5 ms·

Some brilliant mind who lurks on HN should create a competitor to eBay. Not some online yard sale where you have to meet people in person for the exchange, but

Some brilliant mind who lurks on HN should create a competitor to eBay. Not some online yard sale where you have to meet people in person for the exchange, but a nice online marketplace for people to sell their stuff. If this already exists, do tell. In my opinion, eBay for sellers (outside of maybe the power sellers. I've sold <100 items) is a nightmare. I sold a Tiffany necklace a few months back. The buyer reported to eBay it was fake and I was ordered to refund the seller and they could keep the fake item. Long story short, over a span of a few weeks, I was lucky enough to get an original receipt from Tiffany and supply it as evidence, which almost still did not work. More recently, I listed an old iPhone with a "buy it now". Sold in like 30 minutes to someone with an "@god[dot].com" email requesting I send the phone first and then he will pay me. It took a week or longer for me to challenge this. I even have settings to disallow certain types of eBay users based on ratings etc. eBay still charged me a listing fee. I had success doing a non buy it now sale after that. Maybe that is my only option now. I don't even feel like getting into how slow their seller admin tools are ...

searchers 9y ago
I think blockchain will help us with this.
- untog 9y ago
  It would be interesting to create an HN bot that replies exactly this to every top submission, then track the up/downvotes
  - sha256link 9y ago
    I think blockchain will help us with this.
- SamPatt 9y ago
  For the payments layer, yes, but not for storing the actual marketplace data. Blockchains aren't great for storing data apart from maintaining a transaction ledger. When we started building OpenBazaar we specifically avoided using a blockchain apart from Bitcoin for payments. It was the right call I think. There are plenty of other decentralization tools to use apart from blockchains, like IPFS, which OpenBazaar 2.0 is built on top of.
nik736 9y ago
I agree completely, also their platform is just so slow and full of bugs. It simply looks like they havn't changed anything in the past 10 years. Edit: Forgot to mention that their search is so bad, they mix search results with search phrases previously so it's impossible to find things I am looking for.
Xeoncross 9y ago
This is a real hard problem. Bad people make everything bad for everyone else. The problem is more about the US market laws and scalability I think. Large companies like eBay have to take fraud and customer support costs and weight it against their company vs you as a seller. It would take a company that cared more about sellers than their own bottom line. The customer is always right. Middle men like eBay have two customers though: the buyer and the seller. They support the one that helps them the most and let the other get burned occasionally. Note: I mostly buy "buy-it-now" items on ebay
idibidiart 9y ago
The only purchase I ever done on eBay was in 2002 for a PocketPC. It never came. I reported the seller. They said 22 others were scammed and PayPal, their partner in crime, said that they couldn't reveal the seller's personal detail unless by court order. That was the only UX data point I needed. Never used eBay again.
- jws 9y ago
  What were you planning to do with the seller's personal information outside of the legal system?
  - idibidiart 9y ago
    Naively, alert his bank that he was stealing money from everyone and share the PayPal email with them. I wasn't aware at the time that I could take the matter to small claims court. PayPal offered no assistance as far as laying out what my options were. They were fine with it, it seemed. Zero on actual customer "care."
SamPatt 9y ago
>If this already exists, do tell. Yes, it does exist, and it's completely open source. It's called OpenBazaar, and it's a fully decentralized marketplace. There's no middlemen at all. https://www.openbazaar.org/ https://www.openbazaar.org/ It's backed by the OB1 company, which has raised $4.25 million from a16z, USV, and BlueYard. It uses IPFS so that stores don't go offline, and all payments are settled in Bitcoin. We love code reviews and pull requests. The back end is done in Go: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go The front end is an Electron app: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-desktop https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-desktop
- themihai 9y ago
  How do they manage listing flooding or fraud?
  - SamPatt 9y ago
    Buyers can place orders one of two ways: 1. A direct order. The Bitcoin goes directly from buyer to vendor. There are no protections. This method is only used for small value transactions or transactions where the buyer trusts the vendor. 2. A moderated order. The Bitcoin goes into an escrow account (a 2-of-3 Bitcoin multisig address) and there is a third party moderator who will resolve a dispute if one of the parties feels wronged. Note that if there is no dispute opened in a moderated order, the buyer and the seller can release the funds without the moderator even knowing they were chosen for an order. There's nothing to prevent listing flooding, but the rest of the network will just ignore nodes that are abusive. There are also third party search engines that crawl the network, and they'll block spam themselves for their users. Rawflood is an example: https://rawflood.com https://rawflood.com
