their own exchange rate...

I have just picked up on some inconsistencies with the exchange rates myself also. eg. I purchased an item from amigakit yesterday at a cost of $198.xx AUS$. The actual cost when paying through PayPal was $212.xx AUS$. In understand the possibility of variations due to time, and so on, but - that much of a difference? Something isn't "right" with it.

[tokyoracer]

Sadly eBay is so popular it has the market completely to itself. So now they can slap on any fees and they know people will still sell on it. It very much reminds me of M$ Windoze.

[mike-]

It tried convinsing me 67 GBP wasnt 133 USD some time ago,  should have been 135 dollars at the time

[motorollin]

eBay have got the monopoly in this market, and monopoly is never good for consumers. It allows the provider of the service to make any demands they want from their consumers (as long as it's legal) and the user has only two choices: put up with it, or don't use the service at all.

Unfortunately this situation is perpetuated by users, myself included. Buyers go to eBay because they know there is a very high chance that they will find the product they are looking for. Seller go there because they know buyers look for products, so they have a better chance of selling their item at the price they want.

The only way for any alternative to become viable would be for both buyers and sellers to move to a different site. In a small community like ours this is easy because we can advertise where we are selling our items so the buyers will know where to look. This takes away some of the pressure on sellers to list their items in eBay, and over time eBid or AmiBay may well become the "standard" place to list Amiga items and buyers of Amiga goods might not even bother searching eBay. But then, there will always be people outside the Amiga community who don't know about eBid/AmiBay, so people within the Amiga community may well continue to search on eBay for used items.

Either way, we are just a small community. For any alternative to become viable, the provider would have to market their services aggressively to increase awareness among consumers of competing products (i.e. eBay users) and to promote viability (i.e. show why they are a good alternative). This is well demonstrated in the case of Apple, whose market share increases all the time even in the face of Microsoft's enormous market share.

--
moto

[AmigaEd]

So what is the verdict?

Has anyone else on here been giving eBid.net a try and if so what are your thoughts on it?

Best Regards,
AmigaEd

[redrumloa]

Traffic, the problem is traffic. eBay has traffic, the others don't. Even if every Amiga.org user made a pact to give up eBay, eBay's traffic would not go down much, even for retro Amiga items. A good percentage of my eBay store sales are to people that have nothing to do at all with any online forums.

[ZeBeeDee]

You'll find that Paypal has it's own set of currency conversion tables so it basically gets two (sometimes three) bites of the cherry ...

First bite = during the actual conversion, Paypal offer a rate just slightly under the norm and skims the difference into it's accounts never to be seen again

Second bite = Paypal take a percentage fee just so you can receive the money into your account.

Third bite = If the amount you want to transfer is less than 50 GBP (Great British Pounds), it then charges you a percentage to do that. Remember! all the while you leave funds in your Paypal account, it earns them interest so get the money out of there ASAP!

No matter how you deal with Ebay and Paypal, you get screwed to the wall in fee's.

I've successfully bid and listed stuff on eBid.net and it's great! I'm certain that if more people got to knows of it's existence then others would too. Ebay's advertising campaigns are everywhere you look these days so it makes it very very high profile.

[wurzel]

You can choose NOT to accept Paypal when selling an item, it's NOT compulsory.

of course, that means a delay in getting your money and the buyer getting their goods, but you don't HAVE to have a PayPal option.

[darksun9210]

trouble is, the general public at large knows about ebay. so people that are selling, who aren't in the "retro scene" so to speak, will still list loft clear-out stuff there... look at all the unexpanded A500/A600's with a fiver or tenner starting bid price...

[Astral]

wurzel wrote:
You can choose NOT to accept Paypal when selling an item, it's NOT compulsory.

...but you don't HAVE to have a PayPal option.

Actually you do have to make it a payment option due to recent eBay changes. You may also not "discourage" buyers from using a particular payment method...