eBay Bans Direct Retailer Dropshipping

Bit of a coincidence here as I wrote about my annoyance at recently using eBay to buy a few items and was left disappointed by how many items / sellers where just drop shipping directly from Amazon. Turns out that eBay have now banned direct retailer drop-shipping. This is really bad news for sellers using this method, but its excellent news for buyers. Great news for me!

So, does that mean there will be zero direct retailer dropshippers? Absolutely not. There are exceptions to this new rule. If the seller can get some kind of proof from the retailer that they have a direct partnership, and the retailer has given the seller (dropshipper) their consent, then I believe it is allowed. If that can't be provided, and the eBay seller is caught doing direct retail dropshipping, they will be banned.

But how will eBay actually find out?

Well I'm sure that a company with millions of dollars at their disposal will be spending some of their budget on adding some new features that can help detect such behavior. Of course, simple things like adding a suspicious seller "report" button would be very effective. Along with articles educating people what to look out for, such as long delivery times, branded packaging / shipping materials like boxes from Amazon etc.

However, I think a good few people will still be doing direct retail drop-shipping, and getting away with it if their careful enough to cover their tracks. There's too much money to be made, so some sellers will take the risk. And if caught they'll just make a new account and start again.

But with this money making method now being officially banned it will make it harder to get away with, and not everyone will have the knowledge and know-how to do it successfully over a long period of time and remain undetected. Tools will more than likely be needed: Dedicated proxies, the purchasing of eBay and Paypal accounts that are a few years old (warmed up / trusted) etc.

Another Option (At your own risk)

Some companies / product suppliers actually scout for people who have trusted Amazon and eBay accounts that want to make some money by listing their inventory on the account. A percentage is usually agreed beforehand. All the money from the sales is sent back to the product supplier and the person who's account is being used is then sent their cut, which is, a lot of the time a good amount of money. Certainly worth all the bother.

Although the person who's account is being used in this way must be made aware of the potential tax bill coming their way at the end of the tax year because all sales have gone through them. But good companies / product suppliers who do this will sometimes offer cheap accounting services with the working agreement to give some peace of mind to the account owner. My opinion. You're better off just sourcing your own stock and doing things that way.

Bad eBay Dropshipper Experience Update

A week ago or so I wrote about my experience with recently trying to buy something from eBay UK. I was talking about how in 2018 / 2019 there are so many people dropshipping by listing on eBay and ordering from Amazon. Well, I just wanted to give a little update on the amount of negative feedback the "seller" has received in the last month.

In my other post I wrote that the seller had 1222 negative feedback. Now its not far off 2000! Their overall feedback score now sits at 92.8%. I won't reveal the eBay UK seller, but here is a screenshot of their feedback. It's been destroyed and will take a good few thousand positive feedback in order to dilute the account back to a healthy state.

Furthermore, it looks as though the seller completely lied to not only me, but to almost 2000 other people by saying the items had been dispatched when clearly they had not been. I have still not received anything despite the seller claiming the item had been sent twice. I don't know the actual reason as to why this seller totally fell apart and couldn't even manage to make simple orders using other peoples money, perhaps there could have been some kind of personal problem, but this is a classic case of dropshipping gone wrong.

eBay UK Now Dominated By Dropshippers

What the hell has happened to eBay UK? It now has more sellers dropshipping than I've ever seen before. Recently I've been looking to buy a few items from eBay, consisting of a few Christmas presents and a few personal items. From leads and headphones, to books and supplements. And one thing I now see more than ever before is the sheer amount of sellers that are dropshipping.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to dropshipping, I know how it works. And truth be told, dropshipping is older than the Internet itself. So I've got no problem with someone making a couple of quid if they are sourcing a product from somewhere for a little bit cheaper and providing a good service at the same time.

However, the annoying, or down right sneaky part of what I keep coming across, is that most sellers are just sourcing everything from Amazon. So all they do is search eBay for popular items, and then find the same item on Amazon and see if its for sale cheaper.

