I personally search for things on all these: Ricardo, Tutti, eBay, Amazon.
It’s kind of a pain, but the price difference can be significant. Sometimes Amazon (new) is cheaper after all the shipping fees etc.
I do that for smaller items like PS4 games (where I don’t care if the item is new or used, it’s the same game).
For selling, I’ll try on Tutti for a few weeks first (because it’s free), and if it doesn’t sell there I’ll list it on Ricardo starting at 1.- because it will almost always end up selling there.
What about others here? What’s your secret sauce for buying second hand items in CH, and what do you buy? Or do you prefer to buy new anyway?
Some do actually both. You can pick them in the cities close to the Swiss border like, Konstanz, Singen, Reinfelden,… Just google “Lieferadressen für Schweizer Kunden” and you will find a lot of different services. You pay a €2-3 fee for the picking service (depending on the package size) or they will put it through the border and sent it within Switzerland to your home address. That is more expensive (Swiss postal service, plus fee service). I use Grenzpost.de but there are many similar services available.
Occasionally I might walk into a Brocki. It’s also fun.
And if I have old stuff, still in good shape, and don’t want to go through the effort of selling it, I donate it to them. Gave them some vinyl records lately.
Interesting, that probably wouldn’t work for me though. Most of the stuff I buy is in the 10 to 70 CHF/EUR range so adding 3 to 9 EUR for receiving it in DE and then paying Swiss Post costs on top of it kinda kills the deal in my case. And going to Germany is 20.- and 2h return so that’s not ideal either.
I almost always buy new, which is totally crazy especially for stuff like kids toys. I do use ricardo and tutti tho to sell used stuff. Mostly stuff that still works but layed around for a year or two starting price 1.- Fr.
It depends. Sometimes stuff is cheaper/more available new from a Swiss retailer (toppreise.ch) than buying it used on Ricardo etc. If the price difference is small and I’m in a hurry, I’ll also buy it new. Or if I’m not sure I’ll like it then I get it from Amazon because returns are easy and free (and they sometimes let you keep the item for free when you say you want to return it)
Ricardo.ch doesn’t really work great for me. Either the sellers are delusional and have a starting price at over 90% of the new price… Or the people outbid eachother to a similarly high price.
Sometimes it works if you find something that has a reasonable “Sofort kaufen” price, or if it’s some small niche item.
Also the offer is quite small… It seems Swiss people just throw things they don’t need away instead of trying to sell them?
Tutti.ch works better since you can actually negotiate a bit and get a reasonable price. But there are tons of scammers on there. Always ask for a photo of the thing with a piece of paper with your name on it. A scammer will get super angry at that request and block you.
I like old things so I like to wander into a HIOB, an Emmaüs store or on a market and fish for treasures. I’m usually able to find everything I really need there, though electronics is the one thing I wouldn’t buy in any other state than new.
I guess I got lucky so far, but almost all my tutti transactions (both buying and selling) was over the mail and I didn’t get scammed. I think Swiss people overall are rather honest.
On Ricardo, you have to wait until you find a good item and bid close to the closing time. I mostly buy used console games on there and sell whatever didn’t sell on tutti after a while.
It’s funny to think that the same company owns Ricardo, Tutti, Homegate, and even Doodle (the scheduling thing).
The problem is that it’s not Swiss people, it’s the classic ‘nigerian prince’ scammers. They even have (innocent) Swiss people as money ‘mules’, so they can use their ID and bank account to receive the money, instead of Western Union.
It’s called “money mules”. The scammers offer legit-sounding jobs to Swiss people, but the job is actually to launder money which comes from online scams or other illegal activities.
Experienced that myself when I tried to buy a good photo camera and a VR headseat that had a suspiciously low price.
The scammers had completely stolen their ‘mules’ identity. They had their Whatsapp account, and photos of their ID and Bank card with IBAN.
A friend of mine fell for that scam in another country. He was offered a “job” to cash cheques and keep something like 10% for his trouble and forward the rest to another account.
He did it once, couldn’t sleep because he thought it was dodgy and was going to jail so he forwarded 100% of the money and said he won’t do it again.
Nothing ever happened to him and we still don’t know where was the money coming from or why was the cheque never stopped.
A very nasty job scam that my brother fell for was to redirect post packages. He was told that is was a service like “Grenzpaket.ch” so foreign people can buy things from Swiss shops.
So the scammers created real Ebay auctions and sold things that can be bought on Swiss online shops. Then they actually bought that item with my brothers adress, and using stolen credit card data. And my brother sent it to the real ebay buyer… Until the police complained.
What happened to your brother? Was he held responsible in some way? I guess you could argue he was deceived, but also that he should have known better.
I check anibis and ricardo on a regular basis, stopped expecting good deals on consumer electronics, power tools or stuff like that. Anything well below new price is either gone during the first 20 seconds or is a “too good to be true” offer from a newly created account.
However, you can find very good deals on less popular categories. Gas-powered garden tools (used lawn mowers, snow throwers), kitchen robots, coffee machines are good examples.
A few tips :
Sometimes, when I notice an item that I am very interested in but find too expensive to my taste, I send a price proposal to the seller. I usually offer to pick the item the same day and pay cash, that often works. Especially when the offer was created a long time ago and seller is getting bored or has realized that nobody is going to pay the kind of price he is asking.
Always pretend you want to meet the seller IRL. Ask about their availability during the coming days even if you have no intention to actually come, if they start arguing against it with stupid excuses (too busy), run away!
Offer twint payment if possible. That’s a good “swissness check” and forces the other person to disclose a lot of information.
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