Half.com tips for Ebay users
Written: Jul 30 '01
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The Bottom Line
Quick and easy person to person fixed price sales. I like it.
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Half.com is a great place to buy and sell newer used items. The company is owned by Ebay, but it is not an auction site. Instead, they list products that you can sell, such as books, movies, music, electronics and trading cards. The only items I have bought or sold are DVDs, videos, books and CDs, so that's what this epinion covers. Selling more expensive things is probably a different experience.
SELLING
Items are easy to enter for sale. You don't have to scan, take pictures, upload images, write descriptions, or pick categories. You just type in the isdn or upc code number, and it will pull up the item. After you specify what condition your product is in, the computer will tell you what others are selling it for. You can pick you own sales price. You are not allowed to say anything except a 70-space description of the condition.
When your item sells, you get an email notification. You have 48 hours to confirm the sale, and the item must be shipped the business day after you confirm. Half.com collects the money when someone buys your item. They keep track of your sales and pay twice a month, taking a 15% commission. You get a postage allowance for each item you sell, which usually ends up being a little more than the actual cost to mail it. You have the option of getting direct deposit or checks. It's nice not to have to haggle with people or figure out postage costs and explain your policies or wait for mythical checks in the mail.
You really have no contact with the customer except as a shipping name and address. It's much less personal and much more efficient way to do business. While I like the personal side of doing business on ebay, it's also nice to just sell stuff without having to exchange endless email with buyers.
BUYING
I also buy a lot of things on Half.com. It's easy to set up an account, and they have one click ordering. Sellers are rated on how fast they confirm their sales and condition of the merchandise.
The postage is charged per item, so each hardcover book you order is 2.99 postage, each softcover book is 2.39, etc. There's no break on postage for multiples, because you are ordering from many different people. You do get a discount if you buy books from the same seller, but they don't make it easy for you to browse people's pages. Many times, the postage cost is greater than the price of the book. That's still usually much cheaper than buying new.
The sections are not organized that well. Browsing is difficult. The best thing to do is browse somewhere else with reviews (like Epinions) and than search and see if they have the item at half.com. The search function works well on the site.
Half.com is good for buying and selling newer used items. They don't have a lot of old books, it tends to be only items with isdn or upc codes, mostly from the last ten years or so, though some go quite a bit further back. I sell older and unusual specialty books on Ebay instead. I like both sites, they complement each other well for buying and selling. If I didn’t sell on Ebay, which is the bulk of my business, I don’t think I would bother selling on half.com. Since a lot of the books I sell only end up going for a dollar or two, it would be a pain to go to the post office for that small amount. I go to the post office 3 or 4 times a week for my Ebay sales, so the half.com sales end up as a nice supplement.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
meowmp3
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Member: Melissa Woycechowsky
Location: San Diego, CA
Reviews written: 83
Trusted by: 20 members
About Me:
I'm an artist, writer, reader, gardener.
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