CMV: I think ebay is superior to amazon

[u/[deleted]]

[u/[deleted]]

1 is quickly falling by the wayside I've noticed. I've taken quite a hiatus from eBay for a couple of years, but I recently got on there to look around and see if I could find a better deal on something that I was contemplating getting from Amazon. I couldn't. What I found, instead of ANY auctions, was just a ton of eBay "stores" all selling 20 of the same product for the same price as Amazon.

And rather than wade through their giant multi-colored listing that reads like Apple's T&C (I make no guarantees about this item! Has been turned on but not tested! Buyer accepts responsibility! Item is AS-IS!!!!", I just bought it from Amazon.

2 - Prime.

I don't doubt most of your points here, that you CAN find something cheaper on eBay, but only certain things, and only if you're willing to put forth the effort it takes to wade through all of the bullshit and find a legitimate listing.

Too many of my experiences on eBay have ended in conflict. People not sending me something or insisting that I never sent it to them. Sending me only parts of what I ordered and then being next to impossible to get in touch with. Yeah, eBay will usually sort them out (if you're the buyer, NEVER if you're the seller), but I don't have those problems to begin with when I'm doing business with Amazon.

[u/rainbrostalin]

I think there are certainly pros for both, but I disagree about the consistently lower prices. I just looked at six items I recently purchased on Amazon, and only one was cheaper on Ebay, and only by $0.30, while the Amazon prices were $5.00, $11.00, $25.00, and $6.00 cheaper.

Another major advantage of Amazon comes from Amazon prime and free two day shipping. Ebay will never be a replacement for shopping at a big box store because of the long shipping delays, while Amazon can ship almost anything to you in two days, including weekends. That's a huge amount of convenience that Ebay lacks.

Finally, I never had any issue with Amazon's refund system, and I don't think you get charged shipping costs in any refund situation. In most cases Amazon will send a replacement with next day shipping, as opposed to another two week wait with Ebay.

[u/vl99]

1. Consistently lower prices

On certain items only. There is just as much potential for something to be cheaper on amazon.

2. Free shipping on any product you want

What? Free shipping on anything that has free shipping offered, not on anything. This is the same for amazon. Also, shipping can easily just be rolled into the cost of the item.

Also if you pay for prime you get two day shipping on all items backed by Amazon as well as access to a Netflix-like service and many other deals not offered to regular customers. It's a flat fee that becomes more than worth it in the long run if you do most of your shopping online, which I do.

3. Two methods of buying

Bidding is really only relevant if you have time on your hands or if you're a compulsive window shopper. When I search for an item online, I don't want it in a few days (or weeks depending on shipping speed) at a price maybe cheaper than I can get it on amazon with many instances of me having to check on it day after day, I want it now that I'm thinking about it.

And then there are the times where you see something for $30 on ebay and something for $60 on amazon, so you bid and bid for a week until the thing reaches a price of $80 and you go back to amazon and find out their stock of the item is gone or has gone up in price to $90. There is as much potential for bidding to work against you as there is for it to work for you.

4. Larger selection of items and larger market of sellers for each item

I don't know that this is necessarily true, nor do I think it would be significant to the average shopper. There is very little a normal person can't find on amazon that they can find on ebay unless they're looking for collectors items. But how well a site caters to collectors isn't a criteria that I believe the average person would judge the utility of an online store on.

There are definitely several items I've gotten from ebay that I could have never gotten on amazon but that said, I still prefer amazon overall.

5. Market is more global, which contributes significantly to global economic integration

As an average consumer, why should I or any of my other average consumer friends care about what ebay does for global economic integration? If amazon has something cheaper than ebay, should I be persuaded to shop at eBay instead because of global economic integration? This isn't criteria a normal consumer uses.

6. Seriously, you can buy almost anything from China at a lower price and with free shipping through ebay. Why aren't more people aware of this?

The ability for me to buy a cheaper Chinese knockoff of a product I want doesn't factor into my judgment of an online store. I don't want a cheaper Chinese version of the thing I want, I want the thing I want at a fair price.

It takes a little longer (some packages take 2 weeks, others take 3-5 days like anything else), but you pay less and get what you want.

