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At least for camera equipment, this does exist. You can take your camera to B&H's used department, and they will buy it from you. You can also go to B&H's use

At least for camera equipment, this does exist. You can take your camera to B&H's used department, and they will buy it from you. You can also go to B&H's used department and buy a used camera from them. The advantage of this over Amazon is that as a seller, you know B&H isn't going to screw you over in any way, and if they do, you know where to serve your lawsuit. A trusted business with a physical location is the counterparty in your transaction, which makes it pretty low risk. As a buyer, you know B&H is trustworthy and you can come back to the store and have a problem resolved. Amazon offers nothing in a typical Amazon.com transaction beyond matching buyer and seller. They can't trust the buyer, and they can't trust the seller. So they can't really help with the transaction in any way, they are just there to take a cut for basically nothing. B&H takes a larger cut, but they actually do something. Of course, people like money, so Amazon is rolling in it while most people don't even know that they can sell their camera to B&H. (I've bought used stuff from them because I don't trust random eBay listings, but never sold anything because the amount of money they offer wasn't worth it to me.)

akurilin 7y ago
This is actually what Sweetwater does too when it comes to music gear. I've gotten a few duds from Amazon in the past, but smaller, focused online stores like Sweetwater will inspect your gear for you before shipping it out to you, will give you a direct line to a sales+support person. In fact they'll even give you the email of the entire executive team of the company if you want to contact them directly. As much as I like free Prime shipping, for higher end gear I'd much rather have access to a real person with expertise in the gear I'm purchasing, and a brand name and reputation to protect. I was not a believer at first, staunchly sticking to Amazon, but everything I've gotten from them has been top notch and without any defects, so I became a convert.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
> Of course, people like money, so Amazon is rolling in it while most people don't even know that they can sell their camera to B&H. But people don't like risk, either. To choose one of very many examples: consumers will often pay more for "safe" brands they're sure will be good than take a risk on something new that's significantly cheaper. Obviously, Amazon is doing better than B&H, but there's other explanations for that, and it's not like B&H is doing poorly.
im3w1l 7y ago
> but never sold anything because the amount of money they offer wasn't worth it to me. Ok, so this is a serious problem, wont you agree? But is it an unavoidable one? Would it be possible to get something in-between, where it's both a good deal and adds a lot of trust? I suspect the physical presence part is a big driver of cost. Both because of rent, but also wages. And because the camera is not displayed to the whole country, worse matching of buyer and seller.
- jrockway 7y ago
  I don't think people pay that well for used camera gear. Nobody wants last year's model for the price of this year's model, even if it still takes good photos. In my case, I wanted to sell the previous model of a camera after the new one came out. To upgrade, of course. They offered about $100 on a $400 camera, and sold used ones for about $300. That's a big cut, so I decided not to upgrade and am perfectly happy. My time to make a listing somewhere, collect offers, vet a one-off purchaser, and pay for shipping was probably more than $200, so it was actually a good deal. It's not a good deal if you operate at scale and can get the efficiency up, however. So if you wanted to start a business, you could probably eat their lunch. (Or fragment the market and put everyone out of business!) I mostly buy old film cameras used from them. People selling them on eBay bought a custom-made 4x5 camera for $6000, don't want it anymore, but can't bear to see "their baby" go for less than $5999. People selling to B&H are less emotionally attached so the prices are better.
  - im3w1l 7y ago
    > That's a big cut, I was trying to reason around why they take that big of a cut.
URSpider94 7y ago
Sure, but B&H is probably going to take a good 30% premium in that transaction, if not more. Which is certainly better than losing a camera and getting 0% back... Over 1000 transactions, you’d do better selling on Amazon. On one transaction, your statistical outcome is still the same, but you run the risk of hitting that one bad outcome.
- Godel_unicode 7y ago
  How can you possibly know what the expected value is of selling high price commodities on Amazon?

akurilin 7y ago

This is actually what Sweetwater does too when it comes to music gear. I've gotten a few duds from Amazon in the past, but smaller, focused online stores like Sweetwater will inspect your gear for you before shipping it out to you, will give you a direct line to a sales+support person. In fact they'll even give you the email of the entire executive team of the company if you want to contact them directly. As much as I like free Prime shipping, for higher end gear I'd much rather have access to a real person with expertise in the gear I'm purchasing, and a brand name and reputation to protect. I was not a believer at first, staunchly sticking to Amazon, but everything I've gotten from them has been top notch and without any defects, so I became a convert.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

> Of course, people like money, so Amazon is rolling in it while most people don't even know that they can sell their camera to B&H. But people don't like risk, either. To choose one of very many examples: consumers will often pay more for "safe" brands they're sure will be good than take a risk on something new that's significantly cheaper. Obviously, Amazon is doing better than B&H, but there's other explanations for that, and it's not like B&H is doing poorly.

im3w1l 7y ago

> but never sold anything because the amount of money they offer wasn't worth it to me. Ok, so this is a serious problem, wont you agree? But is it an unavoidable one? Would it be possible to get something in-between, where it's both a good deal and adds a lot of trust? I suspect the physical presence part is a big driver of cost. Both because of rent, but also wages. And because the camera is not displayed to the whole country, worse matching of buyer and seller.

jrockway 7y ago
I don't think people pay that well for used camera gear. Nobody wants last year's model for the price of this year's model, even if it still takes good photos. In my case, I wanted to sell the previous model of a camera after the new one came out. To upgrade, of course. They offered about $100 on a $400 camera, and sold used ones for about $300. That's a big cut, so I decided not to upgrade and am perfectly happy. My time to make a listing somewhere, collect offers, vet a one-off purchaser, and pay for shipping was probably more than $200, so it was actually a good deal. It's not a good deal if you operate at scale and can get the efficiency up, however. So if you wanted to start a business, you could probably eat their lunch. (Or fragment the market and put everyone out of business!) I mostly buy old film cameras used from them. People selling them on eBay bought a custom-made 4x5 camera for $6000, don't want it anymore, but can't bear to see "their baby" go for less than $5999. People selling to B&H are less emotionally attached so the prices are better.
- im3w1l 7y ago
  > That's a big cut, I was trying to reason around why they take that big of a cut.

URSpider94 7y ago

Sure, but B&H is probably going to take a good 30% premium in that transaction, if not more. Which is certainly better than losing a camera and getting 0% back... Over 1000 transactions, you’d do better selling on Amazon. On one transaction, your statistical outcome is still the same, but you run the risk of hitting that one bad outcome.

Godel_unicode 7y ago
How can you possibly know what the expected value is of selling high price commodities on Amazon?