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My review of eBay Australia’s alternative, Oztion.com.au
 

My review of eBay Australia’s alternative, Oztion.com.au

Ever since I heard the news that eBay Australia was making paypal & COD the only payment method I decided to give Oztion a try. For those of you who don’t know what this is its basically an auction site like ebay, however it isn’t as big (yet).

I have been using there services for close to a month now and have had some pretty good results. I have had different profit margins then what i would on ebay, however they are still at around 200-250% which is great considering you don’t have to pay for listing the item and you dont have to use paypal which equals more fees

Oztion screen shot

http://i31.tinypic.com/2112kj8.jpg

For those of your thinking of joining here are some of the pros and cons I have encountered.

Pros:
- Basically no listing fee (fee’s apply for things like bold, highlitered, front page featured etc)
- Free picture hosting ( 3 pictures ) you can host your own In the listing
- Small final fee if the item sells ( between 1-3%) no fee if the item doesn’t sell
- Very easy registration process.
- Various methods of account verification. All you need is one, but the more you have the more buyer trust you will gain = sales. They include:

Address verification (they send a letter to your address with a v/code on it)
Phone verification (same as ebay, they ring your landline with a code)
ID verification (send a copy of your id which has been certified by a person of statue)
Credit card verification (they verify you cc by holding $10 )
Australia post verification (costly, time consuming, I wouldn’t bother)

- No VERO bs to worry about. Although they claim to monitor there listings periodically for ⊗⊗⊗⊗ and counterfeits, this is obviously not the case by looking around the site.
- Extremely less likely to take your listing down for stupid reasons like ebay does.
- They admit they do not monitor any new listings; they rely of people reporting them & they to periodic checks.
- Your listing will appear immediately, unlike ebay which can be up to 24 hours
- You can choose ANY payment method you please, unlike eBay
- Considerably lower fees
- There customer service department replies to your emails with REAL answers and are not computers
- They supply there address information unlike eBay.
- The feedback system is different to ebay, it doesnt show a %, instead it shows how many items you've sold, when clicking on the feedback profile you see how many people were happy, neutral or unsatisfied.
- AND LAST BY NOT LEAST, NO PAYPAL REQUIRED!


Cons:
- Less traffic then ebay, resulting in different profit margins
- Takes a little time to get use to, but is easy one you get the hang of it
- Keyword searches are not as accurate as ebay
- Less page views then ebay due to less traffic
- Oztion will pull your listing for high postage costs

Since there is basically no risk in joining and no cost for listing, i recommend anyone in Australia give it ago, it mite not work for everyone, but its going okay for me. I still use ebay as well but so far Oztion has about 35% of my business going through it, and depending on future traffic and sales maybe even more. I think come May, Oztion will see an increase in traffic due to ebays new policies kicking in.

If anyone has any of there own experiences with oztion, or any questions feel free to discuss. I will add more to this as i encounter more experiences.

good write up man, might give it a go :)

thanks, goodluck with it !

very nice article! Thanks!

ppl who arent in au could sell on it?

No. I already tried. I even asked them and they said no. I don't see them growing that much if they are limiting themselves to Aussie.

Au/NZ only atm, i think they are looking to target the AU market atm.

Yeah i reckon its going to be big in Australia very soon

So may 21st is tomorrow, paypal is a must on all listings, come june it will be the only option.

Have any more Australians here signed up to Oztion yet?

i did sign upto oztion and my first buy was from a fraudulent seller
he listed an item i purchased it and then after i paid for it the seller sent me an email saying sorry but the item is out of stock for 2 months and would i like a replacement product,i said no and he gave me my money back.all this sounds fair ok?
the next day guess what i see the exact same listing from the seller saying he has 10 units for sale
he sold one of them so i got into contact with the buyer and guess what he sent them an email after they had paid for the item saying he cant get them and would you like a replacement product now this is 2 times he has listed the product that he cannot get
well guess what he did it again and relisted it for sale and got another buyer,so i sent the other buyer an email and yes the same thing happened.now isnt this called deceptive advertising and obtaining money by deception.
when i sent an email to oztion outlining this they instantly deleted my account and told me it was because i was sending emails to other members regarding didaden (the seller)
this is against thier rules
but funny ripping people off isnt against the rules ??
and guess what
this man isnt even australian he doesnt even live in australia so how can it be an aussie site ??
(i even know some people open accounts just to let people from hong kong/china sell directly to aussies so you think you are dealing with an aussie but infact you are not)
i would also suggest you only ever pay for your items via paypal or credit card as atleast you have some protection from these sellers
atleast with ebay you know you are dealing with shonks
but with OZtion you are dealing with fraudsters who are being helped by OZtion
(i have emails from oztion stating this)
so in all expect to be ripped off and getting absolutly no help from oztion except deletion of your account

In due time if its popular in AU they will go bigger. As with any company.

Umm, I know this is a while later but coming across this thread, Jeffsky, from what I read, you got your money back, and assuming the others got their money back, how can you make a blanket statement like this? Accusations of "Fraud", etc. Sometimes you sell out, it happens as a seller, especially if you have a large inventory you can make mistakes, NOONES PERFECT, this does not always mean "fraud". You didnt complete the sale, you got your money back,,,, soooo,,, where is the rip off???? I really dont understand. The guy relists it, ok, thats really HIS problem, not YOURS, as he's the one giving out the refunds if he's dumb enough to relist. Or perhaps the auction site had an auto relist setting and he didn't realise it kept relisting until he got the sales? This is quite plausible if he had many listings at once, and as I once sold there a long time ago I think there might have been an auto relist function, but my memory is vague after over 8 or so years. Really, I wouldn't get myself in a lather about a transaction you GOT YOUR MONEY BACK ON, and I'm not surprised you got yourself suspended or deleted trying to interfere with something that was nothing to do with you once you got your money back. Seriously. All you had to do was pretty much mind your own business or if he failed to refund you report him / file a dispute if by paypal etc / or go to police with receipt if by bank deposit and it's worth your time. Other than that I would say build a bridge and get over it. No disrespect intended, I just get really surprised at the amount of people who love to interfere, just like they do on ebay when they report you for some tiny little thing like keyword spamming or incorrect category for a little mistake or when you actually arent spamming but using correct keywords in moderation, I see that as meddling / interference from people who have nothing better to do than waste their time online and trying to "police" other people and try to "make them conform" or do what they want them to do. Or trying to bring someone else down because they're bored and angry or frustrated for whatever reason in their own life... So much time wasted concerning yourself with someone else, what will it get you in the end? A skippy badge? Really. Most people would do better to mind their own business and remember "you can't control others". I am so sick of "rules" that others try to enforce on other people, this society is going stupid with "control" on an individual scale. LET IT GO FOLKS, MOVE ON, MIND YOUR SELF 1ST AND YOUR OWN MOTIVES FOR DOING SOMETHING AND ASK YOURSELF WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO ACHIEVE / WILL IT IMPROVE YOUR DAILY LIFE TO WASTE YOUR TIME DOING IT................. !
Peace out.