    - teddyh 9y ago
      How do you select and assign moderators?
      - SamPatt 9y ago
nwatson 9y ago
Google did a similar acquisition in 2010, "like.com". https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/its-official-google-acquires-like-com/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/its-official-google-acquir... .
- homero 9y ago
  Might be related to Google goggles app which died
beambot 9y ago
Lollipuff (YC W'13: https://www.lollipuff.com/ https://www.lollipuff.com/) does exactly this for higher-end women's fashion -- to directly address the issues you had with your Tiffany necklace (though I don't think they support Tiffany today). All the items get authenticated before listing by professional authenticators, without needing to take items in hand. This provides more-than-ample evidence in the event of a dispute (the authenticators are well known in the field!). Then Lollipuff walks buyers & sellers through the process to ensure a safe transaction -- including instructions on shipping, which can also be a frequent gotcha for high-end items.
- ssharp 9y ago
  I wonder how much eBay has been impacted by this type of "wedging". I would use eBay primarily to buy/sell musical instruments but Reverb took a pretty big chunk of that market and provides a better and more trustworthy experience than eBay, at least in my experiences there. I know there are a few fashion-related sites like this out there and I'd guess there are other "Reverb for X" sites as well. I'm sure there is still a fortune in the long-tail but specialty sites seem to be more of a concern than a direct competitor.
user5994461 9y ago
Ebay is great. There isn't any marketplace without fraud on iPhone and jewelry.
whipoodle 9y ago
There have been a lot of those. The problem is network effects. (Sellers go where buyers are, buyers go where sellers are)
djaychela 9y ago
"In my opinion, eBay for sellers (outside of maybe the power sellers. I've sold <100 items) is a nightmare." I wouldn't argue too strongly with you there. I've sold loads of stuff on eBay (about £50k worth over the years, apparently!), and there are problems too often. People try it on, so I have to send -everything- via recorded mail, which is expensive, so then people complain about the postage cost, even though I always put them up front. I've had quite a few completely fatuous claims made against me when selling, one of which said there were parts missing, when I'd actually said those parts were missing in the listing. eBay refunded him and let him keep the item. Whenever I have an issue now, I just say 'send it back, I'll refund it' as this is invariably the path of lowest friction. Dealing with muppets is a cost of selling on eBay that has to be factored into the equation, alas, and it's worse than it ever has been; here in the UK around 2000 it was pretty 'niche' and only serious people seemed to be on there. But after a few years (and a few newspaper articles along the lines of 'quit your job and make a living on eBay') it started getting like it is now. Non paying bidders are a pain to sellers, but it means nothing to eBay so they don't do anything about it. The upside, at least, is that when you buy on there, you're well covered. Had a dodgy 'reconditioned' cylinder head turn up a few weeks ago. Returned it without even having to pay postage, which was a relief - in the past that would have been £400 I'd never have seen again.
schnevets 9y ago
I had a summer of eBay nightmares in college. I was supposed to help a relative sell an attic full of old clothes and knick knacks. Nothing was buying because I was a new seller, so I put some old video games on to bolster my score with quick sales. Everything went well until one person reported me for not including the box & manual (which was never mentioned in the listing) while another claimed the disc was counterfeit. After these two headaches, my relative complained about having to give some costume jewelry up for $7. At that point I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Final profit was $97 There are definitely ways to improve the process. Maybe a "middleman" has to provide an appraisal or validation for the jewelry/electronic before making the listing. The true obstacle with any new competitor is network effect. When normal people want to sell local, they use Craigslist, when they want to sell nationally, they use eBay. Any chaff has already been taken by the big guys, and what is left isn't worth the fight.
gnopgnip 9y ago
