A site to rival ebay? (ebid.co.uk)

Member Name: offy

Product:	ebid.co.uk
Date:	11/10/03 (2122 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: FREE selling, more selling options, good customer service

Disadvantages: Fewer buyers, no post sale tools

I am an ebay addict, so what am I doing writing about a rival auction site? Well, the main reason is to tell you that that ebid is completely free to sell goods (as a standard listing) ? that?s right completely free!

I stumbled on ebid by accident, being desperate for an item that wasn?t available on ebay. I did a search on google for auction sites, and so found ebid. I have been using the site for about 9 months now and so thought it appropriate to share my views.

In case anyone reading this does not know about ebay either, both sites are on-line auction sites where you can buy and sell almost anything ? from a pencil to a car, and from a pair of knickers to a stereo system. You have to register to bid or sell, and the URL for ebid is www.ebid.co.uk.

** Background **
Before writing this opinion, I asked for a bit of background to the site. This is what the site owners said ?Since 2000 we have gone from strength to strength. We are now the largest free auction site in the UK and we believe 2nd overall behind eBay. We are committed to remaining a free auction site and we are very vocal about this. There is no hidden agenda.? Apparently ebid was founded by four friends with financial and business backgrounds. It was launched about 6 months after QXL, and has steadily grown ever since. On 13/6/02 ebid stopped charging for selling with a standard listing, but they make money from adverts which are scattered around the site (but no pop ups) and featured listings. They positively welcome suggestions for improvements using the navigation link at the top called ?Forums?.

** Look of site **
Like ebay, ebid has a busy looking home page. It has a white background with orange headings and lots of blue links. The main headings from the home page are a list of busy auctions (often with only 1 or 2 bids on them), a list of closing auctions, a list of new auctions, a list of front page featured auctions, a list of categ
ories and various search facilities. Considering the complexity of auction sites, I think they have managed to lay each page out very well. There are a number of icons on the auctions which denote if it is a new auction, Buy It Now, etc. but I can never remember which one is which, and so tend to ignore them.

** Navigation **
Navigation is very similar to ebay, with links and searches everywhere. You can either do a general search or restrict it to a category (but not a sub category, unlike ebay). The main categories are always displayed on the left for general browsing, and the navigation bar at the top also remains static. The headings are home, register, start auction, my ebid, helpdesk and forums. If you are used to auction sites, then it is a very intuitive site to navigate and it loads quickly too (but then I do have broadband).

** Customer Service **
In summary, excellent. You get speedy, personal replies. I often e-mail them late in the evening, and usually receive a reply that same night. They are very helpful and willing to go that extra mile, offering alternative suggestions for your queries.

** Helpdesk **
The help feature is comprehensive. You can look a FAQs, the suggestion/chat forums or e-mail the site owners.

** Signing up **
To sign up, simply click on ?Register? and choose a user ID. Enter your e-mail address and contact details, and then you will receive an e-mail to validate your membership. You will be given a password, but you can immediately change it to something familiar. If you want to upgrade your membership (more later), you can also enter your credit card details on a secure page. Since I joined up, they have introduced a one off fee of £2.50 when you register your credit card.

** Buying **
Buying is very similar to ebay. If you decide you want to place a bid on an item, you simply type the amount you want to pay in the relevant box. Like ebay, ebid will b
id the minimum amount needed to let you have the winning bid, so you don?t have to keep on going back and bid again if someone outbids you. For example, if you decide that you are prepared to pay £10 for a DVD and the current bid is £5, you can bid £10 and ebid will only bid £5.50 if that will beat all bids on the item. If someone subsequently bids £6, ebid will automatically up the bid to £6.50 and tell the latest bidder that they have been outbid. You will also receive an e-mail notifying you if your proxy bid has been activated, unlike on ebay. On some auctions you can also ?Buy it Now!? which basically means the auction ends when you click the button and you will generally be responsible for the postage and packing costs of any items you buy. There are no post-sale tools (e.g. checkout) like there are on ebay either, but both buyer and seller will get an e-mail confirming details.

One difference is that you may not be able to bid on all auctions if you are a new member to the site, as the seller can restrict this. There are 4 levels ? bronze (no credit card validation), silver (0-9 positive feedbacks and credit card validated), gold (10-29 positive feedbacks and credit card validated) and platinum (30+ positive feedbacks and credit card validated).

** Selling **
To sell an item, you click on ?start auction?. Unlike ebay, you can only list the item under one category. To get a photo, you can either type in the URL of the image if you have it on a website, or load a photo on your PC to ?My Gallery? and use that. I like this idea as it means you have a gallery of photos to use in the future if you have more than one item to sell. They recently increased the size of the photo you can load, from 60k (which often caused me problems) to 500k.

