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Comment by vaksel | Hacker News Reader

its all about $$$.

eBay used to save you a crapload over other web stores. Now the difference is so tiny, that there is no reason to take the risk with eBay

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On the contrary, I think it's all about eBay has long been a market for new goods, instead of the used stuff that the original idea was based off of. Auctions just aren't a very good means to sell new goods.

Go search for any product you like on eBay - the overwhelming majority of the results are new items, from large-scale eBay dealers, using the Buy-it-now feature instead of real auctioning.

In this case eBay has simply become another webstore - and Amazon has had third-party sellers for quite some time also. As a webstore, Amazon's brand name is considerably more powerful than eBay. Not to mention Amazon takes payment on your behalf as a trusted entity - which is more than can be said for the money order and PayPal-based payment system of eBay.

Oh, also, so many eBay listings lowball the selling price and then destroy you on shipping. This is the primary reason why I stopped using the service - it was too much work having to figure out exactly how much it would cost to get it shipped to me. Amazon third-party sellers are locked to certain shipping rates.

Nowadays you can list listings by price + shipping. Amazon sufferers from USAitis really bad compaired to eBay, where shipping anything out of the usa (like canada) adds ridiculous shipping fees like $50 extra from a $5 to USA shipping fee. And most of it is not even available to ship to canada.

Even as a web store eBay sucks -- it's hard to search for something and not get swamped in accessories/manuals/related junk for an item.

I assume you mean the risk of using PayPal. That's the main reason I don't use eBay.

risk of using paypal, risk of getting scammed(never getting an item, getting a box full of rocks, getting a refurbished item as new, getting a knockoff etc)

Not to me - PayPal doesn't enter into why I don't go to ebay. It's like vaksel said: I used to be able to actually save money by buying things on ebay. Now I often find that ebay's sellers are so unrealistic that they have higher prices than even B&M stores. Also, from a seller's perspective, the fees that ebay charges today are so much more expensive that it makes it far less attractive for me to put my goods on ebay in the first place.

So true! I'm no Apple fanboy, but just to drive the point home, 99% of the time I can buy a brand new Apple product _cheaper_ from the online Apple store than I can from eBay! Where's the fun in that?

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