Ebay doesn't charge a listing fee for the first 50 items per month. If the buyer never pays you should open an unpaid item claim after three days, then call ebay after four days and have the claim closed in your favor. If more sellers did this the buyers would get filtered out of ebay. In the future you can use buy it now and require immediate payment to prevent this entirely. Verifying the authenticity of commonly faked items does not have an easy solution and I would not buy or sell anything like that on Ebay. Any place that allows the sale of items like this will have tradeoffs. Some alternatives to Ebay are Ebid, Etsy, Rakuten/buy.com, Amazon, Bonanza(allows cross listing with Ebay), Swappa for phones, uBid, Jet.
kermittd 9y ago
I've actually thought about that idea and even did some initial prototyping for a mobile app. But the idea I had was a more usable/less scammy version of craigslist specifically for local commerce. Initially, I was thinking of limiting the goods to electronics and then expanding slowly to other items.
Jemmeh 9y ago
I have the same problem with Amazon. Both of them favor the buyer because customers trusting their platform is a huge selling point for them. As a seller most people are honest, but enough of them are not for it to be extremely annoying. Problem is you have plenty of scammer sellers too.
- overcast 9y ago
  Amazon is the worst for a seller, much worse than eBay. It's completely in favor of the buyer over there, and can easily be gamed. Saying something is damaged, waiting to the absolute last second of a 30 day "trial" to return it. It's horrible. I will never sell anything on there again.
callmeed 9y ago
Seems like Facebook would be best positioned to do this. They already more transparency than Ebay/Amazon with regards to who you're dealing with. They also have regional buy/sell groups already. Integrate with some shipping platforms and they'd be on their way. That being said, its not really in their lane.
cr0sh 9y ago
The thing I miss most about ebay are the independent sellers of "crap" - not sure how else to put it, but basically the random people who dig out stuff from the their "attic" and put it up for people to bid over. You know - what Ebay was originally set up for. I mean - one time I found a bucket of bolts for auction; just a bunch of random rusty bolts someone had in the back of their shed, they decided to auction off. And wouldn't you know it, a bidding war happened. That bucket of bolts went for close to a $100.00 by the time it was all over. Those are the kind of stuff I like to see, and the kind of stuff I like to bid on and/or buy. Not the mass-produced junk from China - if I want that, I'll get it from Amazon or Ali Express (and I do). You can still find this on Ebay, but it isn't as ubiquitous like it was in the beginning. I personally think their decision to compete with Amazon instead of sticking to their core users really changed perceptions and user base. Maybe it's better for them, but for users who like auctions, finding something similar that is trusted as much hasn't been easy (there are a few).
- jjawssd 9y ago
  What platforms do you suggest as alternatives for finding your aforementioned independent sellers of valuable items? I think OfferUp and LetGo seem viable.
notyourwork 9y ago
Years ago I sold an ipod on ebay after Christmas. My parents bought me one and a family relative also bought me one. My account was suspended for fraud even though I provided proof of purchase for the item. I left ebay/paypal and stopped using it when I realized that they could arbitrarily hold my money for 6 months even though I provided legit proof they were wrong.
gdulli 9y ago
It's just as bad selling on Amazon. They both disproportionately and intentionally side with buyers because the buyers are where the money comes from.
chis 9y ago
I just sell things on reddit. Something about having access to the other’s post history keeps things honest.
- asymmetric 9y ago
  What are some marketplace subreddits?
  - chis 9y ago
    Hardwareswap is a catch-all, and also smaller ones like appleswap and steamgameswap
fny 9y ago
There are a bajillion eBay alternatives in the wild. Here are a few... /s mercari.com, swappa.com, letgo.com, offerup.com, snapsale.com, wish.com local, varagesale.com, listia.com, carousell.com, shpock.com, 5miles.com Believe it or not, eBay has even made their own local selling app close5.com
TallGuyShort 9y ago
As long as there a dishonest people, you're either going to be a nightmare for sellers, a nightmare for buyers, a random nightmare, or you're going to have a lot of overhead to have competent people in a scalable organization arbitrate everything.
Nition 9y ago
TradeMe[1] is pretty good. It stopped eBay getting a foothold in New Zealand. [1] https://www.trademe.co.nz https://www.trademe.co.nz
tom_pinckney 9y ago
Sellers and buyers can now use eBay Authenticate to get independent confirmation that goods are as authentic. It’s starting out just focused on certain types of handbags and luxury items but expected to expand over time. https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/ebay-takes-on-the-realreal-and-other-fashion-resellers-with-launch-of-authentication-program/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/ebay-...

