Just got the email from ebay. You can see complete details here: http://pages.ebay.com/sell/update08/overview/index.html ----- eBay: eBay will require some sellers offer a safer payment option, either PayPal or a merchant credit card. These payment options offer additional protections to buyers. Sellers will be required to offer safer payment if they meet any of these conditions: have more than 5% dissatisfied buyers in the last 30 days have a feedback score of less than 100 are listing items in the following higher risk categories (and sub categories): gift certificates, video games, cell phones, computers and consumer electronics ---- Japan-Games.com: Put another way, if you're selling video games you must offer paypal as a payment because eBay/PayPal considers it to be safer for Buyers. You can also offer merchant credit cards, meaning that you have your own processing machine for Visa, MC, AMEX, etc. Also, there's a chance you might get a hold placed on receiving your payment depending on how good of a Seller you are: --- eBay: If you are required to offer a safer payment option, you might also be subject to holds on payment. PayPal may hold payments for the sale of an eBay item until the earliest of the following occurs: the buyer leaves positive feedback, 3 days after confirmed item delivery* or 21 days without a dispute, claim, chargeback, or reversal filed on that transaction. --- Japan-Games.com: They're saying that this will only happen in a small percentage of cases. It's largely based off of the new system that they will be using which takes into account more comprehensive feedback. Here's more info on that: --- eBay: In a small percentage of cases where it has been determined the risk of dissatisfied buyers is higher, PayPal may delay release of the payment funds to the seller until the buyer has left a positive feedback or 21 days have passed without a dispute, claim, chargeback or reversal filed on that transaction. To determine if a transaction may have a higher risk of dissatisfied buyers, eBay reports to PayPal a number of factors, including but not limited to: Seller's % Positive Feedback in the last 30 days Seller's Detailed Seller Ratings in the last 30 days Final price for the item Shipping & handling fee Seller's eBay tenure as an eBay member Seller's total number of Feedback Your payments WILL BE NOT HELD if you meet all the following requirements: eBay Tenure: Greater than 6-months Total Feedback score: More than 100 Dissatisfied Buyers %: Less than 5% Or if you meet all the following requirements: Detailed Seller Rating: Greater than 4.5 Total Detailed Seller Ratings Recieved: More than 20 in the last 12-months --- Japan-Games.com: They're also raising their Final Value Fees (FVF). For Auctions and Fixed Price Listings the FVF will be 8.75%, up from 5.25%. This applies to sales in value between $0.01 and $1,000 which is most things most people sell. For ebay Stores, the sliding scale is as follows: Up to $25: 12% $25 to $100: 8% $100 to $1,000: 4% Over $1,000: 2% They've lowered the Insertion Fees for all items, including free gallery pictures now. The fees are $0.05 to $0.80 lower for auction insertions. They've lowered the fees on the front end and increased them on the back end. Seller Rewards: They're starting a new system to reward good sellers. Some of these things include: * Pirority exposure with the new "Best Match" search system. Sellers will better track records will get more exposure. * "Good Sellers" will get a 5% or a 15% FVF reduction if they meet certain requirements related to feedback and other criteria, but they're pretty hard to meet. Feedback now has 4 different rating areas, and you must have a minimum rating 4.6 out of 5 to get 5% off or 4.8 out of 5 to get 15% off. That means you need these numebrs for ALL 4 areas, not an average. I'm at 4.9 (Item as Described), 4.9 (Communication), Shipping Time (4.9), and 4.7 (Shipping and Handling Charges), so I'd qualify for the 5% discount since my Shipping and Handling Charges rating is below 4.8. The other criteria relates to things such as Buyer complaints, etc. Also, the numbers reset every 30 days. --- Japan-Games.com: Other changes that I won't go into too much detail about here: Buyers will only be able to receive positive Feedback. Positive repeat customer Feedback will count and Feedback more than 12 months old won't. Negative and neutral Feedback left by the buyer will be removed for transactions in which a buyer doesn't respond to the Unpaid Item (UPI) or if the member is suspended. eBay/PayPal has changed Seller Protection: "In February 2008, sales on eBay paid with PayPal will be covered against claims, charge-backs, reversals for unauthorized payments, and merchandise not received. Transactions must meet the terms of coverage. This free protection is exclusive to PowerSellers and eliminates the need for confirmed addresses."
I'm a bit worried about the feedback changes. Reading it I understand it in the way that you still gain feedback and the one older than 12 months still counts, just not to your percentage? I hope the "buyer can only receive positive feedback" only comes in if they paid. Because if they don't pay they deserve a negative.. no? If it is that way I think its fair, I often got negative feedbacks from sellers in return when I left a negative one.
