eBay has angered a lot of sellers over the years because they are frequently jacking up the cost of their fees to list the items. They are trying to make amends with all of the sellers by lowering fees across the board, which will become effective on February 20th, 2008. Well, maybe not all the way across the board.
Some of the listing fees have dropped by as much as 50%, and they’ve completely removed the fee for adding a gallery image (the thumbnail that’s displayed when performing a search). The biggest price reductions come to those who start their auctions under $25, and even more to those who start under $0.99.
There’s one bit of information that they failed to leave out of their mass email that was sent out to all members (I received it earlier this morning). As you would expect eBay isn’t just going to reduce the prices without making up for it somewhere else. Right now with every item that you sell eBay will take 5.25% of that revenue, and on February 20th they will start taking taking 8.75%! That’s an increase of 67%.
To help put the increased Final Value Fee into perspective lets look at an example. If you sell an item for $500 on eBay they would have previously gotten $26.25 plus the listing fees. Now they are going to get $43.75 from the final selling price plus the slightly reduced listing fees. That’s a difference of almost $17, which is doubtful that you’ll make up from the reduced listing fees.
Remember, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. eBay wants to make you think that they are putting more money in your pocket, but the only people who are really benefiting from the changes are those who have items that don’t sell.
[via The Associate Press]
They need to make up for Skype some how!
One thing to consider though, I have listed several items that never sold. I quit listing because the list price was to high if I then didn’t sell the item. If I sold the item a bigger percent I wouldn’t mind giving up. Most people like me don’t care, it’s more about getting a little something back on something you would otherwise toss in the trash. Just another side to consider. For me.. it’s going to help. But then I don’t try to make huge money on ebay. Like SOME folks do. I just use it as a spring cleaning dump or sell off old games so I have a few bucks to buy a new one.. and the like. Just something to consider. Point of view is always key.
scratch my last commit I didn’t fully understand the fees.. sorry. I thought I had it, but I missed that the fees where going up for some/most listings as well.. so mostly this is just a fee increase it seems. My mistake.
Not only that, but they introduced a new feeback policy so buyers can only recieve POSITIVE feedback, no matter what! That means even if a buyer screws a seller over, the seller has no way to leave truthful feedback!
If you do the math, it actually works out to an increase in total fees for any item sold. Cost’s are not down for the average seller, but up. This is not a ‘good news’ article that E-Bay is telling us. + add the paypal fees and it is getting expensive to list anything on E-Bay.
Well I like the buyer can only receive positive feedback, I’m sick and tired of receiving negative feedback as the buyer just because I left negative feedback to the seller because item was badly shipped or was DOA, or horrible communication, honestly the whole feedback system is just a joke, each party waits for the other party to leave feedback first to determine if they get negative just because.
Also they’ve now screwed up the reserve price fees, you no longer get the reserve fee back if your item sells, they take it no matter what… really a pain, guess they are forcing us to list as Buy It Now with Offers and just list higher then we would want.
Huh, I missed that part of the email. I guess having 100% positive feedback no longer matters, because everyone will have that.
That’s exactly what I was trying to convey in our article. Ebay tried to make it sound like they were lowering fees all around, but the only people who will benefit will be those who have a lot of items that never sell.
I was never a big fan of the reserve prices anyway. I think if people listing the items want a minimum amount of money they should just set that as the starting bid.
I sent this to ebay
How do you think this will help anyone. You lower the insertion fee a few cents and hike up the final value sell percentage which will make you more money from us. Don’t ever send messages like this to me saying your doing something good and really your just slapping me in the face.
I know I am sending this a little late, but I feel the same way about ebay & have also sent them an email about the fees. I also mentioned to ebay how I thought it was very tricky of them to promote everyone to offer FREE shipping. They don’t take a final value fee from this charge, how clever of ebay….but I caught on. I have found a new selling/buying site that I am giving a try. it is ebid.net
It’s just getting the word around that is making it so hard. I did sell one item as a BIN & only had it listed for 2 days.
I AM SICK of ebay!! They SUCK in my book!!
Amy
The numbers in the OP are wrong since the 8% rate only applies to items under $25. Of course, all the brackets did go up, so the basic idea of the OP is correct.
watch paypal do the same crap
Just got off the phone with eBay over the change I’ve seen in final value for $44 BIN items. Per the eBay rep on the phone I use to be charged 2.51% FV fee, now its 8.75% due to the new fee structure. But, I’m saving 15cents by not paying a listing fee, even if I’m paying $1 more on the final value. So really, I’m only paying an extra 85 cents. Basically a 2% increase is what I paying.