I love selling my stuff on Ebay, so I figured I should finally try Half.com as well. I had quite a few books that hadn’t sold on Ebay, so I put them up to try it out. Overall, I was very disappointed and will probably just stick with Ebay from now on. My Ebay experience has been great 99% of the time, but I wasn’t thrilled with Half.com at all.
Problem #1: Shipping Amounts are Often Inadequate
Unlike Ebay, where you control what the buyer is charged for shipping, on Half.com the shipping amount is out of your control. When I sell items on Ebay, I charge very fair shipping prices. I don’t include my time in the shipping charges so basically the buyer is just paying the exact shipping. Sometimes I’ll include the price of the box too (if I had to buy it to ship out that item), but sometimes I won’t (if I already had the box). On Half.com, I figured the price of the box, packing materials, and the actual shipping would be accounted for. I was very mistaken. I had a few textbooks up for sale because they didn’t sell on Ebay. The one textbook wasn’t just the book itself, but a bundle. Half.com doesn’t take textbook bundles into account apparently. Not only did I have to pay for the box and packing materials, but the shipping cost itself was off by five dollars! What if I had been shipping a paperback? I would have been paying to send this book out. You could actually end up losing money instead of making money on low cost books. I realize that some buyers feel cheated on Ebay because the shipping amounts are sometimes high. However, buyers have a choice. If you don’t want to pay $80 shipping on a 99 cent guitar, then don’t buy from that seller. Half.com doesn’t give sellers a chance to be reimbursed for inadequate shipping amounts.
Problem #2: High Fees for Sellers
While I realize that Half.com isn’t providing a free service, I think that taking out 15% of the price of the book as a fee is absolutely insane. You won’t always be charged 15%, but Half.com definitely has higher fees than Ebay. A lot of sellers complain about Ebay’s fees, but I don’t think their fees are all that bad. Ebay’s fees will seem like nothing when you see the fees on Half.com. Of course, there is no listing fee which is kind of nice. However, on Ebay the listing fee is often only 20 cents, so that’s not a huge loss if your item doesn’t sell.
Problem #3: It Can Take a Long Time for Things to Sell
On Ebay you’re given the choice of having a 7 day auction (standard) or you can add or subtract a few days if you wish. On Half.com, your item sells when it sells. For most of my items, I made sure to list them at prices lower than others that were currently available. If your item isn’t the one offered for the lowest price, you’ll probably end up waiting until all the lower priced items sell before yours will even have a chance. If you list your item at too low of a price however, you don’t have the chance that people might make the price go up by bidding. There is no bidding on Half.com, so you’re out of luck if you listed something at too low of a price. Even with low to reasonable prices, you’ll still have a lot of books that will take forever to sell. You never know what they’ll sell either. One day you might come home to an email that you’ve made a sale. The thing I like with Ebay is, I can schedule my selling around my life. With Half.com, I don’t have that luxury. If someone buys a book from me and I’m in finals week, I still have to ship it out. Of course, if you’ll actually be gone or you think someone might finally buy something at a time when you’re really busy, you can say that you’re on vacation. That still doesn’t make up for the fact that you’ll probably end up waiting around quite a bit for things to sell. This is especially bad if you’re disorganized and can’t find a book that you listed 3 months ago, when it finally sells and needs to be shipped. If you want to sell something fast, go with Ebay instead.
Problem #4: No PayPal on Half.com
It’s hard to remember what it was like using Ebay before PayPal. I’ll admit I didn’t like PayPal at first, but now that I love it I want to be able to use it for all of my online buying and selling needs. However, even though Half.com is a part of Ebay, they don’t take PayPal or reimburse you with PayPal. Instead, you receive your payment by direct deposit. I suppose I should be thankful that payment isn’t even more archaic. Afterall, at least they don’t send a check and make me physically go to the bank.
Problem #5: Receiving Payment Takes Forever
Let’s say you’re a college student and you are selling your textbooks to get some money to buy your next set of textbooks. Once your textbooks sell, you’re probably hoping that you’ll receive that money quickly. However, it took me over a month to receive the payment. So you have to be able to front the costs for shipping (not that you’ll be completely reimbursed anyway) and you have to be patient about receiving your payment. That just doesn’t work for me. On Ebay, I sell an item and then I am paid. After I am paid, I ship the item promptly. On Half.com, I sell an item and then I ship it out promptly. Then I wait forever to be paid for that item. I think I like Ebay’s method a whole lot better.
Half.com just really failed to impress me as a seller. I was lured in by being able to list items at no cost, but I was quickly turned off this site. When I sell something, I am usually selling it because I need some money now. I don’t want to have upfront costs involved when I’m selling items. When I ship something out, I really like the idea of being fully reimbursed for the shipping. I don’t want to pay high fees plus end up paying for a large part of the shipping on my own as well. If you’re considering selling on Half.com because you love Ebay, consider this points. Ebay is a much better selling environment in my opinion.
