eBay Will Now Price Match Amazon, Walmart and Others On Over 50,000 Items (techcrunch.com)

eBay announced today a new Price Match Guarantee for over 50,000 items across its site -- promising that it will have the best deal online, or it will match the lowest price of a competitor. While only select items are available for this offer, "the move is a significant effort on eBay's part to ensure that it doesn't lose customers to Amazon, Walmart and other online stores as the market consolidates behind the industry's major players," reports TechCrunch. From the report: In order to qualify, the item must be one of the new, unopened items sold daily through eBay Deals, for starters. Deals are eBay's selection of "trending" inventory across all its categories -- like consumer electronics, home & garden, and fashion. The deals are also generally offered at 20 percent to 90 percent off, and are sourced from over 900 of eBay's trusted sellers. These sellers include both smaller merchants looking to grow their customer base as well as major consumer brands. At any time, eBay says there are "tens of thousands" of items offered through the Deals site, with featured deals updating at least once per day, beginning at 8 AM PT.

Comments

Asterisk

[Anonymous Coward]

*..plus $60 shipping. ... plus $50 import fees.

Re:Asterisk

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Yeah and 6 weeks to 8 months shipping ... I go to eBay for super low-price quasi-disposable stuff for my hobbies. I got some silicone heat-shrink tubing just to try it out, took almost two months to get here but there was no way I was paying more than 5$ in any case.

Race to unprofitability

[DogDude]

Quick! Who can lose money the fastest?!?

Re:Race to unprofitability

[ShanghaiBill]

Quick! Who can lose money the fastest?!?

That is how free markets are supposed to work. Marginal surplus profit should be competed down to near zero.

Re:Race to unprofitability

[Anonymous Coward]

ebay 2day shipping is free, no 100usd bs
amazon customer service is very nice, but they dont really care if you aint buying prime stuff
with price match, im going to ebay...

Re:Race to unprofitability

[stooo]

Ebay increased their fees again last year. They have a crazy margin on stuff they don't sell themselves.

Re:Race to unprofitability

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that is the myth that people are sold on how free markets should work, but free markets tend to move to monopolies not lowerhttps://news.slashdot.org/story/17/06/21/2127252/ebay-will-now-price-match-amazon-walmart-and-others-on-over-50000-items# prices.

Re:Race to unprofitability

[great throwdini]

If you think eBay's margins are inflated, you clearly aren't familiar with Amazon's fees imposed on third-party sellers, which have been monkeyed with at least twice in the past year, and to the benefit of Amazon alone.

Re:Race to unprofitability

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, which is why free markets ultimately fail and why they basically don't exist. No one will stay in a business with zero economic profit in the long term. The end result it monopolization or market failure.

Re:Race to unprofitability

[Neuronwelder]

Oh, I don't know.. I got a lot of good deals from Ebay so far. (Depends what you are looking for. Don't rule out anybody!)

Re:Race to unprofitability

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll just ramp up the shill bidding in other areas to make up the difference. Funny how all these 0 and 1 feedback bidders keep just losing hundreds of auctions at a time, usually by retracting any winning bids. More shills means more fees for eBay, everyone wins!

Re:Race to unprofitability

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

99c fixed fee
15% commission
49c on shipping

Then, they only allocate $4 for shipping, forcing vendors to build another $4 minimum into their price, of which they take 15%.

On a $20 item, your fees are just over $5, or 25%. They haven't even handled it and they're taking 25%? But it gets better!

For this magnificent fee, the sellers gets...to unilaterally lose every single A-Z claim. Unless (maybe) you pay another $8 for restricted signature delivery (regular is only $3 but they say "hurrr...somebody else could've signed for it"). You can't charge separately for that, so you have to build it into your price, of which Amazon takes 15%. Now you're up over 31% ($6.28). But it's still no guarantee of winning A-Z claims so you still have to build a little more into every sale to cover for whatever percentage of bad apples you're expecting (buyers have no feedback and you can't block anybody) and Amazon gets 15% of that too.

Every problem/expense that Amazon creates rewards them with higher commissions! And people wonder why the place is stuffed with counterfeit merchandise that rattles around in boxes with no padding?

Easy to match Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Their prices are soo hiiighh

Paypal still required?

[HornWumpus]

If so, fuck off.

Re:Paypal still required?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Not for years. But you will need a credit card.

Re:Paypal still required?

[ArylAkamov]

What was wrong with funding Terry Bollea's lawsuit?

Re:Paypal still required?

[tlhIngan]

What was wrong with funding Terry Bollea's lawsuit?

