Some sellers taking the mickey with prices

[Barley Rubble]

I was just browsing eBay (as you do on a Saturday night) and couldn't believe what a seller was trying to charge for a Woodfordes Admirals Reserve Kit. Wait for it.......drum roll please....... £65.30!!!!!! Woodfordes Admirals Reserve Real Ale Home Brew Kit | eBay You can get the same exact kit in Wilkos for £20.00, more than a third less!!!! I mean I know we are all trying to make a living etc., but that's just taking the mickey. I wanted to use stronger language but I didn't want to offend anyone.
It shows it pays to shop around.

 

[Drunkula]

Because of the way ebay is run now you can put listings on for nothing and pay less fees when offers are on so making crazy listings on the offchance is worth it. It used to cost to try some lairy chancery, now there's no risk. It's all about recognising the gaps.

When Resident Evil 4 came out, which was set in Spain, people there went mad for previous games and I was buying them from Game for £9.99 and selling them for 90 quid sans postage and loads of people were saying have you got more and buying them on the side.

 

[Sidri]

I've seen a lot of this online over the past two months. Coopers kits going for £30+ which is just ridiculous. I've also seen 1kg of brewing sugar going for over a tenner!!! Luckily it seems these prices are now starting to decrease. Supply and demand I suppose.

 

[Clint]

That 5kg of Chemclean at MM for over £70!
Kegthat and B2B sell this for £26/£27....

 

[Beebee31]

I've seen a lot of this online over the past two months. Coopers kits going for £30+ which is just ridiculous. I've also seen 1kg of brewing sugar going for over a tenner!!! Luckily it seems these prices are now starting to decrease. Supply and demand I suppose.

Ummm. What’s the right price for a Coopers? . I may have overpaid....

And where would the best place to get them at that price...?

 

[Leon103]

Ummm. What’s the right price for a Coopers? . I may have overpaid....

And where would the best place to get them at that price...?

Thought they were somewhere around £13

 

[Beebee31]

Thought they were somewhere around £13

yup I think I put an extra fiver in someone’s pocket....oh well.

 

[Banbeer]

I went on Amazon as my wife has just signed up to prime and the prices on there for homebrew kits is ridiculous, sometimes adding a tenner to a single can kit

 

[terrym]

Ummm. What’s the right price for a Coopers? . I may have overpaid....

And where would the best place to get them at that price...?

Try Brew2bottle.
https://brew2bottle.co.ukLooks like they currently have a good range in stock from £11/12 according to what you buy .

 

[Ezza]

Wilko IPA on Ebay £23

 

[kelper]

Sometimes an eBay seller will change the price to something silly because it's easier than removing the listing - maybe he's out of stock. Then it's very easy to put the price back later. It was a seller who explained this to me.

 

[Joust]

There's been a shortage of the stuff on eBay and Amazon. Plus people are trying not to go to the high street.

And there are some automated price matching. Which means as competitive stock vanished the price automatically increases.

 

[Heff81]

yup I think I put an extra fiver in someone’s pocket....oh well.

If you paid an extra fiver that's not bad postage still needs covering

 

[country joe]

£52 plus £10 for a second hand keg

 

[foxy]

I wouldn't expect anyone to sell anything under a GM of 50% unless of course it was very high volume.

 

[Joust]

Anyone got a recommendation for good price of a few kg of dme?

 

[xozzx]

Anyone got a recommendation for good price of a few kg of dme?

I have always found Brew2Bottle the best price for DME. Not compared it recently as last time I ordered loads to get free delivery and I only use it for yeast starters.

 

[Joust]

I have always found Brew2Bottle the best price for DME. Not compared it recently as last time I ordered loads to get free delivery and I only use it for yeast starters.

Cool. That's who I recently used. Great service.

 

[B2B]

Afternoon all

Marketplaces such as Amazon/eBay should be your second port of call after a dedicated home brew site for a couple of reasons...

1. They both charge the seller a fee for the privilidge of selling on their platforms, this is partly absorbed by the seller in reduced margins which isn't great for a seller in what is still a pretty niche market, but also some of that is passed on to you guys. You get the same service from the seller regardless of which platform you buy the items on. eBay/Amazon don't sell home brew themselves, it's all 3rd party sellers like ourselves. There are a couple of sellers who put their products into Amazon warehouses for them to dispatch but that was cancelled by Amazon when lockdown started and they couldn't keep up with the volume of items coming in and out of their warehouses, and they wanted to prioritise household essentials.

2. More often than not you're paying for shipping built into the cost of each indvidual item. You can get some single items cheaper on a marketplace granted but take Amazon for instance. xxxxx kit is £24.95 delivered for example, that sell price will include the cost of shipping out to the customer. If a customer buys the same item twice, or two different or etc... etc... then they are paying for shipping with each unit they purchase. As the quantity increases the seller will have to pay more for shipping because of the increased weight of the parcel, in general it means we have to ship DPD rather than Royal Mail which is cheaper. The shipping costs built into the sell price of the 2nd unit covers this increased cost usually. If a customer buys a 3rd individual unit though then the extra shipping paid for goes to the seller. As I said you can sometimes find individual items on marketplaces cheaper but in general if you are building a basket then go to a homebrew site and it will always be cheaper. There is no way around this, the marketplaces reward a seller for offering a delivered price rather than £xx.xx + P&P. Build a basket on a home brew site and you'll only ever pay for shipping once, or not at all if you meet free delivery thresholds.

Plus bare in mind most homebrew shops aren't selling huge volumes and need every sale they can get with the most profit they can make without taking the pee just to keep their doors open. Quite often the marketplace makes more profit on a beer kit than the actual seller because of the way a marketplace works, driving the price into the ground until no-one will go lower. Great for you guys, and me at crimbo doing all my shopping in 36 minutes flat, but not always great for a seller who is desperate for a sale at any cost. The margins on beer/wine kits aren't huge, online has seen to that because every store is on the same high street now and easy to compare against each other.

That said we have loads of Festival, Woodfordes, Cwtch and other Muntons kits delivered today... plus the new Winexperts and On The House wine kits... bare with me. Only nipped up here for a ham butty and I'll be back downstairs booking it into stock. Probably best to wait a few hours to see everything that's arrived. Couple of DME's as well and Mangrove Jacks 1.2kg Pure Malt Enhancers, should be over 400 of them here.

Cheers

 

[gar]

just put an order in with B2B, keeping it real. cheers guys