http://pages.ebay.com/sell/August2008Update/BasicFees/ Wow....15% fees for video game software (not consoles) that sells for under $50. And since they've made PayPal a requirement for video games, you can tack on an extra 2.9% (3.9% for international PayPal members like me). That's 17.9% total, not including your listing fees. Congrats, eBay is now your 20% partner with no risk...heh.
It's so insane that I'm actually quoting my own post to say how insane it is. Call it an out-of-body experience.
:lol: Man, that must suck, especially for someone like you that sells lot's of stuff through eBay. Ending up in almost 20% is just insane, greedy bastards OH:
It must have something to do with the declining "real world" value of such items. I remember reading an article a while back that said as the economy slows so does the resale value of luxury goods (i.e. videogames, cameras, electronics etc) It also said that if ebay kept going with the whole auction strategy that their revenue would also naturally decline regardless of whether the user base continued to grow. I think ebay is essentially discouraging auctions in favor of fixed price listings. On a larger scale it means that customers on ebay no longer determine the "real world" value of posted goods. I have always believed that ebay was a good indicator of an items true retail value, but between unreasonable fees and Vero big companies have managed to keep false values attached to their products. Ebay has essentially given in and no longer is what Pierre Omidyar intended it to be (I guess it doesn't really matter now, he's a millionaire).
They're basically repeating their model for the eBay stores. They offered stores with $0.01 listings and longer listing times and people rushed out and filled their stores with hundreds of items. Then....surprising to eBay (their words)....the site was losing its "core function" as an auction site and they needed to correct the imbalance. So...they jacked up the fees on the stores (was $0.01 a listing, now over $0.10 each moth for items over $200) to "correct the imbalance." What they really did was offer really cheap listings with the obvious intention of getting people to list a lot of items, then jacking up the price when people were used to the higher volume sales. They've slaughtered that cow, so now it looks like they're doing the same with fixed price listings. They've dropped the fees and are offering 30-day listings. And yes, they're doing this only months after jacking up store fees bacause they said people were using them too much and not using auctions enough. I guess their whole "imbalance" thing went out the window. People will add a lot more fixed price listings, then when they do, eBay will jack up the fees there.
I can see eBay being a story to tell kids in years to come like some old man telling war stories... "In my day we had this wonderful site call.....eeeeebay"
Personally, I like amazon now for selling games. They may be slower with payment, but I don't get as much shit as I do from ebay.
eBay have clearly lost the plot. I noticed something in the paper about them (but didn't have the time to read it properly), that they were moving away from auctions (I thought they claimed they were NOT an auction house?) and concentrating on sales. So from the point-of-view of a buyer they are now a giant, badly run, poorly organised store (rather than an auction house), but without any stock and no guarantee that the item will arrive, be as described or even be genuine (no change there then). As a seller they are just cutting their core users throats, and they clearly don't see the danger of opening the floor up to serious competition.
ebay is cutting their nose with discouraging sellers. selling on ebay stopped being fun years ago. ------- for a buyer, ebay is like emule in some way. it sucks, but there are some rare things you can only get there.
Wow, Ebay is trying really damn hard to make sure nobody will ever want to sell anything on there ever again.
lets make their wish come true :thumbsup: there are many small competitors, most of the time even without any charges! people wont stop using ebay from one day to another, thats for sure. but if they started to use the competitors in addition and then slowly but surely stopped using ebay...
Signed up to eBid but not used it yet, looks like a decent alternative and i may use it next time i need to auction stuff.
