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It’s no different to scalping with tickets.
I buy all 10 sets of Fox Factory forks at £270 each knowing full well that the cheapest other price is £570. At £400 each, people buy from me as I’m the cheapest gig in town.
I buy all 10 front row tickets for £40 each knowing full well I can sell for £80+ each as I’m the only gig in town.
in both cases I’ve deprived a genuine buyer of the chance to buy at the same price I did and will then charge them more for the exact same item having done nothing at all to change or increases its value other than depleting the available supply.
What am I missing?
Not like they were full price last week, then suddenly dropped in price though is it, stuff has been reduced week by week over that last couple of months, and the stuff still didn’t sell, so ‘depriving’ is a bit strong. As above, there’s also a cost to store and post the stock that scalpers don’t have, and there’s no time crunch for buyers. If you buy a ticket off a scalper in a couple of years time for a gig that’s next week, they aren’t gonna put a gig on for you…
Even in your own example, the buyer is getting a better deal than buying at full price.
Difference is that tickets aren't just limited in supply. They have a sell by date and an additional once in a lifetime quality - Taylor Swift will have new songs and new routines for her next tour so if you want to see the 2024 version of Taylor Swift, pay the $$$ now or miss out forever.
This is more like wellies at Glastonbury in 1997. I decided I didn't want to spend out on wellies beforehand and have the hassle of storing them and carrying them and owning them forever, but after several hours of (unforecasted!) torrential rain at the site, I was willing to pay triple 🤷
As with the enterprising glastonbury welly seller, someone had to take the risk and upfront expense of buying up all the Vitus/Nukeproof spares and take the time to list/ship/deal with returns. But if you need a Nukeproof chainstay protector in a few years time, you're going to be ecstatic that Four seasons cycles Abingdon had the forethought to do so.
Not sure why people are so bothered about this!
I’m not overly bothered, but am surprised that many of you are blithely accept a form of price gouging.
blithely accept a form of price gouging.
Buy them, don't buy them. It's not a life or death situation.
this is literally how EVERY business in every country in the world works. But things, sell them for more money... that's the whole ethos of running a business, whether it's small, large, or HUGE...
If you're running a business and suddenly a competitor is going out of business and you can buy their stock for 25% of your normal purchase value, well of course you would... But... you wouldn't then sell it for a fraction of your normal retail price... you'd sell at your usual price to maximise profits...
Personally, I'm still quite salty that I had to wait over a year to get a graphics card as all of the scalpers were buying up all of the available stock and selling it for 100%+ more than retail.....
I never did get a PlayStation 5 as by the time the scalpers had their profit my son had lost interest
The scalpers add absolutely no value and just distort the market. There is a reason why the UK government has prosecuted some ticket scalpers.
I only hope that HMRC gets their cut from the eBay scalpers....
Let's not forget that the way CRC got much of their cheap stock involved manufacturers overordering parts (either unintentionally or intentionally) and then selling the excess off to CRC in bulk so we could then get components with 70% off RRP.
All this 'gouging' is only possible because component manufacturers massively overcharge punters who want to buy components individually rather than buy complete bikes*.
If I'm angry at anyone it's Shimano et al.
*OK, I know that's not exactly what's going on with most of this guys components but I like to take every opportunity to gripe about my biggest complaint with the way the industry works.
I’m not overly bothered, but am surprised that many of you are blithely accept a form of price gouging.
What do you suggest people should do about it, other than whinging on an internet forum?
I don't think it's an optimal situation, but equally I don't see that it's something I have any agency over beyond choosing not to buy stuff that I think is overpriced.
Being frustrated and angry at stuff you have no way of changing or controlling is at best futile and at worse, bad for your mental health. I guess you could start some sort of campaigning/lobbying organisation with the aim of curtailing 'price gouging' at source, but there are plenty of more egregious issues out there which would arguably better merit a campaign, STWers Against Sudocrem for Cats for example.
The irony of posting this isn't lost on me btw. I'm fully aware that nothing I can say or do will convince those who believe that buying and selling CRC/Wiggle cheapo stuff is a heinous moral crime 🙂
Referring to a retailer who bulk bought low price bike components from a retailer in administration with a view to selling them at inflated prices as a 'scalper' is laughable.
They took a risk in buying stock which could be gathering dust on a shelf in months time.
The parts weren't in high demand.
The administrators have a legal obligation to maximise value in the business so selling in volume at the listed price satisfies that legal obligation.
None of these apply to touts.
There must be something more deserving of your bile than a few low priced bike components, surely?
