Ebay - I'm confused!

[woodchip]

I'm about to buy a festool ts55 so I'm doing my due diligence.

Axminster - special offer around £300 (with one guide rail)
Other sites - around £375-400
Ebay - around £400. ...... Except

Several sellers wanting around £1,400

Wtf???

One of them, tools4trade has around 100,000 positive feed backs and has sold 15 of theses at £1,400. What am I missing?

My wife says "let it go, it's not important, you're not buying from them", but it's just bugging me! Why would 15 people pay £1,000 more than the regular retail price?

 

[marcros]

probably out of stock, so increase the price to save re-listing it.

do a search for "OMG, eBay prices are crazy" on the forum and about a post a week will come up asking the same question

 

[CHJ]

People don't, just a means of advertiser covering out of stock items with excessive high asking price without withdrawing listing and having to pay for new listing when back in stock.

Edit:
OK, just read that as "Wot He Said"

 

[woodchip]

Thanks for putting my mind at rest guys!

 

[brianhabby]

People don't, just a means of advertiser covering out of stock items with excessive high asking price without withdrawing listing and having to pay for new listing when back in stock.

Edit:
OK, just read that as "Wot He Said"

It isn't concern about having to pay for a new listing as for most businesses with a business account and eBay shop do not pay a listing fee for Buy-it-Now listings.

The reason is because they are temporarily out of stock and adding £1,000 to the price stops people ordering it. This maintains the sales quantity for that item on eBay. If you start a new listing, your sales count for that product is reset to zero, which is what they are trying to avoid.

We used to do this when I was working and running our eBay shop.

regards

Brian