UKC

Hi all,

I'm about to put a bunch of stuff I've got lying around on eBay. However, eBay seems to have become more complicated since I last went on a clutter cull some years ago, with a mix of auctions, 'buy it now' and 'make an offer'.

What do people consider the best strategies for selling these days, to maximise selling price whilst minimising hassle? A simple auction with a low starting price and just let it go? Or an auction with buy it now and make an offer added in? I was thinking of going for an auction with a buy it now 10% higher than I anticipate getting for each item. Is it worth having 'make an offer' in the mix too?

What would your optimal strategy be?

Cheers,

Colin

The very best e-bay strategy is to use Gumtree.

It's free and widely used.

Personally I hate negotiating and working out what something is worth so go auction only and clearly state it in the description too, this has always in my experience got me a reasonable price.  Despite this some muppets still contact me asking for a buy it now price.  I can only conclude they can't read.

They can probably read but not put 2+2 together. The more people you have to deal with, the more muppets .

That said, if you want to sell, why not just give them a price , low high or whatever figure and you might get some dosh. 

I use Facebook buy/sell on the app. It’s great so far. Just work out a reasonable price and stick it up there. Benefit for me is no sneaky EBay fees + often you get a sale in under 48hrs so you can post it and get it out the house! 

Because I don't have a clue what's reasonable, the purpose of an auction is to establish what that is.  Notably, I think in every case so far the auction has ended significantly higher than any of the offers.

These days I just delete their messages and ignore them.  If they can't be bothered to read the description in full (which is what it's for so you know what you're buying - the principle of eBay is to be detailed and honest) then I can't be bothered to read their emails, either.

By far the easiest way is to stick it on for 1p and let the auction run to the end. Runs the risk of you not being happy with the final sale price though 

A gas fire in good working order that probably cost someone a few hundred pounds went for 1p on eBay.

Only after some smartarse gave me a lot of internet grief about selling gas fires being illegal. I put him straight about it only being illegal to fit a gas fire when unqualified.

Anyway it saved me the hassle of taking it to the tip, sorry civic amenity site

Depends whether you are trying to get the maximum return, trying to find what is an acheivable value or just a sale,any amount.

Looking on " completed listings" enables research on what similar product has actually acheived at auction.

Might be worth mentioning (because it caught me out before) that if you put a 'buy it now' price on an auction item, the option to 'buy it now' will disappear as soon as a bid is placed.  I'm sure it didn't always work that way.

If selling through an auction, it can be worth considering selling internationally as you will reach a much wider audience. RM's international signed for isn't hugely expensive (around £15-20) and if you quote a honest postage price then your items will be more attractive to international ebayers.

Just remember to state that customs forms will be declared correctly and buyers are responsible for all taxes and further delivery costs.

Tried that, too many no shows and time wasters.

My usual strategy is to put it on Buy It Now with no limit accepting offers, then just wait for people to either buy it as listed, or offer an amount that's not insultingly low (you can auto-reject these in the settings of the listing - set it to automatically reject anything underneath a certain amount).  My BIN cost is usually a bit more than I'd be willing to take for it - if anyone wants it for that price then you get a bit extra, but if they make an offer you're still not getting taken advantage of.  However, I've always sold on an offer rather than the BIN price so maybe it's not the most sensible strategy.

Depends if you want it sold quickly or want the best price for it.  As a buyer I prefer to go with BIN because I don't have to set an alarm and be ready at an arbitrary point.  As a seller I've been jibbed with auctions before now.  

What I'm usually after is to find what is a reasonable value with the minimum of hassle (I absolutely hate negotiating on price - it is one of my least favourite things to do).  I find the auction-only format achieves this well, other than these people who try it on who can simply be ignored (I now state this in my listings - "any offers, or requests to transact outside eBay/PayPal, will be ignored and you will not receive a reply").

I'm more than happy to respond on questions of fact about the sale, but I'm generally quite big on making the listing honest, truthful and detailed (including about what I don't know about the item) so it's very rare to actually get any.  The only time I did get a few was when selling a used mobile phone, where most of the business buyers were asking me to guarantee to them that it had, for instance, never got wet - which I did respond to declining to make such a guarantee as I had no way to know barring taking it apart if the previous owner had dropped it in the bog and got away with it.

In essence, in most cases it's fire, forget for a week, then get paid, dispatch promptly and get positive feedback.

Gumtree is just a modern version of putting it in the paper, which did require fielding a load of phone calls and planning for people to turn up who didn't.  eBay as an auction avoids all that.

I found eBay extremely stressful to deal with as a seller when I sold a few items at the beginning of last year. I posted a few points in response to a Facebook thread about it at the time: 

"eBay has turned into an awful experience for sellers. Out of 6 sales I had 4 issues to resolve. Online customer services is non-existent as there is no 'miscellaneous' category, and to use it your complaint has to fit into a very limited number of complaint types, which typically it does not.

Why was my auction advertised to overseas customers, even though I only specified UK delivery? eBay do not make it at all clear that you also have to go into your account settings and restrict sales to the UK in order to prevent overseas customers bidding. I cannot afford to send the item registered to France, and never intended to offer international shipping (I specified UK only).

Also why do they still allow people to pay by PayPal for items being collected, when they know Fraudsters regularly pay PayPal, collect the item, then claim they never collected it? Sellers should not be forced to include Paypal in payment methods if they have specified cash on collection only. Clearly eBay are just trying to make as much money as possible (they own PayPal - and clearly they are abusing customer rights because of this), irrespective of whether this puts their sellers at risk of being scammed."

I can't remember all of the other problems I had right now, but they make it very difficult for sellers.

Another thing that was annoying was that even if you untick the 'allow offers' box, if no-one bids for about a day or two, eBay automatically allow offers, even if you don't want to go below your starting price. I was getting ridiculous offers and having to send multiple replies saying no, no, no, no and no.

If you use it I would recommend not advertising it all at once, as trying to resolve each issue that comes up is very time-consuming when they have virtually non-existent customer services!

Good luck with it!

Chris

I have sold pretty much all my recent stuff on the 'make me an offer' basis, just stick it on above what you would be happy with and see what happens

Or list it here if its outdoor related kit, seems a pretty buoyant market ?

I would suggest timing your auctions to finish around tea time on a Saturday or Sunday, or around 7pm for a weekday as you are more likely to have people browsing and available to make last minute bids

Lots of photos, honesty over condition. 

Make sure you use signed for post so you have proof of delivery etc.

Point of order, eBay no longer own PayPal, they've flogged it off.  I forget who does now.

I think it's a company in it's own right now?  PYPL US is the ticker. Largest shareholder is Vanguard who own 7.34%

Agreed with all of that.

Very true - although that reminds me of another problem I had - I had set all of my auctions up to end at a strategic time on a Sunday evening, but then eBay changed the end dates so they all ended during one of the England World Cup matches on the Saturday night! So don't rely on the date/time you pick for the sale to end remaining in place.

I didn't think they could do that legally. (i.e. these are not the terms you agreed to) Interesting

I think it might have been a bug which occurred after I added some wording. By that point I was so frustrated that I couldn't be bothered to complain yet again!

Facebook marketplace and any of your local selling groups. No fees and less hassle (usually!).