You ever notice ebay's kind of a rip-off?

Maybe I'm really slow on the uptake to be only now discovering what everyone else has known for years, but I find that, time and time again, auction items on ebay keep selling for more than the list cost of the item. Okay, maybe not more than if I tried to purchase them at some prestige place like Nieman Marcus, but I can always find the items online cheaper than the closing price on ebay's auctions. So why is ebay still in business?

I bought a cell phone a few weeks ago... list price = $499. I paid $300.

$200 down from the list price.

List price tends to become sort of meaningless when you can routinely find stuff online for 40-70% less than the full list price.

There are some AWESOME violins out there....

I look at ceramics, pottery, that sort of that thing. My experience is what may be a reasonable bid price becomes unreasonable when the seller adds in the shipping and handling. I just had $25 added for postage on a ceramic pot whose bid price was around $45. Yuck! I would never have bid on the item had I known postage was more than 50% of the purchase price.

Shipping and handling on many of the ebay items I was looking at was easily twice if not three times what it would have been to order through an online retailer, adding significantly to the end cost of the item.

I sell stuff I pick up at auctions, estate sales and garage sales. I might only make a few dollars on an item, sometimes it doesn't sell at all and you lose money from listing fees. But whenever you sell something, the U.S.P.S. makes out pretty good. Quite often the shipping (I don't charge "handling", and won't BUY from anyone who does)is more than the item itself.

Like anywhere else, let the buyer beware.

That's virtually the first thing I look at. And I refuse to deal with sellers who intentionally rake on shipping charges. I love their phony rationale; "I want the buyer to receive it ASAP." Yeah, like $16.95 for shipping a single stick of computer RAM. I saw that specific example a few days ago.

Always look at where the item is shipping from, if no specific shipping fee is stated, or no "calculate shipping" box is included.

Required insurance is another farce. Anyone with a shred of intellect passes on that.

While selling, I' always low and very reasonable on shipping charges, and highlight that comparison in my listing. It has paid off many times. A guy from Ecuador bought two items of mine when I agreed to ship them together at one price. It was simple to check via USPS online and get the rate to Ecuador.

i looked all over the place, in stores on the internets but it was not available anywhere except for ebay, i paid about 20% more then it would be in stores---if you could get it at a store that is. It was well worth the extra few dollars.

What the hell is a yu-gi-oh?

unbelievable bargains there, it's a matter learning and searching.

And I don't understand the premise of this post. If eBay is a ripoff because people pay too much, then become a seller.

I have bought many things I could have resold immediately at considerable profit. Usually they are items where the seller listed an absurdly low Buy It Now, and I caught it first. I'm amazed how many companies screw up the Buy It Now, as opposed to individuals.

Used Macintosh computers, for example, hold their value incredibly well, but many companies don't seem to understand that. They have a 2-3 year old computer and seem to assume it's only worth 1/3 to 1/4 what they paid for it, or less. I missed a $600 Buy It Now on a Dual 1.42 Ghz that regularly goes for $1500 or so. The buyer bragged about it on DealMac.com for weeks. I also saw, again too late, a company put a brand new G3 processor upgrade card for a Powerbook 1400 for a Buy It Now of $35. The damn thing would have fetched $200 at auction. I sold an identical used one for $160 two weeks later.

You can also find incredible deals when auctions end at odd hours, like in the middle of the night, or on major holidays. Or when the item is listed poorly or in the wrong category. I picked up my current dual processor Mac when the guy listed it as DP instead of dual processor. I got it for virtually half price, probably because anyone searching or bookmarking for dual processors did not pick up DP in their search result.

a ton of that stuff is bought on ebay.

...At least the vehicles I've been looking at. Seems that the novelty of purchasing one on the internet adds $2000-3000 to the value of certain cars.

A lot of people will fail to disclose repairs or things wrong with the car. A Carfax may not pick up all repairs or damage either.

People get caught up in it and bid more than what the item is really worth. You have to have the discipline to decide on what you're willing to pay and hold to it.

I use eBay to find things I can't find other places - out of print books, collector's items, etc. I've gotten some very good deals. I recently bought a riding helmet that lists for close to a hundred bucks for $27 (including shipping). It was lightly used and is in great shape.

It all depends on what you're looking for and how firm you can be on your price.

Once you're in the game, you hate to lose out on a competitive process by a few measly bucks, so you keep bidding higher.

One of the items I was watching this week was a pair of compact binoculars, the full list price of which is $375 and which you can readily, easily find online for $300. By the time the bidding was done, it went for $390, plus $35 in shipping and handling (for an eight ounce item). That's just stupid, yet I seem to see it repeated over and over again on ebay.

...trying to get a cheap Michael Jackson "Thriller" jacket on eBay. Oh, I have my reasons for wanting one, but these suckers usually start at 19.99 and go up to 100 dollars, and quite frankly, I don't want to spend that much. Maybe I'm just cheap.

...if you don't understand the game, don't bet on it !

I collect vintage Star Wars "crap", and eBay's a pretty good source for such a collector, but you'd be surprised how many "sellers" are lower than pond scum...just be careful.

It's like a giant garage sale. There is plenty of overpriced crummy stuff out there, but if you do your homework and you don't mind waiting, it's possible to pick up a decent bargain. Particularly if the seller has posted in an area where not many people are looking -- last month I saw a soil sampling unit mislabelled as a drill for making maple syrup! It ended up selling for about a quarter the price of a new piece of equipment.

It seems to come in waves. For example, there was a time when really bad replicas of ancient armor would be snapped up for +$200, but now either the market is flooded with crap or people are getting wise -- poor knockoffs like this stuff will sit around unbought for $50 or less!

http://www.larp.com/legioxx/bad.html

So now it's possible to get a decent replica for a hundred dollars less than the usual online cost. Even better, sometimes people get tired of the hobby or need the money, so they sell lightly-used custom gear for half what you'd pay an artisan.

But as you say, what's probably keeping eBay afloat is the same kind of thing that keeps garage sales going -- people who don't know any better, or who get swept up in the excitement. I've made plenty of eBay mistakes myself (and been ripped off by outright frauds a couple of times), so it probably makes up for the times when I've done really well.

Once bided on an item that retailed for $30 and by gave up by the time it reached over 3 times that much. Searched the net and found a small retailer who sold it for the retail price and saved almost $100. I'm convinced in a lot of cases sellers have their friends bid on items to jack up the cost knowing some stranger will outbid in the frenzy and if not, they can refund their friends, get back the item and try again and thus lose nothing.
I much rather pay upfront then deal with the games.

But it's true one of the biggest rip offs is shipping, something on-line retails (especially Amazon.com) are notorious for. It's ridiculous when I can find a bunch of used games on Amazon for only a buck or two, but have to pay almost $4 for each in shipping thereby negating the bargain.

Let's also not forget both Ebay and Amazon were big contributors to the Republican machine last election.

$115 after the shipping, that is. I was pretty pleased with the result, although I would have rather paid $100. It takes a bit of time and you have to be willing not to win every auction you participate in.