lots of ebay changes: thoughts?
erewhon
1,123 Posts
http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200801290559182.htmlI'm mulling these changes over. Pretty fair overall. It definately means I'll be taking advantage of the Power Seller status I've turned down a few times already. I love the lower final values costs and better visiblity for good sellers. Can't complain about lower listing fees across the board. Doing away with negative feedback for buyers is pretty major. It will be interesting to see how that will play out. As a seller with 100% feedback who has likewise never left bad feedback for anyone, I'm a little shook on that one, because I know that fear of retaliation has been the only thing making buyers think twice about leaving bad feedback when shit happened that was out of my control (i.e. USPS to Italy jobs). Thoughts?
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cool. I don't think i'd qualify as a power seller, but that'll be good for some of you.
They are going to make more money from people now , even though they are "lowering" the listing fees..
THEY ARE JACKING THE FINAL VALUE FEES FROM 5.25% to 8.75%!! That may not look like much but that shit will add up .. and the money you will "save" by spending 5 cents less on listing an album won't make up for it. The free gallery is cool, but again I have a feeling the way this will balance will be in Ebay's favor.
anyone else feel me on this? I don't do much ebay selling so I'm not too bent out of shape over it , but I could see some high volume sellers being affected more extremely.
I am seriously pissed.
Raising the final fee to 8.75 is just robbery at this point, ESPECIALLY when added to the already outrageous PAYPAL fee. This means that the final fee after all is said and done could be as high as 15%.
Again....I am seriously pissed.
I think you're right.
Also, their "study" about retaliatory feedback fails to take into account that often times sellers are leaving retaliatory feedback because the buyers left bogus negatives in the first place. Bottom line is that the feedback plan is an imperfect, but necessary part of the process. Taking away the ability to flag shitty buyers for other sellers is lame. Then again, ebay's customer service focus has been towards buyers for a long time anyway, so this is nothing new.
I'm probably reading that wrong... but if I didn't pay you for a record you couldn't leave negative feedback for me? or if i paid, but you never sent? or...?
why the change?
Then here's an idea.... just don't use it! Theres plenty of other avenues to sell records. No ones twisting your arm into using Ebay or Paypal. Complaining about their fee's is like going into a shop and complaining about the price of a record you want. Yeah, it sucks, but they have the right to charge whatever they want.
Exactly, the best way to f*** ebay is to not using it. Do a website, do records fairs etc.. etc..
People have to realize we don't HAVE TO USE EBAY for selling records..
T.
They're lowering the barriers to entry (the sellers who have 25,000 pages up and sell 2 items) and cashing in on those hooked already (the big money sellers). I thought they would have done this a while ago. They should have never charged for extra photo's as that helps the auction price...and the money eBay was getting.
If they didnt charge for extra photos, they'd be paying a shitload more in server space.
and be getting more out the back end with sales.
It's definately a rate hike, which sucks, but the 15% discount on final value fees for well-rated sellers does cushion the blow a bit.
Only sellers will get positive/negative ratings. A seller can either leave a positive or leave no feedback for a buyer. To balance things for the sellers, ebay is beefing up protections against unpaid items and unfair feedback. If a buyer doesn't respond to an unpaid item notice, their feedback gets deleted. The seller's feedback rating will only be based on the past 12 months. Etc. etc. There's some other new protections for sellers.
The idea is to cut down on the fear of retaliation ratings from sellers, though I think they could have tweaked this a little better.
Right, Ebay should be used as a last resort IMO. For those with patience, GEMM is just as good,and no fee's involved. Ebay is great for hallelujah frenzy bids and selling records that don't have a set general value. Also Ebay is nice just to get rid of a shitload of records at once rather than little by little. Gotta pay to play though, thats the name of the game.
Someone's gotta do something about the double taxation though (on ebay and THEN on paypal)... that is just wrong.
Theres gotta be some kind of legal issues with this.. they've created a monopoly on this shit. I'd bet they are just milking the cow until they get caught up, cuz when they do, it will be a small slap on the wrist settlement... like the one a few years back when Blockbuster got a class action suit for overcharging on late rental fee's... I remember getting a 4$ check in the mail for that one.... OOOH!!!
I don't think GEMM would work well for a shop like yours, with a quick turnaround... but great for small town hustlers who get records, but don't get great walk in traffic.
Yeah, exactly. I'll use it insofar as it is still useful. It could always be cheaper, but it's still worth the extra money they are taking out of my cut for me to get inflated money for stupid records I couldn't get anywhere else or so conveniently. At some point maybe their fees will get so high it isn't worth it anymore and people will quit it, and then they'll be luring us back again with lower fees.
Answer = Registered Mail for EVERYTHING
although, if I've read it correctly, power sellers are covered on ANY overseas shipment through paypal.
There's something to be said for size, and nobody gets the numbers Ebay does. Being first has it's perks.
Nobody is balking at the price paid for paypal now.
Get a 3rd Party Shipping Program and you can have a log stretching back as far as the program itself.
I can call up every single shipment I've ever made through my program here (www.endicia.com)
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that when we actually get to read the fine print on this change things won't seem as peechy.
I thought you needed proof of delivery (quite a different thing than proof of mailing). The next couple months are going to be very interesting, I'll say that at least.