eBay UK have announced that they’ll be closing eBay Neighbourhoods by the end of August.
Neighbourhoods were announced as an updated version of eBay Trading Assistants in July of 2016 with the aim to connect experienced sellers with people in their local area who need help selling on eBay. In return for helping them, seller would receive a set 40% commission based on the final sale price. The selling commission was to cover the eBay and PayPal fees as well as your admin fees for selling the item but there were also some additional eBay fee discounts when selling your own products.
The initial eBay Neighbourhood Pilot went live in London, Manchester and Glasgow in August 2016 and was further expanded in the October to Oxford; Nottingham; Brighton; Leeds; Birmingham; Southampton; Colchester; York; Blackpool; Bath; and Bristol.
“Following an initial roll-out in some parts of the UK, we’ve made the difficult decision to stop supporting the eBay Neighbourhood project on eBay.co.uk. Despite lots of interest, we found that item owners such as yourself prefer to sell their items themselves.”
– eBay
eBay Neighbourhood will officially shut down on the 31st of August 2017 and from then on there will be no official eBay Trading Assistant type program.
However if you’re one of the people who value someone selling your unwanted items on eBay on your behalf, all is not lost. There are still a handful of companies who specialise in this, one of which is Stuff U Sell which is run by occasional Tamebay contributing author David Brackin.
9 Responses
“…………we found that item owners such as yourself prefer to sell their items themselves.”
Sales dont make a lot of money so to get 60% of something that wont get a lot in the first place will not be worth the peoples time. Apart from that I have never heard about it till this post. Yet another epic failure from ebay.
Updates to the next stage of our product identifier journey
From:eBay
Sent:03-Aug-17 14:00https://mesg.ebay.co.uk/mesgweb/ViewMessageDetail/0/All/90341509340
“1. Ebay have made it easier to list an item.
2. The younger people coming through are more tech savvy anyway and therefore do not need assistance in selling.”
I think you must work for ebay in that department.
I sell a lot on ebay and have never heard of this so no wonder it was never used by people. Would reckon 95% of people did not know of it in the first place. So fail in advertising it.
I have found ebay harder to list now with all the new things you have to be wary off. Photo size, background colour, product identifiers what you can and cant put in listing like contact numbers, being worried that the software you may be using does not put active content etc any new lister has a minefield to navigate.
You seem to think them only getting 60% of selling (so little incentive to sell on ebay) had nothing to do with the problem along with the fact that ebay is taking more of the profit though postage etc and I guess the lister is now getting less discount (and again less incentive) if a top rated seller and the fact that these sellers are now more than likely to loose it as the level you have to reach to get the discount goes up and up making any mishap with postage cost them as they wont get the discount. Selling on ebay is troublesome and most people cant be bothered with it.
Do you know what Simon? I am sick and tired being told I work for Ebay. It seems anyone writing anything positive about Ebay or expressing a positive opinion “must work for Ebay”. The moment I read that I decided not to read your message – you lost my interest in any opinion you may have.
So your not interested in the truth. Obviously a lot of people have told you that selling/buying on ebay is rubbish but you have choose to ignore them all. You dont have to go far to see even on these board that ebay is run by a bunch of idiots that have no clue about their business. I have had plenty issues with them and all bad.
The facts you dont want to hear the truth shows you are not listening in the first place. Can you add anything positive about ebay which I think we would all like to hear about? Fees, discounts, customer service, resolutions to sellers problems etc.
Ebay has done me well as well BUT there are loads of problems that if ebay address would make life easier. I find with ebay once one thing is implemented and you have spent a week or two changing everything along comes another initiative.
I have 1300+ and just after sorting out listing so they complied with eans etc which took ages as they had to be done one by one as the online bulk editing tool did not work we find the new initiative is active content has to be removed. Great so instead of watching TV and relaxing I now have to sort this out.
I have just lost my discount but next time I will get it but the margins are always moving and its got to the point where its not worth the effort to get them. End result is dont put yourself out ie stop the next day dispatch etc as there is a good chance you wont get anything for it.
Buyer returns for wrong description, refund for items buyers have bought and broken are always on the buyer side when it is obvious that t he seller is at fault.
LIke I say it has given us ok turnover but there are a lot of minuses it has aslo decided to throw in the way. Apart from giving us ebay they have done nothing else to improve the sellers experience and have in fact made it worse.