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Does anyone know if eBay usually to have a competing sale to woo back some customers from Amazon?
eBay Vs Prime Day Bargain
wittyusername on 12/10/2020 - 09:14
This is part of Amazon Prime Day sale for 2020
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ebay will bring out their usual CRAP ebay plus items sale…
drip fed every hour that will sell out in a few seconds..All ebay have are "eligible item" sales.
ANd things that take 50-60 days to deliver.
they're over.But do you really need discounts when the prices are already so low?
In my personal opinion I dont see any competition between these 2 anymore these days.
Ebay stuffed up by doing too much promo in the early days of Amazon. Now people expect them to continue, like the never ending sales. The other problem was, they turned off the tap to the promo way too quickly. It was literally within 1 year. And the next became mediocre very quickly.
Remember those days of 10%off gift cards followed by 10-12% site wide with no jacking. They were good times. But you can't blame them for stopping that. I would never buy anything in between sales.
Isn't that what Ebay Plus specials are for?
I am only using ebay these days for niche stuff these days such as Fizzler Gasket and old laptop battery which Amazon has no way of selling them.
You don't get good value out of the eBay Plus membership/subscription whereas the Amazon Prime subscription gets access to many other Amazon services. Their "sales" are barely sales due to the constant price jacking and it is sometimes hard finding particular Plus items that qualify for these "sales" as the search function is pretty crummy. eBay have their place for 2nd hand used items and such. Though I remember Amazon's disastrous start in Oz but they have certainly improved their offerings n services. Yes it isn't "perfect" but they are ironing it out.
Ebay used to be a convenient way to sell 2nd hand items with a small fee, now it takes 10-20% of your item value as commission, it went from a cheap alternative for 2nd hand trading to a market place that rips you off.
ebay is now basically a site you occasionally dont pay exorbitant prices on certain things, however almost all retail items are 10-20% above brick and mortar retail store prices.
Amazon uses their massive buying power to get a good economy of scale, Selling alot of items not available in the australian market place, while also being able to provide a considerable discount on alot of items versus their domestic counterparts.
They serve 2 different niches, so you cant really compare the two.
Yeah which makes me wonder where to sell second hand good nowadays. Facebook marketplace? Tradingpost or Gumtree? I don't feel gumtree is safe at all
eBay Vs Prime Day Bargain
eBay (niche) vs Amazon (mass) market
eBay is generally only good for me for cheap items from China with "free"/cheap postage and occasionally eBay Plus specials to draw interest every now and then.
It's easy to buy more things from Amazon for me; that's why I canceled my Prime subscription after a year. I can generally buy at the same or cheaper price for the things I need, but I have to do a bit more work, which suits me fine because I don't want my house filled with stuff I might need.
I have eBay Plus because eBay has incentivised and covered the cost 3x with credit and then refunded my cost because of issues.
woo back some customers from Amazon
Hopefully under its new owners (Adevinta) eBay may return to it's original format with reasonable fees and better quality stuff at reasonable prices.
They will also need to do something about the many fake accounts, bulk Chinese rubbish, and buyer scams.
Only then will eBay stand any chance of winning back customers from Amazon.
yeah canceled my ebay plus as it was due for renewal, they offered $30 voucher.
I'll only renew Plus if there's a deal for a few bucks or $1 like last yearI got a renew for $49 and receive a $50 voucher about a month ago after letting my membership expire.
It started intermediately popping up on the front page as I visited usually one evry couple days randomly. So don't accept the $30 offer its not their best.I accepted the same offer last year ( $49 and get a 50$ voucher ). Not sure if ebay will send the same offer again after my membership expires. Did you avail the same offer last year by any chance ?
I do see 30$ voucher once I go and try to cancel the membership.
I subscribed to ebay plus on the 1st year (with the google home mini promo), then got the 2nd year for free because they charged renewal 1 day earlier than what stated in their T&C, got refunded and still retained membership
as a seller on ebay and amazon, when sale time rolls around ebay really screws over the seller.
For example, if its a 20% off deal, ebay wants the seller to kick in 15% of the discount and ebay will cover 5%.Alot of sellers do not like this as those costs are way to high on most.
