I shill bid on my ebay listings

What are you selling on Ebay?

List everything "Buy it Now" ...at the lowest price you're willing to take. What's so difficult about that, if you don't like doing it, give it up. What do you want us to do about it?

I save crap I want to sell and go to a flea market or trunk sale every year or so. I never go with expectations and its fun to get rid of everything and I'm surprised the cash I pull in.

I never use Ebay anymore. Too many oddballs/disputes/complainers.

OP is a scoundrel.

OP is one more reason not to use ebay

I got ripped off and I never made any money on sales. Too many crooks.

R2 BINs never sell, they sit there forever.

Same with reserve bids. People rarely bid on those.

R4 and R7 I had one prick from the UK switch a part on the item he bought and try to return it. He included pics to prove the part was damaged and even though his own pics proved the part was switched ebay still sided with him.

You're surprised that no one wants to buy your grandmother's bloomers?

I rarely use Ebay anymore, but I only go the "Buy It Now" items.

*go to the "Buy It Now"..

I only list BIN, unless it's a piece of silver. I list and forget about it, eventually it all sells. Perhaps you have unrealistic expectations. If you're selling antiques or collectibles, no one wants it unless it's MCM.

How do you go selling books etc?

R8, all my purchases are BINs. I don't bother bidding.

I don't want to say what I sell because it may out me. After dealing with some of my buyers I have no trouble believing they're Dataloungers.

But honestly R12 I do research before listing items and I know the market value. I have to believe at this point it's because I'm located in Canada and no one wants to buy from me.

Come out of the ebay closet please OP

The shipping cost on EBay is usually a deal breaker for me. I’ll stick to buying things on Amazon.

The last second bidders really annoy me. Do they think they're the only people who thought of this? Do they rally think their last second $2 bid will win the listing? Why bother?

I ALWAYS go for the [italic] Make An Offer [/italic] items. Most times I will offer lass than half of what they are asking and finagle from there. Amazing how people just want to get rid of their stuff instead of throwing it away.

I sell on ebay. I sell memorabilia which can sometimes be unique and do well around the holidays. I also don't gouge people on shipping, I just charge enough to ail the item and recover most of the fees ebay and paypal charge.

I used to have a store but I quit it, it was just way too much money. My sales have went down, but I don't care. The key I think is to have Buy it Now AND auctions running at the same time. I've tried to sell on Amazon before and it was a nightmare.

Fuck Ebay. Mercari is netting me about $500 a month. Listings never expire. No after fees. OfferUp (ships nationally) and I net about $200. Listings don't expire.

Poshmark is another way to bring in the bank. Listings don't expire there as well.

Mercari is the best!

I bought a camera on eBay. The seller wrote to tell me it didn’t have the manual, available online, and did I still want to buy it? I said “sure”. It was a couple hundred bucks.

It arrived without the cord to download the pics from the camera to the computer, making it useless. No refund. The seller claimed they had told me it was “missing some parts”. I complained and easily got my money back. It was such a piece of crap, the seller never asked for the camera back.

OP (R15) if you charge shipping that may be the reason. Shipping charges from Canada to the US are astronomical. I only buy from Canadian sellers if I can't find the item anywhere else.

I bought an antique $1000 US bank note, with a 14-day return guarantee on ebay. I thought the seller had starched and ironed the note - that makes a worn note feel crisp, but destroys its collectible value. The seller absolutely refused to accept the return. I sent it back anyway. eBay refunded my money easily enough.

The top note, at the link.

R23 yes. Shipping from Canada to US is $19. International can be anywhere from $45 to $55. No one wants to pay that.

Shill bid all you want, OP. Items rarely sell for much more than they are worth. If you are doing much shill bidding, you are taking the real risk of making the highest bid and getting stuck with an item that is not really sold. You may even owe eBay a bit of coin for the "sale." If the price of an item climbs above what I am willing to pay, I NEVER chase that item just to get it, price be damned.

But do not fuck with the shipping. That different sellers quote vastly different prices for shipping like items always intrigues me. And nothing gets me to move on quicker than inflated shipping prices. We all know what is happening with that.

OP, if you win, do you owe eBay their cut?

