What happened to people making offers and asking questions on ebay?

[Butch7999]

Similar to what Rock, Daryl, Trib, and Mark have cited above, we've been made gun-shy about making an offer because
too many vendors are provoked at a glance, soooo offended and outraged that anyone would dare to imagine an overpriced item
might be obtainable for anything less than the BIN or auction start price.
We've even gotten nasty replies after merely asking for details on items poorly photographed and/or inadequately described.
Also, so many eBay BINs are 200%, 500%, 1000% above any established or probable market value -- there's just no point
to trying to make an offer at a reasonable price.

[gunboat82]

Originally Posted by Butch7999

Similar to what Rock, Daryl, Trib, and Mark have cited above, we've been made gun-shy about making an offer because
too many vendors are provoked at a glance, soooo offended and outraged that anyone would dare to imagine an overpriced item
might be obtainable for anything less than the BIN or auction start price.
We've even gotten nasty replies after merely asking for details on items poorly photographed and/or inadequately described.
Also, so many eBay BINs are 200%, 500%, 1000% above any established or probable market value -- there's just no point
to trying to make an offer at a reasonable price.

Yeah, these are weird times on eBay. I asked yepbg if he would take $4,000 for an item listed at $4,410. He said no and raised the price to $5,780.

It's his prerogative, of course, but it felt like a passive-aggressive response.

I don't usually leave much wiggle room when I sell on eBay either, but that's because I'm just a hobbyist who gets hit with fees on the buying and selling end, and I'm usually just listing to break even or take a modest loss. Failing that, the stuff stays in my collection.

For example, I bought a card on REA with a $3,400 hammer price, but my cost was $4,375 after taxes.

When I found a better copy of the same card just a week later, I offered the REA card at $4,250 shipped in multiple places, with zero interest. I had to list it at $4,750 on eBay to hit that $4,250 target, and wasn't willing go any lower. The person who used BIN ended up paying $5,100 after taxes.

I can't even imagine what the spread is like for someone who has overhead and does this for a living. In this ecosystem, the auction houses and eBay are the real winners.

[ricktmd]

Ebay has done a terrible job with their categories. It is difficult to search for Sports cards without doing a word search. The categories used to plug you into Pre 1930 baseball cards or similar. Like many things ebay does it makes the site worse and more difficult to use. Even the custom searches that used to be fruitful have been invaded by what ebay pushes not what you search for. If you want to look up 1920 W522 you do a word search, and it gets you there, sort of. There is no sense to try to look through their mixed-up categories relating to Sports Memorabilia. As far as communicationing with sellers most are uninterested and could care less. Ebay has helped create this atmosphere of over pricing, apathy and seller disinterest.
As far as selling via auction or Buy It Now. I agree they are different mainly because there are 3 types of buyers. BIN only, Auction Only and people that do both. It is good to toggle your items back and forth between BINs and auctions to get new eyes. I would disagree that auctions necessarily do better in terms of sales then BINs. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. If you try to auction an item starting at 149.99 for a 149.99 value card it is my experience that a bin has about the same odds of selling. If you choose to start the auction lower you may get more bids, even past a BIN that sat in your store for 2 months.
There is so many listings on ebay that stuff gets lost and with ebay pushing what they want you never know. Sometimes you land in the algorithms air stream and your item gets pushed to Google and Bing. That is when ebay is really helping you get views
I am scaling back selling. If I have a valuable sports cards to sell I tend to consign to an auction house. On most other types of items ebays return policy is absolutely insane and unfair to the seller. Revenue and profit comes from buyers. Sellers are treated like they are, replaceable. The few big sellers are treated a bit better. In the end ebay is still a good resource and if mined correctly can yield good buys. As far as comparing it to the partnership it had with sports collectors in the past it is completely different

[raulus]

Originally Posted by gunboat82

Yeah, these are weird times on eBay. I asked yepbg if he would take $4,000 for an item listed at $4,410. He said no and raised the price to $5,780.

It's his prerogative, of course, but it felt like a passive-aggressive response.
.

My experience is that yepbg offers sales of all of his stuff periodically. Usually for a decent discount off his standard prices. If I remember correctly, the last one was maybe a month ago for 30% off. So waiting for one of those to roll around, and then just buying at his discounted asking price might be your best strategy.

Of course, if he’s reading this, then he might decide to stop offering those periodic sales events.

[gunboat82]

Originally Posted by raulus

My experience is that yepbg offers sales of all of his stuff periodically. Usually for a decent discount off his standard prices. If I remember correctly, the last one was maybe a month ago for 30% off. So waiting for one of those to roll around, and then just buying at his discounted asking price might be your best strategy.

Of course, if he’s reading this, then he might decide to stop offering those periodic sales events.

