I have been an ebay buyer and seller for many years. I haven’t sold much in the past few years though. I just went to list a few items and was trying to find out what the selling fees actually were. I couldn’t find it so I went to Customer Service for the info. The lady there told me the listings were free for 50 items. The final selling fee is 10% of the selling cost PLUS SHIPPING? WTF? I have to pay 10% of the shipping cost to feebay? I just don’t understand that. They dictate HOW you have to send it and then charge extra for what the customer has to pay to get the item? She, naturally, couldn’t explain why feebay would be due that extra cost and replied with, “that’s just how it is!”. Anyway, I won’t be listing there again. Just too many fees and that one is unwarranted to me.
Is there anywhere else to sell things besides Yahoo Groups? I’m just not familiar with any other places. Help!
It’s not hard or complicated to figure out, it’s right on the site, they have PAGES of infomration on how it all works. Bottom line, it’s a flat 10%. Not outrageous, and it’s charged on shipping fees to stop thee previous practice of selling a $100 item for $5 and then charging $100 shipping and handling. Blame the cheats for forcing their hand. It’s to keep you from charging a ridiclous shipping price. Considering most model railroad items fit in the $6.80 flat rate priority mail box and that INCLUDES insurance and tracking, AND the USPS will deliver the boxes to your house AND pick up the package for you - no driving to the post office and waiting in line - I don’t see why people use other options that cost more. You MIGHT need to get the bigger $13 box for some items. Still beats UPS or Fedex.
There no longer are the listing fees that were scaled based on your starting bid - where if you wanted to make sure you didn’t give your item away for under $1 you had to either pay more to crank the starting bid, or pay more to put a reserve on it. And then if it didn’t sell, pay again, though for a while they had a free relisting. But if it still didn’t go the second time, you had to pay again to list it. It all evens out.
They don’t force you to ship it in any particular way.
I much prefered the pay for higher listing price as it got rid of a lot of the people trying to make a buck over those that were cleaning house, I accually did quite well listing everything for 99 cents, only a few went for low prices but the added traffic sent some items though the roof more than making up for the other.
I couldn’t find the actual selling cost listed anywhere. I just got caught in a revolving loop that told me the same info over and over without specifying the actual amount.
And, YES, they do post and determine the shipping costs for you. I tried to list a very large and heavy S scale N&W Class A 2-6-6-4 and aux tender. When it got to the shipping part feebay placed a $7.05 Priority Mail fee for me. WTF? There’s no way that would ship those pieces, even across my train room. The cheapest fee I could find on the USPS website was closer to $60 and that isn’t including insurance. I tried to post the actual shipping and it wouldn’t allow me to. I called and they said “after the auction you can work that out with the buyer”. I don’t think so! If I purchased something in an auction stating $7.05 shipping and the seller told me he wanted an extra $53+ I doubt if I would be too happy. Would that work for you? I don’t think so. Anyway, their answer was firm and unacceptable to me.
They also wouldn’t allow a reserve price and pushed me to give a BIN price. I thought it was an auction place?
Roger, don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. eBay provides the widest possible audience for selling your unwanted items. And, besides, eBay provides shipping discounts that more than make up for the additional selling fee tied to the shipping charge.
EBay does have the shipping calculator. To the poster that had the low shipping cost for the heavy loco, I think you will find that calculated price was for shipping it from your zip code to your zip code. If you put 3 pounds in the weight when listed, the calculator will figure the cost based on the buyer’s zip code. If you print your shipping labels thru the eBay site, you get a discount on the USPS price that helps cover the 10% charge on the shipping and the tracking number is posted on your “My eBay” page.
Also withn the help system is a fee calculator, and detailed instructions on using various options, such as setting a reserve. I can’t believe that if the size and weight of the item were entered properly it would give that price. Not even sure what that price would be, though postage rates did just go up. But that’s not the smallest Priority Mail flat rate box, nor is it the second size up. The largest box might fit the loco, the tender int he medium one - cheaper than one monster box trying to fit them both in - sometime you have to think outside the, erm, box to get reasonable shipping for a particualrly large item.
And there are other options, like offering free shipping and just building it into the cost. I’m still certain you can specify information such that the calculator would give the correct results - it’s even in the fee calculator, which is in the help section as well, you put in starting price, final price it sold for, select whatever other options you selected like the priority listings and stuff, and it lets you put in an amount for shipping, and then calculates the total fees you would be paying.
It’s still the largest expsore, and still cheaper than an auctioneer would charge for a public auction, and more likely to get results than just palcing classified ads. Used to be the classifieds in the back or MR were THE way to move railroad equipment, but in today’s litigious society I can see why Kalmbach doesn’t want to have anything to do with that sort of thing anymore.
USPS push their flat rate boxes. I find in most instances, unless something is REALLY heavy, I can ship items using regular Priority mail cheaper than flat rate. If you go to the USPS web site for cost, you can see the difference. 2 pounds from western Colorado to Dayton Ohio is $10.75. A medium flat rate box is $13.45 I can get 3 to 4 HO 40’ or 50’ freight cars well packaged under 2 pounds. Unless you are shipping bricks or anvils, flat rate is usually a bad deal.
I agree that eBay isn’t cheap anymore, when they started the “free listing” they jacked up the final value fee. But now anyone that wants to be a big time seller can flood the categories- it must be really easy to become a Bachmann dealer, there are a couple that don’t sell any other model railroading stuff, and they list the entire catalog at full MSRP or more! If they would just charge a nickle or dime for a listing fee that would get rid of that mess.
But back to the original question- for selling there are two other sites I know of-
Dash, which seems to be owned by the eBay seller “Trainz”-
I’m not sure what the seller fees are, if any. But the buyer pays a 15% premium and unless you’re a member you get dinged for an extra 50 cents “Dash Fee”.
They used to be moderately busy (but not even close to eBay traffic). Lately though they’ve been really slow, most of what they have is from Train City (the owners) selling off collections they bought, mostly Lionel and Flyer. Again. I’ve never sold there but I have bought from them. That was a while ago though, they used to be located in Erie PA and moved to Florida, I could stop in and pick up items and save the shipping.
The only thing eBay does that drives me nuts as a seller is that if you use the smartphone app you can’t add handling. Its easier to use the app because I don’t have to transload the pictures. But then I have to go over to the computer to revise the listing to add a handling charge. I recently sold some hockey equipment and that required some rather large boxes that were not cheap at all…