What is going on on eBay??

[artie]

James Gregory ( American comedian) does a stand up routine about going to Lowes on a Sunday afternoon with his Dad.

Explaining about how they would go to "look around" never buying anything. He does it very well and brought back memories of me and my son going to B&Q on Sunday afternoon and seldom buying anything.

My son still talks about, he's almost 40 now.

In fact a few years ago I flew over to Glasgow where he met me and we drove up to Maybole to get suits for my daughters wedding.

On the way back he pointed over to a B&Q and we had a walk round, and of course bought nothing.

I think browsing ebay and of course buying nothing is the 21st century version of pwowling Lowes / B&Q

 

[chrisdt]

At least with Ebay you know exactly what your paying and if its not as described you can issue a request to return it and get your money back. Auction houses in general are crooks pushing the price up (by taking bids off the wall) and making it very difficult if not impossible to return anything. I bought an Omega watch in
a local auction house and when I got home I realised the movement was not Omega at all. Had a hell of a job to get a refund and had to resort to the threat of legal action. Plus the comission charges at auction houses have rocketed over recent years to around 25%. 5% more if you register to bid on line. Still cheaper on Ebay.

 

[Jelly]

There's often a market size aspect to consider.

I have bought almost all of my clothes on eBay for the best part of a decade because it offers excellent value for money, I needed to replace some jeans recently, and managed to get 3 pairs of Levi 501's in immaculate condition for starting bids priced at the £5-£10 mark, bargain!

This infuriates my missus who can never ever seem to find a bargain on clothes on eBay, despite there being a much bigger second hand market for almost new womens clothing.

What's the difference between us? At 6'4" with a 36" inside leg, and 50" chest, I'm well outside the average, so there's just not much competition for the stuff I'm buying; meanwhile at 5'4" and a size 10-12 she's pretty much bang on the average size of a british woman and has huge amounts of competition for the stuff she wants to buy.


Translate that back to machines, and it explains why small, portable, single phase machines often sell above what you'd consider to be market value, whilst really excellent industrial equipment usually sells for pennies on the pound to what a reasonable dealer price would be... There's more people who want it, than there are machines available.