Starting to agree with you, They now insist you allow paypal payment, who swipe another 3%+ for your sale. That is despite the well known scam similar to the Western Union scam where cash on collection for larger items can end up with them able to claim thier money back off you fo not recieving.
In fact I am not allowed to mention Western union in a description as it gets censored out. aaarrggg rant over!

I have started to look at gumtree which is good for local stuff. But you have to ask if you havent heard of it why would anyone else buy from it.
I need an online auction for more unusual antique or specialist tech type stuff which take a long time to sell waiting for the right person at the right time to turn up.

Tried using Ebid a couple of times, but kept getting sporadic errors when trying to view the details of anything.

If I want to sell something, I put it on ebay. I know the fees are quite high, but I'd sooner pay higher fees and sell it, than pay less and not. Stuff that works well usually does cost more than stuff that doesn't.

Glad you are doing ok on Amazon. I thought the charges/commision was quite high on there too.

Eddy

Because they allowed eBay to buy them out! I remember it happening and it was a real shame, as yahoo auctions were nearly as popular as ebay back in the day (fees were negligible/non existent back then as well).

Proved to be a very shrewd business move by eBay - using the Microsoft strategy of buying up the opposition before it gets big enough to be a threat. They did similar when they bought Paypal, knowing that it would be a huge extra commission for them.

Unfortunately for sellers, eBay is now a total monopoly, and I don't that changing in the forseeable future. Because they are so big, they have a much bigger market of buyers, which pushes up prices.

One thing I really liked about yahoo auctions was the flexible end time - if a bid was made in the last 10 minutes the auction would automatically extend for another 10 minutes, just like a real auction. This stopped the last second sniping (and to an extent shill bidding) that tends to artificially inflate prices on ebay. I wish ebay would offer it as an option on their auctions.

This is the interesting thing about the development of the internet for shopping (or indeed other things). Rather than open up choice it can eventually simply stamp out all the competition. There was an attempt a few years ago that got a few million quid of VC funding called Firedup but that sank. That was ten years ago too and it would be harder and more expensive now.

Ebid looks a great contender for a big brand to come and buy and develop. Its 90% there it just needs people on it. Not sure who owns it at present but I get the impression they are waiting for the phone to ring with an offer as it tends not to develop much these days.

As counter intuitive as it may sound I think there may be a market for an auction site that excludes commercial traders. I much preferred ebay in the early days before traders jumped on and filled the listings up with 35 auctions of the same item. I say this as someone who does from time to time put stock on ebay too.

This is my biggest issue with eBay atm, it's just filled with commercial traders that sell stuff at BIN prices no less than anywhere else on the web...

I find filtering by private seller, item located in UK and auction only gets rid of most businesses.

I believe Ted has already tried/is trying it.

Unless you have a £10 million advertising budget I would forget it!

Tedvertiser was shutdown a while ago. I thought it was a good concept (essentially 'social network' linked classifieds ie you 'knew' the buyers/sellers better) but it just didn't seem to get any kind of critical mass.