10 ms·
EBay Valet
- ps4fanboy 12y agoebay doing its hardest to be like amazon, while their actual auction experience is getting worse and worse.
- thaumasiotes 12y agoThey're doing that on purpose. I think a major turning point was discovering that "buy it now" auctions (i.e. normal, fixed-price sales) were massively more popular than auction auctions.
- ps4fanboy 12y agoThats because they failed to ever fix bid sniping, switching to dutch auctions would have been better for everyone. Edit: Dutch auction is the wrong term and I cant track down the actual name. But essentially the auction gets extended by 10 minutes every time someone bids if the auction is going to end in less than 10 minutes.
- bato 12y agoBeaten to it. Sniping is hugely frustrating and the main reason people either use buy it now or plain old ads (cf gumtree/Craigslist etc)
- aianus 12y agoWhy is sniping frustrating? How can sniping make me lose an auction if their snipe bet is lower than what I entered as my maximum?
- michaelt 12y agoWhile it does not frustrate me personally, it does seem rather pointless to list an item for several days or weeks when the actual sale takes place in the last five minutes, and to show a 'current price' which has little relevance to the final price. Ebay might as well call it a sealed bid second price auction and be done with it.
- justincormack 12y agoYou need to list it for a while for discoverability. Having a low price makes it seem more attractive while you browse.
- michaelt 12y agoHaving a low price makes it seem more attractive while you browse. I can see how buyers would find that - and by extension sniping - frustrating.
- bjterry 12y agoBy a Dutch auction, are you referring to a sealed second-bid auction, or are you referring to a second-item auction? Or are you actually referring to a descending price Dutch auction?[1] If you are referring to a sealed second-bid auction, you're right that it would definitely eliminate sniping, but it probably wouldn't be beneficial for eBay, so it's not going to happen. First, with eBay's current bidding system items are already auctioned for a very full price, and it's better for eBay for prices to be high. Theoretically a sealed-second bid auction would cause people to provide their maximum willingness to pay, but as a matter of uninformed consumer behavior I wouldn't be surprised if prices were actually lower with sealed bids. Second, with the current system people are much more engaged with eBay than they would be with sealed-bids, because eBay gets to send them status updates on their auctions when they get outbid, which can cause them to either go back to the site and increase the bid (and potentially bid on something else while they are there), or bid on an alternative item which decreases the cycle rate for bidders. Third, bidders may actually prefer the current system, because they can know before the auction ends whether they have been knocked out or not and can move on to acquire goods through some other means. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction Edit: Actually, it turns out that if everyone on eBay were using sniping, it's essentially the same as a sealed second-bid auction, economically, because of the proxy bidding (or very close, due to the way bid increments work). But time extension is a different issue. Given that prices would be open still, I would expect that the prices end up near the same place that they do with sniping. Potentially the prices would be slightly higher because all of the bids would be open rather than just the bids made before the deadline which could foment more competition, so that criticism doesn't apply. In any case, from the consumer's perspective if you want to win the auction it doesn't really change your strategy. You should bid the maximum amount you would be willing to pay and make sure its more than anyone else would be willing to pay. With proxy bidding you can always win by paying too much. If you've ever lost because of sniping it's because you didn't set your bid high enough to beat the snipers. (What, you thought you would get a deal on an auction site? No, this is winner's curse territory.[2]) 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse
- ps4fanboy 12y agoAnecdote about eBay, I sold an iPad on the site about 3 years ago, it got bought "Buy it Now" 3 times in a row from fraudsters even after restricting countries and ratings ppl just refused to acutal pay for the goods. However after one "Free" re-listing ebay demanded that I pay them, even though the item had not sold. So in effect ebay has created an economic model where they benefit from scammers and fraudsters. I never sold anything on the site again.
- machbio 12y agohardly any innovative things come out of ebay, nice to see something new... can other sellers become valet ? or is it the ebay itself serving as valet ?
