(Store Closing 2022) After 10+ Years Selling on eBay. I'll Cover the Termination Fee, Not Waiting..

[fairdeal*lb]

Actually, I've been selling on eBay for more than 20 years through two accounts. Over this time eBay has continued to take advantage, drip-drip.. The last-straw for us was the eBay PL Pay-to-Play scam, not a drip-drip, more like wave-wave.

eBay has lost (half) of it's market value this year, in turn, this platform is covering the core growth losses by going after sellers with said Pay-to-Play. All of this while selling expenses are already at their highest for sellers. 

The net return isn't worth all the trouble anymore. I'm one of the lucky ones, I can afford to walk away. Good luck fellow sellers.   

[buyersnirvana]

Mercari will NEVER overtake eBay. It is rife with cheats and unethical buyers and sellers along with the people that run it. Buyers know they can damage something and get their money back no questions asked. I know this happens on eBay as well but not to the amount it does on Mercari. I'm glad it's working for you now - enjoy it while you can! Mercari raised one of their fees this week so it's starting for them as well. Just watch what is coming in the future. I would love eBay to have some real competition but Mercari is not it. It's not even eBay lite at this point. Bottom line is there is a LOT of competition for us all from other sellers - unless you stay on top of changes and market trends, your business will suffer  along with your sales. Your sales are tied directly to your inventory - I have had to change mine several times over the last 21 years in order to keep selling. Just one month of a downward trend in sales makes me look at my inventory and do some comparisons to other sellers so I can start the sales popping again.

With eBay I can call or contact eBay for Business on Facebook. Mercari has some of the worst customer service I have ever seen - it is almost nonexistent. Lots of reasons why they will never "crush" eBay. With the way things are going in the economy right now it is probably going to get worse before it gets better.

[bonjourami]

"Been here 7 year longer than you so may not be that much to you having 7 more years experience but obviously way more knowledgeable about how Ebay works."

Yes its always amazing to me that so many long time members are still not familiar with a posting id..weird.

[gamersbaystore]

Oh, all platforms have garbage buyers and sellers, I'm sure Mercari is no exception to the rule. But its a lot better functioning platform and far easier to use in my opinion.

I can make listings on Mercari 10X faster than ebay. Registration was a breeze too, I was verified and up and running minutes after submitting my info.

Mercari also offers up to $200 insurance for lost or damaged packages, while ebay offers nothing.

I also noticed Mercari spent money out of their pockets to help my store grow, literally giving buyers 20% off and eating the costs themselves on every transaction.

My biggest concern with Mercari right now is the fact I'm a new seller and an obvious target for scammers and harassment from trashy people.

As for ebay, the whole incentive to sell here to begin with was the ability to tap into ebay's audience. That incentive is now gone for me. ebay cut all the traffic to my store this year.

What I have to offer buyers is irrelevant if no one even knows my store exists.

I get way more traffic on Mercari than I get on ebay. I get like 50 views for a single listing in a day or two on Mercari, while I get a lousy 30 to 50 views a day on ebay with 1,600 listings.

[gamersbaystore]

I stand behind my original statement, Mercari is absolutely crushing ebay. ebay's market share collapsed this year to a lousy 3.5%, this platform isnt even relevant anymore. ebay lost millions of buyers, tens of billions in sales this year alone, and their market share continues to decline.

Meanwhile, Mercari has seen quarter after quarter of consecutive growth over the past 2 years.

[yuzuha]

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@gamersbaystore wrote:

I get way more traffic on Mercari than I get on ebay. I get like 50 views for a single listing in a day or two on Mercari, while I get a lousy 30 to 50 views a day on ebay with 1,600 listings.

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But are you actually getting any SALES? See, I too tried Mercari and got a million and one views, but sales? Nada. Nothing but people asking me if I'd take half my listed price for the stuff I was selling.

If you want a ton of people looking at your stuff, sure, Mercari is great for that. Not so much with the actually buying it part.

[vintagecraze50]

Well I always thought that ebay would be in a better position to sell more if they would keep their fees down. Especially in a bad economy like we are all struggling in now. I think many get very discouraged nowadays trying to sell with such incredible expenses to buy merch, pay for higher and higher shipping, pay more taxes and whatever get’s thrown in the sellers way. Doggy eat doggy. Some of us cannot stop selling here. We have built to much into it, and we hope that somehow we will all thrive and survive, especially this year. I wish you the best and sorry to see you go. You had some great posts on here that I appreciated very much. 

[craigstevensstudio]

feedback of 2?      was that "BOTH" shoes? or two pairs?

[gamersbaystore]

I am getting sales, but its getting people to leave feedback that's a pain. You dont get paid until they rate you, and most just wait out the clock, never rating at all. So that part is annoying.

