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5 commentsTuesday, June 16, 2009

eBay Starts "5 Free Insertion Fees" Promotion

Savings don't always add up

5 Comments

Hi, I have been antagonized

Hi,

I have been antagonized no less than 5 times over these few weeks by ebay.
(i) First I was not a business seller on Ebay UK selling good-will 99pence cards. But ebay judged I was one and forced me to switch to a business account which of course raised the insertion fees by 15 pence. Ebay is really greedy. There is no doubt.

(ii) I tried to avoid ebay UK for all the unhappiness the site brought. But ebay continued to hound me even when I moved to other ebay sites.

(iii) When buyers place untrue feedback comments, I can't retaliate and ebay refuses to help sellers.

(iv) Where I used to send clients photos of the product for their inspection, ebay disallowed this too.

(v) The ebay experience has really gotten from bad to worse to nightmare. Traffic and sales on ebay has dropped dramatically too. I fear ebay is forcing me away and I need to write to all of our past clients and enquirers about our departure and the circumstances leading to that.

I am running away to craigs and bonazale now. running..running...

We are all previous sellers

We are all previous sellers and buyers on ebay. And we have grown to hate ebay due to the litany of practices they've pioneered to establish a monopoly and squeeze every drop of money out of their sellers and thus buyers.

Here is a list of ebay's actions that we are most displeased about...

1.) Just in the past few years, ebay has slowly increased the percentage of their commission for goods sold from a little over 6% to 8.75% of the final ending fee!! A 50% increase in your commission/share of the profit in just a few years is absolutely unacceptable!!

2.) When overstock.com popped up as a competitor to ebay offering lower commission rates, ebay proceeded to buy them out, gut the auction portion of their site, and only then did it start to increase it's commission rates ever higher.

3.) Ebay has gone to extraordinary lenghts to shut down other competitors like yahoo auctions and amazon auctions, and are now engaged in buying up any online auction and classified listings left over.

Recently, they bought up 27% of Craigslist (a rival) and are currently being sued by Craigslist for using that stock share to undermine Craigslist. Once any remaining competition is done away with, expect to see ebay's commissions rise even higher. This is the definition of monopolistic anti-competitive tactics.

4.) When paypal first opened to provide people a cheap easy way to pay for online auctions and other purchases, ebay proceeded to buy out the company, and later increased it's commission rates. Whereas ebay used to allow sellers to enable buyers to pay for items with cashier's checks, and money orders even just a few months ago, ebay recently changed this policy. Now the only payment method that can be used on ebay is paypal.

Any sellers that tell their buyers they can pay via money order or check if they don't have a paypal account, get their auction closed by ebay, without a refund of the listing commission fees. This ensures that ebay gets a cut of the price twice, first for the auction's ending price itself, and then a percentage of the paypal payment as well. Most sellers including I've had auctions that ebay ended prematurely, without warning , and without refunding the listing fees because they mentioned that they will accept payment via either paypal or money order from buyers that don't have a paypal account.

5.) In addition to the continual increases in the commission fees, ebay has taken away sellers right to leave nonpaying buyers and buyers who abuse the auction site bad feedback. Sellers no longer can leave negative feedback to bad buyers. This policy along with the higher commission rates led to many sellers boycotting ebay as well.

Seriously, does ebay's management not see the direct correlation between the higher commission rates it started charging 2 years ago, with the loss of sellers (and thus buyers) from it's site?

Yet, in an effort to squeeze every drop of money out of us, ebay has continuously increased the commission fees more and more and each year. And as a result, it has become less and less profitable for all of us. Many ebay stores have had to close. Ebay's repeated milking of your sellers with higher and higher commissions and more restrictions is only going to continue your sites trend of losing business, and it's stock's decline. And as this petition goes to show, we, the previous buyers and sellers on your site, are well aware of what you have been doing to squeeze every drop of profit out of us.

We strongly urge to google or some other competitor to launch an auction site to compete with ebay that is FREE and completely supported by ad revenue to provide relief to the many sellers that have had to close up shop on ebay due to the commissions going up from 6% to 8.75% in just two years. And we urge them to do so before ebay completes it's current buyout of craigslist.

Ebay

Ebay is such a great example of galloping management incompentence ruining a vibrant and successful company. Ebay had a unique attribute - it was the place to go to find fascinating and wonderful stuff for auction - and where to find valuable items too - it was becoming the Sotheby's and Christies of ecommerce and with the chance to dominate even these. I was a biggish ebay seller and buyer for many years, I don't list any more as there's little point, and now my standard search, which used to pick up many items of interest to bid on, now only returns a few. Little point logging on any more really - with the neat stuff going, the "eyeballs" are going too, Ebay's no longer unique, just another big box estore and there are better ones out there. I wonder too if ebay had any idea of the demographics of their customers - the despised small sellers - the (ex) sellers I know locally certainly aren't the mom and pop borderline poverty types but are rather well-off collectors with tons of disposable income - I guess they're elsewhere now.

I did the math

Hi, I did some calculations and realize that it can be a good and a bad thing. To simplify I assumed that the starting price is in the same range as the final value. So up to 45$ the new fees are advantageous, between 45$ and 65$ is about the same. Between 65$ and 450$ the new fees can cost you up to 7.60$ more than the old fees... For 450$ and up, it's a real good deal.

So if you plan to sell an item between 65$ and 450$, you better using a listing tool.

Ebay

I have heard of seller complaints on ebay for 2 years but tried to stay on ebay. But they just do not welcome smaller sellers like me. Fees, changes, bad buyers can insult and say what they wish and you cannot retaliate with a negative feedback, etc etc WOW it is one nightmare.

With effect from today, I am taking my business elsewhere and I am currently writing to all me past clients about my migration away from ebay.

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