- zengr 12y ago"How do I become a valet? Valets are carefully screened for inclusion in the program. Requirements include, but are not limited to: (1) ability to list 100,000 listings each month, (2) storage capacity sufficient to hold and manage items received for at least 21 calendar days, (3) ability to list items across all eBay categories, (4) physical presence in all major metropolitan hubs in the U.S. and (5) demonstrated ability to reach Top Rated Seller status on eBay within 90 days of starting valet services. " http://pages.ebay.com/sellforme/faq.html http://pages.ebay.com/sellforme/faq.html
- stevewillows 12y agoHow do they expect people to post just over 4700 items per day?
- Jochim 12y agoFrom the looks of it this is something they expect to be run by a small business with a few people. Not many individuals have space in their home to store and turn over 100,000+ items in a month. Or have "Physical presence in all major metropolitan hubs in the US".
- kubiiii 12y agoLocal smaller valets would be something nice, since as a seller and buyer on ebay I enjoy the occasional local delivery of an item which spares the hassles, pollution and the costs of shipping. You can come accross assholes too but that's part of the charm.
- vijayaggarwal 12y agoWill it not create conflict of interests? On one side, eBay should make their listing and selling processes as easy as possible for individuals, and on the other side keeping them somewhat difficult will promote Valet service.
- jychang 12y agoIt would not be a conflict of interest if the Valet service does not generate more profit per sale after everything is factored in.
- vijayaggarwal 12y agoI believe it is fair to assume that Valet service will be costlier for the user. So, if eBay makes the same profit on Valet as on direct selling, then eBay may not feel motivated to push through usability enhancements in direct selling, even though it is definitely beneficial for its users. Of course, I am over-simplifying things, but I have been in a similar situation wherein the customers of our service started offering to pay us to help them use our service. Instead of accepting payments, we helped the users for free and took their problems as problems with the usability of our tool which we needed to fix. We believed that accepting paid service as a revenue channel would deviate us from making a good tool in the first place.
- jakozaur 12y agoIsn't amazon already doing something similar with "warehouse deals" and "fullified by Amazon?
- aaronbrethorst 12y agoWarehouse is all Amazon returns, AFAIK. But you can do used sales off of the main purchase page, and mail in your stuff to have it Fulfilled by Amazon. I've been looking into this quite a bit lately since I have about $7,000 of Canon gear to sell off. I think I'll stick with Amazon. Ebay's 30% seems ridiculously steep.
- zengr 12y agoFor $7,000 of Canon gear, 30% is surely steep. I think you should just sell your stuff directly on ebay. They just charge 10%. I think ebay valet's customer base is people who have something around but don't know its value and just want to get rid of it.
- eitally 12y agoDo you happen to have either a 50mm 1.4 or 1.8, or a really wide zoom (10-32 or 16-35)? I might be interested.
- awjr 12y agoFBA is seller's stock distributed by Amazon with the same levels of commission. They just charge for storage and handling of the item at warehouse.
- rahimnathwani 12y agoAmazon has a trade-in store: http://www.amazon.com/Trade-In/b?node=2242532011 http://www.amazon.com/Trade-In/b?node=2242532011
- dsplatonov 12y ago"If you send in something that valets can't sell, there's a return fee to have it sent back to you." Not very good for me if i send a big amount of items
- aniketpant 12y agoInteresting idea. Would love to see how it works out for them!
- alaskamiller 12y agoOne of ebay's Cottage industry got absorbed into the mothership. I wonder if they made consideration for consolidating all the various auction listing businesses across the country.
- anigbrowl 12y agoYou get 70% of the sale price if your things sell. 30% commission, and the valet's incentives are for a quick sale rather than the best price, if the behavior of existing bulk listers is anything to go by. These people are usually not especially knowledgeable about the items they sell and so have a poor grasp of pricing - often good for me as informed buyer, but a real pain in the ass for sellers.
- roel_v 12y agoThe alternative is 'throw out not completely useless stuff because I can't be arsed to sell it'. It's win win the way I see it, I'd dump half a truck of stuff on their dock if they'd offer this in Europe.