searchers 9y ago

I think blockchain will help us with this.

untog 9y ago
It would be interesting to create an HN bot that replies exactly this to every top submission, then track the up/downvotes
- sha256link 9y ago
  I think blockchain will help us with this.
SamPatt 9y ago
For the payments layer, yes, but not for storing the actual marketplace data. Blockchains aren't great for storing data apart from maintaining a transaction ledger. When we started building OpenBazaar we specifically avoided using a blockchain apart from Bitcoin for payments. It was the right call I think. There are plenty of other decentralization tools to use apart from blockchains, like IPFS, which OpenBazaar 2.0 is built on top of.

nik736 9y ago

I agree completely, also their platform is just so slow and full of bugs. It simply looks like they havn't changed anything in the past 10 years. Edit: Forgot to mention that their search is so bad, they mix search results with search phrases previously so it's impossible to find things I am looking for.

Xeoncross 9y ago

This is a real hard problem. Bad people make everything bad for everyone else. The problem is more about the US market laws and scalability I think. Large companies like eBay have to take fraud and customer support costs and weight it against their company vs you as a seller. It would take a company that cared more about sellers than their own bottom line. The customer is always right. Middle men like eBay have two customers though: the buyer and the seller. They support the one that helps them the most and let the other get burned occasionally. Note: I mostly buy "buy-it-now" items on ebay

idibidiart 9y ago

The only purchase I ever done on eBay was in 2002 for a PocketPC. It never came. I reported the seller. They said 22 others were scammed and PayPal, their partner in crime, said that they couldn't reveal the seller's personal detail unless by court order. That was the only UX data point I needed. Never used eBay again.

jws 9y ago
What were you planning to do with the seller's personal information outside of the legal system?
- idibidiart 9y ago
  Naively, alert his bank that he was stealing money from everyone and share the PayPal email with them. I wasn't aware at the time that I could take the matter to small claims court. PayPal offered no assistance as far as laying out what my options were. They were fine with it, it seemed. Zero on actual customer "care."

SamPatt 9y ago

>If this already exists, do tell. Yes, it does exist, and it's completely open source. It's called OpenBazaar, and it's a fully decentralized marketplace. There's no middlemen at all. https://www.openbazaar.org/ https://www.openbazaar.org/ It's backed by the OB1 company, which has raised $4.25 million from a16z, USV, and BlueYard. It uses IPFS so that stores don't go offline, and all payments are settled in Bitcoin. We love code reviews and pull requests. The back end is done in Go: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-go The front end is an Electron app: https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-desktop https://github.com/OpenBazaar/openbazaar-desktop

themihai 9y ago
How do they manage listing flooding or fraud?
- SamPatt 9y ago
  Buyers can place orders one of two ways: 1. A direct order. The Bitcoin goes directly from buyer to vendor. There are no protections. This method is only used for small value transactions or transactions where the buyer trusts the vendor. 2. A moderated order. The Bitcoin goes into an escrow account (a 2-of-3 Bitcoin multisig address) and there is a third party moderator who will resolve a dispute if one of the parties feels wronged. Note that if there is no dispute opened in a moderated order, the buyer and the seller can release the funds without the moderator even knowing they were chosen for an order. There's nothing to prevent listing flooding, but the rest of the network will just ignore nodes that are abusive. There are also third party search engines that crawl the network, and they'll block spam themselves for their users. Rawflood is an example: https://rawflood.com https://rawflood.com
  - teddyh 9y ago
    How do you select and assign moderators?
    - SamPatt 9y ago

nwatson 9y ago

Google did a similar acquisition in 2010, "like.com". https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/its-official-google-acquires-like-com/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/its-official-google-acquir... .

