Does anyone use Ebay?

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Aredwood

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#1656400 23-Oct-2016 00:45

Have been buying parts for my Merc Van from Ebay UK. Way cheaper than locally, and no local places seem to keep what I need in stock anyway. All of the car parts sellers seem to offer free shipping within the UK. But often ridiculous shipping to NZ. So I just use Youshop.

Sidestep

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#1656423 23-Oct-2016 07:46

Use Ebay almost weekly to buy stuff, esp tools, parts & service gear for our American equipment and utes. Pay with Paypal.

Youshop to send the smaller items. Mainfreight (via Kiwi Shipping) freighting/consolidation service for larger heavy items.

I was also a seller on Ebay for several years when I lived in US & Canada.
They're all over bad sellers in comparison with trademe - who basically ignore you if you get ripped off.

I buy my electronic stuff from China.

dejadeadnz

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#1656545 23-Oct-2016 13:04

I have had excellent successes buying glasses frames (Oakley/Ray Ban) and Steam games keys from Ebay from reputable sellers. They have always arrived, are obviously genuine, and have been at much better prices than I can get in NZ.

TeaLeaf

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#1656649 23-Oct-2016 17:22

i sold on ebay for 15 years, had a good reputation. fees were fair, well i thought they werre a rip off, until i tried to sell something on trademe. i really miss the trade and exchange and its pricing. why didnt somebody buy that and put it on the net? im not sure how trademe justifies its prices other than "because we can" which doesnt drive much brand loyalty if a better product comes along. if ebay pushed hard into NZ they could easily put trademe down, would be like Justn Timberlake fighting Tyson, lights out in 10 seconds.

But I cant see ebay caring to much for NZ's piddly profit unless it kept prices jacked up.

And how the heck do people who buy cameras from rip off shops like JB expect to sell them for the same or more used than a NZ New vendor with 12 month warranty? Im looking at Nikons at the moment and seriously these guys think Im a liar until I send them a link of their camera. Of course parallel import isnt as good but this is NZ new shops that still compete with parallel import. But they bought the camera at JB 12 months ago for $999 and are asking $750 with no warranty for something I can get NZ new for $630 with 12 months warranty. I know trademe will slap on $80 for the sale which is just insane. So nobody can sell used for a fair price a. because they dont look at price search engines first b. trademe is taking close to 10% all up for their sale. which a very stagnant used camera market. unless ur a canon buyer because like mac buyers u will believe the products worth what ever price your told ;-p (just jokes).

Even PC components, the same deal. OMG notebook so so frustrating. "Yeah but its an alienware and it has an gtx665, I paid $4200 for it so $2500 is a bargain" with a 3-4 year old overclocked GPU and CPU, yeah really. clowns.

Why cant be people just be decent and fair and sell for a fair reasonable loss and buy new from fair reasonable retailers and why cant we sell on a site that charges fair reasonable fees? Problem solved.

richms

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#1656652 23-Oct-2016 17:39

Because people will pay the stupid prices eventually, so why sell cheap just because you dont want to pay their stupid prices?

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Fred99

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#1656667 23-Oct-2016 18:44

TeaLeaf:

i really miss the trade and exchange and its pricing. why didnt somebody buy that and put it on the net?

Perhaps because there's no money in it - and no interest, as TM rules the roost in NZ, despite awful fees.

Craigs List is in NZ - kind of

https://geo.craigslist.org/iso/nz

Despite that being huge in the US, there's not much interest here, apparently.
I did browse that once - stumbled across mainly plenty of ads for women's underwear, guaranteed used, and came to the conclusion it wasn't really for me.

Biggest threat to TM is probably Facebook - if/when they find a good way to monetise buy/sell/exchange.

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mattwnz

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#1656674 23-Oct-2016 19:01

Fred99:

Biggest threat to TM is probably Facebook - if/when they find a good way to monetise buy/sell/exchange.

Isn't there a facebook app created by a NZ company who were running such a system on Facebook for buying and selling thing. I recall they had some form of public shared offer about a year or so ago. Anyone know what happened to that, or has facebooks own systems superseded it? It is a really fast moving market. Trademe has the advantage that it has a lot of users that know how to use it, and is reasonably safe.

tchart

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#1656685 23-Oct-2016 19:36

We buy a fair bit off Ebay (had an account since ~2000). Lots of small cheap stuff (cable etc) but Ive found lately Aliexpress is better and cheaper for that kind of stuff now.

Some sellers are just ludicrous with shipping (i'd say because of the hassle) but you can still find the odd bargain.

For example we recently bought a Turtle Beach of a Canadian seller shipping was about $20 which was reasonable. We also buy things which are getting harder to find here like decent Hallmark xmas decorations (Star Wars etc) - Paper Plus and Briscoes didn't get any stock last year.

Just make sure you pay with PayPal. The odd dispute Ive had always ended up being resolved.

Dratsab

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#1656811 24-Oct-2016 09:59

k1w1k1d: Have used Ebay on occasions, but you have to watch out for freight costs. Many sellers don't send international and others are super expensive if they do. Some sellers are USA based, but send direct from China so not a problem.

Aliexpress often has the same stuff with free shipping. Much easier to deal with.

Like all things you just have to be careful and shop around.

I use eBay on a semi-regular basis and find, as above and as others have noted, a bunch of stuff comes directly from China at reasonable rates and quite quickly. Stuff shipped from the US tends to be super expensive, for instance I've brought a new bass guitar neck from a seller in New York for US$72.95 and international shipping was going to be US$69.00 so I had it sent to Phoenix (Youshop) which cost US$10 and from there has cost me a further NZ$38.

I use Aliexpress too. Haven't looked at Trademe for buying anything for easily a couple of years now - it seems to me that a lot of people buy goods cheaply (probably from Aliexpress) then try and knock it out at ridiculously high prices on Trademe.

Dingbatt

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#1669702 12-Nov-2016 18:32

Dingbatt: I have found the stuff I get through eBay that comes from Hong Kong or Taiwan generally arrives much more quickly than from Shenzen or Guangzhou. If there is only a small percentage difference in price I'm willing to pay a little more to get it quicker. Same goes for trademe though. If the delivered price isn't hugely greater, I would rather support local vendors.
In general though it is because the item I want just isn't available in NZ. I did wonder why stuff from the US had such high shipping costs by comparison. Some of the above posts explain that.
Just bought the first (relatively) expensive thing ($200) through eBay and awaiting delivery. So my opinion may change markedly if things go awry.

To update this. Both items arrived very quickly (within a week) so my record of positive experiences with EBay purchases remains intact.
The hardest part was trying to track the parcel. The tracking number provided by the seller worked in the NZ Post site but only showed despatched and in transit when the courier knocked on my door with the package. After signing for it electronically, I checked the NZP site again and all the spaces were filled in including delivery.

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jpoc

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#1669844 12-Nov-2016 23:53

I use ebay all the time. I can say the same for T-me, amazon, aliX, dealXtreme and others.

All are good for some stuff and the key is to know what you will get at a good price from each.

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#1669902 13-Nov-2016 09:20

Years ago I bought everything on Trade Me. Now I buy nearly everything on Aliexpress. My experiences there have all been good so far. I bought something once on Ebay, but I didn't like the site and haven't gone back. I look from time to time but so far anything I want I can find on Aliexpress. Like others, I buy small, relatively cheap items. Once I bought a notebook on Amazon because of price but also because I couldn't find the model I wanted locally. I had it shipped via my sister in America because of the battery issue. For expensive items, especially electronics, I would normally try local suppliers first because of CGA and warranty. I ran into this problem with my notebook, thoguh fortunately I was able to fix it myself.

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