eBay’s new 9% FVF in conjunction with the FORCED pay-pal 3% fee totals 12% for anything sold in an auction style listing valued up to $500.00!

I submit that for coin or rare collectible items it has now become foolish to sell here as Teletrade and Heritage will only charge the seller anywhere from 4-8% total, depending on the value and do all the work including descriptions, pictures, shipping and collecting payment so why bother with this place.

I introduced dozens of collector/investors to eBay over the years because I convinced them by the (FVF + listing fee)numbers that if they did the work themself, they could make significantly more on items and while our volume is not always as high as other areas, the dollar amount per transaction is quite high relative to many other venues.

Apparently eBay no longer values nor desires those sellers who can sell 4 to 6 coins valued at $500 each or 120 $10.00 coins per month or a single antique vase for $400.

Why should we waste our time and work effort only pay more money than if we let one of the professional auction houses handle it. They bring as large a return or more and do all the work and charge less.

Now here is an idea….How about charge the buyer a 7% buyers fee and reduce the sellers burdon via the same amount. It is stll less than half they will pay in other trusted venues or is it that eBay does not have the buying publics trust?

Moreover this is exactly what all the RESPECTED Auction houses do and the buyers have no problem paying standard 15% and up to 20% comission in some instances.

Hence it sadly appears that after more than a decade, eBay has become a greedy manipulative monster. I even own the stock which has droped over 50% in the past 4 years….guess why…because you keep dumping on and pushing away the people who made eBay a success so we have found alternative outlets.

eBay was a Brilliant idea and a great place 5 years ago, but now it is numbering its own days. The proof is in the poor perfomance of its stock. It was $57.00 in December 04, today it is $23.42.

What ever happened to quality before quatity. The stock will take another serious drop after the “great exodus” which is comming, it is all over the PCGS and NGC boards and the 50,000 members of the American Numismatic Association do have serious buying CLOUT!

Hence inevitably, eBay profits will again drop along with sales because many of the sellers that helped build eBay have had enough of the abuse and have all but dissappeared, only to reappear on competing sites.

Cheers! :-)

However!

Most of the sellers in my category have stores. We sell Japanese character items (Hello Kitty, etc).

So . . when the new changes are implemented, everyone’s listings, not just mine, will be moved into the main search results. How is that a competitive advantage for me? I’ll be in the same boat I’m in now, but with increased fees.

“You’re correct we’ve repeatedly said we have no plans to eliminate Stores. With the changes that we announced, we are not eliminating Stores, we are converting Store Inventory Format into Fixed Price Format giving it more search exposure. This increases the value of having a Store significantly.”

How so? My items are getting more search exposure – but so are everyone else’s. So how is that advantageous for me?

WRONG!!

I just checked my Dec 15 to Jan 15 Ebay invoice and there in black & white is a $49.95 charge for Store (Premium): Subscription Fee dated Dec. 15.
Of course I am seeing RED, not black & white.

What gives?

NOT cheery,
RRR

First off I want to thank you for hosting this forum and allowing us to discuss the new fee changes.

Some background: I am a Top Rated PowerSeller who sells in the media category. I have been selling on eBay for over a decade and sell mostly in auction format, but I use fixed priced auctions to list things that move more slowly. I am a Mac user and I list with a third party tool because eBay does not offer any listing tools that are Mac compatible. This tool allows me to upload multiple pictures for free. For all of these reasons an eBay store has never made sense for my business.

After these new changes were announced I crunched the numbers and it’s become obvious to me that the only way I can limit significant and crippling fee increases is to purchase an eBay store subscription. Unfortunately for the reasons outlined above, this monthly payment does not benefit my business in any way. My fixed price listings already appear in core for $.15 (it jumps to $.20 with a basic subscription and more than triples(!) to $.50 without one). My FVF’s are higher in either scenario (significantly more so without a subscription). Add in the fact that I cannot use eBay’s internal listing tools and I already get multiple pictures for free and you can see my frustration at being strong-armed into paying a monthly subscription fee for the privilege of paying higher fees than I currently do today without a store.

I understand that every seller’s case is different, but it seems like media sellers are really getting the worst of this. Not only do we pay the highest across the board FVF’s of any category and our shipping costs have been capped, but the only bone we’ve been thrown in the past several round of changes, $.15 fixed price insertion fees, is being taken away as well.

As for the other big benefit of free auction listings under $.99, it’s not worth the risk of selling an item for the minimum bid in order to save a quarter on listing fees. This feels more like a smokescreen to mask eBay’s ever-increasing take rates than a genuine benefit to small sellers.