Ask Nick Denton.

Re:Paypal still required?

[TimothyHollins]

I can't, his phone was re-possessed.

Re:Paypal still required?

[AmiMoJo]

I think a lot of us enjoyed seeing Gawker go down in flames and the editor's kitchen appliances being listed as assets in the settlement, but the same guy has also been known to fund lawsuits against media that is critical of him. Win or lose, lawsuits cost money to defend and rich people can abuse them to simply bankrupt people they don't like.

Re:Paypal still required?

[Anonymous Coward]

last time i looked
paypal is at around ~4.5% of transaction.
ebay fee is ~12.5%.

both of course are from total transaction value.
most transactions STILL use paypal. Add p&p fees + insurence for sending.

Small sellers are still around but the market is now dominated by low quality and often fake or designed to break after 2 weeks merchandise. If they REALLY want to become a force again they need to lower fees. In some way they have as regular small sellers get fee discounts (sometimes 1/4 fee charged deals on special days) but this is an annoying little game. They also need to clear out the fake stuff. I don't foresee either of these things happening.

No Prime & that wonderful guaranteed ship time

[SensitiveMale]

One of the best things about Amazon is the "Will ship today if ordered in XX hours" time guarantee.
Buying something from eBay doesn't guarantee when it'll ship & when it'll arrive.

Why would you prefer buying from eBay?

[coryhamma]

Having dealt with eBay on a bad purchase, it seems strange that anyone would prefer purchasing something from eBay at the same price, especially if they have to jump through hoops to perform the pricematch. For items that are more likely to be counterfeit, like memory cards, it is actually more advantageous to purchase them from a reputable retailer, and extremely difficult to prove to eBay that you received a counterfeit item.

Re:Why would you prefer buying from eBay?

[ShanghaiBill]

it seems strange that anyone would prefer purchasing something from eBay at the same price

I don't see why anyone would. Amazon is quick and reliable. eBay is slow and flakey, but sometimes cheap. There is no way I would buy from eBay over Amazon unless eBay offered a significantly lower price.

Re:Why would you prefer buying from eBay?

[ayesnymous]

Many times an item will be available on eBay (for possibly a bit cheaper) with free shipping without any $25 minimum. That's the reason to use eBay.

Re:Why would you prefer buying from eBay?

[Anonymous Coward]

and many times that item is cheaper on ebay because it is being substituted with a second or worse a fake. ebay fees mean you should nearly always be able to find it cheaper elsewhere and if you can't then you have to question how someone is managing to sell on ebay cheaper with the huge fees they have,.

Re:Why would you prefer buying from eBay?

[drinkypoo]

Having dealt with eBay on a bad purchase,

Every time I've had a bad purchase, eBay has sided with me. Literally every time. And I regularly purchase from the cheapest sellers in China.

Re:Why would you prefer buying from eBay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I've had a bad buyer on eBay making fraudulent claims (and admitting as much in eBay's own messaging system), eBay has sided with them. The buyer never has to prove anything, just make a claim and get your money back, even if the seller doesn't accept returns and there's nothing wrong with the item.

So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

when I sell something new on ebay that they can reduce the price I sold it for? The ~10% they already take in selling fees and with PayPal already mean I'm losing money. This move means the will lose me as a seller.

Re: So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

This. They're forcing us to lose money.

Re: So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like that. I make a 4% margin on eBay, so I can't afford to sell for a lower price.

Re:So does this mean...

[omnichad]

No - they got sellers to sign on to this. Which is fine with the bigger sellers that would sign on. Lower profit beats a lost sale any day for them.

Re:So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales on ebay were great, untill they changed search.
My ebay store sales dropped 95 percent in one month.
Attemped to call a few times, got no help.
After seveal months of little sales, stopped selling on ebay.
They still owe me some cash,
Around same time started selling on Amazon.
Sales were fantastic, started expanding, put on some help.
Then the economy tanked aroung 2008, still had good-enough sales but:
Something strange started happening on Amazon.
No matter what lower price I had others sold cheaper.
I had a dirt cheap direct from factory hook-up but they still undersold taking sales.
WTF !
Got so bad that with Amazon taking 15 percent of sale price plus shipping, I was making sometimes one or to pennies.
But they still sold cheaper!
Something was rotten, were these cheaper sellers real ?
Ended selling on Amazon when on top of that, they would charge back a sale when customer claimed order nor received.
They didn't care I had confirmed tracking showing time, date and location delivered.
After all, according to Amazon support, "that's the cost of doing business."
I no longer trust selling anything on ebay or Amazon, something stinks when sellers lose but they always win collecting fees.

