Ebay increasing fees again

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/pricechange08/#fees

They only recently increased their fees, now they're doing it again. At the new rates, you'll be paying out well over 10% of the sale price in ebay fees and paypal fees. IT's getting ridiculous and creating a perfect opportunity for google to jump in using google checkout to make a rival auctioning site. Come on GoogleBid get something out now!

Isn't this something to do with them trying to lower the charges for larger sellers?

I'm all for GoogleBid. I'd drop ebay like a stone if I could find a decent alternative (that had enough of a user base).

Does anyone even use Ebay anymore? The site is so messy read, and the results so filled with "sponsored" results which are just glorified storefronts with minimum bids and crap, that I don't even bother with it.

I list my stuff on Craigslist. Easy to read, not full of sponsored crap, I can deal with people who are local so I don't have to worry about shipping large items, and they don't even take a cut.

They are changing their business slowly to a low cost fixed price model rather than auctions. So sellers who sell at a fixed price will get lower rates. Whilst auctions are likely to go up a little.

So primarily like Craigslist, only further reaching with more protections.

Was in the news earlier this week.

I've never heard of this Craigslist. I think I'll take a look...

I was just about to ask that too. I stopped using them after they refused to do anything about their sellers selling counterfeit items, marked me for non payment on an item I bought through PayPal ( their sister company ) allowed me to be sent death threats from a counterfeit seller who didn't appreciate me taking the counterfeit item to trading standards, and then started delisting items I was selling for no reason other than because I was selling them for less than one of their preferred sellers with an EBay shop.

@Gabriel: sounds like you've had a rough time with them. I've been pretty much fine with them in the three years I've been using them. But I sell alot of cheaper prices items, such as old games, and the fees really kill your overall profit to the point where your better off doing a car boot sale than selling online. It's sad really because they can't justify the prices they charge aside from being a company who's trying to constantly increase profits. It's the major flaw in capatilism. Why companies can't be happy making $100 million a year I'll never know.

Miky:
You've never heard of craiglist?

Great site. Craigslist.org. Has different sections for different regions. I put some tires for sale on there and found a buyer in a few hours. And I just listed an RC car on there and I got an inquiry less than an hour later. And since they're local buyers, we just meet up in some public place and exchange cash.

Nope. never heard of it. It sounds great though!

Thanks for the heads-up.

Basically they want to compete with Amazon with fixed price sales and are moving away from their Auction model

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/20/ebay_change/

Sounds like a good thing to me. Normaly I can't be bothered with bidding wars and will look for a good buy it now with reasonable shipping charges and good rep.

I'm with swift, craiglist is the best.

Simple, local, and free, just the way I like it :).

It doesn't look like Craigslist is quite as established over here in the UK yet (well, not in the Birmingham area anyway).

What are you talking about? Select the UK, then Birmingham and you get lots of listings:

http://birmingham.craigslist.co.uk/

[edit]
Well, okay not as many as Manchester NH. Oddly British people seem unable to part with their furniture*, but there's plenty of electronics for sale there.

(* I bet they all sell it on Antiques Roadshow.)
[/edit]

craigslist is ok, but you don't have as much choice if your into buying rare and unusual stuff or supplies. I use ebay for things like toner refill kits and books. Craigslist for large items that would cost too much to ship, usualy furniture in my case :)

Ebay is as stale as 2 month old donkey wee!

Either car boot it, or just look in your neighbours bin! :D

Works for... erm, that man over there! *Dabz points*

Dabz

I use ebay every once in a while, but I will only use "buy it now" for purchases, I do not have time to waste on auctions.

Grr!

That buyer that contacted me about the RC car I'm trying to sell turned out to be a scammer.

I told them cash only, and they sent back an email telling me to give them all this personal information like home address, full name, home phone, so they could send me a certified check, which would turn out to be fake, but the bank wouldn't discover it for a couple weeks and they'd come to pick up the car right away so they'd make off with the car and they'd have paid me nothing.

Seems a rather silly way to rip someone off. I'm sure it'd be much less risky for them to break into houses than to try to scam people into handing over fairly inexpensive items.

worst thing about craigs list is getting hold of someone, and arranging a time to meet up with them to buy stuff. Especially when you don't know if the item is still going to be there once you turn up. Get all kinds of problems with this quite frequently on craigslist.

And then you get the dodgy deal. One time I was looking for a bike and some guy had a good older one at a reasonable price. Only he wanted to meet me in a parking lot outside longs drugs in a bad part of town at a certain time, and to call a number when I got there.

At least with ebay, its all electronic, you don't have to keep chasing up on people and waiting to get a hold of someone or someone to get hold of you. Come to think about it Craigslist isn't all that great :(

Yeah, whenever I meet up with someone from Craigslist, I make sure it's somewhere where there will be people. If they're not willing to do that then something's up.

As for the item not being there, I had a guy tell me to meet him somewhere which was a good half hour drive from home, and he strung me along for several hours saying he was going to be there, but never showed up.

And if someone told me to pick up an item somewhere and they didn't have it when I got there, I'd give them a piece of my mind.

We used Craigslist to look for houses in Vancouver after someone recommended it, it's pretty neat, if primitive looking.

There's a tool for Firefox which puts the images in the listings into the list view as well. It makes it a lot better.