eBay

momcqueen · ‎02-17-2018

I read a story about a month ago the suggested ebay as a corporation subsidizes those great deals from their select chosen-one sellers as part of Ebay Deals which is how the sellers can afford to sell their frying pans for 70 per cent off retail. (Like a loss leader.) Here is a link that expands on that speculation.

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/2/1518745155.html

eBay May Wrest Control of Prices from Sellers

EcommerceBytes Blog News and insight focusing on ecommerce by Ina Steiner, Editor of EcommerceBytes.com Thu Feb 15 2018 20:39:15

ypdc_dennis · ‎02-17-2018

A-river wanna be.

recped · ‎02-18-2018

The sky is falling again!

Take one slanted article, add a healthy dose of misunderstanding then mix well with a lot of wild speculation and you end up with yet another freak out!

"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.

momcqueen · ‎02-18-2018

Oh, I’m not sure I agree with you. That’s the reason I labeled the topic as speculation in the first place and, if true, I think it’s probably fine with me if eBay wants sells my high-demand stuff at a loss-leader discount as long as I get the sum I need to make it worth selling it. Whether that split is 50 per cent buyer and 50 per cent eBay, okay. It wouldn’t matter to me. I’m in it for the money, honey.

cumos55 · ‎02-18-2018

Pricing is based on something called... Fair Market Value.

If the price is set and someone buys it..... reasonably quickly..... then it is Fair market Value.

We have a situation where it is very low prices...... and they sell very... sometimes very, very, very quickly... This is very close to garage sale pricing.

Then there is high to very high pricing and it sits on eBay forever... almost forever.... and may never sell.

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I see this in the book category

The sellers with millions of listings list almost everything very low... about $5.00... regardless of the original publishers price...... sometimes this is acceptable...... Da Vinci Code as an example. Too many copies of Da Vinci Code available on the secondary market.

Then there are the high to very high prices... seller says they have one copy... It must be worth quite a bit.... But, how much is too much?

and then ....How does one list it in the thousands, where it can be bought elsewhere for $20 to $30.

Those sellers with millions of listings have listings of plain ordinary books listed in the thousands... $1000, $5,000 and $10,000. Pricing can be ridiculous... and absolutely .... stupid... and then ... How about $40,000 for a book that can be bought elsewhere for $20 ???

The story is that the sellers with millions of listings in the range of $5.00 force many to also list at this price..... They force the price down... and then the competition is gone... and .... these million listings sellers list the books at higher and sometimes much higher prices... They kill the market for those that choose to play the game of acceptable prices.... Fair Market Value prices.

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There are books worth no more than $1.00

There are other books worth in the thousands.... perhaps millions

But...... and it is a very important ... BUT..... All pricing must be justified.

Selling Da Vinci Code for $1.00 can be justified. Many published and few buyers want it on the secondary market.

Then, how about that Superman, first edition in almost perfect, perfect condition that sold for $3.2 million on eBay...

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One has to be very careful with pricing....

What is acceptable?

How mush is a potential buyer ..... willing to pay?

Is the price... justifiable? Too low..... Too high... or Fair Market Value

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Fair market Value for Da Vinci Code is $1.00... and then for Superman first edition from 1938 it was $3.2 million.

Is there anyone out there willing to pay $3.2 million for Da Vinci Code????? Absolutely NO, not ever... Never... Maybe a million years from today ... Maybe

momcqueen · ‎02-18-2018

@ypdc_denniswrote:
A-river wanna be.

Don't get me started, I find myself browsing on ebay.com pages and catch of glimpse of the future and it looks like a future that's more an eerily-familiar deja-vu from shopping on The River except nowhere will my products find a place since I cannot compete, as a Canadian ebay seller, with American prices. Is the goal to look so much like the competition that buyers forget where they are shopping?

Hey, what's this? Am I still on ebay? Well, yes, it's ebay.com and this is the Future calling to you, oooooOoooooo

momcqueen · ‎02-18-2018

@cumos55wrote:
Pricing is based on something called... Fair Market Value.....

Of course. Except ebay is relying on Product Identifiers that are often flawed if not always at their root and associate similar but not identical items for their Product Catalogue wherein their artificial intelligence would see no difference between your First Edition Da Vinci Code signed by the author and a tattered paperback version, setting by dynamic pricing both to be exactly the same at 99 cents CAD. (I exaggerate for the sake of making my point.)

When I see a three-pack of kitchen sponges listed for $6000 CAD, I back away slowly from the Buy It Now button in case I have a sudden case of the twitches and accidentally buy it by mistake, and assume one of two things is at play: this is a money-laundering enterprise where a criminal organization is trying to clean money by listing a 60-cent piece of (redacted) for that sum so that they can buy it with another account and legitimize the profits that way OR that the seller has used their own third-party dynamic price-setting software which glitched supreme and screwed up some of their listings and they just haven't noticed it yet.