Re:So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales on ebay were great, untill they changed search.
My ebay store sales dropped 95 percent in one month.

That's just eBay's handy load balancing feature. They decided that you had gotten enough sales, so they throttled your search results to give someone else a chance. I'm sure they would let your items show up again in 6 months or so. Or less if you signed up for some premium services like Price Match.

Re:So does this mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ended selling on Amazon when on top of that, they would charge back a sale when customer claimed order nor received.
They didn't care I had confirmed tracking showing time, date and location delivered.

I work for UPS and delivery to about 200 different places each day. People aren't generally home and not everyone has an open porch. Sometimes people steal packages right off the step or porch.

Pepperidge farms remembers

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember when... Ebay was for auctions?

Re:Pepperidge farms remembers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes indeed and thanks for posting this. It's been a long time since I used eBay. I left after sellers could no longer give negative feedback to buyers.

Remember when Amazon had an auction site? It was never popular but Amazon like eBay gave up on the idea in order to attract large volume sellers.

Re:Pepperidge farms remembers

[Anonymous Coward]

I left after sellers could no longer give negative feedback to buyers.

just curious, was their money the wrong color? what else is there?

Re:Pepperidge farms remembers

[CrashNBrn]

Still is. Got a Pioneer DEH-150MP car stereo for 20 bucks last week.

Compared to Amazon, Ebay is a "pleasant" experience: faster page loads, better product filtering, more convenient "collections", etc. - with the caveat of generally longer delivery times.

Re:Pepperidge farms remembers

[MrLogic17]

You've clearly never used eBay.

Sellers taking the money and never shipping, shipping after a month delay, not communicating at all, shipping the wrong product, shipping defective product, shipping with used pizza boxes as packing material (seriously), seller refusing returns when it's their fault, seller threatening to leave negative feedback about you if you didn't leave a glowing review for them, sellers refusing to sell you a product because you didn't bid enough on a no reserve auction, and much more.

As a seller, the list is even longer. Mostly people bid on things, and refuse to follow through with the purchase- and there's no consequences. And I'm stuck playing listing fees, multiple times. (Ever try to get eBay to refund listing fees? Good luck.) Dealing with those turkeys is worse than screening Craig's List overpayment scammers.

The minute you couldn't leave negative feedback, you suddenly had no way to tell good sellers/buyers from bad. Feedback became meaningless. And the whole place went to scum-ville overnight.

That's on top of having to use PayPal, which has its own long list of negatives.

I won't buy on eBay unless I have no other choice. I would never sell through them, even if they were the last place on earth.

Re:Pepperidge farms remembers

[link-error]

I've bought tons of stuff over the years from ebay, from small solar panels and electronics from China, to parts for my refrigerator or dishwasher. I've NEVER had a problem. Maybe I'm the luckiest guy on the web... who knows.

Re:Pepperidge farms remembers

[CrashNBrn]

The only problem I've had on eBay were a few attempts to get a discounted Windows license. Every time was a scam. Never had an issue with an actual physical good.

Free Ad

[Green Salad]

So...slashdot is where online retailers post ads at no cost, solicit consumer feedback on shopping deals. I had slashdot bookmarked under tech/science. Long past time to change that.

Re:Free Ad

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the first time you have heard of "eBay" then? I suppose they have only been around for 21 years, so they could just be a flash in the pan.

Re:Free Ad

[Anonymous Coward]

who ever said these submissions didn't cost anything?

They'll do just fine

[rsilvergun]

Ebay's plenty big enough to absorb the occasional price match on a loss leader. Hell, even my local Fry's electronics will price match Amazon. And Ebay's goal isn't to sell product anyway, it's to get other people to sell and take 10% of the proceeds.

Re:They'll do just fine

[mysidia]

Who pays the loss, though? Is it eBay, or the merchant? I.E. Does this mean the Merchant's buy-it-now price is lowered for the order, or does eBay itself fork over the $$$ ?

Re:No Prime & that wonderful guaranteed ship t

[kangsterizer]

unless its "fast and free". just like for amazon this only works for prime/amazon warehouse items

F&F has been more reliable for me than Amazon "guaranteed" shipping (the shipping time is guaranteed but not the arrival.. lol - so many 1 day *shipping*/ 2 days *shipping* amazon items arrived late... the hour thing is just to incentivize you to buy and brings no real warranty. it might work, it might not.)