I’ve thought of doing this, but can’t be bothered. Between eBay and PayPal, I can’t make a profit on my stuff.

R26 the absurd highs cost of shipping through Canada Post scares off a lot of bidders. My sales have gone down as their shipping charges have gone up.

R27 I usually pay the ebay fees if they're not too high, or just cancel the order, then relist several weeks later.

I'm selling of my personal collection to pay for something more important and most of the time I'm just breaking even with the shill bidding. If I didn't shill bid I'd be seeing items selling for a few dollars.

A buyer owes you nothing, he's out to get an item for the best price he can...if you don't like the way it works, find some other way to sell it. If I buy something at auction, I'm looking for a deal and I'll snipe if I can. List your auctions with an opening bid that is the least amount you're willing to sell the item for. I buy a lot on Ebay, I pay promptly and have only returned maybe 2 or 3 items out of 1000+ transactions. This incessant whining about Ebay is ridiculous, move on if you don't like it. Try offerup, craigslist, etsy, 1stdibs, kingsroad....lots of choices out there.

[quote]have only returned maybe 2 or 3 items out of 1000+ transactions

Was one of those items a non-douchebag personality?

OP, maybe your stuff isn't worth what you think it is, it sucks, but used shit or collectibles are difficult to sell. It sounds like you're hard up and angry at the world, hang in there.

Mercari

I sold some things on eBay including a semi-valuable thing I got $600 for — and then was shocked by the fees PayPal charges!

How much does PayPal and eBay typically take?

I’m in Australia and if the shipping is crazy from the USA and Canada - it rarely is from the EU or Asia - I say “I’d really like to buy this but the shipping is prohibitively expensive. What’s the cheapest rate of shopping with tracking you offer?” and boom.

Are you the coin/antique watch seller, OP?

I never understand Ebay. I have sold stuff on there BNIB and others will sell for more than my listing while I get low ball offers (when it re-lists Ebay automatically lists it with best offer, you have to go in and change it every time). That and ebay takes 10%, paypal (which ebay owns) takes another 3 % and then shipping?? Letitgo or craigslist is sometimes a better option.

Log out of ebay or use a different device or use a private window and search Ebay for one of your listings using the search bar. How far up are you listings showing up and are you using the same keywords as other people? Do the search through bought Ebay.ca and regular Ebay.com and maybe use a VPN or proxy set to USA when doing the Ebay.com search to get more helpful result.

The most likely issue is the Canadian shipping but it could be that you're being filtered out from most people's searches just because of the way ebay works or because of the keywords you are using.

OP=EBay Shopbottom

I have a bunch of collectibles I need to sell. Is Etsy an option? Is EBay better? I’m confused about the options.

[quote]all my purchases are BINs. I don't bother bidding.

I gave up on actual auctions on EBay when sniping software became the norm - only BINs now as well. I don't even include auction listings in my searches.

Back in the early 2000s eBay used to be so fun. Looking all over for all those old memories and rare things you used to own. They even allowed bootleg recordings to be sold.

Those were the days.

I bought a few things back in the day, but I got turned off when they went to PayPal-only payment methods.

R34 In Canada it's about 13% between the listing fees, international visibility fees, final value fees, shipping fees and then tax on top of all that. Then the PayPal fees.

R20 You "charge enough to (m)ail the item and recover most of the fees ebay and paypal charge." ? Meaning you inflate the shipping cost to cover the fees?

Shipping costs, even the US, are high enough but if you expect your customers to pay for your cost of doing business, no wonder your sales have gone down. It's easy enough to know, for instance, that it doesn't cost, say, $25 to send a teaspoon. If I saw that, I'd never bid.

Some do exactly that, R43. There is a particular brand of vintage cookware that I collect. Within that brand, the items are highly standardized. I frequently will see the exact item offered with a variety of shipping costs, from the US to a US address. The postage may be listed as $8,or it may be $20 or even $30.

eBay and PayPal take so much in fees that you hardly make any money in the end

R44 And all else being equal would you buy the item offered with the $30 shipping cost (of which maybe $8 is the cost to the seller of postage and packaging)?

