At the end of February, Ebay removed the fees for private sales. Now there is another important innovation. It is intended to give private sellers more reach and save on shipping costs.
Ebay wants to further boost private sales and is therefore focusing more on collecting the goods personally on site. When creating new private offers, the pickup option will now be preselected in addition to the shipping option. Existing offers are not affected. The online marketplace informed its users of this by email.
According to the information, the innovation is intended to reach more potential buyers and save shipping costs and expenses. Sellers who prefer to only send goods can deselect the pick-up option if necessary.
In competition with classified ads
The aim of the innovation is also to “facilitate trading in the neighborhood,” says the Ebay announcement. The online marketplace is thus competing more strongly with classic classified ads, where personal collection of the goods from the seller is the rule and shipping is the exception.
The company sold its own classifieds division (“Ebay-Kleinwerbung.de”) to the Norwegian portal operator Adevinta in the summer of 2020. This finally deleted the Ebay part of the name in mid-May and has since appeared with a new logo as “Kleinanzeige” or “Kleinwerbung.de”.(dpa)