I think it's generally a good thing that some businesses buy up old remaindered stock and sell it on later to someone who needs an obscure spare part a few years down the line, rather than random punters picking it up "because it is cheap and I might use it some time" and sticking it in their shed never to be see again.
I find it a little odd that people are getting so upset about somebody heavily discounted bike parts from a company under administration and then taking the time to re-sell them on Ebay.
Its not 'price gauging' at all - its somebody trying to earn a bit of pocket change and using their own time and money to do so, better than all the cheap stuff sitting in all of the STWers garages gathering dust for the next 5 years, eh?
'I hope the HMRC gets their cut from Ebay scalpers'.. - Oh do get a grip.
The HMRC will get their cut as it will be reported to them in Jan 2025 so anyone that doesn't do a self assessment but has sold, let's say £10K worth of items in 2024, will have the HMRC to answer to.
But who knows, some of the 'scalpers' may stay under the £1800/30 item limit which is fair enough.
I wouldn't personally pay one thought to filing a self assessment if I was selling over the threshold unless it was considerably over, like way over - Its £6k isnt it btw?
Nobody is going to visit or ask for accounts and how will anyone at HMRC be able to define profit vs turnover, new vs old goods etc from a snapshot? Only traders shifting a fairly serious amount of money will need to worry, and even then.....
STW really is full of bods, isnt it.
Let’s not start this again…
I always get slightly annoyed when a great psa gets advertised on here, and someone then goes on and Hoovers up the entire stock. Ie a few months ago there was a psa for deore cassettes for a tenner from crc. Someone proudly announced they had bought 10…
Obviously within about 30 min of the psa going up they had all sold out. Just stuck me as slightly greedy, given loads of folks could have benefited if a few hadn’t bought them all
not quite the same as the OPs gripe tbf, but annoying nonetheless
mrbadger - totally different; the components in question were being sold by the liquidator and, to repeat part of my recent post, the liquidators are under a legal requirement to achieve maximum value for creditors so a bulk sale at the listed price does that.
If the deore cassettes were part of the liquidation sale, the same comment would apply.
I wouldn’t personally pay one thought to filing a self assessment if I was selling over the threshold unless it was considerably over, like way over – Its £6k isnt it btw?
£6k is for personal items. Buying 100 of bike items from a shop and then selling them all as new without using them is not classed as personal items.
You may not pay one thought to filing a self assessment but you may not get a choice as they may request you to complete one based in their data from the likes of eBay.
Yep, my understanding per year:
More than 30 Transactions / £1740 (2000 euros), Ebay will pass your info to HMRC
More than £1000 of online sales; need to do a tax self assessment return for HMRC. Will comprise of following two types of selling:
1. Any trading; liable to tax on profit eg bike part bought new and flipped
2. Personal possessions sold; Any single item over £6k (except a car) liable for Capital Gains Tax on profit. Anything less than £6k with a limited lifespan of less than 50 years no CGT eg clearing spares box of used bike parts
If in doubt do a tax return...
And yet another reason why Ebay will be irrelevant before long.
Sell 30 things and get a self assessment flung at you? Aye, right ye are then.
Aye. FB mp & Gumtree are gonna pick up. But what are HMRC going to do with that huge amount of data anyway? They struggle to reply to an email at the moment. Use AI? I guess they will start from the biggest numbers and work down so probably no bad thing.
Also Ebay are saying they will need your NI number for this. Really not comfortable disclosing that to them.
Starting to see the Brand X 11-52 cassettes popping up on ebay for £40
They are still for sale on Wiggle/CRC for £18
A quick check and i can add 30 to my basket and they still show as in stock but wont allow me to add more due to a 30 item limit per order so i presume they have even more in stock!
OP username doesn't check out.
Selling price £18. Post and packing ~£4. EBay fees ~£3. Roughly £10/11 profit…..except that the time listing, packing and posting isn’t free, nor is the space for storage, nor is the risk of having money held up in unsold stock.
I’d be interested in the naysayers calculations on what a reasonable price and profit would be….
Since when does eBay follow the law.
I can give a good example of fake goods which they were adamant of meeting me suck it up.
My CC came in wonders there.
Bastads, PayPal too, Amazon etc.
Why should the very customers who make these companies rich beyond their wildest dreams pick up the bs tab.
Sounds like you'd prefer tighter checks on marketplace sellers.
My point was that eBay will only be doing extra checks and reporting IF mandated to by law. They are not known for being overly pro-active with such things. So, if they are going to be reporting on sellers habits, you can be sure it's only the minimum required of them by law... so all other market places will be tasked with doing the same.
