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Comment by aucisson_masque | Hacker News Reader

Side note but did anyone here tried to sell stuff on eBay ?

Their pricing are insane, they take a cut on your product price, but also on the delivery method and even on the taxes !

It amounts to about 13% of total price, including delivery and taxes.

It looks absolutely insane to me, but some people seem to defend it.

To put some perspective, here in France we have an extremely profitable competitor called Leboncoin, it's crushing eBay shares in the country, and they take only 5% cut on the product price.

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> It looks absolutely insane to me, but some people seem to defend it.

Before that policy, you had a bunch of items listed for $1 + $60 "shipping" to dodge fees. I'll take the current structure over that.

Making you pay ~12% fee on foreign country taxes collected by eBay, when those taxes can’t be gamed like postage was, is a bridge too far.

I used to offer listings to the world, now I just add Japan for the odd rare item.

Stuff is still getting listed like that on ebay.

I use ebay heavily and I don't see it anymore, except for things that look like typos or people who clearly just don't know how to use ebay. There's no advantage to doing so because sorting/filtering includes shipping.

Sorting isn't strict (or perhaps affected by paid placements?) so buyers still have to look at the prices to see which item is actually the cheapest.

Sorting is strict when you select "Price + Shipping: lowest first", for the main results. It's been that way since they started adding fees to shipping.

No it isn't.

I still see it. Idk what the seller is thinking but I’m guessing they aren’t too smart.

You still get suspicious shipping prices just not as extreme perhaps. For a platform like eBay where I am less likely to buy multiple different items from one seller and that is integrated internationally, the list price should just include shipping (and import fees!) anyway to make comparisons easier.

Yeah, now you pay $30 in real shipping to have everything routed through ebay's hub and have your package take three times long to get there.

That's interesting, at least it's a reason to put tax on delivery method.

Too expensive for things you can sell for cash on one of the dumb local marketplaces or on Craigslist.

Super niche stuff you need to be able to advertise to Timbuktu & Japan & LA & NY in hopes of finding a single buyer… fine take your 15%.

Great place to buy new stuff w/o enriching Bezos. Filter Buy It Now + Lowest Price First & hope they’ve fixed the “list a 99 cent cable alongside the $15 widgets you actually want, or price cap + use Best Match.

eBay has always nickle and dimed you. I remember a friend saying that in the early 2000s when he ran a big eBay store. He always tried to avoid eBay but you made money easier online than at a flea market or Craigslist which come with their own headaches.

He's much happier doing live auctions on WhatNot these days, which seems to be eating into eBay's business

Ebay sucks but I'm not sure there are any better options in the states

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