So moving forward youll see a lot less ebay deals. Unless they fix their ratios to help sellers more.
On amazon, its a similar situation, but amazon work with the sellers better over what ebay to.
So if there is a bargain at present, take it while its there. They wont be around much longer if these companies dont work with their sellers.
It is for exactly the reason of the high fees that we do not participate in the eBay 20% off sale promotions.
The clear winner is eBay as the "generously" cover 5% of the promotion discount, but still charge you their normal 13%-14% sales commission.
Meaning the seller pays around a total of 30% to eBay on a sale,So who are the silly buggers that do participate? New entrants that want a quick hit of publicity?
To a point yes.
but in a way some consider it cheap branding still and are prepared to pay the extra fees to be somewhat promoted and be found first in search.however this wont last long and hurt a number of smaller sellers when they do not get the returns at all to cover costs.
Everything is negotiable depending who you know… the seller covers 15% deals are for new entrants or low volume sellers. Once you get to a higher tier the doors start to open up. BUT it is hardly worth it anyways as you are always better to focus on your own website first.
ebay is awful now, amazon not so bad.
I've been turned off ebay because their customer service seems like an opaque black hole. You don't know how decisions get made, but you can't do anything about it when they make a decision that doesn't seem founded on facts.
For the occasional sales, high fees mean if you hoped to make a small profit off something, ebay takes all the profits so you break even or make a loss, unless you jack the price up exorbitantly. And even then, they do nothing to protect sellers against scammers.
For buying, they're mostly only useful for buying the niche items now. Often that's from Chinese sellers where quality is hit and miss but it's so cheap that it's not a big deal if I end up receiving something useless. I feel like all the incentives of using ebay, including bargains, are just chucked behind ebay Plus these days.
The worst was when ebay Plus was introduced, many stores which previously offered free shipping became free shipping with ebay Plus. You can't entice me to pay just so I can get something that was previously offered to me free. No thanks!
Any chance of getting Xiaomi monitor for better price on Amazon ? :D
eBay deals are so bad. Customer service is so bad which is weird consdiering they own Paypal. eBay and Amazon dont compete anymore. Amazon overtook them. I remember signing up just to grab an animal crossing game on sale and it didn't even go through. No sales after that no special discounts. No free shipping. Never gone back and happy I haven't. Amazon is nothing but fast free shipping with free Amazon Prime Video service.
Although Amazon does use a hell of a lot more cardboard paper but they never competed in the first place. Amazon is both a marketplace and seller. eBay is just a marketplace.
eBay does not own PayPal - it was sold off in 2015
Omg, I feel old.
I have an eBay Plus membership when they did the promotion to receive a $50 eBay gift card and I plan to have this elapse/unsubscribe closer to my renewal date.
To be honest, eBay Plus membership is only good for not paying for shipping costs (I do buy alot of electronic ebay sellers) which charge a premium for standard shipping normally killing any savings to be had on an item (if I didn't have the membership).With that said, I never looked into or participated in their crappy eBay Plus deals where they had eg. 300x items at a reduced price but didn't actually provide you the page or seller. Meaning you had to go and hunt / guess and refresh and hope that you were a lucky one to get in before a bot bought up all the items.
At least with Amazon you have consistent deals across many categories and free shipping on any Amazon fulfilled product combined with excellent customer service when things go wrong (eg. broken/damage items received) they are generally quite good in refunding you the item or in some places sending you out a new replacement item. You can also get hold of an Amazon customer agent via phone (try that with eBay, good luck!).
eBay does provide you a $5.00 discount voucher each month but the catch is you have to spend $50 or more before you can use it.
I have used this voucher probably 4 to 5 times so it is nice considering that Cashrewards and Shopback no longer really give any cashback and you can't stack eBay discount codes anymore.I just wish that the $5.00 discount voucher was move to a lower spend point of $20 (then I would consider this to be reasonable and then a fair trade) considering there isn't much of a saving elsewhere on eBay. As mentioned before, price jacking and fake "discount cycles" just don't do it for me and it is the sellers who really are paying for the discount that eBay advertise (through their high seller fees) hence why you see price jacking.