- josh64 12y agoAlmost the same here, except I keep it in a box in the shed. For example I have a Nexus 10 that I never use and I can't be arsed selling it but would happily sell it through eBay valet.
- atwebb 12y agoAre there not currently businesses that do exactly this? You drop things off and they list them. I ran one for a while (albeit in the states).
- bebefuzz 12y agoThis was exactly what I was thinking too. In a weird way, eBay is competing with itself. There have always been companies where you can drop/ship your stuff off at and have them list it for you.
- sirdogealot 12y agoI remember ebay consignment stores that existed locally years ago. They took on the order of 50-60% of the total sale price. It was a horrible deal, and every single one I knew of is now closed for business.
- isomorphic 12y agoYou can't set your own price, and you only get a two-week run. On the other hand, you don't have to deal with the cesspool that is being a seller on eBay. I wonder how eBay will deal with the "yes, please iPad to vacant lot near warehouse Miami" folks, other than immediately transferring buyer's funds without the possibility for reversal. If they did that for ordinary sellers, I'd quite happily ship my iPad to the sketchy address and go on my merry way.
- sinzone 12y agoFOBO (YC2011) has a similar model and it takes only a 15% fee. http://www.fobo.net/ http://www.fobo.net/
- davedx 12y agoGoes to show how seller-hostile EBay is if they need to provide a service like this. Imagine if you needed to provide a "valet service" for your SaaS. Wouldn't that say something about your UX?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jxf 12y agoEven if your SaaS were perfect you'd still need to expend some kind of effort to move and ship physical goods around. So to the extent that's true and that people would prefer not to do that, there may be a viable market for Valet.
- awendt 12y agoThis has nothing to do with UX. Yes, eBay has a terrible UX but some people have stuff to sell and no time on their hands. Does Instamotor exist because of the terrible UX of car dealerships?
- pessimizer 12y ago>some people have stuff to sell and no time on their hands. The quality of ebay's UX is the main determinant of how much time you need to have on your hands to sell something on ebay. >Does Instamotor exist because of the terrible UX of car dealerships? Yes.
- kidlogic 12y agothe Gone! app does this for you, but it's even easier and you don't have to ship anything out (they'll supply and even pick up the boxes for you). definitely worth a try, but eBay Valet is interesting: http://thegoneapp.com/ http://thegoneapp.com/
- jefreier 12y agoI wonder what the username(s) are for the Valets, is that public yet?
- sjtrny 12y ago40 year old virgin did it first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEHD6jHXt58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEHD6jHXt58
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hellweaver666 12y agowell... the "we sell your stuff on eBay" type shops have been around for ages. I don't think that movie invented them.
- sjtrny 12y agoOh really? I thought it was a unique idea. Thanks to you I would never have know others had also thought about and created such a business. You have thoroughly changed my perspective on the world.
- mootothemax 12y agoNew or like-new designer shoes and handbags: Brands like Hugo Boss, Gucci, Nine West, Ralph Lauren I wonder if eBay are potentially setting themselves up for a massive headache with this. There is a quite staggering number of people who falsely believe that their counterfeit designer items are genuine.
- beambot 12y agoFWIW... this is exactly why we launched Lollipuff (YC W13): https://www.lollipuff.com/ https://www.lollipuff.com/ eBay is notoriously plagued with fakes. For some designer brands, fakes can account for 75% (or more) of the items sold [1,2]. The key for Lollipuff: We have brand experts authenticate each and every item -- ie. real, human experts augmented with sophisticated software to make things scalable. We like to think of it as "eBay without the fakes", or if you prefer "Palantir for designer goods" (software-augmented humans). [1] https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/41/ebays-counterfeit-epidemic-herve-leger-edition https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/41/ebays-counterfeit-epidemic... [2] https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/123/ebays-counterfeit-epidemic-alexander-mcqueen-edition https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/123/ebays-counterfeit-epidemi...
