eBay's done it again...

Yup, they raised fees once again. Check it out:

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
Gallery fees will be raised from $0.25 to $0.35 per listing. We will also be increasing the size of the Gallery image on search and listings pages by 56%. This will make it easier for buyers to see details of the item before clicking into the listing.

Buy It Now
Buy It Now fees will no longer be charged at a flat rate, and will instead be determined based on the Buy It Now price. Fees will be charged as follows:

Buy It Now Price Fee
$0.01 - 9.99 $0.05
$10 - 24.99 $0.10
$25 - 49.99 $0.20
$50+ $0.25

10-Day Duration
The fee for 10-day duration listings will be raised from $0.20 to $0.40 per listing.

eBay Stores
The fee for the Basic eBay Store subscription will be raised from $9.95 to $15.95 per month. The subscription fee for Featured and Anchor Stores will be unchanged.

eBay Store Inventory format listing insertion fees will remain unchanged. The Final Value Fee for Store Inventory items will change as follows:
Closing Price Old Price New Price
$0.01 - $25 5.25% of the closing value 8% of the closing price

$25.01 - $1,000 5.25% of the initial $25, plus 2.75% of the remaining closing value balance. 8% of the initial $25, plus 5% of the remaining closing value balance ($25.01 - $1000)

Over $1,000 5.25% of the initial $25, plus 2.75% of the next $25.01-$1000, plus 1.50% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 - closing value). 8% of the initial $25, plus 5% of the next $25.01 - $1000, plus 3% of the remaining closing value balance ($1,000.01 - closing value).

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 for details.

Insertion and Final Value Fees
The insertion and Final Value Fees will be changing for items listed in certain Business & Industrial categories. More details about the changes for these categories are provided below. The insertion and Final Value Fees in other categories will not be changing.

Business & Industrial Listings in Certain Categories
The Reserve, insertion and Final Value Fees will be changing for select high item price capital equipment categories in Business & Industrial. Please click here to view the capital equipment categories affected by the pricing change.

The fee changes for these capital equipment categories are as follows:

* Reserve fee: Lowered to $5, refundable if the item sells
* Insertion fee: Raised to $20, regardless of starting price
* Final Value Fee: Lowered to a 1% flat fee, with a $250 maximum charge

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
Reserve will be charged a $5 flat fee for all eBay Motors vehicles categories except Pocket Bikes. This fee will still be refundable if your item sells.

10-Day Listings
The fee for 10-day listings will be changed to $8 for all eBay Motors vehicles categories except Pocket Bikes.

Pocket Bikes Category
The insertion fee and Transaction Services Fee will be lowered from $30 to $3 each.
The following fees will remain the same: Reserve ($2 flat fee, refundable if item sells), Gallery (free), Listing Designer ($5) and Highlight ($5). Motors HomePage Featured fee will be lowered to $24.95 and Vehicle Picture Pack fee will be lowered to $1.50. All other fees will be lowered to become the same as those for eBay Motors Parts & Accessories categories.

For more information about these fee changes, please see our Frequently Asked Questions.

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,

eBay


As if it weren't hard enough trying to get a fair deal for my shit, now I have to deal with them taking EVEN MORE off the top? This is such bullshit lie.

I don't even want to sell my CAR on there anymore!!!!

I saw that too. Basically they're doubling the cost of listing anything. Fucking assholes. 8% final value fee up to $25??? You pretty much make no money at $25 on anything and then they charge you $2 for it. Plus all the other listing fees.

It's really obnoxious. You'd think the fact that they are getting more and more business that they would make enough revenue to not have to raise rates. Not like the extra money will go to the paltry tech/auction support they have.

It's time for some healthy competition in the online auctions market. E-bay seems to be running away with a monopoly, EA style.

People are still selling on eBay? That's an obvious question, I've stopped doing that over a year ago, here's the problem, I'm OK with fees (but this rate increase is absurd), but the % of deadbeat bidders have gone up astronomically, you can't leave - feedback as recipeint will retaliate, just ask people who sell regularly, eBay doesn't seem to want to regulate and improve this, all they care is getting as much revenues as possible. If fees are problems, half.com charges higher percentage but I'm glad to pay for it as payments are guaranteed (eBay pays you directly) and it's free to list them.

Lately I've only been buying on eBay but this rate increase could affect my interest on items listed, far fewer people will list the items, sellers will gouge shipping charges desparately (like $10 for a single CD). Which means fewer bidders, lower bids, less revenues, might end up being a vicious cycle.

If you absolutely have to sell online and have no resources, use half.com, so far it's free to list, you're guaranteed the payment from eBay, no Paypal involved.

That's freaking ridiculous.

That's the price they pay for growing so fast I guess.
Doesn't matter much to me as I've been using them less over the last 2 years.

Bad enough with the multiple eBay and PayPal fees, now they're raising them again?!!

