Ebay Ireland - Any Point?

mike65

I was just browsing ebay.ie and realised that 90% of whats on it is'nt in Ireland so whats the point? Is the market here just too small to support such a site, has Broken & Stolen got this market tied up already? I think so.

Mike.

thesteve

I agree totally tbh, untill Ireland gets out of the stone ages and throws out the Buy and Smell, it'll never get off the ground. People need to get educated a bit in how to use it though, people hear everyday about Nigerian scams and most people don't realise the half of what goes on on ebay, handing out your credit card information onto the web can be daunting for some people, the combination of all this leads to people being overly cautious and not bothering to find out how to use it....

faceman

maybe so but its still early days and its nice to have the option etc. I like the euro conversion bit too

dceire

Might as well have it there even if all the stuff is coming from abroad & it dose the euro conversions which is handy!

:Keith:

Well, at least there's something on it unlike E-Bid.ie

Karoma

Euro conversion..that is all:)

:Keith:

Think Amazon.ie will ever get round to set up? Did Amazon not setup a warehouse in Ireland last year?

Karoma

Unless they'd be offering a price reduction (Or even cheaper / free shipping):i'd settle for .co.uk + a Euro converter option (Like play.com ..but without the crazy rates!)

BuffyBot

Did Amazon not setup a warehouse in Ireland last year?

Nope. An IT function, not a warehouse

RicardoSmith

mike65 wrote:

I was just browsing ebay.ie and realised that 90% of whats on it is'nt in Ireland so whats the point? Is the market here just too small to support such a site, has Broken & Stolen got this market tied up already? I think so.

Mike.

Broken & Stolen - LOL. I don't see the point of ebay.ie either.

=$hr@pnel=

Theres a lot of crap on ebay - i saw a program where the presenter went a round lookin for rubbish to sell on ebay to make a profit. He found some old rope on a beach and sold it no problem.... just goes to show!


think I could sell my creative zen 20gig mp3 player that needs a new hard drive on ebay?

thesteve

most definately, just be clear in the suction that its broken... ive sold broken phones, and a friend of mine has sold cameras with broken screens too...

stressedout

Hi there

We have a Toy & Gift shop on eBay.ie. We don't sell any second hand or broken items. We are one of the few irish eBay shops and certainly the largest shop suppling Toys & Gifts on eBay.ie.

It is frustrating for us to have to compete with the UK sellers but on the other hand most of our customers are in the UK.

We set the shop up to target the Irish market and so far we have sold to almost every other country in the world. But very few Irish sales.

I think people have the impression that eBay is a second hand market place and don't realise that there are high quality online shops available.

I wish eBay would do some more marketing on this as the take up in Ireland is really slow.

Come on the Irish, start buying online through eBay shops!

Karen - Gifted
www.giftedgifts.ie

KdjaCL

Irelands internet shopping is laughable.

Gifted.ie your competing with smyths.ie Lol reckon your up about 27 -0 at this stage, smyths are the biggest toy shop in ireland just looking at their website makes me sick. Its a complete joke.

Only good thing about ebay.ie is its shorter to type into firefox.

kdjac

thesteve

I wish eBay would do some more marketing on this as the take up in Ireland is really slow.

I agree that this has to be done but have you actually tried doing some promotion yourself? With online shops/retailers helping raising the awareness, it might actually get off the ground...

... or are you too afraid of alerting the ol tax man?!?!

Tazz T

I would've thought the tax angle alone would've made ebay a big hit here.

thesteve

Not to go off track or anything but just comment on your store, stressedout, it really bugs me when people put a starting price of say 39.99 and then a buy it now price of 41.99!!! It does my head in, I mean why bother!

paddylonglegs

we've probably all done it before,seen a great price for something on ebay,then when it comes to shipping they charge an arm n a leg to cover their initial offering price.The problem with Ireland as an island is that for us to ship across the world or even to Europe costs huge amounts.Even being honest with your shipping costs you still look like your ripping someone off.Check out anposts postage costs booklet for Zones 1,2,3 and 4.The lightest item(think its 0.5kilos) to post to Europe will cost about 12Euro.People don't wanna pay this because they feel like the bargain factor is gone.

An Post are trying to up their price of a stamp by 50%,goes to show.

D'Peoples Voice

paddylonglegs wrote:

we've probably all done it before,seen a great price for something on ebay,then when it comes to shipping they charge an arm n a leg to cover their initial offering price.The problem with Ireland as an island is that for us to ship across the world or even to Europe costs huge amounts..

Lads,
I was looking at something on Ebay.ie, but was put off by the methods that the seller wants to be paid. does the following seem dodgy to anyone else! No Paypal, why would someone say this?

NO PAYPAL EVER

Please read my Auction Terms below before bidding as all sales are final at close of auction. Most items are second-hand collectables and therefore offered with no guarantee or refunds given or implied. Your winning bid is a binding final contract. All items are tested and working before they leave the seller unless stated otherwise in the item description. You win it you own it no excuses. I am not Argos with a thirty-day return policy. That being said I have hundreds of satisfied people in feedback so buy with confidence my descriptions are obviously honest. Any questions about the item please ask before you bid and I will answer as quickly and as best I can.
N.B. The letter and numbers at the beginning of the auction description are my personal auction reference code only.

THIS Auction is priced in GBP Great Britain Pounds.
PAYMENT in US Dollars 2 to £1 Or Euros at 1.6 to £1 by CASH ONLY please, I CANNOT accept U.S. Money Orders.
PAYMENT in Pounds Sterling to be made by Personal Cheque, Postal Orders or Cash.
ALL cash payments should be sent by recorded delivery (or international equivalent).
I cannot be responsible for money lost in the post.
If payment is made by Personal Cheque, the item will be despatched on Cheque Clearance.

