Selling Advice. Where to list parts.

[ChasR]

If this needs to be removed, I understand.

I need to sell some parts. Some are relevant for here or too niche, others are for “moderns”.

However, eBay have pretty much put an end to used car part sales. A waste disposal licence is now required! Great if you sell loads abs loads of bits, useless if you don’t sell many.

Frankly, I think I’d consider going onto a diet of Marmite if I sold
Stuff on Facebook Marketplace. To sell anything, you need to join about 10 different groups per part, and then be met with folks claiming they can get the part for £5 down thr pub or 50p off Aliexpress. They also want you to deliver said part to them, at your expense.

I guess what I am asking is is there anywhere else besides the above to sell? Autojumbles I’m guessing may be too cold
Now!

Is Shpock any good?

A lot of my parts are basically from cars I’ve had over the years, which I kept just in case. But given my garage is still running out of space, I need shot of them. It would be a shame to throw them away or in some cases weigh them in (like the W108 rad). But the hassle has to be worth it.

[biturbo228]

That's a curse word as eBay's the only one I've seen that has a halfway decent search mechanism (FB marketplace is abysmal).

Looking at this news here it seems like it's a limited number. 10 traders with accounts suspended, 20,000 contacted which is a tiny proportion of total eBay sellers. They're probably focussing on high volume big targets. I'd be surprised if they started enforcing this down to the hobbyist levels.

They're a business after all, and they have a vested interest in not enforcing it ruthlessly unless forced to by government legislation. It's all in the wording of who they deem to be a 'trader', whether it's business accounts or private ones, and how far they're willing to sacrifice their profits to avoid government intervention.

I could be entirely wrong, but it doesn't sound like cause for alarm unless you're a vehicle dismantler by trade, sell mainly via eBay, and don't have a license.

[ChasR]

Nov 8, 2021 15:40:17 GMT biturbo228 said:

That's a curse word as eBay's the only one I've seen that has a halfway decent search mechanism (FB marketplace is abysmal).

Looking at this news here it seems like it's a limited number. 10 traders with accounts suspended, 20,000 contacted which is a tiny proportion of total eBay sellers. They're probably focussing on high volume big targets. I'd be surprised if they started enforcing this down to the hobbyist levels.

They're a business after all, and they have a vested interest in not enforcing it ruthlessly unless forced to by government legislation. It's all in the wording of who they deem to be a 'trader', whether it's business accounts or private ones, and how far they're willing to sacrifice their profits to avoid government intervention.

I could be entirely wrong, but it doesn't sound like cause for alarm unless you're a vehicle dismantler by trade, sell mainly via eBay, and don't have a license.

My friend can’t use it anymore. He used to sell 5-10 parts a month.

[Dez]

I heard this mentioned before as more doom and gloom but never saw anything else about it.

I sell oddments via ebay (generally classic car parts) and haven’t had any issues.
But there’s also no direct stipulation you need any form of waste licence to remove parts from YOUR vehicle, unless you’re breaking cars commercially. Even then it has to be your main revenue stream for any authority to be interested.
The buck is passed to the scrapyard your take the shell to when you’re finished, as they’re the recognised ATF. . (Or the ‘scrap dealer’ with a transit you sell it to to get it off the drive, who you obviously check has a waste carriers licence 😉)

Obviously I do restoration and parts cars are part and parcel of that as it’s not possible to obtain a lot of parts any other way. I enquired with the council if I was doing anything wrong by doing this, after initial reticence regarding my inquiry I was asked how many cars I was doing and what I did with the fluids and tyres, and any residual parts/shells.
When I told them it was about 1 car a year, occasionally one more and maybe none at all, explained how it was a means to an end and provided a receipt for some tyre disposal (6 in a year) and scrap receipts for the shell they said it was absolutely fine and to carry on, but keep a record of what I was doing. I think this was to cover their bottom more than mine.
They said unless I was deliberately buying scrap/waste to sell on at profit I did not need a waste carriers license.

I cant see already overstretched local councils being very happy when they suddenly got dumped with thousands of requests for unnecessary waste processing licenses because eBay demand it…

[biturbo228]

Well that's pants. Very disappointing, ad will surely lose them a lot in revenue as it's one of the main places to go to find car parts. It's pretty short-sighted too as it'll just drive people to other platforms.

Unfortunately, the only alternative I've found that has anywhere near the reach of eBay is FB Marketplace. Gumtree does a job, but I've never had a great deal of success with it.

I suppose these alternatives will increase in usefulness as more people vacate eBay and look for another channel to sell things on.

[Dez]

Nov 8, 2021 16:18:05 GMT biturbo228 said:

I suppose these alternatives will increase in usefulness as more people vacate eBay and look for another channel to sell things on.

Answering the original question a bit more, I’ve noticed quite a few changes on FB marketplace over the last couple of weeks, including the implementation of a payment handling system. I think that shows what they’re intending for the future.

[biturbo228]

I think if FB Marketplace wants to be a credible alternative they have a lot to improve about their search functionality.

I get that their operating principle is that you choose where you live and it sends you stuff that's available locally. Unfortunately, there are some things that I'm happy to pay to have shipped in from the Outer Hebrides, and others that I would only buy if they're right down the road. The 200 mile limit from a single location needs to go, as does the requirement to choose a single location (being in the SE I've got it set somewhere just West of London so it still covers my local area, but also hits as much of the rest of the UK as possible).

There's also something horribly broken with their filtering (if I choose 'pre-1992' in the car searches, it misses a lot of pre-92 cars and starts throwing boats and caravans at me for some reason). Also, their search algorythms are pants, meaning if I search for 'BMW wheels' it starts showing me BMWs in general, and wheels in general.

Something like Gumtree or Shpock tend to do slightly better at these things (although not as good as eBay), but don't have the traffic yet to prove a viable alternative.

It is still worth mentioning though that what's happened with eBay is being described as a pilot, which means it's a tester to see if the thing works in principle and give an indication of the sort of practicalities it involves. As anyone in the public sector knows, pilots frequently never reach the point of widespread implementation. It's worth sitting and waiting a bit to see what actually comes of it.