Re:No Prime & that wonderful guaranteed ship t

[omnichad]

the hour thing is just to incentivize you to buy and brings no real warranty

The hour thing is based on when the truck leaves and what warehouse the item will ship from. I mean sure, it may not be 100% accurate, but it's not arbitrary.

It isn't a deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

A deal requires the consent of two people to a transacton.
Before that it is an offer.

Why would any serious company think I would want to buy anything from anyone who doesn't even understand basic english?

Re:It isn't a deal.

[Paradise Pete]

A "deal" can also be a price that's considered to be lower than the item's value.

Collusion!

[dumky2]

If your price is higher, that's price gouging.
If your price is lower, that's predatory pricing.
If your price is the same, that's collusion. ;-)

Re:No Prime & that wonderful guaranteed ship t

[ayesnymous]

I actually joined Prime today, and some of the items I ordered gave me the "free same day shipping" option, so I selected that. Later I received an email saying the items would actually be delivered tomorrow. No such guarantee there.

marketting BS?

[gravewax]

sounds like little more than a marketting push. rarely if ever do I find ebay is the cheapest for anything (except where you can expect the real item to be substituted for a fake).

Thank you, eBay

[sultanofswing]

I was bidding $8 for a straw hat, bought it for $7.50 That's nice

eBay needs quality match, not price match

[Anonymous Coward]

eBay is where I go for cheap junk.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats an eBay?

And why would I buy from ebay

[Kartu]

for the same price I can buy from amazon, may I ask? (no bestbuy in Germany)

How about Amazon price matching ebay?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Amazon price matching eBay or anyone else? Don't hold your breath.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201133150

Doesn't matter

[nehumanuscrede]

eBay requires PayPal.

Thus, eBay can charge HALF of what Amazon does and I still would not use them.

When PayPal is regulated like any other financial institution vs being allowed to do whatever they want with no concequences, I may change my mind.

Maybe.

Re:No Prime & that wonderful guaranteed ship t

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have prime, but the couple times I paid Amazon extra to have 2 day delivery (one was for a laptop charger), the goods arrived in 4 business days. YMMY

Ripped off by ebay -- will never use them again

[n0w0rries]

You know, when I go to order online, I like to choose the vendor that has the most hoops to jump through, with an added risk of getting totally screwed.

I stopped using ebay when some asshat said they shipped me something, but didn't, and I ended up paying for it anyways.

Re:Ripped off by ebay -- will never use them again

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because Amazon packages never get lost or stolen in the mail.... If the tracking # says delivered you wont get a better response from Amazon than from eBay.

Re:Ripped off by ebay -- will never use them again

[CyberKnet]

This is anecdotal, but in my experience customer service at Amazon has been far superior for lost packages/misrepresented items than eBay when something is Shipped and Sold By Amazon.com or Fulfilled By Amazon.

• A) At Amazon, when the item in the package was not what was advertised, they have either refunded my money (without a product return required) and let me order it again, given me a prepaid label for return and cross shipped me a replacement, or offered me a discount on the item to make up for the difference.
• B) On eBay, When the item in the package was not what was ordered (clearly used instead of new), the seller confirmed the deception and offered no solution, while ebay (and my bank) insisted I should return the item at my expense, and then they would refund my original purchase price.

One of those solutions is acceptable, the other costs me money for someone else's deliberate deception. It should be noted though, when an item is completely third party at Amazon (neither shipped nor sold by Amazon.com), all bets are off and you are about as likely to find help as at eBay.

Re:Ripped off by ebay -- will never use them again

[gravewax]

Actually Amazon did ship me a free replacement even though my package said delivered. I suspect dodgy courier or something, but regardless they could see I at the time had made quite a few regular purchases with no issues so with very little discussion they resent the item (just a few DVD's, maybe $50 in value in total). With ebay you are well and truly fucked when something like that happens.

eBay is almost always cheaper than Amazon/Walmart

[Anonymous Coward]

eBay is almost always cheaper than Amazon/Walmart anyway. Where they lose is in slower shipping and having to pay return shipping on most items. Since I never return anything 99% of the time I have no problem being stuck paying for return shipping and I don't generally mind getting stuff in 4 days instead of 2 if it means I save even $2, but if time and return shipping matter to you you're not going to use eBay. But on price 99% of the time they will beat anything on Amazon/Walmart.

Laughter

[DrYak]

You here that sound in the distance ?

That's the maniacal cackle of Alibaba.

They are chineses.
No matter what ebay and amazon try to do whil attempting to outcompete each other, alibaba will still manage to come up with something dramatically cheaper.
Yes, the build quality will be horrendous, the time to failure will be counted in minutes, but still, it's going to be cheaper.