eBid - www.ebid.co.uk

This is a horrible company that is deleting lifetime subscriptions to free up resources, and will make up all kinds of lies as to why they do it. So if you have built up a nice store, DON'T BE SURPRISED WHEN ONE DAY YOU LOG IN AND SEE A DELETION NOTICE, They are a dirty company.

I signed up and paid the lifetime membership with high hopes that this site was offering an alternative to the mighty Ebay.

Views were low on items, and after two days they locked me out of my own account with no warning, rhyme nor reason.....This was after carefully reading the rules policy and trying to abide by them.....This was after selling on Ebay without any problems for 8 years!

The complaints process is very complicated and difficult to navigate....

You'd get more value from some nice crisp £20 notes by wiping your own rear with them........

Read the rules very carefully. Listing and Selling is ok, but be wary of responses to questions - could get you banned without notice. No warning, nothing.

I was a member for over 8 years, no problems, now banned? Can't ask why, their info. says they're too busy to respond? You gotta read through heaps of Q&A and work out for yourself why you're banned?

Was impressed, now no longer.

My personal experience.

Traffic is minimal. The website looks old and dated. In the course of about 6 months, selling exactly the same things as I do on ebay, made about 4 sales compared with thousands on ebay. eBid seems to be a place for disgruntled ebay sellers fed up with paying fees.

Lets put it this way, with the low fees you pay peanuts and get monkeys. The marketing and brand awareness for ebid is non existent. Therefore, the buyer footfall is non existent. You as the seller, are hoped to do the marketing through your sales on the channel. This platform is useless for making any decent amount of coin. There's just isn't the critical mass between buyers and sellers to make this a vibrant community of buying and selling, instead its a lot of sellers selling to no one.

Time and time again, sellers talk of potential and eBid could be a great competitor to eBay/Amazon. Won't happen in my lifetime, guaranteed. This talk has been going on for over 10 years. Without the marketing muscle and budget of the tech giants and the consolidation of the industry, ebid is going nowhere. Don't waste your time here and don't waste money on the £50 membership fee, its not worth it. I am certain ebids business model is to make the bulk of its money through £50 membership fees from disgruntled ebay sellers, lured with its attractive low fee alternative, overpromising and delivering absolutely nothing in sales.

I'm only a hobby seller, not a business seller, who lists when time permits. I had used eBay for many years but their hefty fees were were increasingly making selling items for a reasonable price unprofitable. Hence the search for an alternative venue.

After researching the options, eBid stood out as the best alternative, although I was still a bit cautious due to some negative reviews. However, I decided to jump in and give it a shot with the £49.99 Lifetime Seller+ package. This meant no more listing fees, five free stores to utilise, multiple free pictures and only a 2% final value fee.

I will admit that it took a little while to familiarise myself with the way the site works, but after doing so found it to be actually much more intuitive than eBay (although this may just be personal preference). I now find listing much easier and quicker to do on eBid than eBay.

In terms of success, I was pleasantly surprised with the number of sales I managed to make on eBid. Having read some other people's reviews drifting around on the net, I was half expecting to not find any buyers. Within about a week I'd had my first sales, which were completed with no problems. Overall, I used eBid for around three months, with less than 200 listings. I managed to make 80+ sales in that time. I recouped my membership fee within about two months.

This was much better than I was expecting to do, although sales were still lower than on eBay. However, given that profit margins on eBid are much higher, eBid was actually much more profitable! What's the point in just selling items for the sake of getting sales if next to no profit is being made? Surely it makes more sense to sell items more slowly but make more profit off each one?

Overall, I found eBid to be a much fairer than eBay as the site's rules and regulations aim to protect both buyers and sellers (eBay seems to be too much on the buyer's side). There are also a lot of resources available to help. The one time I had to get in touch with Support I was delighted that an actual person replied instead of just an automated message.

I would definitely recommend eBid to anyone else looking for an alternative to eBay. Granted, sales volume will be lower but there is nothing stopping you from listing on both sites until eBid gets a bit bigger. I felt obliged to write this review after seeing so many awful reviews out there. I don't feel they fairly reflect the opportunities and potential eBid has, particularly to more serious sellers.

if i could give this site a minus star i would. the idea is great as it is cheaper than ebay, but what is the point in been cheaper if there are no buyers!!

the management are too lazy to invest in promoting the site and tell the sellers to do self promotion,the site has been going for more than 10 years and is no where as good as it could be.

i would leave ebay without hesitation if there was a suitable other option, but sadly ebid is not it.

i must add that the forum is ebids only upside as the people on there are very warm, friendly and informative

I signed up for Ebid because Ebay have made several changes over the past few months that are to the detriment of sellers.

