Can I get a bargain Golf Net on eBay? I bought a 3 metre net for $99, and here's my experience...
Over the years, eBay has been an Aussie favourite when it comes to scoring bargains, although its position is not as dominant anymore with the emergence of Facebook Marketplace, I certainly still use it a fair bit for items where I felt the potential savings outweighed the risk of getting a dud. Especially for new items.
Having said that, when I cast my memory back to the early days of COVID and I was looking for a "at home" golf set up, bargains were nowhere to be found (you can read more about it here). In fact I paid $186 AUD for a beach tent looking net which was so bad that I had to return it the day it was delivered. This was part of the motivation for starting Kaizen Golf.
But with the growth and maturing of the "golf at home" segment of the market, I have seen prices of nets come down on eBay and decided to give it another try. I hope this can be useful to others who are also considering this option.
One important thing to address before we start - I am obviously biased. But I will try to be as objective as possible here and as you will see below, have not purposely gone for a bad quality product to make this a foregone conclusion.
This is the first of a 3 part series and will focus on the initial buying experience. The next 2 parts will cover my initial impressions (when it arrives) and then finally my thoughts after I have had a few sessions with it. At the time of writing this, I am still waiting for the net to be delivered, so I'm keeping an open mind.
So let's get buying!
Product Search
The process for searching for the product was actually pretty simple, basically I wanted to find a product that was comparable to the Kaizen Golf 3m Net but at a lower price point.
So I typed in '3m Golf Net' and were presented with the usual avalanche of search results.
Given I was very specific with what I was looking for, I was quickly able to exclude those items which didn't fit the bill, those included
- Cheaper items that were of an inferior design (beach tents)
- Items with similar design as the Kaizen Golf 3m Net but where selling at the same price point or higher. Interestingly most of the search results were in this category.
After excluding the above, there were only a handful of results left.
Of the remaining results, one listing stood out from the rest because
- It offered 'reinforced nylon' netting - in general nylon is much tougher than polyester however it is a more expensive material. We also use Nylon for our nets. All other listings had polyester netting.
- It had decent photos of the net in "real" settings. The other listings only had photoshopped photos. Some had a mix bag of photos for both 3m nets as well as 2m nets which ran alarm bells for me.
At $99 with free delivery, if it's made with high quality materials then it definitely represents good value.
I also looked at the sales history of this item and made the following observations
- Item was originally listed at $120 with the last sale of the item around the end of June at that price.
- Price was then updated to $99 at the start of Aug and it started selling a lot faster with 15 items sold in 2 weeks. In fact there was only 1 more left in stock.
Sounds like a bargain. Add To Cart, Check Out.
Seller Background
I also did some research on the seller, here's a summary.
- Seller profile - seller has been on eBay since 2012. Although the listing says the item is shipped from Sydney, the eBay buyer seems to be based overseas.
- Seller's other listings - the seller carries 120+ items in their eBay store ranging from desk lamps to walking frames and everything in between.
- Seller feedback / ratings - seller has a "turquoise shooting star" from eBay which identifies them as one of the most reputable sellers.
- Communications - I asked a question about the materials used for the net and received a response next day (see below).
Looking at the above, I think this particular seller is very similar to the typical eBay seller who brings in products based on popularity/demand rather than interest/specialisation. But I guess that's just how eBay works.
Concerns
There are 2 things that I'm slightly concerned about
- Returns - the vendors return policy states 'We provide 60 days money back on non-defective, undamaged, unused and resalable products.' The way I interpret this is that essentially you can get a refund only in instances where you have buyers regret before you actually use the product.
- Stock location - after I snapped up the last item in stock, I did notice that a similar listing was added from another seller, with the same descriptions, photos and ship from location. It was also flagged as the 'last one'. Nothing to see here...
Summing Up
I would say that my shopping experience was quite typical of a eBay buying experience. I was able to find a product which met the brief in terms of quality (based on description) and price and I bought the item with a bit of a 'leap of faith'. I'm actually genuinely interested in what the product will be like.
eBay is telling me that the item will arrive next week. Stay tuned for Par 2 where I share my first impressions of my new golf practice net!
[EDIT] Final part is now up here.