I thought not. I certainly wouldn't. This isn't like buying milk and bread - none of us buy vintage cookware or Frank Smith "Newport Shell" flatware because we have to - we do so because we want to. And since they aren't among life's necessities, I anyway don't like to get screwed paying for postage.

Ebay introduced the shipping fee on sellers to curtail excessive shipping quotes. Then they use the ebay calculator to calculate shipping which is always too low. Then you get charged the shipping fee, get charged tax on the fee and have to pay PayPal fees on the shipping. When I ship I always loose anywhere from $2 to $3 because of all the fucking fees.

I've tried selling elsewhere--forums that specialize in the items I sell, my own website, Facebook, but when things don't sell and I want to get rid of them then ebay is a necessary evil.

I use the eBay shipping calculator and directly print my postage from there, it's always cheaper than the post office.

Mercari not getting very good reviews.

I have a listing right now for a vintage item. Market value, (averaged out based on previous completed auctions on ebay,) is $85. I started the listing at $5 and I shill bid $80.

The listing has had a few bids and was up to $9.50. Today one person bid on the listing in $1 increments--57 times.

These people drive me up the wall. All those bids tend to scare other bidders off.

I tend to make about 73% profit on my final sale price on eBay after fees from them and PayPal. It would be less if I sold with a BIN plus shipping costs, but because I make more by offering "free shipping," I basically just add in the price of shipping to the BIN cost and sell that way.

Shipping materials will eat away another 5% of your profits, too.

1. Shill bidding is illegal. People who shill bid on ebay have been arrested and sent to jail.

2. There is too much competition and someone is always willing to lower their price a little lower than yours.

3. Unless you pay ebay or someone to do a lot of advertising you rarely get seen by anyone. Ebay's servers could never hold all the listings so they get rotated. When I 1st started listing there were a total of 5 million listings on ebay and everyone saw them. Now I'm sure it is close to billions. I'll list 15 items and in a week will have had a total of 25 views and this is with millions of people visiting ebay everyday.

I list about 20 vintage items a month and if I'm lucky I sell 2.

That's somebody who knows you're shilling, r50. They're trying to find the dollar amount you shilled for, i e. the lowest price you'll sell it at.

[quote]1. Shill bidding is illegal. People who shill bid on ebay have been arrested and sent to jail.

Mary!

Knock on wood, but I've had good luck as a buyer on eBay. I've purchased from US eBay and, also eBay Ireland and eBay England. Shipping to U.S. was reasonable (from Ireland and England). I think I've only bid on auction once. I like to buy via "Buy It Now." I look for the sellers with good ratings and feedback.

A few years ago, eBay's customer list and passwords got broken into. It was a domino effect with PayPal. My credit card got used to purchase something like $3,000 in iPads and Galaxy pads (unauthorized). Had to shut down my credit card and get a new one.

What kills my interest in eBay is the people who get buyer's remorse and try to get a break after they've won an auction and come up with bullshit reasons why they deserve a partial refund.

Ebay is generally a cesspool now that PayPal has bought it.

Paypal has not bought ebay; they are separate entities.

OP, this is only fair if you get buyer's remorse for winning your own auctions and then give yourself negative reviews both as a seller and as a buyer.

As a buyer, I have had very good luck on eBay. Over the years, I've only had two bad experiences with sellers. Both times, I received broken items. And both times the items were horribly packaged, sealed into a re-used, and consequently weakened, cardboard box, with nothing to secure or cushion the items. Both sellers were nasty and confrontational and both refused to refund. eBay handled it. I submitted photos of the ripped boxes and the broken items. Done.

Again and again, I hear sellers complaining stridently about eBay and its policies and its fees. But if it is that bad, why is it so big?

How can China sellers charge little to no shipping to the U.S, but U.S. sellers usually cost at least $10-20 shipping?

R61 they use surface mail which is sent by ship to North America. I ordered an item that had free shipping and it took three months to land in my mailbox.

What annoys me about some ebay bidders is they're willing to pay hundreds for an item but balk at paying $20 or $30 for traked shipping.

What's up with all the posters bitching about "excessive shipping" charges? If you're happy with the TOTAL amount of the item including shipping, why does it matter what the breakdown is?

They weren't for a while there, r58.