I will breach the ebay limit soon, I have absolutely zero plan to file a tax return or think twice about doing so and can almost guarantee the HMRC will not be sending me anything what so ever, I have made a 'profit'.
If by chance they do, I will fill the return out in such a way that I have absolutely zero liability to pay any tax, even if I do and absolutely nobody will check or care.
This is all about catching people (of which there are many) essentially running full scale re-selling business without paying a penny of tax, as somebody said above, what on earth are they going to do with all the data, its a scare tactic, nothing more.
@crankrider I’m impressed with your confidence in evading HMRC. Quite often they will target the easiest and quickest result. Getting responses from them and trying to persuade them that they’re wrong is very time consuming and often unsuccessful. Good luck, you’ll need it!
So hmrc are going to investigate me because I breached the online sale limit and didn’t file a return, or if they do request a return I’ll just make sure no ‘profit’ is shown and you think I’ll ‘need luck’ getting away with that? I’m not an online seller importing from alibaba and need scaring to register into paying tax with a paper trail of stock purchase.
Remember they know only the value of what I have sold, not if there is a ‘profit’
I have self employed friends and know people who own Ltd companies who haven’t had inspections for over a decade and they will investigate me to see if I may or may not have made a profit on some crap on ebay? Laughable.
Dragging this OT anyway.
My wife is an accountant and she has 2 things to say about HMRC (who she has to regularly deal with), the first is “they really don’t care about chasing the little companies dealing in small amounts of money” as they want to get the tax from bigger companies.
And second - “they’re a bunch of morons”.
So most eBay sellers will be absolutely fine.
Well it seems that some people who bought the Brand X cassettes for £18 each and then listed them on ebay havent done so well
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235479056809
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235477355879
It looks like they also sold some Brand X external droppers for £40-£50 each, not sure how much they were originally
Hopefully overall they are not out of pocket
I did think about buying some extra cassettes and some other bits to sell onto help fund my habit but im kinda glad i decided not to now!
Auctions are a waste of time on ebay these days. They should have chucked them up as buy it now. They'd sell em all eventually.
Auctions are a waste of time on ebay these days.
Depends what you expect from them really. I put some 5-10s I couldn't be bothered to send back to Evans on auction, with a low starting price. I got back what I paid for them. Pretty much what I expected and not a waste of time.
Think the trick is probably to wait 6 months then stick them on once everyones forgotten how cheap they were.
Auctions are a waste of time on ebay these days. They should have chucked them up as buy it now. They’d sell em all eventually.
Totally disagree with this. I sold a 12 year old Fiat 500 with a broken clutch last week as an auction. £1 start price, honest description. Got £1850 for it. People go way overboard if there's a chance they may get a bargain. This tactic has never failed me - yet.
If I'd have put a start price of £1000, I don't think it would have attracted any bids.
Auctions are a waste of time on ebay these days. They should have chucked them up as buy it now. They’d sell em all eventually.
That's my experience. All my bargain buys recently have been through auctions. Often I'm the only bidder. Buy it now is more convenient so there is a premium for that. People want convenience.
If you have a one off item fair enough chuck it on as an auction such as your car. But for something as common as a cassette I see no reason why you would auction it off. People want to just be able to click buy and it turns up at your door couple days later. Imo of course.
Ive got a new hobby/game
Its called cassette watch, im currently watching 10 Brand X cassettes that are for sale on ebay and waiting to see if they will make a profit or loss lol
Auctions are a waste of time on ebay these days
Seen bikes relisted multiple times because the buyers haven't got anywhere near what they thought. Always a different excuse (relisted coz chancer being chancer like) so they don't have to pay fees 😀
What a rancid little shitpile full of chancers, blaggers and bullshitters. The clowns who pay more SH than new, I mean... :DDDDDDDDDDD funniest dickheads of the lot.
The biggest problem with auctions as a seller is all the ****ers who don't bother paying when they have won.
That is the reason I switched to Buy It Now as always use Immediate Payment Required option
eBay should change the policy so that as soon as you win an auction it takes the money.
I sold a bike on eBay recently, had advertised here and elsewhere with not a peep of interest, was on the verge of putting it in a skip (good bike lightly used but 10 years old and 26", hadn't been ridden in a few years).
Got about 300 quid, happy buyer paid promptly and came to collect. I didn't think that was a waste of time. TBH the money is only half of the point, I was also pleased to see someone take the bike for their child to have some fun with rather than skipping a perfectly usable bike.
Seatpost guy is copping some right flak on all the facebook selling groups over the past day or two.