Its true you can bid on anything on the platform, that doesn't means sellers have to accept them though. I haven't had any low ball bids yet, just people asking for a couple bucks off.

[chapeau-noir]

People make offers - I didn't know they could bid (I've been selling on Mercari for a couple of years).  Save for a few items, most my cheapest of the cheap clearance items go on there - people don't tend to want to pay much, though sometimes something surprising will get snapped up.  Huge volume of Revolutionary War era naval records and a signed Scots kilt pin.  A lot of stuff is pennies on the dollars. Guess it depends on what you sell.  

Horrible search, though. Also, their brands list is rubbish (if it's not a brand on their very inadequate list you have to list it as "Don't know" which is lame.  For clothing, sizing is wrong; international shoe size equivalent chart is VERY wrong and they won't fix it - I list cycling shoes which are Euro/US/UK sizing and I have to put in every.single.listing that Mercari's size chart is wrong and please to go by what the shoe manufacturer has (i.e., what I put in there).

I don't shop there much because it's so hard to find stuff.

[nuclearomen]

You can't bid on Mercari - not in the way like ebay via the listing - when he says "bid" he means people mailing you with offer - and the game there is to counter back higher, and then you meet in the middle usually. 
I've been there 3 years off and on, I got offer today, I countered, they haven't responded. The way to sales on there is to add like $5 more then you want, generally people will mail with $5 less offer, then you counter 2.50 higher and I normally say that's the lowest and they accept. Some people sell there will accept any offer. But I have to get what i have to get. Rarely does something just sell there without 20 inbox rounds with someone. The real low offers I immediately decline so they get the picture. 

[nuclearomen]

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@gamersbaystore wrote:

I am getting sales, but its getting people to leave feedback that's a pain. You dont get paid until they rate you, and most just wait out the clock, never rating at all. So that part is annoying.

Its true you can bid on anything on the platform, that doesn't means sellers have to accept them though. I haven't had any low ball bids yet, just people asking for a couple bucks off.

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@gamersbaystore trick to feedback is communication - make a sale via offer or just via order - inbox buyer and tell them something like "it's going out today/tomorrow, thank you, please remember to rate when get it to close transaction out asap" that usually gets the buyers there to leave it without waiting 3 days. 

[vintagecraze50]

Mercari’ s inventory is still much lower than eBay’s so for some stuff it is much more visible and findable so it may work great for DJ.

[vintagecraze50]

IF mercari continues to grow at a fast pace with more and more competition with more and more inventory I am sure eventually they will start the pay to play strategy at some point but for now DJ you might get more visibility for your money. I wish you luck.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@vintagecraze50  Agreed.  In the early days of etsy, we heard a lot of stuff about how different etsy is from ebay. Back then I said: enjoy it while it lasts, because many changes ebay made were largely the result of adapting to growth, and if etsy grows, it will find the same or similar solutions. If you have followed etsy, you'll know how true that turned out to be. I suspect the same is true of most platforms. 

I'm not knocking Mercari or etsy. I'm just saying that growth brings challenges, and ebay has had to meet a lot of those challenges before their smaller, newer competitors, many of whom will eventually face those same challenges...they might find other ways of handling them, but at least some of their solutions will look a lot like ebay's solutions. ebay search order was ending soonest for many years, which made sense for an auction site and a fairly small site...as it grew, and more items were fixed price and there were simply so many more items, ebay went to "Best Match" (with a lot of resistance from sellers). etsy began with "newly listed" and eventually went to their own form of Best Match, because they had simply become too large for "newly listed" to make much sense anymore. And so it goes.

Today, all these sites keep an eye on the other sites to see what ideas they can "borrow".  So, I agree: don't assume a site without seller advertising today will always be without seller advertising.

[chapeau-noir]

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@nuclearomen wrote:

You can't bid on Mercari - not in the way like ebay via the listing - when he says "bid" he means people mailing you with offer - and the game there is to counter back higher, and then you meet in the middle usually. 
I've been there 3 years off and on, I got offer today, I countered, they haven't responded. The way to sales on there is to add like $5 more then you want, generally people will mail with $5 less offer, then you counter 2.50 higher and I normally say that's the lowest and they accept. Some people sell there will accept any offer. But I have to get what i have to get. Rarely does something just sell there without 20 inbox rounds with someone. The real low offers I immediately decline so they get the picture. 

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Yes, I get offers but I expect that since I also sell on Poshmark, and price accordingly.  But as I say, some things move better than others.  It's funky, but it's still a very decent site to sell on.

@gamersbaystore  Sells the kind of thing that actually does well over there.  I also sell DVDs/media there if they don't move here after a bit, though the last batch of DVDs I listed here sold in days.

It's no longer the cheap option, though - they imposed a processing fee (2.9%) and have raised the service fee from 30 cents to 50 cents.