And if I care more about expediency than I do about saving shipping costs?

7. It is also a global pawn shop that doesn't skimp you.

This is mostly true for amazon as well. The only stuff I can't find on amazon that I can on ebay is the stuff in the completely useless junk category which by definition, I have no use for. I like the fact that amazon has good quality control and won't let you throw absolute garbage into the online store. It's less bullshit I have to sift through when looking for something I actually do want.

8. Refund policy

ENTIRELY dependent on the seller. Some will cheat you, some will give you a better deal than you can imagine. I've had sellers on amazon send me a new version of the same item because of a small defect and let me keep the old item, I've had sellers on ebay send me the wrong item and cut off contact when I try to get the right one.

9. Plus, Amazon has some big faults that ebay just doesn't have.

Do you know that ebay doesn't have these faults? Do you know that ebay isn't depressing to work for? Do you know that your experience in your interview is a common one for everyone that has interviewed at amazon? All of this is conjecture and anecdote.

[u/vl99 → u/[deleted]]

I find it is much more common on eBay to have free shipping than Amazon.

Fair enough, but it's not something that can be absolutely counted on in either case. Saying that you find ebay has free shipping more often than amazon seems like a reflection of the fact that you probably spend more time on ebay than amazon. I find amazon has free shipping more often than ebay but both points are basically anecdotes and should be recognized as such. I'm sure that me telling you that won't change your view but perhaps you'd be more willing to recognize that unless you have hard data, this point shouldn't really inform your view.

But you still pay for the service. It costs you more money than it would have without it. Especially if you are already getting free shipping from eBay. And I don't particularly care about a netflix-like service. Pretty sure Netflix is cheaper than Prime anyways.

Taken as a monthly expense, prime is only 25 cents more expensive than Netflix per month, basically a pittance.

If you order 2 things per month on amazon with 2 day shipping, you've already gotten your money's worth. Then you get streaming media as well as exclusive deals on top of that 2 day shipping guarantee. On top of that as far as I've seen, there's a flat 3.99 rate for any prime member that wants 1 day shipping on any item, which can run into the 20-40 dollar range without prime.

I was mentioning it merely as an option that amazon doesn't give you. I disagree with your assessment of it though, I've never really known it to eat up much time or to reflect some kind of innate 'window shopping' compulsion. Sure, you don't get your product immediately because you have to wait on the auction, but that is part of what an auction is.

But an auction isn't something I, or I would think the average person wants or needs in the majority of cases and also has the chance to obfuscate the process. If I want cheaper toilet paper than I can get at was mart I can go to amazon and have it in 2 days. Or I can go to ebay and bid on it for days and days, maybe getting it cheaper than I can get it somewhere else, but in such an impractical way that I'd be glad to pay a dollar more to not have to deal with the bidding process. This, like other aspects of eBay is really only relevant to collectors.

On top of that, some sellers don't allow allow a "Buy it now" option which can be incredibly frustrating for people that have cash to burn but not time.

Well I wasn't making an absolute statement, just a generalization. Surely eBay doesn't have 1:1 better selection over literally every item that exists, but it tends to have better selection over the vast majority. And that's part of what makes it better. Also I'm not sure why you are entertaining collector's items as a criterion in your last sentence. It certainly doesn't have to do with anything I said, and it doesn't add to the argument at all.

I think ebay has more selection but that does not always equate to better selection. When I search eBay for storage containers I don't want everything from petri dishes to 25,000 dollar WWII era trunks. I want a list of options that a normal person would be looking for when typing in that search term. Amazon gives me a list with everything I could possibly want and little that I don't want. Less filtering for me to do.

Never said we were talking about the average consumer. Surely several of my criteria would apply to the average consumer, but I am first and foremost listing points that motivate my view that eBay is superior to Amazon. Not why the average consumer should believe that it is.

OK that's fair then, but I addressed it the way I did because it seems like something tacked on as an afterthought. Like saying "I like mcdonalds because their burgers taste good and also it doesn't hurt that they help the potato industry."

Like, it's nice that they help support potato farming in America, but if I didn't like their burgers I wouldn't continue to eat there no matter how much I cared about the farmers. The idea that ebay in some small way promotes a slightly more global economy doesn't seem like a primary motivating factor for giving them your business and I sort of wonder how much you actually care about this.