If it is they list the item on eBay, and when someone orders it through them on eBay, they just buy it (with the buyers money) from Amazon and give the Amazon seller the persons name and address and say - deliver it to that address please. If the person doing this is selling quite a few items per day, they usually purchase Amazon Prime to take advantage of certain offers, such as super fast free delivery.

One quick example of a product listed on eBay UK that's now basically dominated by people dropshipping it from Amazon, is Health Aid Halibut Liver Oil Capsules. I wanted to buy a bottle of Halibut Capsules from eBay, and every big seller that has it listed was just ordering it from Amazon. So they don't have any physical stock what so ever. In fact, even many of the Seven Seas Cod Liver Oil listings are very similar. So many of the listing results are just Amazon dropshippers. There's literally around £2 profit in each purchase.

Once the transaction is complete the eBay seller (Amazon dropshipper) keeps the price difference (minus fees) as their profit. Under normal circumstances the original buyer would be none the wiser. But with Amazon being such a huge company, and understandably making the decision to put their branding on every box / parcel they deliver, the person who thought they purchased an item from a normal seller on eBay ends up receiving a parcel from Amazon.

While maybe a little confused, most people don't have a problem with this, but some do. And to be honest, I am one of them. I, like some of the others, find it a bit sneaky. It's just, I'm trying to buy something from eBay, and really, most people are unknowingly buying it from Amazon.

If I personally wanted to buy from Amazon I would have just went to their site to begin with. The ironic thing is, I did end up going to Amazon because the eBay seller turned out to be a complete disaster, claiming to have posted the item twice, but nothing ever turned up.

Strange how I'd ordered many items from other sellers before I placed an order from him and they all arrived just fine. Needless to say, this seller was an Amazon dropshipper with a ton of excellent feedback on eBay, but still couldn't manage to place a simple order.

He either didn't place the order at all for reasons that are a mystery to me, or he has used a 10th Class snail-mail postal service that takes the items he sends on an around-the-world tour before reaching my residence. The seller in question has since gone on to receive over 1000 negative feedback for the month of December alone.

Make that 1222 negative feedbacks for December the last time I checked. Seems like no one got their items. I waited for 3 weeks (still not received anything) but did get a refund though. So at least I never lost any money.

Anyway, some of the people doing eBay-to-Amazon drop shipping are making big money. I seen one seller on eBay who actually has over 100,000 items listed on eBay UK, from books to drills (wherever they've found profit to be made), that are all just dropshipped from Amazon.

In fact, over the course of me buying some items, I came across several huge sellers like this who must be making a lot of money. All those £1 - £10 Pounds mount up when you're selling hundreds, or even thousands of items each day / month.

Making Money From VHS Video Cassettes

If you've been to a charity shop or car boot sale at some point within the last ten years, chances are you would have seen many VHS videos for sale. And with a general selling price of between 20 Pence to £1 Pound, no doubt, most people wouldn't really look at VHS videos as having any kind of resale profit in them. And in terms of buying them to actually watch, most people don't own a Video player anymore, so they are pretty much obsolete at this point.

Electronics and playable media has moved on so much since the VHS days, even from the CD / DVD era as well to some extent. It's all about digital and mostly invisible media these days, streaming, downloading etc. People want everything in super HD and delivered within seconds. I should make it clear that I'm not one of those people. I prefer old school media. Retro electronics are still loved by many individuals, and as a result, there is still a demand for certain items.

This brings me to the subject of this post. Can you make money from old VHS videos. The answer is, yes you can. Slowly. While most videos, popular ones, are not worth much, there are some that are worth a decent amount of money. So if you do some research beforehand and know what to look out for, there are more than a few gems out there.

But make no mistake, to make the highest amount of money, the movie must either be rare, or a pre-cert (pre-certification). Pre cert basically means that the video tape has no official age restriction information on any part of the cassette tape or case / cover due to the 1984 Video Recordings Act not yet being in force.

