ebid.co.uk > Reviews > OOOOO I LIKE IT HERE

Author's product rating:   

Layout & Design	Excellent
Navigation	Excellent
How fast is this website?	Very fast
Quality of the Content	Excellent
Range of Services / Products	Very complete

Advantages:	Exceptional customer service, very fast growing and no fees
Disadvantages:	not as big as ebay .  .  .  duh who is?

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

As online auction sites go this is the best i've seen.

I think the easiest way to give you a true idea of how good it is is to directly compare it to the current 'best' auction site which is ebay

listing Fees:

Well as we all probably know by now ebay has recently raised all of there fees making life for sellers of small low value/collectable items a living hell as the fees cancel out any profit they make

eBid has the advantage the it charges no listing fees or final value fees, you pay nothing to set up a buyers account, and a 1 off payment of £2.50 is all that is needed to upgrade to a sellers account, after that its free, the only things you have to pay for are things like featured auctions which cost 50p-£1.00 depending on what type of featuring you want, front page featured auctions will set you back a measly £2.50 which is a lot less than eBay's fees

Membership Numbers:

Lets face it ebay has millions of member so eBid isn't going to match up on this front, but this in some ways works to its advantage.

Due to the fact it has fewer members, (just over 100,000) this means that you have to trawl though a lot less crap that you don't want, which makes buying an infinitely less stressful experience.

As for selling you will get fewer people viewing your auctions but, due to the fact there are fewer members you have less competition so it balances itself out again, plus you have the added advantage of no listing fees so in the event you don't sell an item you wont lose any money so this place is a sellers paradise.

Customer Service:

EBay's major failing has been its total disregard for the well being of its members, fraud cases are ignored, accounts suspended with no explanation, if you send them an email you may if your lucky get an auto-response email but nothing that's actually helpful to you.

eBid is totally different, the customer service is the best I have ever seen on a web site of any kind, if you send them an email you will get a reply from them (not an auto-response) usually within 2 days, also you will often find them in the forums on eBid where they will answer any question you put to them.

Forums/Community:

The forums on eBay in my opinion are not nice places to talk to people, don't get me wrong there are nice people on there but after a while there's bound to be someone who'll try and stir the sh**, which is not nice.

eBid forums are great, I have made many new friends there and everyone is willing to help if you have a problem, I've quite happily spent all day on there and had so much fun I've forgot to do any work lol. They have however had a few of the aforementioned sh** stirrers from ebay come over, but these few 'trolls' have been dealt with and are now gone, so eBid is back to its happy old self once again.

The Rest:

The layout is much better than ebay, despite having a similar appearance on the main pages its when you come to view an auction that the difference becomes clear, as many people know eBay changed there page layout recently and its not the easiest thing to read, eBid auction pages are very clear and they have what i think is a great addition which is a real time countdown clock, which means you don't need to refresh the page over and over to be abe to go 'auction sniping' properly as all you have to do is watch the clock tick own and whack the bid button in the last few seconds.

Site navigation is easy, the category layout is much the same as eBay's but a little clearer in my opinion.

The website is very fast due to eBid's new server, this brings them up to 4 servers now, which makes browsing a doddle even on my dial up connection. eBay i have found to be usually a bit slower, this is probably due to the higher amount of 'traffic' the site gets.

Conclusion:

In my opinion (which is what your reading this for lol) eBid is an exceptional site in all respects, it is fast growing and i expect it to be rivaling eBay's uk member base in the none too distant future.

If your planning to buy then things will be cheaper as sellers don't have to compensate for listing fees, and if your selling then again the no fee system will make life very easy for you.