eBay auction alternatives

I’ve used eBay for years. I’ve bought, I’ve sold (infact, I’ve bought two items this weekend) but I do so begrudgingly, knowing that the fees eBay milk from their sellers never reflects on the customer service you’d expect from a website this popular.

So with that in mind, I’ve always been keeping an eye out for alternatives to what I lovingly refer to the online car boot sale that is eBay. Everyone and their dog has had a go at the auction startup it seems, some with more success than others (think QXL and Yahoo Auctions).

I got a tip off that another site had launched to try to take a slice of eBay’s calorific pie so enter stage left ORBAY auctions. With auction sites, their key to success is the user base. Without enough sellers flogging their wares, the auction site is never going to take off and likewise if there’s not enough buyers, sellers are going to see their items go for a fraction of their real-world value.

As an side thought, that’s the beauty of eBay - you can list a book that sells for £10 on Amazon, £7 in Tesco yet on eBay, it’ll be found for £14.99 plus £5 postage, plus another £2 if you want it sent recorded delivery. And it will sell for that price too. Yes, eBay’s a great sellers market because it’s buyers are mostly idiots that get wrapped up in the whole eBay game and just buy because “it’s convenient”.
How entering into a dispute because the item you won never arrived is convenient is beyond me. Anyway, back to the post…

ORBAY have the right idea from the start and do not charge listing fees. This means more of what your item sells for goes into your pocket! I recently sold an item for family and by the time you took off the fees to add the item, the fees to sell the item and the fees to get the money for the item, you’re already £10 down on the final price.
Ok, there is a final sales fee but then any auction house that doesn’t charge a fee somewhere has a seriously screwed business model.

Let’s watch this space.