This is a great site and pleasently surprised to have so many of my pieces displayed here! The venue ebay is pushing antiques dealers off its site w/ so many changes and now refusing payment by any paper currency! Myself and other dealers are looking for other venues more friendly to the selling of quality antiques! Norwinda has been w/ ebay for 13 years w/ a specialty in Horner furniture. Its sad making so many happy customers, then having to leave, but hopefully someone will grab this opportunity,....any thoughts on this subject are more than welcomed!
Elliott Morehardt / Northwind Antiques
Vic Sellers Leaving Ebay
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General Discussion thread on victorianforum.com · started August 28, 2008 by norwinda · 7 posts · discussion in 2008.
This is a great site and pleasently surprised to have so many of my pieces displayed here! The venue ebay is pushing antiques dealers off its site w/ so many changes and now refusing payment by any paper currency! Myself and other dealers are looking for other venues more…
Elliott, so much of your stuff ends up here because you always have such good stuff! BTW, I spoke to Wendy yesterday for a shipping quote and as usual she gave me a great price.
Why not use multiple selling venues in parallel? So many of the dealers have the same inventory on TIAS, GoAntiques, Trocadero, RubyLane, etc. Yes, the fees add up, but theoretically the additional exposure would offset the additional fees with a ramp in sales.
I recently had a discussion with my wife about creating a better version of Ebay on this site without the gouging fees. That would be a significant investment in development, but I only see opportunity where Ebay is fumbling the ball on multiple fronts (discontinuing live auctions, seller fees, forcing use of Paypal,...).
Welcome to the forum.
Why not use multiple selling venues in parallel? So many of the dealers have the same inventory on TIAS, GoAntiques, Trocadero, RubyLane, etc. Yes, the fees add up, but theoretically the additional exposure would offset the additional fees with a ramp in sales.
I recently had a discussion with my wife about creating a better version of Ebay on this site without the gouging fees. That would be a significant investment in development, but I only see opportunity where Ebay is fumbling the ball on multiple fronts (discontinuing live auctions, seller fees, forcing use of Paypal,...).
Welcome to the forum.
I agree, I buy and sell on ebay too. Ebay is the big kid on the block and really pushing their weight around with all their new rules and fees. Driving sellers and business away. Without sellers there won't be buyers - it's a symbiotic relationship, but they don't seem to be working very hard to keep their sellers happy. Eliminating checks and money orders - because they can't get a cut off them - with paypal they take 3% right off the top - including shipping fees. They are really getting greedy. I just added up all the listings total currently on ebay from the quantities shown beside all the categories (click on "Buy" - then "See all categories" to see totals per category) with a calculator - it came to 14.3 million listings on right now (auctions only - did not include ebay motors or store listings) which I gather is more or less an average number. Those listings are for about 1 week (some a little more - some a little less). They get a listing fee for everything that gets listed - whether it sells or not (14.3 million x listing fee) + the selling fee for all items that sold + paypal fees. They are making a ton of money because of pure volume. Do the math - that's 10's of millions if not 100's of millions of dollars PER WEEK! - but that is not enough for them - they want more. Greed kills - and it will open the door for another venue to move in and force a mass exodus of sellers and buyers will follow the sellers to a site that makes it reasonable to do business with them. I'll be going with everyone else too.
I think Ebay has made a biz decision that real antiques are not really their core business and it just doesnt fit well within their structure. Add in the fact that many auction houses DO NOT accept credit cards of any kind and i can see why Ebay is going in a direction away from this biz.
I closed my little store on ebay because of the fees. By the time I paid ebay and paypal it was impossible to make any money, and if I upped the prices and shipping to compensate for their charges, I was not making any sales.
I hope that ebay will be hurt by these changes, and also the live auction feature that they are eliminating in December. Maybe that will cause them to reconsider the steep escalation in fee structure and un user friendliness?
In addition to brick and mortar stores would it be unreasonable to set up your own site to get the products within the eyes of potential shoppers? Then close the deals in whatever terms were suitable to both buyer and seller?
I hope that ebay will be hurt by these changes, and also the live auction feature that they are eliminating in December. Maybe that will cause them to reconsider the steep escalation in fee structure and un user friendliness?
In addition to brick and mortar stores would it be unreasonable to set up your own site to get the products within the eyes of potential shoppers? Then close the deals in whatever terms were suitable to both buyer and seller?
Random fyi - there's yet another "Ebay replacement" emerging, though it doesn't seem to have critical mass yet.
http://www.bonanzle.com/
I haven't looked into it much but worth a quick look.
http://www.bonanzle.com/
I haven't looked into it much but worth a quick look.
It appears live auction is developing a platform for small dealers as well in 2009
http://www.liveauctioneers.com/livedealers.html
http://www.liveauctioneers.com/livedealers.html