Posted on 01/14/2005 9:40:36 AM PST by BJungNan
Ebay to increase fees, angering sellers
Auction giant Ebay announced plans to boost the monthly fee it charges sellers by 60 percent.
For a typical item selling on Ebay for $100.00, Ebay will collect 8 percent of the first $25.00 of the sell price and 5 percent of the remaining $75.00 of the sell price, or a total of $5.75 of the $100.00 purchase price. In addition, Ebay also derives a fee of anywhere from $0.40 to $1.00 per listing depending on the selling features the buyer selects.
Should that $100.00 purchase also be paid for using Ebay's PayPal service, Ebay will the earn another $3.50 on that transaction, bringing Ebay's total commission on the sale to $10.25 of an item selling for $100.00.
Some eBay sellers lash out over fee increase
eBay shares slip after word of fee increase
eBay "outperform," estimates raised
Looks like an opportunity for other auction sites to move in and take some business from E Bay!
There are others out there but sellers complain they can not get bids on their items.
Well, the greedy get greedier...
That's exactly true.
I used to love Ebay back when it started out. Now, every time I log on to the site they've changed the entire look of it. It's ridiculous, and a ripoff to boot.
They need a way to pay for all that Google Adwords space they're buying. Ebay takes about 80% of the sponsored space on most searches now, virtually pushing the little guy like me out, even though my ad has a much greater relevance to the search topic.
I'm sure that's why EBay can raise rates right now but disgruntled customers have ways of moving their business elsewhere.
It's Bush's fault!
Interesting, but essentially meaningless.
You could sell that same item by taking out a classified ad in your local newspaper. Minimum cost of about $10. But what do you get? Exposure to just a local audience. Put it on eBay and it's almost sure to sell, and the price will be set by the buyers, often much higher than you could have gotten locally.
eBay may lose a few sellers, but not many. There just isn't an alternative.
The first rule of sales (okay, second, right after "asking for the money") is to avoid Quanum Leaps. Such sales never happen. For instance, if the client is happy with $10,000 in life insurance, and you proposed $1 million (he/she might need it after all) they probably they won't buy, but if you try for three incremental sales (after showing the $1 million need) they will probably do that and more.
Ebay is guilty of a quantum leap in fees, and that never goes over well.
Yahoo had an auction site ..... I wonder how poorly it's doing?
I quit selling on Ebay because of those fees.
In real auction galleries, they put the fees on the BUYERS, as buyer's premiums, not sellers.
Well, if'n you are into Willys Jeeps here is a better site than Ebay. Word of mouth will direct people to other less costly sites.
http://www.willystech.com/parts/board.shtml
That new look - the big one that took place last summer - slowed the sight down for a few reasons. (1) They added a bunch more graphics to the page that slowed down page loading, adding icon looking things that were not icons, confusing users. (2). Sellers had a terrible time with it as many functions changed with the new look and find out where function buttons had been moved to and (3) as you point out, people that visited and were used to the old look did not want to take the time to learn the new look, they just wanted to buy something.
I don't use these auction sites so I don't know. I was going to sign up on EBay once but when they wanted my bank account data I decided I didn't want any part of them.
The problem is that eBay can't claim to raise its fees because of inflation. Why? Let's say the average cost of an item rises 10%. Then ebay, using it's CURRENT rate fees would collect %10 more of the sales price. So this isn't an example of eBay wanting to keep up with inflation.
Thanks, PP.
I often tell my husband I don't know how classic cars got restored before eBay. The stuff you can find on eBay is amazing.
It's an example of a company doing what a company is supposed to do, maximizing profits. It's pretty much got a lock on this segment right now. If they piss off enough customers though there's room for the competition to move in. Market forces and all that.
For a used item you want to get rid of, that may be true. But if you regularly sell on ebay, the margins are not great. And ebay does not survive on the "garage sell" type sellers.
"The problem is that eBay can't claim to raise its fees because of inflation. Why? Let's say the average cost of an item rises 10%. Then ebay, using it's CURRENT rate fees would collect %10 more of the sales price. So this isn't an example of eBay wanting to keep up with inflation.
"
Well, since nobody's required to sell anything on eBay, I guess they can charge whatever they wish. If it's too much, then they'll lose business. Capitalism 101.
"For a used item you want to get rid of, that may be true. But if you regularly sell on ebay, the margins are not great. And ebay does not survive on the "garage sell" type sellers."
Then eBay will have a problem if they've raised their prices too high. Market forces at work. I'm sure you're not proposing some sort of restriction on how much they can charge, right?
I almost quit my full-time job a few years ago to do Ebay, and I'm so glad I didn't...
You missed a lot of bargains. Much of what we use around the house was bought on ebay at less than half of what we could find it for in the stores.
I laugh when I am in line at a place like BestBuy and I see a guy buying a phone for $50 that I just picked up for $5 plus $5 shipping on ebay.
"But if you regularly sell on ebay, the margins are not great. And ebay does not survive on the "garage sell" type sellers."
Funny. Try opening a brick and mortar store or running a retail sales web site. eBay's a real bargain. I've done both.
So why were you at Best Buy? Just kidding. I'm sure there are bargains there and I have friends that swear by it. I'm just not willing to give them access to my bank account. Call me old fashioned.
Those same market forces you mention also include complaining about fee increases. I'm complaining. You are not proposing some sort of restriction on how much the consumer can react to price increase, right?
I've bought a few things on Ebay, but have never sold anything.
