DO morons use E-Bay?

[GimpTG]

E-bay seems to be a good idea, but everytime I go there bidding has put the price higher than the price of on-line merchants. What's the deal, do these people look other places for there hardware?

 

[rudder]

answer to your question is... yes.

I would love to see jsut how many of bids on items are actually from the people who posted the thing in the first place.

 

[stingbandel]

I bought from eBay a few times and I always got it way much cheaper than on here or other online places. It's just a matter of how to find it.




Darno

 

[GimpTG]

I have yet to see E-bay have anything cheaper than Pricewatch, other than cheap generic stuff.

 

[dman]

Yep, even if you factor in shipping the prices are higher. Because, the auction price is higher than the pricewatch price and then most auctions have a shipping charge in addition to the winning bid. Thus, it's definitely NOT the place to be cheap hardware. It is, however, OK for finding out of production stuff, not cheap, but it's available.

 

[SilverThief]

It depends on what your buying. If your referring strictly to computer hardware, then its almost always higher on eBay.
Calling people morons who use ebay is definitely a stupid thing to say.
My wife, sister, mother all buy from eBay...I'm pretty sure that your not calling them morons.

:|

 

[MrBond]

Ebay used to have great deals. Because of that, the initial users spread word about said great deals. More users flocked to the site, and sellers began to see a chance to take advantage of them. Anymore, I've all but stopped using it, because as someone said, you can get the stuff cheaper elsewhere.

Not to mention most Ebay sellers are members of the "Pricewatch School of Shipping Costs". I just had a friend buy a sound card from ebay, he paid $10 for the card, $8 for shipping. He got the package, the shipping label said $3.95. And it was packed in Priority mail boxes/supplies (read: free from the post office). Any decent deal is usually offset by the high shipping cost.

 

[GimpTG]

I didn't mean that everyone who uses E-Bay is a moron, rather that apparently a portion of them are.

 

[daveman]

Like SilverThief said, it depends on what your buying. I have got some great deals from ebay and then some things I look at and wonder why the hell anyone would bid higher than you can buy the product at walmart or online.
go figure

 

[samgau]

E-bay used to be allright.... I was ablt to get pretty good deals for a long time... especially at the beginning of e-bay... now its just a reseller's market... and bunch of people caught in bidding frenzy.... its sad
you can still get deals on other things... like collectibles, etc... definetly not current computer equipment.... unless you are looking for 4year old technology.. such as Ppros and the likes....

 

[ggavinmoss]

I'm assuming that question is rhetorical...

As far as the bidding over retail goes, people just get caught up in the moment... they think "well nobody is gonna one up me!" and then bid higher... without thinking about shipping or retail prices. The result is a sad number of people paying too much for stuff.

At least there aren't more people paying good money for links to where to buy stuff... that's REALLY stupid.

-geoff

 

[PsychoAndy]

<< I was ablt to get pretty good deals for a long time... especially at the beginning of e-bay... now its just a reseller's market... >>



not exactly true. depending on the product, it can be a bidders market or a sellers market.....i run plenty of auctions and my auctions close anywhere from $15 to $40 LESS than the going rates on pricewatch.

 

[NetGuySC]

Perhaps pricewatch beats Ebay a large part of the time.

But have you checked the reseller rateings of the lowest priced vendors on Pricewatch? They seem to be some shady characters

 

[Avalanche007]

yes. There are morons everywhere.

 

[Wallydraigle]

Are Mormons even allowed to have computers? Oh, nevermind.

 

[yakko]

Not everyone is a moron and there are some good deals on there but you have to know what you are looking for.

 

[b0mbrman]

No. I've found plenty of things cheaper on Ebay. They have way lower margins than online retailers so it only makes sense that more people speculate than normally would driving the prices down... Maybe *you're* the moron for not knowing how to find the cheaper things on Ebay

 

[Looney]

Depends... you can really find good deals on ebay, but stay away from computer stuff, because people do pay a lot more than the value of the items.

 

[Dood]

eBay's strength is in collectibles, not commodity items.

 

[MWink]

Short answer: yes
Long answer: YYYYYEEEEESSSSS

I love buying something, using it for a few months, and reselling it for twice what I paid! (True story!)

 

[mithrandir2001]

Hey, morons are good for profits!

 

[hans007]

sometimes you can get a good deal. just depends on what. laptop stuff is pretty cheap on ebay, especially batteries and that sort of thing

 

[rahvin]

Frankly if you are dilligent in searching you can often find prices on ebay that beat 50% of the posts in the FS/FT forum. Half the users in the FS/FT forum think that you should get 95% of the lowest pricewatch price on a used item. Now if you are buying brand new stuff ebay does suck but if you are trying to find something rare or older there are pretty good deals to be had.

 

[OSUdrunk]

<< E-bay seems to be a good idea, but everytime I go there bidding has put the price higher than the price of on-line merchants. What's the deal, do these people look other places for there hardware? >>


Well then what's the problem? Go get yourself some hardware and resell it on eBay for higher than other merchants. Sounds like a good business model to me.

I can find a lot of good things on eBay that you either cant find anywhere else or cant find cheaper anywhere else. For example, tickets to many sporting events that are sold out (Ohio State football, Cleveland Indians, Browns, etc.) are being sold at about face value on eBay. You just gotta know where to look.

 

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