Posted on 05/08/2017 3:50:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It's nearing bedtime for Asher Huzar, but on a Tuesday night at 7:30 he ducks the rules, wriggles out from the dinner table and disappears to the basement for playtime. By the time his father, Nick Huzar, checks in on him, 3-year-old Asher has inflated his indoor bounce house, which provides him and his sister, Ava, with 15 minutes of entertainment before they pinball onto the next activity. Raising kids can be taxing, but at least for Huzar and his wife it has been relatively inexpensive. He bought the bounce house secondhand for $100. Huzar then points to Ava's princess mirror, which he scored for $70. Asher's Black & Decker toy tool set that supposedly came new from Santa? Just $50.
Huzar is the cofounder and CEO of OfferUp, so it's no surprise he's raising his children on hand-me-downs bought on the classifieds service he started six years ago. It's been a dizzying rise for OfferUp, which has outgrown its own playpen days, morphing into a stealth powerhouse that's on track to facilitate the sale of more than $20 billion worth of goods this year. That's nearly a quarter of what was sold on eBay EBAY -0.73% in 2016. With a valuation of $1.2 billion, OfferUp has established itself as one of the strongest and most credible challengers ever to Craigslist, that messy website of crowded blue hyperlinks whose iron grip on the online classifieds business represents one of the most unlikely monopolies of the internet era.
In the technology industry, where survival depends on constant innovation, conventional wisdom suggests Craigslist should have vanished long ago. Launched by Craig Newmark in 1995, the website, which has kept roughly the same design through the years and now has some 55 million visitors a month....
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Craigslist is dead but the corpse is still dancing.
Like so many tech-oriented things, the lowest common denominator of society have discovered it - and ruined it. Dole scroungers that they are, they believe that they can get something for nothing and simply annoy sellers with lowball offers and bizarre trade suggestions.
And, of course, the scammers have moved in for everything from ‘jobs’ to stolen goods to goods that don’t exist (eg sports tickets) ie fraud.
Whoever invents the next marketplace is going to have to do some verification and screening of participants and they are going to have to be much better at it than eBay.
CL uses to be a decent source for freelance photo and video gigs.
I rarely sell anything there now. A few years ago,I was making a few extra bucks regularly peddling this and that.
Ebay is barely worth the effort. I sold a pair of vacuum wiper motors and was surprised at the interest. I had an offer for a gunner’s quadrant that I accepted. A few days pass and I contact the person. He changed his mind which is ok but it would have been good to be informed.
Nonsense. CL will be around because it works and for most people it’s free. As for scammers, they will be around anywhere people are selling stuff. Use your common sense, that’s all. Screening? If I had to provide CL with all my personal info to sell something I wouldn’t use it, and neither would most people.
Second the motion.
I really can’t complain about my CL dealings. They’ve been generally pleasant and no hassle.
As for CL, I have some hard set rules about responses. All common sense stuff.
Something that I found that discourages scammers is in a response is to meet in the local police dept parking lot.
I use both Ebay and Craig’s List. They work for me but it would be nice if there were alternatives to shake the tree.
They can drop dead. I now buy my stuff from honest people.
>>As for scammers, they will be around anywhere people are selling stuff.
Yes and they proliferate on CL because a) it’s free (as you point out) and b) there are no standards for use or ‘membership’ such as it is. CL washes its hands entirely of any disputes.
>>Use your common sense, that’s all.
Never said I wasn’t or hadn’t, but an absence of demand for scams doesn’t mean the supply automatically disappears. The signal-to-noise ratio in almost every category of CL is poor.
>> Screening? If I had to provide CL with all my personal info to sell something I wouldn’t use it, and neither would most people.
I find categoricals about what ‘most people’ would do as risible as they are specious. Neither you nor I have any way of knowing.
eBay has taken its share of deserved knocks and we can debate its future prospects but they do, in fact, demand personal information and despite this effrontery they managed to scrape together $9 Billion in 2016 revenue alone.
the solution isnt to leave ebay.
the solution is to not buy from power sellers.
they do not do this for the little sellers. far more of them on there.