I've found that people often overpay for things - it's really unbelievable sometimes. I was in the market for a cheap 8-port network switch. There are some on Ebay, but people are bidding $10 - $15 for used switches and then paying another $12 for shipping. For $27, I can get a brand new one! It's crazy.
The other thing is the shipping costs. Clearly most sellers are overcharging on the shipping to recover the Ebay transaction costs (and make a little extra).
A silly example is a guitar auction I recently "won" on Ebay. My daughter wanted a guitar and the auction I won for the brand new guitar was $0.99! But the "shipping" was $29.99! It doesn't cost $29.99 to ship a guitar from NJ to PA. The real cost of the guitar is really ~$30, but they put the initial bid price really low, then just run up the shipping costs. I understand what's going on, but it's a little silly.
The only "complaint" that counts in the market place is to take your business elsewhere. Otherwise you're just wasting your breath.
If you, and some of the other eBay users that are "lashing out" at eBay, would actually read and understand the announcement, you would discover that the fee increases affect only a small percentage of the eBay sellers. And even with the fee increases, you would realize that eBay is actually a very cheap way of selling. And, for those who claim that the eBay fee structure forces them to operate on a small margin, you are selling the wrong stuff. The last 4 items I sold gave me a profit of about $400 on a $30 investment. Had those fee increases been in effect, my expenses would have been increased by $0.40.
For the low end sellers not much of increase unless you use gallery on all your auctions.
I do suspect that they will lose a lot of ebay stores over tis though.
tis=this
Not all seller do. Some sellers charge less than the actual shipping to attract bidders. But, with the new fee structure, that actually works out badly becuase the sell price goes higher and it costs more. So, perhaps you will see more of what you are talking about.
I did not see where I was lashing out at anything.
I just got back from picking up some US Army Night Vision Goggle transport cases, real heavy duty weather proof aluminum. I was in the truck yesterday driving back from Fort Polk LA with my new Ebay Power Seller book and heard on the radio about the fee increase. Oh well, I'll still figure out how to list them and see what happens.
I'm going to try a few other places too.
What were the old fees for a $100 item?
Interesting points..Is fraud increasing on Ebay? I always felt that would be its undoing..
When browsing for items ending soonest, successive pages often have huge gaps or overlaps in the ending times which makes it frustrating when trying to see all the items in a given category.
I've ripped their arses repeatedly over this, but it falls on deaf ears.
Their biggest problem, however, and one which will eventually hit them hard, is the scam artists working ebay.
Thieves watching big ticket items sell, then saving the photos and descriptions only later to list them (with some minor tweaking) to take the money and run is one such scam.
Another is to do the same, watching expensive stuff sell, then send the underbidders second chance offers claiming that the buyer backed out of the deal.
There are even skanks who take auction house listings (posted on the web) and then put them on ebay before/after the auction sells them to a live audience.
What burns my rear the most, however, is people ripping off items on my web page (just text so far), and then using that in an ebay description for their profit. Copyrights be damned, they don't care!
And while I'm ranting about ebay, they irritate me to no end with their feel-good mentality. I've had auctions revoked due to stuff being listed on the Endagered Species Act, even though the item was made 150 years before that act. However, you can still sell antique ivory there with no problems.
It basically went from 5% to 8% on listing fees and from $9 to %15 on store fees.
I was thinking of selling my 1964 Cobra on E-bay. Any alternative ideas?
You posted an "evil corporation getting greedy" article. Sorry, but I must have missed the part where you defended eBay.
Posting an article about what others are saying is not making a declarative statement for or against. If that were the case here on FR, there would be a heck of a lot of liberals posting articles from the MSM.
Where is your critical thinking man?
And if you read my posts, I said it was the best place to get a bargain. That is hardly critical.
BUMP
Huge increase. I was shocked.
|
Dear (name withheld), We are writing to let you know that effective midnight PST, February 18, 2005 eBay.com and eBay Motors will be making changes to the fee structure. The fee changes are as follows: Gallery Buy It Now
10-Day Duration eBay Stores eBay Store Inventory format listing insertion fees will remain unchanged. The Final Value Fee for Store Inventory items will change as follows:
Store sellers will continue to be eligible to receive 50% off of the Store Inventory listing final value fees for Store Referral credit. Please click here (disabled link) for details. Insertion and Final Value Fees Business & Industrial Listings in Certain Categories The fee changes for these capital equipment categories are as follows:
Additional listing upgrade fees will remain the same as for eBay.com. Pricing for all other Business & Industrial listings outside the specified capital equipment categories will remain the same as for eBay.com. eBay will also introduce Buyer Protection covering up to $20,000 per item in these capital equipment categories this spring. eBay will offer this Buyer Protection at no cost to the buyer or seller. The following fee changes will apply to vehicle listings on eBay Motors. Fee Changes for eBay Motors Vehicles Listings Reserve 10-Day Listings Pocket Bikes Category For more information about these fee changes, please see our Frequently Asked Questions. (disabled link) Some international eBay sites have also changed their fee structures. To learn more, please check Announcements for the eBay site of interest. We understand that fees directly impact our members, and take care to ensure that any decisions to change fees are made only after careful consideration of this impact. These changes will help us continue to sustain and develop a thriving global marketplace, while balancing the needs of our buyers and sellers around the world. Regards, |
That's just really obscene.
I never sell on Ebay, but it's obvious that this is Ebay taking advantage of their monopoly.
bttt for later read.
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