R64 I know many buyers--especially international buyers--ask for cheaper non-tracked shipping so they can claim the item never arrived. Some sellers fall for this.

What is it with Asian buyers and taking forever to pay?

Every time one of my items sells to an Asian high bidder they won't pay, I'll open a non paying bidder claim and they will wait until the very last minute before the case is closed in my favour to pay.

And invariably they will request immediate shipment with the tracking number so they can verify the item has been shipped.

R64 The point is that we aren’t happy with the ‘TOTAL’ amount. When you add $10 shipping on a $15 or $20 item, it kills the deal for me.

Let me tell you one reason I hate PayPal.

I sold an item for $600 USD. With the exchange rate that's about $806 Canadian. Yet PayPal states the exchange rate makes it $779. Those fuckers burned me for $27 with their inflated exchange rate and currency exchange fees. Fucking pricks.

Then simply move on to the next listing, R68.

Ebay = online garage sale

My Humboldt figurines bring in thousands and my Murry Ormand dolls do just as well

R58, it's old news, but the poster was correct. In 2002, ebay bought PayPal. In 2015, they split up again. Probably for 2 reasons: 1. ebay owning its own payment processor might raise antitrust issues; and 2. PayPal is a much more viable business if it can do transactions with ebay's competitors.

The poster was not correct -- he said paypal bought ebay, which never happened. So the assertion that ebay is a "cesspool" since paypal supposedly bought it is particularly idiotic.

You're splitting hairs, R74. ebay and PayPal are both cesspools.

[quote]Ebay = online garage sale

Yes. So?

My ex sold on EBay and tried to make it appear as if he was self employed. He still lived at home with mommie and daddy in his 30s. Hell, he may still be there. He would charge the merch and shipping on his credit card. I really think his net amounted to nothing more than using his credit line as cash advances since he would get charged interest because he didn’t pay his cc off each month. Lord he was a loser. He also had a little dick and was lousy in bed,

[quote] What's up with all the posters bitching about "excessive shipping" charges? If you're happy with the TOTAL amount of the item including shipping, why does it matter what the breakdown is?

That's how I look at it as well. I just look at the total (after shipping) and decide if I think it's worth it.

Yes, and the ones that are not worth it because the shipping is inflated we come here to bitch about. What's so hard to understand about that?

It's hard to understand why you wouldn't just move the fuck on to the next listing then. You know you can display listings from lowest price to highest including shipping, right? Once the items go beyond what you're willing to spend STOP LOOKING! What's so hard about that?

This thread is ground zero for a lot of miserable damaged people.

Ground zero for damaged people, haha. Yes. I spend 7 years doing online sales. I made more than I do now as a public high school teacher. However, the people who do it are usually people who are smart, crazy, and absolutely unemployable.

I had a circle of local guys who did what I did, and all 12 were crazy. One was an ex-writer coke head. One lived in a trailer with him mom at 50. All kinds of sad sacks. Interesting people.

The business side is awful, and Ebay is an evil company, Paypal even worse. It's their sandbox, and they rule it with a crazy arbitrary fist.

It was fun for about two years. 80 hour weeks, lots of driving, packing , VERY HARD WAY TO MAKE AN EASY LIVING.

Original poster is probably lying, honestly. Shill bidding on Ebay, that didn't work 20 years ago, and surely does not work now.

You get a lot of "Ebay ruined my life" people, they are the saddest of all. You aren't even a number to Ebay, just a resource to be used or discarded.

Lots of crooks in used goods though. They have no moral compass at all.

I used to sell high ticket items on ebay but stopped because the last couple of years I was ripped off by buyers too many times.

The final straw was getting an email from someone I know telling me someone was using my pictures to sell a watch I had sold on ebay. Turns out it was the buyer.

He hadn't paid for the watch yet and was using my ebay listing pics to try and sell the watch before paying for it.

Now I just list items worth $300 or less.

Anyone get the email that ebay will start collecting sales tax from sellers and remitting to the government, (or so they claim,)?

I am done with ebay. I don't need some offshore based company collecting sales tax from me, holding it in their accounts to accrue interest and then possibly submitting it to the feds.

Fuck them.