The only positive that I give eBay is that you can buy items from anywhere in the world (provided the seller is willing to ship it to you). I can't do that with many items found on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, etc. The regional restrictions are just awful and there are many times I have found items I like only to see "can't ship to your region" and it might be a simple item like a CD.
No such issue with eBay, you pay the conversion rate, GST / import taxes and shipping and the item gets delivered.
I also have no issues renewing Amazon Prime because of (Free streaming of music, prime video, prime gaming (Twitch - gives you free monthly games & free Twitch subscription each month)). Then there are other services like Audiobooks and eBook which has it's appeal to those who read.
Between the two marketplaces I would be more or less in the Amazon camp however it loses points for not allowing me to buy items in other Amazonm marketplaces (like the US, UK) which was not the case prior to Amazon AU opening their offices in Australia.
For eBay only sign up for when they do their promotional sign up such as
Sign up for $1 or
Sign up for $49 and receive a $50 gift card/voucherThat is exactly how much eBay Plus is worth —- $1.00
I guess I'm going against the flow here. I buy a lot of stuff from ebay and amazon and have done so for the last 20+ years. This year alone I have probably brought around 300 to 400 items from ebay and 20 to 30 items from amazon. SO I am very familiar with the buying experience from both.
I find the search function on amazon absolutely terrible, worse than useless. Ebay is not great either but it still is about 10x better than Amazon.
As a buyer, I find the guarantee of being able to buy with PayPal to be a big plus. I have never had any issue getting my money refunded when something is not right. With amazon, I had a buyer that was clearly a scammer (became obvious later) and amazon had a guarantee to refund. They took over 6 weeks to get around to it after I had logged several tickets, spoken to several support staff and basically went through hoops. Not a pleasant experience which was particularly bad since they actually tagged the item as auto refund but then just didn't do the refund. Also most sales on amazon require me to use my credit card directly which means if I need to claim, I have to go to the credit card company which is more difficult for me.
I routinely do price comparisons between ebay and amazon for the same goods. Ebay comes out as lower in price in 90+% of items This is a pretty critical difference and even with sales, amazon often appears to come out higher.
Sales on both platforms are very hit and miss and you really need to do your research as to what previous prices were. (ebay has a completed items list which is useful if you use it.
Amazon shipping seems to be better in most instances which I think is related to their power over Aus Post due to their huge footprint - lots more notification of delays etc. Ebay seller use various postage services and without the huge amount of sales, they do not have the influence on Aus Post. I have mixed feelings on this as I don't like the monopoly aspect of amazon but it is nice to get parcels a bit quicker. I do worry that it impacts all the other online sellers tho.
I find ebay sellers often provide more details about their product compared to amazon but this can vary.
I like that ebay provides similar listings on the for sale item page whereas amazon doesn't do this very well at all. I can find loads of similar items this way and it has saved me money on many occasion when I've seen similar items for much less.
I use ebay most, then amazon and then aliexpress and then banggood and then several individual web pages. Anyone who refuses to explore all options is wasting money and letting prejudices get in their way. I recommend not turning to amazon blindly, they are not interested in you any more than anyone else.
Great points.
In terms of pure price, eBay is generally cheaper but Amazon is unrivalled for "instant gratification" at the almost the same price. It's just no possible to buy something on eBay and receive it next day, let alone same day delivery.
You touch on a similar point with regards to AustPost. Due to Amazon's size, they have directly negotiated contracts which allows them to offer a special product that is not available to other retailers – 2 day guaranteed (to most locations, otherwise best effort) but 1 day "best effort" to Metro locations. This is without mentioning that Amazon offers "Flex" delivery in Metro areas as well now which allows Saturday/Sunday and 4 hour deliveries.
Not sure what's happening with your search, but Amazon built its search and shopping functionality from the ground up for accuracy and speed - as long as it's an item that Amazon stocks it will generally be the first or second item that comes up.
The experience with support is a weird one, Amazon has always had extremely fast and excellent customer support for me. In cases where there is an issue with the product, they either offered a full refund (with or without shipping back) or sometimes even shipped another brand new product out next day (without asking for the faulty device back. Their response has been unrivalled versus any other shopping platform I've used.