I started a company that exclusively sells online, mostly on eBay. It has been simply amazing for me. I’m a lawyer, but this is way more fun. I’ll never practice law again.
My wife’s Ebay business favors the buyers HEAVILY. They will buy things and then return them for “poor fit”, smelling of perfume with marks that they have been worn.
Ebay always favors the buyer in the dispute.
I’m a Top Rated Plus Power Seller who has never had a single negative feedback. There’s a reason for that. Once I decided to open an eBay store I knew customer service would be key. I have worked hard to protect my eBay reputation and I expect my employees to do the same. I give full refunds with no questions asked. There’s no reason for a single buyer to be unhappy. I know I’m occasionally taken advantage of because of the way I operate, but that’s simply part of being in business. I know on occasion I have items that are essentially rented. That said, my return rate is less than 1%. And almost all of those returned items are later resold, so it’s just not a big deal.
And by the way, they will indeed side with buyers against a power seller. It happens all the time. If you search you can find scores of forum threads, YouTube videos, and podcasts from eBay power sellers complaing about how eBay sides with buyers. In fact, eBay will occasionally tell larger sellers they are siding with the buyer because the seller sells so much they can afford it.
Sometimes eBay issues a refund to a buyer out of their own pocket. I had that happen recently. I had a lady buy a pair of shoes and shipped them to her the same day. Two weeks later she emailed wanting to know where her shoes were. It turned out she had moved without changing her eBay address or providing a forwarding address to her old postmaster, so the shoes were lost in the mail. Once I figured out what happened, I called eBay. They told me I had no responsibility to issue a refund as I did what I was supposed to do. Even though she was clearly at fault, eBay ate it and gave her $80 plus the shipping.
my suggestion was for that persons particular experience.
i am aware of good bigger sellers and sellers getting burned. but he got burned and it is a better alternative for him than leaving ebay altogether.
That stuff happens to me occasionally. She shouldn’t waste her time worrying about those blips. That’s just the cost of doing business. In those situations eBay can’t know for sure who did what. I don’t bother escalating to eBay, I just refund and go on. It’s not worth my time and it’s certainly not worth getting my blood pressure up. I guarantee it happens way less often on eBay than on Amazon.com and certainly way less than in the typical brick and mortar retail store.
I get it. I know what you were saying.
I know eBay isn’t perfect. There are things I’d like to change. Despite its flaws, I hate hearing people denigrate it. If people would take a step back and study it they might see that eBay offers the average man the ability to compete in the global marketplace and make a literal fortune. A man of modest means can start small and steadily work his way up. He can compete with the big boys. A man with some cash can make an incredible amount very quickly.
Most who try selling don’t last long or never make much money because they don’t treat it like a business with real potential. They think it’s a get rich quick scheme or something. They don’t work to take excellent photos or write excellent descriptions. They don’t offer excellent customer service with quick responses to inquiries and lightning fast shipping. They overstate the quality of their items and/or improperly pack items, setting the stage for the buyer to be unhappy. And then, after doing a sloppy job from the beginning, they get defensive and pretend the buyer is at fault. It takes work to do it right and most won’t pay that price.
As for buyers, eBay offers the chance to find deals and save real money. I make quality brands accessible to those who might not be able to afford regular retail. eBay also offers buyers the ability to connect with sellers of rare items that the buyer would struggle to find otherwise.
Ebay always favors the buyer in the dispute.
eBay sure didn’t favor me. Amazon and CL now.
It all matters to some degree. Ebay increasing fees, shipping fees and paypal fees - The buyer must understand that the last person to make money on their purchase is the seller.
In much of my business, I wish that the consumer would understand the process. As an I.T. support provider, I have found that an educated client, one who is educated in the underlying process, makes stupid decisions.
We buy and sell on CL all the time. Never had a problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.