- 001sky 12y agoConceptually, how do you guys triage the fakes? The spectrum of quality seems so broad, in that they are convincing enough to be worn on the red carpet (and presumably picked by stylists) etc. Or are all those shots authentic pieces that were then used in fake listings?
- dmohs 12y agoIt takes some legwork up-front, but after that even the best fakes are pretty easy to spot if you have the right training and tools.
- rickyc091 12y agoI can spot fakes for sneakers, but I assume it's the same process. Material, spotting the stitchings, logos, etc. Certain things line up, there's a certain distance between stitches and logos, etc. With purses, some are easy to spot by looking at the pattern, loose threading, discoloration, etc. Once you have an eye for it, it's pretty easy to spot cause it stands out like a sore thumb.
- bangbang 12y agoI wonder if this will depress the market. Perhaps they will start all items at $1.
- DigitalSea 12y agoThis is not going to end well for eBay, I can see it now. Some fake items are surprisingly good, you'll be reading stories of people being ripped off because valets were told they were given designer brand items only for them to be discovered as fakes later on. Somewhat cool idea I will admit, but when you're dealing with e-commerce and allowing users to get other people to sell their items, it'll open up a rather complex wound.
- easytiger 12y agoIsn't this just a rebranding of something that already existed? This service has existed for a long time.
- DigitalSea 12y agoeBay Valet is a new application. Easy there, tiger. Unless I'm misinformed, it is a new service leveraging eBay's existing auction/commerce platform.
- atwebb 12y agoIt's a new implementation of a common service. You have a point with the auction house providing the service it blurs some lines. Similar points have been brought up regarding some of Amazon's services. I think it will rely on eBay's willingness to shutdown bad vendors (something they aren't known for at the moment).
- amalag 12y agoNot only that but they are simply doing it with pre-paid shipping boxes. People are just going to send them junk.
- dendory 12y agoI think the most likely outcome of this is valet items being given preferential treatment on eBay. Just wait until your items are a tiny spot at the bottom while the valet items take the main spots, and that 30% commission will be the least of your issues.
- pling 12y agoYou mean like auctions are now? eBay is just a storefront now. I do pretty well (£600+ a month) out of just buying items in auctions which are rather well hidden then selling them via the storefront/buy it now process.
- ekianjo 12y agoSeems like the Appstore 30% fee model is becoming standard everywhere now. That's not a very positive thing...
- 4ndr3vv 12y agoCompare ebay to 'real' auction houses; ebay has always had very low sales fees. 30% brings it much more in line with the bricks and moratar auction houses sales costs.
- jzwinck 12y agoIf you think 30% is high, I would like to introduce to you Getty Images, the juggernaut of stock photography. They take 50% now.
- azernik 12y agoI've seen quite a few local businesses in the LA area that do this already; maybe eBay can do it better, but they won't get to eat the entire market by just showing up.
- Thirsty 12y agoSome of the valet-service users will become regulars sellers. Some people who would never use ebay might become users because of this.
- uptown 12y ago"Valets accept like-new items worth $40 or more" So are they committing to getting you at least $40 on what you're selling?
- resurge 12y ago70% of that, no? So $28. You get 70% of the sale price if your things sell.
- Waevian 12y agoLike some people mentioned already, I mostly worried about the pricing of items. Looks like to me like they will poorly judge value of items. Overall, this is not the worst idea eBay had so far, I would love to see how this plays out.
- ghobs91 12y ago30% commission on top of lower than market pricing in order to sell quickly. Sounds like a steep price to pay for some added convenience that should be part of the experience from the start. On top of that, like others have said, it's not far fetched for eBay to give Valet listings higher priority in search results, due to their higher profit margins. Punishing users for wanting a streamlined experience, not cool. I've been dealing with these pain points as both a buyer and seller for over 10 years, and I'm willing to bet I'm not alone here. I'm currently building a p2p marketplace app, and plan to enlist the features of startups like Shyp to make it an all around awesome experience. If anyone has input, feature requests, or would even like to join me, let me know, I'm all ears :)