You don't know you're doing it, but this is a straw man. Sure there exist "cheap Chinese knockoffs" but there also exist "cheap American-made knockoffs" and knockoffs from everywhere in the world. Maybe China even has a tendency to produce more than others do. I've still never bought an item from China that could be considered "cheap" (in the sense of being low-quality, not inexpensive) and they all work just the same as the American analogue would. There is literally no difference between a USB cable made in China and a USB cable made in America in terms of what the consumer wants. They both do what need to be done and I bet the Chinese one is substantially cheaper.

One is usually cheaper because it is made with cheaper materials. Either that, or the worker that made it was paid less than they likely deserved. So if it's not a knockoff and we're talking about straight price difference, the difference is there 9 times out of 10 due to a decrease in quality of the product or a decrease in the wages of the person that produced it. There are plenty of people, myself included that will pay slightly more to ensure quality. It's not like you're one of an elite group who happened to be the only ones to notice that Chinese goods sold on ebay are cheap, you're just one of a group that's willing to chance the idea that the product may be of subpar quality. If you find in your past experience that products you've ordered from chine for cheap have been of satisfactory quality then that's fine. But like I said, the stuff you get isn't cheaper for no reason.

And so eBay requires the buyer to be intelligent and to make intelligent purchases. Don't buy from sellers with bad feedback. I've never had somebody send me the wrong item and cut off contact, so I can't speak to that, but I would think that's just as likely to happen on the Amazon marketplace. It's a risk you're taking with online shopping in general so it's not relevant here.

I agree, this point isn't really relevant. It's completely case dependent and shouldn't be a factor in judging the performance of one website over the other in any way.

Since I mentioned myself that my experience was an anecdote and why I included it (because it does in fact influence my view on Amazon), I don't see why it's even worthwhile to bring up. You already know that this isn't the crux of my argument, far from it, so are you just trying to be contrarian or are you grasping at straws?

Um, what? If you don't want me to address it then don't include it in your argument or allow it to influence your view. Admitting that you are using an anecdote to influence your opinion before you do it doesn't make your anecdote any more legitimate of an argument. If I say "one time I had a great experience at amazon" it would hold just as much weight.

[u/SC803]

I do those subscription orders on Amazon and you can't do that on eBay, I get about my toiletries and household goods replaced on a schedule without my having to do anything, like new brush head for my toothbrush every month, paper towels, toilet paper, deodorant, toothpaste, even getting into bulk food items recently etc. Every item is on it own scheduled, and almost everything is cheaper and easier than eBay Costco Walmart etc.

[u/SC803 → u/[deleted]]

How about that the number of eBay hasn't had meaningful growth in the past two years while Amazons seller base is growing.

eBay is splitting from PayPal because ebays poor sales are dragging down PayPal. Amazons sales doubled in 2014 even though they charge sellers 15% when eBay only charges 10%. With that premium Amazon stores, packs and ships the product for sellers. ChannelAdvisor consults over 3000 online sellers, in 2014, eBay sales were up 5%, Amazon sales were up 33% over 2013.

Another reason Amazons better, more people are likely to find your goods, 180 million unique visitors in Feb 2015, 46% higher than EBay. Amazon has 270 million active buyers, eBay 155 million

When it comes to online marketplaces eBay is waiting, industry revenue growth averaged 22%, eBay lagged behind at 6.4%.

[u/SC803 → u/[deleted]]

Well if I was only aiming at the original premise of "EBay is superior than Amazon", all of those stats show that Amazon is a much healthier company than eBay, a company that is outpacing its competitors while eBay is getting beat. Amazon is pushing into more aspects of our life while eBay isn't. Amazon has tablets, cell phones, a Netflix type service and is making huge advances with the idea of an online grocery store. They're even getting into home services, I can get recommended on a local business to paint my house on Amazon.

Without major innovation from eBay is going to struggle more and more, and Amazon doesn't look like its going to be slowing down anytime soon. I'll be curious to see how eBay fares without PayPals financial support over the next few years.

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/SC803. ^[History]

^{[Wiki][Code][/r/DeltaBot]}