EBay Is Launching A Same-Day Shipping Service Called eBay Now | Hacker News Reader

EBay Is Launching A Same-Day Shipping Service Called eBay Now

techcrunch.com

50 pointszengr12 comments

A local eBay could start to challenge Craigstlist. I bet they could figure out how to map stuff too.

They've been trying to for years. They launched Kijiji in 2005, which caught on in Canada but not in the U.S., and was later rebranded (except in Canada) to "eBay Classifieds". I believe they had some kind of local-listings attempt that preceded that as well. They've also (with more success) been specifically targeting the used-car-sales portion of the local market with eBay Motors.

Kijiji not only caught on in Canada, it's dominant here. I don't even bother listing things for sale on Craigslist any more; the buyers are simply only checking Kijiji.

I found my (Waterloo) apartment sublet listing more successful in attracting customers on Craigslist than Kijiji. Maybe different items are more successful on one space than the other.

I believe Kijiji is popular only in French speaking Quebec

Absolutely not true, I live in Alberta and my experience is the same as joedrew. I also lived in Saskatchewan for a year and found that it was the same: Kijiji is by far the dominant online classifieds site.

I'm still not sure how this is economically viable. At the IRS rate of $0.55/mile and the average messenger pay of $12/hour, about four or more deliveries per hour would be needed to break even just for the hour. Add traffic and downtime for when the messenger has no deliveries and it doesn't seem possible.

For comparison, in Chicago a company called Dining-in has similar constraints -- delivering within about an hour a custom order. They charge $6.99 -- excluding the tip.

If it only supports local stores, and has nothing to do with auctions, then how is it any different than TaskRabbit?

It's eBay. 200 million registered users.

There is a way for doing same day, or even same hour shipping everywhere. Combine pre-ordering with gps.

A website where people can express they want to purchase something at a certain maximum delivery charge. As soon as enough people want to purchase things in a certain geographic area (based on a calculation of delivery route), they service kicks in - someone picks out all the goods (this would most likely be a grocery store) and then drives and delivers it on that route.

This depends on both a large density of users and readily available merchandise (e.g. a warehouse). Of course, in my experience, the only reason people go to eBay is for things they can't get on Amazon - collectibles, used clothing, items not manufactured anymore. None of these combine well with warehouses due to their relatively unique nature.

If you had a good enough GPS location, a Trebuchet seems like it would work.

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