Ebay has introduced an unrealistic selling limit for private buyers with unreasonable charges for their upgraded business account status. ebay

offers no protection from malicious feedback and gives no support when false claims are made by buyers.

The culminations of these changes was that my account became restricted when Ebay allowed an individual to publish lies and to leave untruthful annonymous feedback on their site.

Ebid appeared to be a reasonable alternative as there are no listing fees, and substantially reduced charges compared to Ebay for sales [Ebid 3% compared to 10% Ebay].

At the time they were also offering life membership at a reduced cost of less than £50.00.

Fortunately, I decided to try the site before contemplating spending such a large amount of money.

Ebid is a huge disappointment. Its site appears to have been thrown together by a bunch of amateurs. It is mis-managed in a similar way.

Despite listing items at competitive prices in comparison with similar listings entered on Ebay, and despite the fact that these listings were originally placed prior to Christmas 2011 sales were virtually non-existant.

In early January 2012 the Ebay restrictions were lifted.

I therefore concurrently listed items on both Ebay and Ebid.

In an 8 week period starting before Christmas 2011 I placed on Ebid in excess 200 listings that were relisted every 3 to 5 days. At a conservative estimate, it is probable that in excess of 2000 [2 thousand] listings were placed on Ebid during that period [at lower prices than I had previously listed on Ebay].

I was only able to list 16 items [once only listings] on Ebay in December 2011, and a further 100 [1 hundred] at the end of January 2012.

Despite the huge discrepency ebay sales were in excess of 50 [fifty] items with only 2 [two] renaged payments.

Sales on Ebid numbered 8 [eight] but of those 5 payments were never received, a total of 3 [three] sales from 2000+ listings.

Ebid did nothing to enforce the sale agreement, and still levied charges for the sales.

Furthermore, at the end of January the Ebid account was frozen possibly because duplicate items had been inadvertently listed. It is difficult to be sure if this was the cause as Ebid sent no email to advise that there was a problem, and have not had the courtesy to reply to repeated emails.

There is no others means of contacting Ebid, so even if you pay for lifetime membership it appears if your account is frozen it may never be reinstated.

Ebid states it has many users but examination of users' feedback shows most have very low feedback scores. This indicates that traffic through this site is very low. On Ebay it is not uncommon to have feedback ratings of hundreds or thousands [I personally have 2,500+ positive Ebay feedback scores].

I surmise the reason that Ebid survives is because as a web-site its running costs are low. Unfortunately, the fact that it generates only modest profits dictates that its support structure is woefully inadequate. The people that run this site lack the skills and knowledge to make it true competitor to Ebay. This at a time when customer satisfaction with Ebay is low because of their bizarre policies.

Paying lifetime membership to Ebid is a waste of money. The majority of users will never recoupe the outlay. You may achieve the ocassional sale, and you may be lucky enough to have an honest user complete the transaction. But, if you list on Ebid be prepared to waste a lot of time for very little return.

I signed up for a lifetime seller account but would not recommend it to anyone. I worked out that I wouldn't have to sell much to make my money back compared to eBay, but could never have predicted how slow sales would be. I have been a member for around 2 years now, and with around 10 buy now listings I have sold no more than 20 items - less than I do in a day on ebay! The customer service is also useless - you can't talk to anyone on the phone (there literally isn't a number) and when you create a support ticket all you get is an email full of copied and pasted bits of policy. I asked to raise my issue to someone more senior as I was not happy with the first response I got, and all I got back was a rewording of the first email! So there is no way to complain about their rubbish service. Don't bother - waste of time and money.

Another disgruntled former eBayer. Found eBid by accident. Plenty of good features, especially the fact that they are a Google partner, this does drive traffic to the site, but does not always lead to sales. Certainly got the potential to allow for profitable selling, and definately bargains to be had for buyers. I have dropped all of my eBay prices by around 5% and still make a little extra on each sale. If you sell elsewhere I would definately give it a go as you have little to lose, and if you are a buyer then you could find yourself a bargain.

eBid are alot more friendly, listing and relisting costs nothing no matter what price you start the auction at, even listing with a buy it now costs nothing, if you need a reserve price on your item, that too is free, members can register for free and upgrade to seller for free, Seller+ membership costs anything from £1.99 to £49.99. however if members upgrade within 24hrs of registration the lifetime membership drops from £74.99 to £49.99 and seller+ members get 5 free stores and 5 free photos. Support is on hand basically all hours of the day and will deal with any problems as quickly as possible. with eBid you can get a free eBid T-shirt and be allowed to purchase eBid merchandise to help promote eBid.