So Pre-certs were unregulated, largely unedited, and weren't required to follow any guidelines set by an overseeing governing body. Also worth aware of, is that not all pre certs are worth good money, and some eBay sellers list videos for sale as "Pre cert", but the age restriction (15, 18 etc) can clearly be seen on the cover, and even on the cassette itself. Unless I'm missing something here, those are not pre certs. Anyway, moving on.

Sure, there are some VHS videos out there that are neither rare or pre certs but are still worth considerably more to resell on eBay than you would pay for them at a second hand shop. Besides, some second hand shops / thrift stores actually give them away for free, so its not hard to turn a profit on a giveaway. As an example, one that quickly springs to mind is Jacknife starring Robert Deniro, Ed Harris and Kathy Baker.

That film sells for around £5 - £10 on eBay UK. Or at least it used to. Just checking eBay now, and there are many more copies than what used to be there a year or so back. Hardly worth all the bother to resell. I actually own this movie on VHS, but I wouldn't sell it because I like the film, and it's not really worth the running around for a fiver or tenner after eBay take their fees.

A better example would be some of the B-movie cult classics. Because certain titles are so rare (and also pre-certs), and still have a cult following, certain titles do command fairly high resale prices. There's quite a few on eBay right now. Including Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, the original EVIL DEAD, The Slayer (VIPCO), The House On The Edge Of The Park and AXE. As well as many more. Most of these are priced up at around £200.

However, if you're thinking of doing this to earn some extra money, be prepared for a long wait to actually make a sale. With the demand for VHS videos not being what it once was, it's clear to see that most of the videos mentioned above have something negative in common. None have sold, and none of them even have any watchers.

So while they are worth some money, I think that the people selling them when I just had a quick look in eBay have priced them up for whatever they want, just hoping someone will buy it for an extortionate amount of money due to the fact that they are now hard to find. There is no set market price or ballpark figure.

But in some ways this is correct, and can actually be a good thing. When there's only one or two of something for sale, and that thing can't be found anywhere else, you either have to pay what the seller wants or you don't get the item. It's as simple as that. But it's fair to say, all the movies mentioned above are on sale for too much money, and they'll never actually sell.

I say this because the Original Evil Dead is actually quite sought after on VHS, and does usually sell on eBay for £50+. Trying to sell it for £200, like the seller I just discovered when I did a quick bit of research for this post, has resulting in them pricing themselves out of getting a sale.

Another example of too high of a price tag is with some of the Walt Disney cartoon movies. Some sellers want crazy money for their films. It really is ridiculous. There's one on eBay right now that caught my eye: Pinocchio (in used condition). Guess how much its up for sale for. A used VHS video of Pinocchio is for sale on eBay for £3000 (Buy it now). Three Thousand Pounds! It will never sell.

You could probably check back in 20 years and it would still be for sale. But by that time the seller would most likely have gotten so fed up with zero buyer interest and constantly having to relist it, that they would finally cave in and end up listing it for sale at the right price.

Some of the Walt Disney "Black Diamond" "The Classics" edition films have some appeal, and usually they are much more sensibly priced. Furthermore, certain Disney films, like Beauty and The Beast and The Jungle Book, do have many eBay watchers and do actually sell.

More worth mentioning that have quite a lot of interest on eBay and sell for good money (£35 - £200): Bloody Moon 1981 (B-Movie Video Nasty), Mylene Farmer, Devil Hunter Yoko, Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2 Dead By Dawn, Status Quo Live In Concert, Manga, Superman 1 and 2, Insanity, I Miss You Hugs & Kisses (Rare), Battle Beyond The Stars, Bloody Payroll, and The Exorcist.

These are just a few, there are many many more. Like I said, do your research and I'm sure you'll find a lot more that are worth picking up if you see them on sale cheap while out and about. All the titles mentioned in the paragraph above are definitely worth buying, as long as they are both original, pre certs if released before 1984, and providing the price is fair.

Low prices for VHS videos are extremely common if you frequent charity shops, car boots sales and second hand shops, etc. VHS' are deemed by most to be close to worthless. So the people selling them are not always aware that some are worth a considerable amount of money, and will let them go for 50 Pence each or less. There's a good profit to be made if you know what to look out for.