Ian Stirling wrote:
This would seem good for sellers and buyers, but it means you get 'spam'.
A buisness, instead of selling one or two lines that are their best buys
drops their entire catalog into the listings.

The same happens on eBay - look at the people with umpteen identical
auctions for flash memory cards, for example. eBay have recently put a
limit on the number of times you can list identical items, but I don't know
if this is enforced.

This shows as their are only about 4 sellers in the above category, compared
to several hundred on ebay, which means that sellers with one or two items
to list on the site don't bother, as this spam makes it hard to find their
auctions.

It depends. If the site is categorised well, that helps. But don't people
do a lot by searches these days? And eBay's filtering is usually quite
good.

I'd rate it an advantage of eBay that people put all their inventory up -
makes looking for obscure things like a grommet for a 1975 something much
easier. In the old days you'd have to ring round all the something dealers
who'd have to look in the back of their drawers and hope you struck lucky.
Even if you did you'd pay the earth for it.

Listing on ebay and ebid together at the same time is forbidden by the terms
and conditions - as you would end up not selling one item.

It is? There are plenty of listings for, say, used cars which say the item
is listed elsewhere. And quite a few of them get ended before the auction
close because of that. Or is that a special exception for vehicles?

This means that individual sellers with one item to sell are very unlikely
to list on ebid first, wait a week, then try selling on ebay.
Which means that buyers coming to ebid don't find them.

I think the problem is that if there aren't enough punters, no-one lists at
99p for fear they won't get any interest. So you go to the site and see
lots of things at silly prices, and leave. So you don't come back, the item
doesn't sell, which doesn't encourage the seller to try again.

Theo