homero 9y ago
Might be related to Google goggles app which died

beambot 9y ago

Lollipuff (YC W'13: https://www.lollipuff.com/ https://www.lollipuff.com/) does exactly this for higher-end women's fashion -- to directly address the issues you had with your Tiffany necklace (though I don't think they support Tiffany today). All the items get authenticated before listing by professional authenticators, without needing to take items in hand. This provides more-than-ample evidence in the event of a dispute (the authenticators are well known in the field!). Then Lollipuff walks buyers & sellers through the process to ensure a safe transaction -- including instructions on shipping, which can also be a frequent gotcha for high-end items.

ssharp 9y ago
I wonder how much eBay has been impacted by this type of "wedging". I would use eBay primarily to buy/sell musical instruments but Reverb took a pretty big chunk of that market and provides a better and more trustworthy experience than eBay, at least in my experiences there. I know there are a few fashion-related sites like this out there and I'd guess there are other "Reverb for X" sites as well. I'm sure there is still a fortune in the long-tail but specialty sites seem to be more of a concern than a direct competitor.

user5994461 9y ago

Ebay is great. There isn't any marketplace without fraud on iPhone and jewelry.

whipoodle 9y ago

There have been a lot of those. The problem is network effects. (Sellers go where buyers are, buyers go where sellers are)

djaychela 9y ago

"In my opinion, eBay for sellers (outside of maybe the power sellers. I've sold <100 items) is a nightmare." I wouldn't argue too strongly with you there. I've sold loads of stuff on eBay (about £50k worth over the years, apparently!), and there are problems too often. People try it on, so I have to send -everything- via recorded mail, which is expensive, so then people complain about the postage cost, even though I always put them up front. I've had quite a few completely fatuous claims made against me when selling, one of which said there were parts missing, when I'd actually said those parts were missing in the listing. eBay refunded him and let him keep the item. Whenever I have an issue now, I just say 'send it back, I'll refund it' as this is invariably the path of lowest friction. Dealing with muppets is a cost of selling on eBay that has to be factored into the equation, alas, and it's worse than it ever has been; here in the UK around 2000 it was pretty 'niche' and only serious people seemed to be on there. But after a few years (and a few newspaper articles along the lines of 'quit your job and make a living on eBay') it started getting like it is now. Non paying bidders are a pain to sellers, but it means nothing to eBay so they don't do anything about it. The upside, at least, is that when you buy on there, you're well covered. Had a dodgy 'reconditioned' cylinder head turn up a few weeks ago. Returned it without even having to pay postage, which was a relief - in the past that would have been £400 I'd never have seen again.

schnevets 9y ago

I had a summer of eBay nightmares in college. I was supposed to help a relative sell an attic full of old clothes and knick knacks. Nothing was buying because I was a new seller, so I put some old video games on to bolster my score with quick sales. Everything went well until one person reported me for not including the box & manual (which was never mentioned in the listing) while another claimed the disc was counterfeit. After these two headaches, my relative complained about having to give some costume jewelry up for $7. At that point I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Final profit was $97 There are definitely ways to improve the process. Maybe a "middleman" has to provide an appraisal or validation for the jewelry/electronic before making the listing. The true obstacle with any new competitor is network effect. When normal people want to sell local, they use Craigslist, when they want to sell nationally, they use eBay. Any chaff has already been taken by the big guys, and what is left isn't worth the fight.

gnopgnip 9y ago

Ebay doesn't charge a listing fee for the first 50 items per month. If the buyer never pays you should open an unpaid item claim after three days, then call ebay after four days and have the claim closed in your favor. If more sellers did this the buyers would get filtered out of ebay. In the future you can use buy it now and require immediate payment to prevent this entirely. Verifying the authenticity of commonly faked items does not have an easy solution and I would not buy or sell anything like that on Ebay. Any place that allows the sale of items like this will have tradeoffs. Some alternatives to Ebay are Ebid, Etsy, Rakuten/buy.com, Amazon, Bonanza(allows cross listing with Ebay), Swappa for phones, uBid, Jet.

kermittd 9y ago

I've actually thought about that idea and even did some initial prototyping for a mobile app. But the idea I had was a more usable/less scammy version of craigslist specifically for local commerce. Initially, I was thinking of limiting the goods to electronics and then expanding slowly to other items.

