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EBay Valet

ebay.com

61–70 of 89 posts

Re: EBay Valet

#61
post #52

You get 70% of the sale price if your things sell. 30% commission, and the valet's incentives are for a quick sale rather than the best price, if the behavior of existing bulk listers is anything to go by. These people are usually not especially knowledgeable about the items they sell and so have a poor grasp of pricing - often good for me as informed buyer, but a real pain in the ass for sellers.

The alternative is 'throw out not completely useless stuff because I can't be arsed to sell it'. It's win win the way I see it, I'd dump half a truck of stuff on their dock if they'd offer this in Europe.

Almost the same here, except I keep it in a box in the shed. For example I have a Nexus 10 that I never use and I can't be arsed selling it but would happily sell it through eBay valet.

Re: EBay Valet

#62

This is not going to end well for eBay, I can see it now. Some fake items are surprisingly good, you'll be reading stories of people being ripped off because valets were told they were given designer brand items only for them to be discovered as fakes later on. Somewhat cool idea I will admit, but when you're dealing with e-commerce and allowing users to get other people to sell their items, it'll open up a rather co…

Not only that but they are simply doing it with pre-paid shipping boxes. People are just going to send them junk.

Re: EBay Valet

#63
"Valets accept like-new items worth $40 or more"

So are they committing to getting you at least $40 on what you're selling?

Re: EBay Valet

#64
post #63

"Valets accept like-new items worth $40 or more" So are they committing to getting you at least $40 on what you're selling?

70% of that, no? So $28.

    You get 70% of the sale price if your things sell.

Re: EBay Valet

#65
post #49
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the Appstore 30% fee model is becoming standard everywhere now. That's not a very positive thing...

If you think 30% is high, I would like to introduce to you Getty Images, the juggernaut of stock photography. They take 50% now.

Filthy peasants, you should be glad your taxes for living on the Kings land arnt even higher I say!

Re: EBay Valet

#66
post #50

New or like-new designer shoes and handbags: Brands like Hugo Boss, Gucci, Nine West, Ralph Lauren I wonder if eBay are potentially setting themselves up for a massive headache with this. There is a quite staggering number of people who falsely believe that their counterfeit designer items are genuine.

FWIW... this is exactly why we launched Lollipuff (YC W13): https://www.lollipuff.com/ eBay is notoriously plagued with fakes. For some designer brands, fakes can account for 75% (or more) of the items sold [1,2]. The key for Lollipuff: We have brand experts authenticate each and every item -- ie. real, human experts augmented with sophisticated software to make things scalable. We like to think of it as "eBay withou…

I notice you don't offer support for watches. Are there any plans to expand to that? I operate a similar website (http://www.haberdashboard.com) where I just implemented a watch search, and it is ASTONISHING how difficult paring out the fakes is.

I'm impressed by how much engagement you've built over such a small number of items. Is there a reason you don't seem to have implemented typical search filters like size, price etc? It seems difficult to find anything if I'm just browsing, so I assume I'm missing something as to how people are using the site.

Re: EBay Valet

#67
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW... this is exactly why we launched Lollipuff (YC W13): https://www.lollipuff.com/ eBay is notoriously plagued with fakes. For some designer brands, fakes can account for 75% (or more) of the items sold [1,2]. The key for Lollipuff: We have brand experts authenticate each and every item -- ie. real, human experts augmented with sophisticated software to make things scalable. We like to think of it as "eBay withou…

I notice you don't offer support for watches. Are there any plans to expand to that? I operate a similar website ( http://www.haberdashboard.com ) where I just implemented a watch search, and it is ASTONISHING how difficult paring out the fakes is. I'm impressed by how much engagement you've built over such a small number of items. Is there a reason you don't seem to have implemented typical search filters like size,…

The problem with watches is typically the only way to tell if it is real or not is to take it apart.

Re: EBay Valet

#68
post #52

You get 70% of the sale price if your things sell. 30% commission, and the valet's incentives are for a quick sale rather than the best price, if the behavior of existing bulk listers is anything to go by. These people are usually not especially knowledgeable about the items they sell and so have a poor grasp of pricing - often good for me as informed buyer, but a real pain in the ass for sellers.

The alternative is 'throw out not completely useless stuff because I can't be arsed to sell it'. It's win win the way I see it, I'd dump half a truck of stuff on their dock if they'd offer this in Europe.

Are there not currently businesses that do exactly this? You drop things off and they list them. I ran one for a while (albeit in the states).

Re: EBay Valet

#69
post #28
post #21

Goes to show how seller-hostile EBay is if they need to provide a service like this. Imagine if you needed to provide a "valet service" for your SaaS. Wouldn't that say something about your UX?

This has nothing to do with UX. Yes, eBay has a terrible UX but some people have stuff to sell and no time on their hands. Does Instamotor exist because of the terrible UX of car dealerships?

>some people have stuff to sell and no time on their hands.

The quality of ebay's UX is the main determinant of how much time you need to have on your hands to sell something on ebay.

>Does Instamotor exist because of the terrible UX of car dealerships?

Yes.

Re: EBay Valet

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just a rebranding of something that already existed? This service has existed for a long time.

eBay Valet is a new application. Easy there, tiger. Unless I'm misinformed, it is a new service leveraging eBay's existing auction/commerce platform.

It's a new implementation of a common service. You have a point with the auction house providing the service it blurs some lines. Similar points have been brought up regarding some of Amazon's services. I think it will rely on eBay's willingness to shutdown bad vendors (something they aren't known for at the moment).
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