San Diego, CA
Quoted from cmack750:Justify it however you want, but technically.... Yes. Use Facebook or CL or LetGo or the million other apps/sites available if you want to post items for sale and not pay the fees. eBay fees are the price you pay for getting your item in front of a large buying audience and not having to make a face-to-face sale. Inserting listings on eBay just to use them as a vehicle for your ad to sell outside of eBay not only takes legitimate sales away from eBay, but also promotes shitty buying and selling practices and turns other people off from using it. I hate when I see something I'm interested in, start watching it, and then it magically just disappears or the listing is ended. More often that not, this is why.
Might be good for you and the buyer in that particular circumstance, but fee avoidance just helps drive higher fees....then people bitch about the fees and try harder to avoid them.
Kind of like how everyone sneaks candy into a movie theater but then also complains how the theater charges $5.50 for a $1.50 pack of Sour Patch Kids....
Boo hoo hoo. They have progressively raised their final value fees and provided a shittier product with less seller protection over the years.
I once had a pin listed for $6000. I get an email from someone local asking if they could come look at it and they supplied their phone number. I had it listed on clist and Mr pinball classifieds as well. The guy that emailed me never came to look at it. I ended up selling it through pinside or Mr pinball, I forgot which. I ended the item on ebay. They ding me with $600 final value fee and insisted I sold it off ebay. Fortunately someone on pinside posted the fine print of the user's agreement and I had to threaten arbitration and supply a ton of documentation showing the person that contacted me didn't buy it. I finally got a refund. It was a nightmare. Ebay is a monster corporation that doesn't give a shit about you. Funny to see so many people committed to them. I have over a quarter million dollars of sales on eBay. I sell trinkets periodically but cut back drastically.
