It was back in 2008 that the first eBay seller in the world got a million feedback and frankly that was an outstanding achievement. It’s taken another nine years for a seller to hit the magical five million feedback and the UK’s musicMagpie have done it.
musicMagpie are officially the first eBay seller anywhere in the world to hit 5,000,000 and for good measure by the time I got a screen shot they had already racked up another 50 thousand odd feedback. This is a business founded in a garage which will be a familiar scenario to many eBay sellers.
What’s even more amazing is that musicMagpie have received 7,248,942 individual feedbacks on eBay – their score is only 5 million odd because eBay don’t count multiple feedbacks from a single buyer left at one time.
“We’re delighted and honoured to be the first eBay store to hit the 5,000,000 mark for positive feedback. This is a great stamp of approval for the business, with new buyers immediately able to see that they can trust us to deliver an exceptionally high quality used product with exceptional customer service.”
– Co-founder, and Group COO, Walter Gleeson
So how do you get over 100,000 feedback a month? musicMagpie is a service for buying and selling collectible music, DVDs, books and consumer technology such as iPhones. They launched in 2007 and now employ a thousand people, mostly in the local area, to help run their 24/7 “modern stock exchange” operation. The business boasts an annual turnover of £100 million and exports to buyers in 140 countries around the world.
Co-founders Steve Oliver and Walter Gleeson identified the market opportunity to offer an online bulk trade-in model for CDs, DVDs and games. They launched the new business in 2007 when the recession left many consumers seeking a fast and easy way to raise cash for their old disks. The first item ever sold by musicMagpie was a refurbished copy of Abba’s Gold.
“musicMagpie enjoyed rapid growth in its first few years, but our launch on eBay really sent sales soaring – it’s a huge marketplace for collectibles that has given us access to customers around the world who want to be part of the ‘modern stock exchange’.”
– Co-founder, and CEO, Steve Oliver
Having amassed some 20,000 feedback split over multiple accounts myself (I know, such a tiny number!) I know just how hard it is to serve the eBay community of buyers. I’m in awe of musicMagpie and although much of their business is similar to thousands of other ‘jiffy bag stuffers’, the pure scale that they have achieved is staggering. A huge congatulations to Steve, Walter and their team.
“Surpassing five million positive reviews is an amazing achievement, and we are immensely proud of musicMagpie.”
– Dieter Newell, Senior Director of UK Trading at eBay
Top facts about musicMagpie
- Founded in 2007, the company now employs one thousand people
- Turnover of £100 million a year
- First item ever sold on eBay was the all-time classic by Abba – Gold
- Top selling item (in value) of all time is the iPhone 5s 16gb unlocked
- After ten years of buying used CDs, DVDs, games, books and tech; musicMagpie has now paid out over £145m to sellers
- Recently surpassed positive feedback score of five million, the first business on eBay to do so
- Also trades on eBay.com from its inventory held under its US subsidiary dba ‘Decluttr’ and selling under ‘eStocks USA’ on eBay
- Top tip for the trend of 2017 – the further growth of ‘re-commerce’ (the process of buying and selling pre-owned product online) increasingly through App based platforms as opposed to mobile web experiences
21 Responses
This seller should be banned from ebay, it has a web site pays 11p for DVDs and is absolutely ruining ebay.
Britain should be proud to have such an enterprising company within their country.Well done Walter Gleeson and Steven Oliver.Long may you continue on our isle….
I bought from them and could not get a VAT invoice (even though the item was brand new and shipped from Stockport). After 3 angry emails (I know UKVAT law) the customer services rep provided me with a VAT invoice with a fake VAT number.
My theory is they could [allegedly] potentially be using the VAT margin scheme (for used goods) and sending out loads of new items also under this (illegally) to gain a more favourable selling price
I find their business practice morally repugnant and certainly nothing to be proud of!
Polishing a second hand DVD/CD and re-cellophane wrapping it does not make it new & sealed.
I have mixed feelings about them. They became a competitor to me and sell things for silly prices at times, but I use that to my advantage and often buy things from them to resell.
Most times everything goes without a hitch and the odd time I’ve had an issue it’s been handled professionally.
Love them or hate them, they’re obviously a force to be reckoned with.
Look they found a gap in the market and exploited it. They also encouraged a whole wave of similar companies to sprout up.
We had to change our business model being media sellers because of the music magpies etc. We would have been killed off otherwise, you cannot compete with barcode shifters they just battle to the bottom. You get what you pay for in the end, they may have have 5 million fb but an awful lot of disappointed customers also.
We may sell a lot of similar product but with us you get what you pay for 100%.
However I like the fact they go out there and do it themselves have no problem with that, it is good to see a UK company actually do well.
They are just robbers who get you to send in a pile of new CDs & tell you they are all scratched & offer peanuts for them. You refuse & then have to pay a ridiculous price to have them sent back. They hold you to ransom with overpriced postage. Total SCUM!
I’ve seen a seller with 7 million feed back but they closed down few years back
I left a comment here 3 hours ago but you have not published it yet. Care to explain why my comment has not been published Chris/Dan? Do you have shares in Music Magpie or something? Are you operating from North Korea now?
Chris are you saying everything you don’t agree with is actually “Bile”? I thought you were supposed to be a professional. How about using your charms to report the real big issues with eBay & Amazon instead of playing safe & kissing bottoms! Yes I will correct my comments to include your opinion that calling Thieving Magpie’s S*** renders the entire comment “bile”.
I get that you find the word offensive. It was meant to be as that’s exactly how they behave. However ” bile filled comment ” is what you said. Meaning that my comment was just throwaway “bile” which is more offensive in your business of blogging. Everyone has an opinion but not everyone uses the words you prefer. I have seen other folks use the word before. You never pulled them up about it. Like I said before….get your teeth into some real issues & you might get a better response instead of playing safe & ignorring the countless issues with eBay & Amazon. I
So that’s a “well done” to Music Magpie from most people (apart from Jon).
Never dealt with the company myself but I am guessing if they were really that bad they would not have that amount of good feedback.
Volume really does speak for itself – 138,564 in the last month and we all know not everybody leaves feedback. Assuming a 1/3 then possibly close on 500,000 sales a month
Bad / Neutral FB equates to < 0.5% for the last month, one thing we can rely on is that nearly everybody that has been disappointed will have left bad feedback, compared to the ones that leave positive FB.
There are a few businesses that I would not use again, for various reasons, but not sure I would take to the web and slag them off, especially when the majority seem to not have a problem.