eBay display average used sale price on listings
eBay have started adding a text advert to catalogue based listings with the message “Have one to sell? Sell it yourself £x.xx Avg” I have to say I hate this for all sorts of reasons.
What if my selling price is above the eBay average? eBay are effectively telling my customers I’m about to rip them off because they could make a big saving. Of course if my price is below average it could possibly work in my favour, but I’ve never intended to try and be the cheapest on eBay.
The price displayed is also misleading, it doesn’t include postage so now, having had eBay badger me for years to offer Free P&P (which means “Included in the Item Price”), they’re now going to compare my selling price against the average excluding P&P. Thanks eBay, you just made me look even more expensive.
If you’re selling new products you’ll look ultra expensive, because the average selling price is always based on used items. Buyers will only know this if they click the contextual help question mark to red the pop up text which is “Average price before paying applicable eBay and/or PayPal fees, calculated by determining the average selling price on eBay over the last 14 days for this used item in all conditions offered as Buy it now or auction, excluding outlier selling prices as determined by eBay and does not include P&P costs. No representation is made that a particular item will sell for a particular price.“.
Encouraging buyers to become sellers makes a lot of sense on eBay. Any buyer that’s sold on the site is likely to buy more in the future (they’ll have money in their PayPal account), and perhaps they’ll also be a little more tolerant of sellers having found out how hard it is to make a little money.
Displaying average selling prices is lunacy though. Why would I buy an item selling for more than average? Will I be willing to take into account item condition, VAT, warranty, free postage, service offered and seller reputation? Will the average buyer notice the difference between new and used?
Showing the average price of heavily abused, for spares and repairs and broken products alongside the price of a new product without wording to explain there’s a significant difference in the condition doesn’t make sense. Even worse with many products still being mis-categorised on eBay (See how many Fifty Shades Of Grey “books” are not “books”), the average price is routinely dragged down even lower.
Sellers will hate this average resale price display. Casual buyers will at best be disappointed that their items never sell for the expected return and at worst begrudge paying prices that now appear extortionate.
Joe says
1:24 pm on 10/07/2012
Something else to get annoyed about is that if you look on eBay.com, the average price will be shown in US dollars, then look at the same item on eBay.co.uk and it will show the same figure but in GBP.
EG – on eBay.com $11 avg price, eBay.co.uk £11 avg price, it seems they’ve just shown the figure without converting the actual value.
Shocking.
Chris Dawson says
1:32 pm on July 10th, 2012
Oh heck you’re right – As well as $11 the £11 average selling price also displays as €11 on eBay EU sites and AUS$11 on eBay Australia
That really is bad form
whirly says
1:34 pm on 10/07/2012
Utterly pathetic.
And as is the norm it’s implemented poorly.
Matt Ogborne says
1:52 pm on July 10th, 2012
Ouchy, that is a bit of a fail to be honest.
Matt
st georges dragon says
2:50 pm on 10/07/2012
alan sugars apprentice wanna bes at it again. why cant ebay leave sellers to selling
radroach says
4:10 pm on 10/07/2012
Could be that eBay is trying to get back to being a venue for one off collectables only, by driving everything else out?
JohnC says
4:54 pm on 10/07/2012
Isn’t this yet another indication that the catalogue can only work properly for identical, new items?
Just as the stock photo doesn’t represent used items properly, neither does this ludicrous “mixed” average price.
Gerry007 says
7:51 pm on 10/07/2012
.
And then there’s the buyer who emails you saying ‘I’ll buy your item at the average price, etc, etc’,
Bad feedback coming when buyer ‘think’ they have been done….
Effectively, ebay is telling you what to sell items for.
Cockneydevil says
10:51 pm on 10/07/2012
Yeah , but how many of these am I going to sell with my item pictures plastered all over Tamebay ?
Should I change my shop name to
Reassuringly expensive ?
TWICE as much as you hoped to pay ?
Ive tried to stay relatively calm about this debacle but frankly I am sick to the back teeth of Ebays half arsed ham fisted stumbling trying to turn a Sows ear into a silk purse.
We ALL know its a recipe for disaster , not just for me ,or my items; but for anyone stupid enough to use the catalogue.
They can “decide” how much you “OUGHT” to be selling this for irrespective of any other consideration
Chris Dawson says
1:08 am on July 11th, 2012
Fortunately I don’t think you’ll sell any less for having been featured on Tamebay, but you could always flog all of your games for £1m instead of one by one
I’m wondering what my set of Settlers is worth – I have Settlers, Settlers II, Settlers III and Settlers IV. Mind you I’m not sure I’ve got anything old enough to play the first version on any more
Steve says
11:28 pm on 10/07/2012
This is an awful idea…Are eBay trying to scare sellers away!?
I can see it now, messages to sellers with offers of the average sale price.
Slow clap for eBay…
elvis says
12:04 am on 11/07/2012
What I don’t understand is… I sell new DVDs so they display the ave price for used dvds which as stated above is NOt going to increase my sales. Plus if a customer is looking at my listing for a new dvd, they are not going to have one to sell. There are far more imaginative ways to get buyers to sell. Anyone buying on ebay knows they can sell something if they want anyway.
A completely rediculous idea to be implemented by ebay.
SARAH WILSON says
10:27 am on 11/07/2012
Another poorly thought out idea from Ebay, average sales prices won’t work on a site where people are selling new and 2nd hand items.
Robert Mansell says
10:35 am on 11/07/2012
IS it me or are ebay obsessed with having the cheapest items on the site ?
Gone are the great hard to find vintage and collectables and in is the “cheap” “cheapest” stuff they can find.