I'm sure it was one of those discounts, because my inbox gets flooded with e-mails from eBay when it happens, which is when I remember there's stuff I want. I just noticed that the discounted price went up considerably after I inquired about that item.

Another seller on eBay (the name of this one escapes me) did something similar a while back, but this seller actually had the "Best Offer" option open. I offered 90% on a $5K item, and the seller declined and raised the price to $6500. I couldn't tell if the seller was annoyed, or if it was part of some business strategy where any item to raise the price on any item that generates interest.

[gunboat82]

To his credit, yepbg reached out on eBay and said he adjusted the price because he thought it was too low relative to a recent auction... not because he was ticked off about receiving an offer. It was a pretty obscure item and he knows the market better than I do, so it could have been a one-off.

The other seller was definitely annoyed to get an offer below the BIN price, because the rejection was almost immediate (but not automatic), and the price hike came immediately after the rejection. I wish I could remember the details, because it was bizarre. It was probably a Colgan Chip, because that's all I looked for on eBay for a while.

[ledsters]

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[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by gunboat82

I can't even imagine what the spread is like for someone who has overhead and does this for a living. In this ecosystem, the auction houses and eBay are the real winners.

If you are trying to make money, it is imperative to carefully choose where to sell. Some things are best sold on eBay, others on consignment. eBay and AH costs have been converging for some time, so much so that in some cases eBay is just as expensive as a consignment. As an example, here is the breakdown on a recent eBay sale of mine:

What your buyer paid
Item subtotal $99.00
Shipping $6.00
Sales tax* $10.15
Order total** $115.15

What you earned
Order total $115.15
eBay collected from buyer Sales tax -$10.15
Transaction fees -$22.57
Shipping label -$3.96

Order earnings $78.47

eBay takes a cut of the shipping and the sales tax, so my effective 'commission' was 22.57%. However, this is an item of the sort that an AH would bury in a big lot so the extra 3% cost is worth it to make the item a retail item instead. I probably netted 2x-3x what I could have gotten on consignment.

[Topnotchsy]

In the last bunch of years ebay:

• Removed the wildcard (*) search option making many searches more frustrating and difficult
• Tried to make sure you don't miss anything and so made it far more difficult to just search for what you want by expanding the results in many ways
• Made it that sellers can send offers to people who viewed they listings, even if they did not choose to watch them
• Made it easy to list someone and leave it on eBay for ever for no cost

All told, eBay has created a huge percentage of items priced at a price that they will never sell, at no cost to the sellers. Then made it harder for buyers to sort through the listings to focus on the ones they want. And even if you do that work, you can get a slew of offers on items that you had no interest in (hence not watching it).

It's becoming harder and harder to just find what you are looking for. I know for me, as someone who is an avid collector and spends quite a bit of time on the hobby, I am spending less and less time with eBay. It's simply too unpleasant to want to deal with all the time.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Topnotchsy

In the last bunch of years ebay:

• Removed the wildcard (*) search option making many searches more frustrating and difficult
• Tried to make sure you don't miss anything and so made it far more difficult to just search for what you want by expanding the results in many ways
• Made it that sellers can send offers to people who viewed they listings, even if they did not choose to watch them
• Made it easy to list someone and leave it on eBay for ever for no cost

All told, eBay has created a huge percentage of items priced at a price that they will never sell, at no cost to the sellers. Then made it harder for buyers to sort through the listings to focus on the ones they want. And even if you do that work, you can get a slew of offers on items that you had no interest in (hence not watching it).

It's becoming harder and harder to just find what you are looking for. I know for me, as someone who is an avid collector and spends quite a bit of time on the hobby, I am spending less and less time with eBay. It's simply too unpleasant to want to deal with all the time.

This describes my experience to a tee. The amount of time I spend searching eBay is probably one fifth of what it was 5+ years ago.

And even more so, with regard to selling. I have completely abandoned selling on eBay, and now only consign to auctions or sell outright to collector friends.

[Topnotchsy]

Originally Posted by perezfan

This describes my experience to a tee. The amount of time I spend searching eBay is probably one fifth of what it was 5+ years ago.

And even more so, with regard to selling. I have completely abandoned selling on eBay, and now only consign to auctions or sell outright to collector friends.

It feels like they are making decisions with zero understanding of the experience of their user base and have gone backwards by prioritizing pushing as much as they can to people rather than prioritizing helping people get as close to the desired results as possible.

Additionally, their fees for ordinary sellers (not powersellers) are very close to what an auction house changes. (A 20% Buyer's Premium is 16.66% of the total paid ($100 + $20 = $120. $20/$120 = 16.66%) so they are really within range of each other.

[JollyElm]

The eBay motto:

"If it ain't broke, frickin' break it NOW and keep breaking it further!!!!"