Caution selling on eBay

May 7th, 2015 - Let's get this out of the way first: if you are BUYING something on eBay, that's great and wonderful and beautiful. There are masses of stuff available on eBay - the selection is absolutely outstanding. It makes you wish the days of local newspaper classified ads will never return.

However, if you are selling something on eBay, this article is for you.

Note: Maybe you know this already, or even have more experience, but we thought this was something that at least WE hadn't heard much about, and to the musician-world is extremely relevant.)

We elected to get rid of some of our studio gear recently. Since we support so many samplers, we've collected over the years about 50 different pieces. So it was sort of automatic to list those on eBay and sell it. I started out by selling an older ASR-10 that I'd played for many, many years. It was fully loaded and although it had some wear, it worked like a charm.

It sold first pass for $510. (We threw in a Translator™ to help the deal along.) Fine, wonderful.

However, it was a little surprising to me when I got the bill from eBay - something in the order of $80. I know I placed a bunch of ads at the time but I swore it said that most had free placing fees.

So I looked and it turned out the selling fee for the ASR-10 was about $51 - that's 10% of the selling price! That's pretty high, I thought. Plus, over the last couple years we've purchased things on eBay around $1000 and even up to $2000, and got pretty good deals on them - less than getting a new or even used piece at a music store. Some of those things we fully expected to resell when we were done with them.

Thinking it was a mistake or an oversight of mine, I did some research and sure enough, not too long ago eBay really raised their fees to average around 10% for an item, and really not less than that. These are called Final Value Fees, and not only does it apply to what you sell, it applies to the shipping too. (This was done to combat the loophole of people selling things for $1 and charging a ridiculous shipping fee.)

Click here for more information - appearing on eBay's own site.

We'd rather not comment on the FAIRNESS of these things - of course it's fair to charge anything you want. But we would agree that asking for 10% of an item - and if it's heavy, which you can do nothing about, you get penalized more - when you have a site that sells as much as eBay, is too high. We don't begrudge eBay getting "rich" (that's all our goal, isn't it?) but that's a LOT of money. We think that eBay thinks they have a monopoly (for now) and they are leveraging it for as much as they can until people get used to using other sites. Certainly the large chunk isn't for paying for overhead. Wasn't the benefit of online things in order to reduce overhead and increase efficiency by 1000's of factors? Is 10% really justifiable? (Again, we aren't talking FAIRNESS, but whether eBay really is charging what-it-costs-them plus a reasonable profit.)

If 10% - actually really often 15% - is okay with you, in exchange for the very large exposure, fine. But what if you could sell your piece WITHOUT having someone else in your pocket?

Why are we writing this article? Simply for information's sake. If you are relying on eBay being there for you when it's time to clean house or factoring in buy-sell situations, eBay may not be the best thing for you. They'll be taking a chunk of your change, and maybe you won't even make a profit or get what you think you'll be getting. Craigslist often is not an option, but sometimes it is. Here's an excellent article on eBay alternatives:

Growing Your Biz

Consider using GearSlutz or KVRAudio or VintageSynth.com or other MI gear specific-sites. You can offer your gear for sale in the general areas, or try their Gear-For-Sale specific sites. Or a Internet mailing list. Although it's understood that your security is more in question, there are ways to insure your sale is completed fairly and securely.

Please let us know any For-Sale sites work for you. We'll post them here.

Also, if you are buying something on eBay, perhaps consider not buying that item. This forces eBay to reconsider taking so much money from the sellers.

For us, we are thinking of leveraging our extensive mailing list, and in further emails you may find us sellign stuff off. Then we'd get everything and get eBay out fo our pockets.

So, it's not just Buyer Beware, but Seller Beware too.