This is exactly what pissed me off about ebay, as a fast paying buyer I should receive positive feedback without waiting.. I tend to not give negative feedback to bad sellers that fast as I know I will get it back even if I don't deserve it :-(
Here's what's really going on. eBay wanted to raise fees. It's hard to do that without pissing people off. SO -- eBay lowers upfront fees BUT highers them on the backend, moreso than had it not lowered upfront fees in an effort to make up somewhat for the money lost.
Actually, what's really going on is that eBay are forcing everyone to use PayPal, which is shit, but sadly in the United Kingdom doesn't break any trade laws. You can volunteer not to use them, which is great as right now as they pretty much have a monopoly! So even if you are pissed off with eBay and feel railroaded into complying with their growing list of nonsense then tough! They can tell you to stand on 1 foot, point North with your nose and cough up all your cash for the priviledge of using their 'service', despite it no longer being such a great place to be a seller.
I'm getting fed up with ebay, i used to love buying and selling things on there but now i find it tedious and boring. I love how they say "You asked, we listened" looking at posts here suggests they didn't listen very well and have not done anything right.
You are so right! It would appear that they have roughly the same listening skills as the current Labour Government, who under Gordon Brown PM stated their main aim was to 'listen to the country and establish a new dialogue'. Apparently that 'new dialogue' with the general public was a bit of a one way process with interested parties turning up to various debates to discover the 'communication' and means of offering their 'opinion' was actually via a pre-produced questionnaire with statements you either agreed with or disagreed with! I suspect eBay employ the same railroading questionnaire in their 'Listening to their users' forums. You either accept the changes or trade elsewhere. About time ebay had some stiff competition!
I only use PayPal, so it's hard for me to understand the full gravity of the situation for those in here who prefer to use other methods. That said, I sympathize with those buyers and sellers who are getting shafted. Monopoly is right. Ouch. :/
Ebay is a F*ing joke. You know it cost me over 1000 yen to list something on there yet only 10.4 yen for the same auction on Yahoo !! Yes, that's right 10.4 yen ! EBay are a F*ing rip off! Yakumo
Yeah, the first thing I saw was that eBay was making Paypal a requirement for selling certain items. Soon that will be expanded to all items I'd imagine. I mean if it's safer, then why are they leaving other categories so open to risk, right? heh This is one of the final pieces in the puzzle for locking out other payment systems such as Google's. BidPay just closed it's doors a couple of weeks ago. I'm wondering if they saw the writing on the wall. The thing that irks me about that is that they're integrating eBay and PayPal together, but in terms of fees they're still keeping them separate so they can collect double fees. How about this. If I use your auction company to sell my item, then use your payment company to transfer the money, how about giving me a reduced fee? How much longer is eBay going to keep Paypal a separate company within eBay? Also, at some point eBay will reach a maximum on fees. You're at 8.75% now for auctions. Add in another 2.9% for PayPal fees, plus insertion fees and the $0.30 PayPal processing fee. That means the average person will probably be close to 12.75% in fees, more if they do upgrades. Since I'm an international seller I pay a 1% premium on PayPal so I'm at around 13.75%. What does eBay think the ceiling will be? Obviously there's a point in time where the fees have to stop going up since they are using percentages. Right now at 12.5% eBay is like a partner who has no risk. How high can they go? 20%? The Seller discount thing is mostly just a waste of time. Most of the good sellers will get 5%, but I can't imagine too many people will be getting 15% off. The catch is the rating for Shipping and Handling charges. Requiring a 4.8 rating or above is pretty much impossible. It's a hot point with Buyers who may or not feel the extra charges are legitimate. There's just no way you're going to get nearly everyone to agree that whatever number you chose was fair. Maybe I'm wrong and there are a lot of people at 4.8 and above, but I've yet to see one. I'd actually be curious as to what the percentages are. I meet all requirements for a 15% discount except for that one thing. Also, eBay really manipulated their user base in the last couple of years. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but the result was the same. They introduced the concept of the stores as a place where you could have your own quasi-webstore. They made listing fees $0.01 with an extra penny for a gallery picture. The flat fee was something like $10 a month. So, what happened? Sellers rushed out and got a store and started stocking it with tons of items. For people like me and a lot of others we built our entire business around our store. Fast forward a year or two and now eBay tells us that they've gotten away from the "core function" of being an auction house. They said that there were too many store items and not enough auctions. Gee, no one saw that coming? Their solution? Raise store fees. Why? To create the "balance" eBay wanted to have again. So now all of those people who spent time setting up eBay stores saw fees go from $0.02 to $0.15 per listing with higher FVFs. And you're telling me this wasn't the plan from the beginning? Promote stores, give nearly free listing space, let people stock up, then raise the fees when the store has become a part of the business and can't be eliminated. I think I'd like eBay more if they just came out and said that. The other thing that irks me is that I've done the same type of listing for years now. I write a description. I use a gallery picture. I do a 10-day auction or I put it in my store. I'm basically getting the same function as I did when the fees were a fraction of what they are now. What value has been added for me? Or did my extra fees go into financing one of the recent eBay failures such as Half.com or ProStores? BUT.....even with all of the eBay is still pretty much the best value around because of the exposure. It's just hard that every time something changes it either makes the process more difficult and/or more expensive than it was before. It should help me since I'm a decent seller and it will probably expose the bad sellers faster, but I was fine competing with them before...heh. Also, any time you give more power to Buyers it makes a Seller nervous since you're now more at risk from bad Buyers.