If a competitor wants to list something I sell at a price that's 50 times more than I'm asking, so be it. It doesn't affect me just I don't expect my higher-than-most prices affect my competitors other than to make them look a little better. Being a Canadian seller paying legitimately for Canadian goods with Canadian taxes and Canadian postage, I cannot compete on price against our neighbours to the South or Far East and I will not even try. My strengths as a business model lay elsewhere, with fast delivery and good Customer Service.

sylviebee · ‎02-18-2018

I thought you were leaving eBay?

rose-dee · ‎02-18-2018

Well, I have to say I agree with 'recped' . Ina Steiner's reputation over the years is of stirring the pot until it boils, even if there's little of substance in it. Her "reports" should be taken with a sizable grain of salt.

I wish she would stick to reporting and commenting on what has actually been introduced or occurred at eBay (which might be of real service to the seller community), rather than whipping up a frenzy through speculation and innuendo. We sellers have enough to worry about at present without gnawing our fingernails over what might be, thank you very much Ina. Companies do surveys and float trial balloons all the time to gauge user (in this case seller) reaction, so what? EBay has abandoned many a concept this way since its inception. She should tell us when it's being implemented as a fact, not when eBay is just fantasizing.

cumos55 · ‎02-18-2018

Every listing states.....

Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing.

This is a reality.... Everything in the listing, including my price is my choice, my responsibility

ypdc_dennis · ‎02-18-2018

@sylviebee @sylviebee wrote:
... leaving eBay?

eBay backed down from their stupid no-watermarks-at-all plan.

cumos55 · ‎02-18-2018

Sometimes a bookseller will run out of inventory... a specific listing.... and will keep the listing online with a very high, absolutely ridiculous price.

Will anyone buy?

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and then

A book gets listed a a very high price, $1000 as an example. Seller does not pay attention, because many of this book are listed at a much lower price, $50 to $100 or less, and sell very quickly.

femmefan1946 · ‎02-18-2018

and will keep the listing online with a very high, absolutely ridiculous price.

I'm told that this keeps the number sold live until new stock comes in.

It strikes me as stupid, since:

Buyers Don't Read ™
If someone did accidentally buy, the seller couldn't ship
most of these seem to be dropshippers, who may never have the item again

@cumo55

Do you ever use Addall.com for comparisons?

Often the highest price for a title is from Amazon. There must be some very fat-fingered sellers listing there, with prices for ordinary paperbacks (if I have it to sell, it's ordinary) in the thousands of dollars.

And I swear this pricing error is about one title out of 20.

cumos55 · ‎02-18-2018

Visit eBay's book category.....at the top of eBay's search page... where it says ... All categories ... and click ... Books

about 3.8 million books in total on eBay Canada

Then do Highest first...... then view ....the prices.........most illuminating!!!

rose-dee · ‎02-19-2018

@femmefan1946wrote:
and will keep the listing online with a very high, absolutely ridiculous price.
I'm told that this keeps the number sold live until new stock comes in.
It strikes me as stupid, since:
Buyers Don't Read ™
If someone did accidentally buy, the seller couldn't ship
most of these seem to be dropshippers, who may never have the item again

Very interesting, this had never occurred to me when I saw such outlandish prices. I figured it was someone hoping to catch a completely naive newbie, but your explanation makes more sense, albeit (as you say) a dangerous game for the seller.

For example, I was looking a while ago for a paperback that I know normally sells new at major bookstores for around $25, and found listings for it (used, no less!) on eBay for over $150. Needless to say, that was back-button territory.

femmefan1946 · ‎02-19-2018

I use Addall.com, an accumulator site for booksellers, to compare prices when listing.

Often the highest price will be from Amazon, an ordinary paperback being offered at over $1000!.

I assume that the problem is a fat-fingered clerk intensely bored and working her way through a pile of books for the twentieth day in a row.

momcqueen · ‎02-19-2018

As I've made it known, I'm in the process of developing my own store website using a third-party integration software to move my ebay listings to this new store. Both the third-party software developers and the store-hosting website send daily (it seems) email tips on 'how to sell thousands of products without having to hold inventory' (i.e. dropship) using their software to scrape other venues' store listings to my own.

If one ever wondered as to the reason it seems like there are a million sketchy websites out there offering a vast selection of pricey goods, well, here is your answer. They aren't, really. They're just dropshopping with their fingers crossed.

mrdutch1001 · ‎02-19-2018

"If one ever wondered as to the reason it seems like there are a million sketchy websites out there offering a vast selection of pricey goods, well, here is your answer. They aren't, really. They're just dropshopping with their fingers crossed."

In many many cases there are indeed many such sites that are not only sketchy websites, but are websites that have no intentions of drop shipping or selling any tangible item or having anything to do with the sellers whose listings they pirated. These are outright scamming/fraudulent websites. Such is the case with the hundreds of .top websites that have scraped/pirated hundreds of thousands of listings from eBay, Amazon and Etsy sellers.

Approx. 80 of my eBay listings were scraped/pirated and placed on approx. 30 different .top websites without any prior contact with me & definitely without my permission. These sites have no intention of drop shipping or selling anything... Their motives are purely for their own illegal gleaning activities and whatever money they can steal from unsuspecting buyers. I have gone through the proper channels and have been able to get several of these .top sites closed down but still have a very long way to go...