Couldn't agree more hence is why I no longer partake.
Just wait till you finally sell a "real expensive" part for over say 2k and see the chunk they take out. Then come back here and say it's a great place to sell and I love losing 200 bucks or more....
You can preach all day about the captive audience which is true but it comes at a significant cost to the buyer and seller. Prices have to raise due to these fees and higher shipping cost/materials.
FBBO is an easy marketplace to use and I have had minimal issues. Easy to create an ad, add pictures and easy to bump it forward the pack. Same goes true for DC.com and moparts but adding pictures to them is a pain.
We should take advantage of what we have as a community and build it up from there. The swap meets these days and junk meets and the web is the wave of the future for buying/selling these parts.
The main difference is eBay is a 7 day stent versus a waiting game...I would rather wait than contribute to a profit driven machine that pisses on the seller in the end.....
But I don't live for a seven day payday and I sell to thin my stock! When the wife sees boxes flying knowing that creates more closet space per se that is my get out of jail card, lol...
Hate to say it, but I couldn't disagree with you more.
First, access to buyers is more important than anything! Yes, you can post something for sale on a forum like this one, but you're appealing to a relatively minuscule audience. How many B body owners are not on the forum? A LOT. How many other body type owners who could use the part are not on the forum? A LOT. How many guys who buy/sell parts are not on the forum? A LOT. How many impulse buyers are looking in the For Sale section? The forum(s) is great for selling highly-desirable parts at a friends and family low price, but that's about it. If you're in the business of selling parts, and need to make XX% profit off them, forums are not gonna get it done for you.
As for losing $200 in fees, consider this. I was just searching for a rebuilt 727 trans. I saw several sell on ebay in the $750-$1,200 range, which means the sellers paid $35-$61.50 in fees, so they made $715 to $1,138.50 off them. I ended up buying one that was substantially better than any of the ones on ebay, that was rebuilt with Mancini Racing parts, and came with a 2,500 stall converter. The owner had well over $1,500 invested in the trans alone, but was selling it on Craigslist, which has a very limited customer exposure compared to ebay. After two months of trying to get his money back, he finally lowered his price to $500 and I bought it. Had he listed on ebay at say $1,750, and accepted a best offer of say $1,600, he would have paid $81.50 in fees, for a total of $1,518, which would have been $1,000 more than he made selling locally on Craigslist. Yes, ebay fees mean you're paying for that access to a larger buyer base, but that larger buyer base means the item will sell for much more than it would to a limited buyer base.