eBay has began to come under some serious pressure to keep track of the people selling fake / counterfeit goods or items that broke various legislation, such as particular banned products in one country being shipped to another. The French Government watchdog in charge of auction sales (The French Council of Sales) has actually filed a lawsuit against eBay stating that "(eBay) was flouting regulations governing auction houses in France, including a requirement to take out insurance against fraud. This is unfair competition, because other auctioneers have to make sure they are transparent and that they provide guarantees." (Christian Giacomotto, Chairman) See article here: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article3000774.ece To add insult to French injury, several major designers & firms have also filed lawsuits against eBay as they are accused of not "do(ing) enough to restrict the sale of counterfeit goods on the site". Considering the 2004 Tiffany's lawsuit is still pending, eBay are potentially facing massive legal actions costing $millions if found in the wrong. Whilst eBay defends itself by suggesting it is down to the manufacturers to report any issues, they are also carefully saying that eBay is not an auctioneer, just as PayPal is not designated as an official banking system and therefore surely falls under no banking guidelines for best practice? There was quite a nice article (dated 2000) about eBay and it's attitude towards mounting lawsuits, which stated quite catagorically that "The case (Gently V eBay) ... pushes eBay, a company that could not exist offline, to argue in court that it's not an auctioneer, a legal category that eBay has studiously avoided embracing because of the liability requirements that accompany it". Article here: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/11/07/suing.ebay.idg/ That explains eBays need for additional cash lol - the other aspects of it are means by which they can testify in court that they have recently tightened up their policies, manner by which members can trade and the complaints / tracing procedures to protect customers from fake / illegal goods! I do wonder what service they actually offer however, if they are not auctioneers, what are they? All the time they are applying greater pressure & costs on the sellers on their site presumably in order to avoid the nasty complication of actually admitting they are an auctioneering site and therefore having to comply with various legislation that would entail!
Am I the only one who sees this as an opportunity to start an online auction business solely for video games? Big bucks involved. I for one would be interested to participate in such a scheme, and this is a golden time, at the verge of eBay's new policy.
I think that if Google were to start an eBay and Paypal clone, they could capture quite a bit of marketshare from eBay (I have seen quite a few people (buyers, sellers or both) say "I have left eBay for good" or "I am close to leaving eBay" and I suspect if Google came out with an auction service that didnt have all the crap that eBay and Paypal have, a large chunk of them would move to it) Although given that eBay is almost certainly the #1 in terms of $ value of google ads purchased, would google want to open their own auction site and try and compete with their best customer? As for all these new changes, I suspect its intended to force more transactions through Paypal (which means even MORE money for eBay) but also to provide more protection against all the fraud that happens (I read somewhere that electronic items have one of the highest fraud rates on eBay)
I also use Paypal exclusively, but wait till you get screwed for the first time as a buyer and have no recourse. I just had a situation where the seller sent me the incorrect item, refused to replace it and Paypal basically said as long as he shipped me something, I couldn't file a complaint. They will only get involved in a dispute if you literally receive nothing.
It's been done, and didn't work out really. This is when I'm thankful that I use Ebay only to get rid of shit I absolutely can't sell direct (which is almost never). I just need an easy/cheap way to ditch Paypal and I'll be set. Why the international banking committee doesn't get together and sort something out is fucking beyond me. They could easily steal Paypals thunder, but are afraid to upgrade technology from the 50s.