POSTAGE = Price of postage set by the Post Office and includes Recorded Delivery (if possible).
Also the cost of materials for packaging + petrol and parking fees delivering the parcels to the post office.
If there is anything left over then it's for my time.
POSTAGE cost is quoted below for internal UK mail only. If you are outside the UK, please ask for your postage cost.
POSTAGE is to be paid at cost by the buyer.
PARCELFORCE will be used if the item is large or excessively heavy.
PERSONAL COLLECTION is not an option due to personal circumstances, sorry.
I ALWAYS obtain proof of posting.

PLEASE RESPOND to my Close of Auction e-mail within 3 working days, (unless by prior arrangement).
I reserve the right to relist an item if no contact is made. I ALWAYS leave feedback.
MY auctions cannot be closed early and I do not split up Auction Lots.

*** SEE MY OTHER AUCTIONS FOR OTHER COLLECTABLES ***
*** THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING INTERESTING AND MULTIPLE BUYS SAVE YOU POSTAGE! ***

faceman

There is a lot of dissing of eBay in this thread but it really comes down to the Irish public! Its down to us to sell and set up the shops online. I do most of my buying online and would choose Irish over another seller. However we are a nation of €4m compared to almost €20m in the UK so when you do the maths, it obvious were the market is!

flamegrill

I work for a company that primarily gets 80% of its sales through online means. WE have our own eletronic point of sales system, we verify credit/laser cards in real time.

We ourselves have bought about 30k worth of network equipment off ebay in the past 3 years. We've never been stung by a seller. The only problems we've seen are customs adding VAT etc (which for us isn't an issue anyway)

Ebay.ie will take off, its international so you'll have people from all over the world buying off you not just Irish people.

its all good.

Hells_Belle

I use Ebay for new goods, used goods, and hard-to-find goods. I always look to buy from an Irish seller first, but it just seems like there are none and I always end up buying from a UK seller instead.

I would love to see more ebay items from Irish sellers. Maybe we should do a Boards.ie auction week where we all put up our items for sale for the same five days and post links to all our auctions? That would be very cool.

Happily, every time I've contacted a UK seller who's auction states "will ship to the UK only" they've always been happy to ship to Ireland for an extra quid.

One thing I love about Ebay, though - US sellers are so reluctant to ship abroad, but if you want to send a gift to a US friend or family, you can't beat buying off of ebay US and having the seller ship direct to the recipient. No postage and packing for me to do... brilliant

Tom Dunne

D'Peoples Voice wrote:

Lads,
I was looking at something on Ebay.ie, but was put off by the methods that the seller wants to be paid. does the following seem dodgy to anyone else! No Paypal, why would someone say this?

You won't have a leg to stand on if you pay cash. This person may be legit, but there's more of a chance that he is not legit.

I would say avoid like the plague.

thesteve

I would say never ever pay cash to someone in the UK or US. But for sellers in Germany it's not unusual for the seller to ask for a bank transfer. They don't like using Paypal because the seller has to pay fees (tight as a frogs ass) when everyone there has a bank account that can be accessed online anyway. Ebay DE is tied into their accounts much like Paypal, I have a German Paypal account and ther's even the option for the money to come straight out of my bank account without using my credit card...

As for the 'Will Ship to UK only', when I started buying a lot off ebay, I would email each seller in advance asking if they would ship to Ireland, half would reply, half wouldn't bother. So I started asking and just bid, even when I'd win I'd only pay the shipping quoted to UK only, only about 10% would come back asking for an extra quid, everyone else would just send the item. I've never had one come back saying they won't ship here...

When I sold a few things, I doscovered that the 'Will Ship to UK only' is a default when they sell, they don't choose this option specifically...

Hells_Belle

There are plenty of people who won't use PayPal. It can be risky for the seller. I often prefer to pay people by bank transfer out of my UK bank account; as long as the seller has good feedback, I think it's fine.

rubadub

Is there a site that will search for ALL ebay items currently on sale. If I go to ebay.com and enter something and use advanced to ask for "available to ireland" I can get different results than if I search on ebay.co.uk or ebay.ie
ends up I have to search them all to see what is really out there.

I always email asking for quotes to ireland too, once I was actually charged less, I always ask for cheapest postage, he wanted to use 1st class within the Uk. Mine was cheaper and took a week.

Wertz

#Elites wrote:

no point as .co.uk takes 2 days to get here..

Does it f*ck!

eBay.ie seems pretty pointless as of now...all it does is collate the list of people with "Will ship worldwide" or EU sellers who "Will ship to Europe"...UK sellers listing the default "Will ship to UK only"; those items do not show up on eBay.ie, and they form the majority of wanted items in my experience.

We had an Ireland section on ebay.co.uk for ages; all it ever seemed to list was american souvenir crap and the odd item that someone registered in Ireland (and saying so in their profile) would list. To compete as a seller back then (2-3yrs ago) I had to change my default location to UK...I've not made the move to ebay.ie and I doubt I ever will.

Have to agree with the sentiments of some posters in here about Irish online stores in general...terrible websites, clunky buying interfaces...heck a lot of the time NO buying interface...it seems to be more of an online catalogue for irish stores rather than a virtual shop; for such an apparently tech-based economy/society, our online stores are laughable at best, and that incudes their prices...

SBob

Surely the fact that ebay.ie filters for items that can be shipped to ireland is at least an advantage worth having? Granted there is feck all stuff on there located in ireland but at least you're not looking at items only to find they will not ship here

CiaranC

Exactly, you dont have to manually filter out results that wont ship here. The point is that the stuff is available TO Ireland, not based IN Ireland.