You can use HTML in your descriptions, although I have noticed that most don?t bother. For £4.00 you can list your item as a Happy Hour auction, which are daily front page featured £1 no
reserve auctions that can only be bid on between 4.00 p.m. and 8.00 p.m. There are a few more non-standard auctions which you have to pay for, such as special featured auctions for £1.00, or 60 minute auctions, but this is all explained as you list your item. As I have never used these, I?m afraid I don?t know how you pay for them. One excellent feature of the site is that you can either start your auction countdown from when you list the item, or from when the first bid is placed, so you can just leave items on the site until they sell, rather than having to keep on relisting them. Alternatively, you can set the auction to automatically repost up to 10 times if the item fails to sell. You can delete the auction at any time before a bid is made.

There is also a useful looking facility called ?My Bulk Upload? that allows you to download an Excel spreadsheet and fill it with your auctions to send it back to them to post. Great if you are an avid seller. You can set a reserve price, a Buy It Now price and a minimum level of member allowed to bid on your item, if required. Another nice feature is that you can choose your own level of bid increment, whereas ebay automatically does it for you and raises it as the price goes up. I often reduce the increment on my auctions to encourage bidding, as I am more likely to bid on an item if I can bid 10p more rather than £1 more.

Ebid recommend a payment method called PPPay.com, which sounds similar to Nochex, but I have not used it as I am already signed up to both Nochex and Paypal. You get an e-mail advising you if someone has bid on your item, which is great if you are not selling many items, but may get a bit much if you are selling loads. You also get a chance to preview the listing before posting.

** Feedback **
Like ebay, ebid relies on feedback to police the site. Every time you buy or sell an item, you can leave or receive feedback ? either praise, neutral or negative. To c
heck whether a member is trustworthy or not, just read the feedback they have been given. At the time I joined, if you could prove feedback from another site, e.g. ebay or Yahoo auctions, they credited you with an equivalent number of feedbacks. I therefore transferred about 180 positive feedbacks from ebay and instantly became a Platinum member. I have heard rumours that they are not so keen on doing this now, due to problems from ebay, but it would be worth asking for.

** My ebid **
This is your own page to watch auctions you are bidding and selling, closed auctions, items you are watching, etc. It is always the first place I go to when I sign on to see how I am doing. It also features:
- My Interests ? get e-mailed with new auctions that may interest you by recording keywords for selected categories. This could be a useful feature if you were a collector of a particular item/artist, for example.
- My Stats ? this is a running total for successful auctions you have sold. Unfortunately it does not tally successful auctions you have won.
- My Blackball ? here you can add members that you don?t want to bid on your auctions and view the list.

** Forums **
The ebid forums are very popular, partly for answering auction questions, but mostly it seems, for chatting. There are a group of regular contributors who seem to post all day, but it can be quite hard to break into the group. It is a message board rather than a chat room, with various threads on-going at any time. The latest postings are detailed at the bottom of most pages on ebid, if you are interested.

** Advantages over ebay **
- FREE selling
- Not many bidders so you could get a bargain
- Very quick individual responses from Customer Services to queries
- You can leave auction on the site for ages, with the countdown only starting when the first bid is made
- You receive an e-mail when someone makes a bid on your goods
- You can ea
sily delete an auction at any time prior to a bid being made
- You can choose your bid increments
- You can set auctions to automatically repost if an item doesn?t sell

** Disadvantages over ebay **
- Less choice of goods than ebay
- The search facility is not as good as at ebay
- Not many bidders when you sell goods
- No post-sale tools e.g. checkout

** My thoughts **
I have bought and sold quite a bit from this site now, and have found the sellers to be generally excellent (although one item got lost in the post and I was never refunded). Payment and feedback was received quickly. Nochex appears to be very popular on the site, but I think their PPPay has cheaper fees than Nochex, so may take off. They do offer an Escrow service too (money put into the charge of a third party until such time that the transaction is completed), but I have not investigated this.

Recently, sales are definitely increasing as word about this great site gets around. The increase in ebay fees also contributed to the increase in traffic. If you have things to sell, you have nothing to lose by trying this site, as it won?t cost you a penny.

I will continue to use this site, listing items that I have a number of or am in no hurry to sell. I will also buy from the site due to the low number of buyers around to try and get bargains (DVDs, cameras, jewellery and some designer goods seem to go for cheap prices).

Ebay is still my number one auction site, mainly due to the traffic and variety of goods on offer, but ebid is definitely catching up. Who knows, this site could rival it in the near future if more people decide to try it. Definitely worth a look for all you auction addicts out there.

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