No wonder people are charging double shipping cost just to try and break even

Prince James said:

That's freaking ridiculous.

Click to expand...

eat a dick garland.

Insertion and Final Value Fees
The insertion and Final Value Fees will be changing for items listed in certain Business & Industrial categories. More details about the changes for these categories are provided below. The insertion and Final Value Fees in other categories will not be changing.

Click to expand...

Guys, I read that carefully over and over again and the fee increases mainly pertains to the eBay members who run eBay stores and the auto section sellers.
The regular member fees remain the same.
-BB

Blah

Mean while Ebay let's scammers,bootleggers and. People who..... abuse the feedback system get away with any thing.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&ncid=738&e=1&u=/ap/20050114/ap_on_hi_te/ebay_price_hike

EBay shares fell $4.12 to close at $103.13 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Its shares were at a 52-week high of $118.42 in December.

^Good for business!

Looking at that, it's not normal listing fees for regular sellers (other than car sellers and store owners) that are going up, it's only fees for autos and stores that are going up. If store sellers want to fight back, they'll stop using eBay's service and open their own on-line store.

What I don't like about eBay is the fact that most buyers also use PayPal. So what you have is eBay, who owns PP, making money on your auction TWICE. You sell something for $600 and lose 10% on all the bullshit!

So what alternatives are there? Overstock's auctions are all I can think of, and they are pretty slim pickings.

I actually like Yahoo Auction's system better, as a seller, you can restrict the types of bidders you want (# of feedbacks), extension of auction if there're bids in the last 5 min (allowing bidding wars), in Japan/HK/Taiwan, Yahoo Aucitons are doing quite well. In terms of sellling, I've been using half.com for over a year now, I'm also looking into Amazon.com, so options are there.

Many sellers whom I've talked to prefer selling items outside eBay, I've done this a few times as long as you make sure the sellers are reputable, sooner or later, eBay will be used by sellers as an advertising tool, once they get customers, they'll be inviting sales outside eBay.

Paypal is another big problem, even 2 years ago, I've started refusing to accept paypment via Paypal, instead money order or bidpay.com if they want to use credit card, I've heard countless horror stories of chargebacks, and if you believe their official rethorics you're in big trouble (just like most businesses).

vincewy said:

I actually like Yahoo Auction's system better

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I prefer the Yahoo way of doing things as well, too bad they don't really exist in the US any more, at least, not if you're actually hoping to find something you want. Slim pickings to say the least.

There have been some fee changes in the UK too, but nothing like this. I guess the problem is that there aren't really any good alternatives at the moment. I remember sites like qxl.com were around during the dot com boom, but they all seem to have folded.

slerch666 said:

Looking at that, it's not normal listing fees for regular sellers (other than car sellers and store owners) that are going up, it's only fees for autos and stores that are going up. If store sellers want to fight back, they'll stop using eBay's service and open their own on-line store.

What I don't like about eBay is the fact that most buyers also use PayPal. So what you have is eBay, who owns PP, making money on your auction TWICE. You sell something for $600 and lose 10% on all the bullshit!

So what alternatives are there? Overstock's auctions are all I can think of, and they are pretty slim pickings.

Click to expand...

No, it does apply to regular sellers, not just car and store auctions. The formatting shown above hides the increases in the percentages on the final value fee:

Old New
5.25% of first $25 8%
2.75% of $25.01-1000 5%
1.5% of $1000+ 3%

Nearly all listing fees are doubling (Buy It Now is now price dependent, Gallery fees increase from $0.25 to $0.35, 10-day listing changes from $0.20 to $0.40)

You see, the % on final value fee is nearly doubling. Something that sells for $1000 used to cost you $28.125, but will now be $50.75

The biggest screw job is the $25 sale that costs you $2 now instead of $1.31. No, it doesn't sound like a big increase, but you probably aren't making anything at $25 for the item anyways, especially after PayPal screws you too.

D-Lite said:

No, it does apply to regular sellers, not just car and store auctions. The formatting shown above hides the increases in the percentages on the final value fee:

Click to expand...

From reading it many times when I got the original email, it only effects the regular auctions for the Buy It Now, Reserve Price, Gallery, and 10 Day style auctions. The other (regular auction) fees stay the same. It is a VERY poorly written announcement.

I do sort of see why they are doing it for the stores, even though they will report a $1 billion profit for last year. For your typical auction of a $25 item, they get $0.35 + $1.32 for $1.67. That is for 7 days of advertising. Now, for a store listing, they only charge you $0.05 for the listing, take $1.32, and thats for 30 days. So, instead of increasing the list price, they just bump their take.

8% is still too high, especially with PayPal, which will up the fee to 10-13% easily.

I *think* if Ebay were to raise the regular auction fees to 8% for the $25 and under items, they would be 'basically' inviting the competition. The price increase in the Stores affects very few people compared to what an increase in auction listing prices would do.