Jemmeh 9y ago

I have the same problem with Amazon. Both of them favor the buyer because customers trusting their platform is a huge selling point for them. As a seller most people are honest, but enough of them are not for it to be extremely annoying. Problem is you have plenty of scammer sellers too.

overcast 9y ago
Amazon is the worst for a seller, much worse than eBay. It's completely in favor of the buyer over there, and can easily be gamed. Saying something is damaged, waiting to the absolute last second of a 30 day "trial" to return it. It's horrible. I will never sell anything on there again.

callmeed 9y ago

Seems like Facebook would be best positioned to do this. They already more transparency than Ebay/Amazon with regards to who you're dealing with. They also have regional buy/sell groups already. Integrate with some shipping platforms and they'd be on their way. That being said, its not really in their lane.

cr0sh 9y ago

The thing I miss most about ebay are the independent sellers of "crap" - not sure how else to put it, but basically the random people who dig out stuff from the their "attic" and put it up for people to bid over. You know - what Ebay was originally set up for. I mean - one time I found a bucket of bolts for auction; just a bunch of random rusty bolts someone had in the back of their shed, they decided to auction off. And wouldn't you know it, a bidding war happened. That bucket of bolts went for close to a $100.00 by the time it was all over. Those are the kind of stuff I like to see, and the kind of stuff I like to bid on and/or buy. Not the mass-produced junk from China - if I want that, I'll get it from Amazon or Ali Express (and I do). You can still find this on Ebay, but it isn't as ubiquitous like it was in the beginning. I personally think their decision to compete with Amazon instead of sticking to their core users really changed perceptions and user base. Maybe it's better for them, but for users who like auctions, finding something similar that is trusted as much hasn't been easy (there are a few).

jjawssd 9y ago
What platforms do you suggest as alternatives for finding your aforementioned independent sellers of valuable items? I think OfferUp and LetGo seem viable.

notyourwork 9y ago

Years ago I sold an ipod on ebay after Christmas. My parents bought me one and a family relative also bought me one. My account was suspended for fraud even though I provided proof of purchase for the item. I left ebay/paypal and stopped using it when I realized that they could arbitrarily hold my money for 6 months even though I provided legit proof they were wrong.

gdulli 9y ago

It's just as bad selling on Amazon. They both disproportionately and intentionally side with buyers because the buyers are where the money comes from.

chis 9y ago

I just sell things on reddit. Something about having access to the other’s post history keeps things honest.

asymmetric 9y ago
What are some marketplace subreddits?
- chis 9y ago
  Hardwareswap is a catch-all, and also smaller ones like appleswap and steamgameswap

fny 9y ago

There are a bajillion eBay alternatives in the wild. Here are a few... /s mercari.com, swappa.com, letgo.com, offerup.com, snapsale.com, wish.com local, varagesale.com, listia.com, carousell.com, shpock.com, 5miles.com Believe it or not, eBay has even made their own local selling app close5.com

TallGuyShort 9y ago

As long as there a dishonest people, you're either going to be a nightmare for sellers, a nightmare for buyers, a random nightmare, or you're going to have a lot of overhead to have competent people in a scalable organization arbitrate everything.

Nition 9y ago

TradeMe[1] is pretty good. It stopped eBay getting a foothold in New Zealand. [1] https://www.trademe.co.nz https://www.trademe.co.nz

tom_pinckney 9y ago

Sellers and buyers can now use eBay Authenticate to get independent confirmation that goods are as authentic. It’s starting out just focused on certain types of handbags and luxury items but expected to expand over time. https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/ebay-takes-on-the-realreal-and-other-fashion-resellers-with-launch-of-authentication-program/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/ebay-...