what's the best alternative to Ebay?

what's the best alternative to Ebay?

we all know about Craigslist, which is a monster in terms of views numbered in billions per month. without question CL has momentum.

but CL is geared to local transactions. not specialized items more suited for a national audience. Craigslist has the highest instances of scammers on the WWW. So doing business other than locally is not a very good way to go.

without getting too deep, Ebay has gotten extremely unfriendly to sellers with high fees, rules that favor buyers, etc. sellers could get scammed with no recourse.

the last few times I tried Ebay... items went unsold... all I got was high fees. needless to say folks including me are staying away from ebay in droves.

after doing loads of google searches for what's the best alternative.
I'm still not sure what's the best alternative to Ebay.

Amazon seems to be the best so far.

So what's the best alternative to Ebay?
Please give me a bit of feedback of your experiences.

thank YOU!

I agree about Amazon. I put up some video games up on it and they all sold within a day. It's not ideal for all things but it comes the closest to eBay's pervasiveness.

There are genre specific sites like GunBroker (guns obviously) and Etsee (homemade items). I think specific marketplaces might be the ideal replacement to eBays watered down ubiquity.

As someone who buys far, far more than sells I always check Amazon, then CL before moving to eBay.
It does favor the seller and has become far more so over the years. In general this is how all business survives and in eBays case I think it was driven this way.
eBay used to be a place wher you could find a good bargain in almost anything you are looking for. Those days are gone for the most part and people sell there because it is a cheap way to do business.
For a few hundred or a few thousand dollars they can test market a product and maybe even make a few dollars.

so anyone actually using amazon with good results?

when I do a google search for whatever.... often amazon's used offerings pop up. otherwise I've never gone to amazon's site and search for specific items like ebay.

cy said:

so anyone actually using amazon with good results?

when I do a google search for whatever.... often amazon's used offerings pop up. otherwise I've never gone to amazon's site and search for specific items like ebay.

Click to expand...

For "mainstream" products Amazon will often be cheaper than eBay even before the free shipping at $25.00 kicks in.

cy said:

so anyone actually using amazon with good results?

when I do a google search for whatever.... often amazon's used offerings pop up. otherwise I've never gone to amazon's site and search for specific items like ebay.

Click to expand...

I'm a fan of buying on Amazon. Bought a PS game and the seller never shipped, no response. Filed a complaint with Amazon after a month and got a refund w/o any issue. First problem in forever, and the outcome was good.

Now selling is a different issue: they charge a bit to sell there. I sold a couple items (books) not too long ago and paid something like 20% to Amazon for the sales. But I was happy with the 80% I got to keep. eBay/PayPal would have cost me closer to 10% for the same sales, but who knows if I would have sold them there.

I Vote CPF in the BST!!!!!!!:twothumbs

While Ebay is OK at times, I am finding that subject/topic/interest specific sites such as CPF for flashlights and Eham, QRZ and QTH.com for Amateur Radio to be of greater appeal to me for BSTing equipment.

I'm sure that there are sites specific for audiophiles, photographers, astronomers, musicians and other hobbyists where equipment can be BSTed.

It may or may not be a tougher matter for more "consumer" type products like jewlery and furniture. Browse the web and do some research for sites specific or relevent for what you want to BST.

73
dim

Entrope said:

The thing about these "specialist" forums is that people tend to be more picky at times.

Click to expand...

I've used eBay recently to sell flashlights, and I've been pretty happy with the prices that I got. I always tell everything up front, including downsides like blue tint, old Luxeon model, etc., but there's usually someone who will pay a good price for it anyway.

We use TaoBao for individual goods and Alibaba for B2B transactions.