Ebay is full of cheap chinese tatt at the monent and all they are doing is trying to force UK sellers to attempt to compete. Can’t be done I am afraid.
st georges dragon says
10:35 am on 11/07/2012
not only this
but buy it now or best offer completed items sold in us dollars are showing as £s. something thats sold for 45 dollars,shows as being sold @£45
Robert Mansel says
3:53 pm on July 11th, 2012
I wonder if this is a US idea that they are testing that would work for US$ and Can$
JohnC says
8:41 pm on July 11th, 2012
It’s an idea that doesn’t work in any currency!
Mark says
1:20 pm on 14/07/2012
Of all the changes and testing and iterations eBay have changed, as a manager of two category-leading shops…I
HATE THIS!
with a passion.
Much of what eBay introduce is well planned, well executed, and even if not overly popular at launch, works well in time. This surely won’t and can’t.
One of the worst, most poorly thought-out additions to the site eBay have launched. Let’s hope it’s removed.
And in case there’s any ambiguity, once again
I HATE THIS
Chris says
11:10 pm on 14/07/2012
There appears to be a very serious error in Tamebays programming. I entered the original posting but there was a slight error in my email address. So instead of allowing me to correct it Tamebays programming wiped my posting.
Anyway this is the second attempt. This whole idea of ebay’s is totally and utterly BONKERS.
I sell Books. Most of my Books are New but are not current publications. The bulk of the same titles on sale on ebay are either Secondhand(in one or other of the grades) or could maybe be ex-Library Copies(with stickers or rubber stamps and with the wear-sometimes considerable wear and the possibility of damaged or even pages removed). Yet according to ebay they are all worth the same price.
The only way that the idea would work would be if the prices were to be graduated like would happen in a convenional Catalogue according to condition.
Also if I look through a particular Title and there are copies listed under International Sellers their prices(in whatever original currency-Dollars, Euro’s etc) are converted into Pounds Sterling at the current exchange rate. So there really is no excuse for ebay to initiate a system where 45 Dollars, 45 Euro’s etc are converted to 45 pounds sterling. It is just so totally and utterly amateur.
There really is not one single saving grace for this idea that I can see. It should be scrapped immediately.
ebuyerfb says
7:27 am on July 15th, 2012
That isn’t a error in TameBay’s programming. That is an overzealous spam filter. You likely entered an email address for a domain that doesn’t really exist. It then determined that your original post wasn’t even worthy of moderation. It has happened to me a few times as well but is rare.
Chris says
2:08 pm on July 15th, 2012
What I probably did was to either miss a letter or perhaps add a letter in my email address. After all we are all human and occassionally hit a wrong key when typing in something. In my case with hands like buckets it happens a lot.
Usually I spend a while going through and finding all the errors. Obviously this time I thought that I had found them all but missed one. So Tamebays programming wiped the lot. That to me is a serious programming error. After all if every programme wiped every item that included a spelling mistake or another minor error then nothing would ever be listed.
Chris Dawson says
8:10 pm on July 15th, 2012
Editing an email address when editing a comment is something we block on Tamebay, although we do allow the content to be edited.
We routinely block hundreds (sometimes thousands) of attempts to access Tamebay on a daily basis as well as trapping anything up to several hundred spam comments each day.
If we didn’t have steps in place to protect the site it would run riot with spammers in a matter of days.
Sorry if you’ve been caught, but we won’t be relaxing our security procedures and editing an email address is something we don’t allow.
Chris says
8:44 am on July 16th, 2012
One thing that I have noticed, Although I wonder if Tamebay have done any analysis. Is that since the enhancement there seems to be less comments posted(and its not just that st georges dragon has been posting fewer comments). Have Tamebay done any such analysis?
Chris Dawson says
9:08 am on July 16th, 2012
Thanks for your concern and yes we monitor such things. We’re pleased the train lobby seems to have run out of steam as far as comments go, which might make the site look a little quieter to you, but the number of comments are normal.
Chris says
12:32 pm on July 16th, 2012
I could invent a few Train Comments if you like but I think that you will find that most of my “Train” comments were serious to illustrate a point that others then jumped on the “Band Wagon” and exploited with often irrelavent comments.
I was just commenting that it did appear to me as if there are less postings than previously on important items where I would have expected more.
Perhaps you are now blocking more postings than previously and this is causing the reduction? Perhaps blocking more containing “dubious” Language?
Dan Wilson says
2:44 pm on July 16th, 2012
Chris,
Needless to say we keep a close eye on all manner of metrics on Tamebay. Comments being just one aspect of what makes Tamebay successful, which is why we always welcome valid comments.
In general terms, the redesign has had a positive effect on metrics across the board. Including comments. Total comments being left is actually up since the revamp, average comments per post remains steady.
What might account for your speculation is that we are posting rather a lot more than before and more content is staying visible for longer. There have always been posts that don’t attract comments at all. It may be that they are more visible.
It is worth noting too that the redesign didn’t meddle at all with our moderation processes.
Dan
st georges dragon says
4:00 pm on July 16th, 2012
I think the moderation process on tame bay is The DOGS BOLLOCKS
lol
Chris Dawson says
6:33 pm on July 16th, 2012
Now you’re being naughty just to make me approve your posts
Chris says
7:35 am on July 17th, 2012
I must admit that the above is one of those postings that I was hoping would have been rejected for the obvious and totally unnecessary dubious language.
Chris Dawson says
9:00 am on July 17th, 2012
and that’s why St Georges Dragon thinks our moderation is the Dogs Bollocks and you disagree
We can’t please all of the people all of the time so we don’t try to. Hopefully we please most of the people most of the time but we’ll settle for pleasing some of the people some of the time.
radroach says
9:55 am on 15/07/2012
Has there been any indication that eBay might be reconsidering this “enhancement”?
Or will they just ignore the protests?