An example is the last item I brought from ebay. Not urgent at all, I have a controller but figured a remote would go thru batteries a bit slower. Try it, my search was "xbox one remote" and first item on ebay is from China,with GST it came to $11.54 so well under $12. Amazon search comes up with loads of shit, $33, $45 etc and towards the bottom is same model as I found on ebay coming from the US, just $12.30 plus shipping of $7.42 so just under $20 for the exact same item. The shipping is too low to be on prime and the page says nothing about prime as an option so possibly not available.
Amazons delivery estimate is 4 - 6 Nov while ebay is 2 Nov to 15 Dec. Both are coming from overseas so will probably be delayed. Apart from the slight possibility of delivery a few days earlier, I see little justification for the $8 difference, That is 66% more expensive than the ebay item. This is ozbargain, why is everyone willing to throw away money for nothing?
I could go thru hundreds of items with the same result. Some from Australia. Quite a few things I simply cannot find on amazon but no problem on ebay. I get that people are shitty with ebay but the facts don't support that attitude. It's your money so if you want to waste it overpaying, then fine but please don't pretend that amazon is a superior service. The best they offer is in their delivery and that is not always reliable.If you don't need it yesterday (and you really seldom ever do), think about what you are paying.
I'm pretty much with you on this. And I think it's related to the items we buy (and already mentioned by others).
Amazon are able to offer better prices on current items due to being able to predict what's popular right now.
If you're after something left of center, there's a larger selection and often better prices on ebay.
Having said that, occasionally I do find stuff on amazon that I couldn't find on ebay.
Personally I'd rather a duopoly (of sorts) rather than a monopoly (amazon).
I agree with your points. In my experience eBay is much better than Amazon. Like you, I find that Amazon's search is terrible. I find that for the most part, eBay's search works very well. The only minor annoyance, is when sellers list multiple items on the same listing and the item in the price range I specify is not what I'm looking for. An example is a very cheap listing for a TV box, but when you view the listing, you find that the TV box itself is not quite so cheap, but you can buy just the remote for it for around $10/$20 or so.
In general I find the prices on eBay to be cheaper than Amazon and other online retailers. I guess it depends what you are buying, but I'm always surprised when people say that eBay is expensive, as that has not been my experience.
While most of my eBay purchases are for used items, I've bought about 40 new items from eBay this year, versus about 10 from Amazon.
A definite advantage of Amazon is the quick postage times, although there are occasions where postage from eBay sellers is quicker.
"I also have no issues renewing Amazon Prime because of (Free streaming of music, prime video, prime gaming (Twitch - gives you free monthly games & free Twitch subscription each month)). Then there are other services like Audiobooks and eBook which has it's appeal to those who read."
Twitch?!?! Amazon membership gives you access to Twitch?!?!
I didn't know this lol
Yes, ever since Amazon bought out Twitch, Amazon Prime also gives you Twitch Prime. A very cool benefit for gamers.
I recently cancelled my Ebay plus (from a promo) and as an incentive to stay, they offered a $30 gift card when you renew if you do stay and don't cancel.
Start the cancellation process and they offer it to you before you have to cancel, so if you are going to renew anyway you can get the free $30 gift card.yep only reason i stayed was the voucher. I figure $20 is OK if i buy a few hard drives in the next year.
I had amazon deliveries from melbourne (during lockdown) to bne arrive in one business day. super fast shipping
customer service is generally top notch as well. they sort your stuff out on the spot and mostly don't use copy and paste phrases, unlike eBay which does and always takes a few days to 'get back to you' in my experience.
eBay Plus: $49/year ($1 rarely or they give you $50 voucher), sales are lackluster and no other benefits aside free shipping!
Amazon Prime: $59/Year including free shipping, prime music, prime video (I found this service to be better compared to Netflix in Australia), prime twitch and prime offers (prime day included) and also Amazon's selection and prices are way better than eBay.
Maybe there was some competition when Amazon started here, but not anymore.
Ebay plus better
Lol
Ebay spent all their money on $99 airpods bullshit marketing.
I think ebay is just going for the left over market.
If they are smart, they know their day has passed. They're not in the same league as Amazon and the divide is growing everyday.