buying on eBay versus Amazon versus Company Website

[JohnT Fitzgerald]

I see that Grizzly is also sold on eBay and on Amazon (all shipped from Grizzly). What are the advantages for each?

[Russ Filtz]

I really LIKE Amazon's return policies and shipping rates usually (esp. if you pay for Prime membership). Pretty flexible. And you can pay them direct, not through that evil spawn that is PayPal! Actually PP isn't that bad, but there can be horror stories.

[David Weaver]

PP is expensive to vendors, and consequently expensive to the buyer. With a vendor like amazon, there really isn't a benefit to using it. As a buyer, there's a benefit to using it when you're dealing with a shady vendor. If they don't come through, the dispute process with paypal is pretty easy as long as they don't take all of the money out of their account and disappear.

As a seller who is more of a trader of tools, some of the stuff in paypal is nice, like label printing. You can do it anywhere, and not just paypal, but it's nice - especially on small $$ items where the % fee isn't that big of a charge - to have all of the address information pre-loaded.

[David Weaver]

Separate from the PP issue.

I always buy directly from the vendor if the price is the same, because amazon and ebay take a cut. I'd rather pay the vendor than a middleman.

[Brian Elfert]

Sometimes price with shipping can vary widely for the same product from the same vendor. It just depends if you choose Ebay, Amazon, or the vendor's website to make the purchase. In one case a vendor charged the same for the item on their site versus Ebay, but the shipping cost on Ebay was far more.

[Jerome Hanby]

I can't speak to the Grizzly products, but I found the same vendor with the same Incra Joinery package for a table saw on both EBay and Amazon, but the price and the shipping costs weren't even close. So I looked up the vendor and called him directly to see what the deal was and ended up getting the product for even less and saved a ton on the shipping!

In this case ordering directly from Incra (or at least from where they directed you if you clicked their buy link) would have been more expensive than any of the other three.

Guess you just have to check out all the options and make a choice. I do agree that all things being equal, I'd rather give the money to the manufacturer than to a middle man.

[Brian Elfert]

I can certainly understand why they might sell a product for less on the phone versus Ebay or Amazon. The vendor doesn't have to give a cut to a third party.

[Chris Damm]

I use Amazon for research when buying anything. I recently purchased some Kohler faucets. On Amazon they were the vendor for one with free shipping and the other one came from a 3rd party vendor with a shipping charge. I checked out the vendor's website and found I could buy both faucets cheaper directly from them and since they totaled more than $199 the shipping was free, too.

[Anthony Whitesell]

I see that Grizzly is also sold on eBay and on Amazon (all shipped from Grizzly). What are the advantages for each?

This came up during the Microsoft cashback days. The biggest difference from the vendor point of view is market exposure. It's the equivalent of opening a store in three different cities. The downside, as mentioned, are the additional third party fess associated with eBay and Amazon. As was also mentioned, I would rather give my money to the vendor directly than allowing a third party to skim some off the top. Also to be considered, as was the case in the MS Cashback days, sometimes there's a benefit to the consumer to buy from Amazon or eBay. I have access to a program for eBay that gets me 2% cashback on top of the eBay bucks. So unfortunately, I may be inclined to buy through eBay with these addition incentives. But, I would much rather have access to a similiar program for Amazon.