It is now completely impossible to sell a laptop on eBay

http://consumerist.com/5007790/its-now-completely-impossible-to-sell-a-laptop-on-ebay

by technoguyrob • 18 years ago

49 43 18 years ago

consumerist.com

Some interesting remarks on Reddit as well:

http://reddit.com/info/6inwx/comments/

dpapathanasiou4• 18 years ago

So, EBay is broken (at least when it comes to computers & electronics).

There must be a startup opportunity there.

technoguyrob• 18 years ago

Essentially, the problem is a credentials issue. If you can distinguish "serious" buyers from the "scammers," then you're set. I've done a little freelancing on elance.com, and the way they handle this problem is that they charge a small amount to make bids. Of course, this is somewhat different since one is bidding for jobs and not items (receiving money, not giving it), but it's still not very helpful, since I doubt anyone would pay even a nominal fee to make bids for buying items. Craiglist's solution to this problem is to limit buyers and sellers to their respective local geographic areas, which turns out to be pretty effective, but can oftentimes constrain market opportunities (and of course, there's no built-in auctioning capabilities).

I remember one post on YC a while back was about generating post modernism essays in response to spam emails to the point where a spammer could not possibly sift through all of them in a reasonable amount of time (and the "English" nature of the essays would make them hard to distinguish from real responses). This would make spamming unprofitable. Perhaps this can somehow be generalized to problems like s(c|p)ammers on eBay.

bigtoga2• 18 years ago

And hell, if you could solve that problem, you'd have a legitimate PayPal alternative as well.

dpapathanasiou4• 18 years ago

Essentially, the problem is a credentials issue. If you can distinguish "serious" buyers from the "scammers," then you're set.

Maybe... but I can't help but note that anonymous cash transactions do happen all the time successfully (albeit in person, at shops).

So perhaps credentialed id is not the answer, especially since, on the web it's easy to go back and create a new account at any time.

I doubt anyone would pay even a nominal fee to make bids for buying items

Maybe listing fees (whether paid by buyer or seller) is the wrong business model.

Anyway, it's worth a rethink along the lines of "can you redefine the problem?"

smock• 18 years ago

Check out Dawdle (http://dawdle.com). A friend of mine started it, its a pretty nifty E-Bay like site based around video games which takes a stab at solving the credentials issue.

TrevorJ• 18 years ago

I remember that post, I wish that woulda been implemented, it was such a great idea.

xirium2• 18 years ago

> generating post modernism essays in response to spam emails

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152478

josefresco• 18 years ago

I can't believe someone used Elance as an example of a solution to Ebay's problem. Elance is wrought with it's own issues of underbidding and serious off-shore dominance of almost every available web project. What was once a great way for freelancers to pick up new work, is now just a project farm for offshore companies looking for American work.

Don't get me wrong, I've used outsourcing firms myself and have no issues with it, it's just Elance is no longer a reasonable venue for small domestic firms.

DougBTX2• 18 years ago

> I doubt anyone would pay even a nominal fee to make bids for buying items

You've clearly not seen TeleBid:

http://www.telebid.com/

There are plenty of fools out there just gagging to throw their cash away. Note that the "current price" beside each item goes up 7 pence per bid, so it is easy to work out how many bids have been made on each item. For example, at the moment, there is a Play Station 3 up for auction, and it is currently at £38.08. Divide that by £0.07, and we see that there have been 544 bids made on this item. The nominal fee is 50 pence per bid. So the auction site has brought in £272 pounds so far, and the item is yet to be sold. In the time it has taken me to write this, there have been 35 more bids. The auction is likely to last for several more hours, bringing in at least £2 a minute, probably more like £5 a minute. There are many auctions on the site.

Basically, the site is a scam, as people pay to bid on items they will never win. But, it does prove that you can make people pay per bid, they just need to think they are about to get a great deal.

As a side note, this site benefits from having no social aspects, but is a nice example of a site that could not be built without AJAX. (If the people bidding could talk to each other, they would probably be able to work out just how badly they are being ripped off.)

PS: Also, the timeout for posting replies is annoying. Stateless servers do give you less chances to mess about with closures though, so I understand why it is this way...

mixmax• 18 years ago

The problem with starting another Ebay is Metcalfes law that states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users of the system. They have a lot of users, and thus their network is valuable - even if you try to sell Nigerian stamps from 1800 there will probably be a bidder. A startup will have big trouble getting the first million users, simply because there aren't already a million users. It's a catch 22 situation.

The same is btw. true for facebook, etc. Their value is not in their technology but in their size.

dpapathanasiou4• 18 years ago

True, attracting enough buyers and sellers will be a challenge, even if a scam-free model is invented.

This actually reminds me of the story of the Arizona Stock Exchange, which was technically a better model for selling stocks, but couldn't convince enough traders from NYSE and Nasdaq to give it a try (http://www.businessweek.com/1997/09/b3516129.htm).

xirium2• 18 years ago

See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95288 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152019

dangoldin• 18 years ago

Haha. The article is hilarious. Definitely a good afternoon chuckle.

borga• 18 years ago

welcome to human society.

thingsilearned• 18 years ago

Another data point. I just sold mine a year ago and had no problems.

I bought a laptop and 3 months later got a work laptop negating my need for the other. Sold it on ebay at a loss of just 50 bucks from the original price. Yet another reason to buy a mac. The resale value remains really high.

weegee2• 18 years ago

how do you sell your laptop on ebay? just list it as a single-priced auction, set shipping to USA only, reject any bidders that don't have a paypal account, etc. anyone who can't sell something on ebay without running into trouble like this is an idiot.

rms• 18 years ago

or you can do a buy it now that only counts if they actually follow through and pay

weegee2• 18 years ago

try the "immediate payment required" in that case. it's a good feature that I've used many times.

wensing• 18 years ago

I've sold two Mac laptops on eBay--one 12" Powerbook G4 and the other a 13" Macbook (white). The 12" sold within 24 hours (August 2006) for $500 (!). The 13" sold within three days for $900 (I paid $1200 and it was 1 year old, refurbished). The 13" did come with some other goodies, like Parallels and Win XP Pro, however.

tx• 18 years ago

Ha... I never used EBay in the intended way: when bying I always do searches for local items only, and just pick things up with cash.

For selling I always use Craigslist.

martin• 18 years ago

I sold my laptop on eBay about a year and a half ago. The winning bidder had a 100+ feedback rating, so I thought everything was fine, but then I get the email that he wants me to ship it to Nigeria. I contacted eBay via their chat support, and they were actually not that lame -- they agreed that obviously one of these scumbags had pwned a legitimate account, and refunded my money. When I relisted it, it sold without incident.

vaksel3• 18 years ago

Craigslist should be thanking eBay, because all the scams and fraud on it have made all the people weary of shipping things, So local classifieds thrive.

Tichy• 18 years ago

Shorten more, please

babul2• 18 years ago

eBay is a rule unto itself. They love buyers and do not care much about sellers.

I used to be a powerseller but stopped as I was fed up of people lying on eBay, especially buyers who received goods and complained to eBay they did not. In many cases I provided the shipping tracking numbers and eBay+PayPal could see the items were sent and recieved by the buyers but still they would refund buyers so sellers lose out.

They do this as it is easier to push around a seller (eBay tell you that you have to take the buyer to court but then will refuse to give you the buyers details) than a buyer (who can simply tell their credit card company to sort it out).

babul2• 18 years ago

See http://www.paypalsucks.com for the horror stories I and many others have suffered at eBay/PayPal.

It is now completely impossible to sell a laptop on eBay

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