Important Price Changes

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Members

At eBay, it has been our constant endeavor to improve our buyer and seller experience. Some initiatives we have recently taken in this direction are a new Home Page layout, Feedback 2.0 and improving feedback adoption through promotions like Cricket Mania. The new Home Page layout helps us showcase interesting inventory like 1Paisa auctions, whereas Feedback 2.0 is a result of frequent community feedback to incorporate more details in the Feedback system.

Providing our users with better value is also a key focus area, and we have tried to address this through introducing new features like "Markdown Manager" using which sellers can run discounted promotions in their shops, thus helping sellers showcase their offerings better and helping buyers find good bargains.

To achieve our twin objectives of better value and improved user experience, we are introducing a new Fee Structure for all categories.

Key changes are:

• All listings created on eBay India will be subject to new Listing Fees, revised Final Value Fees, revised Feature Fees and Seller Tools Fees. These new fees shall be applicable to all listings in all formats (i.e. BIN, Shop Inventory format, and Auctions) created on or after 11:59 PM IST on 31st March 2007

• Listing fees shall apply to all listings by sellers who have listed more than 20 listings on eBay

• No Gallery Fees will be charged, however sellers will need to select Gallery while creating the listing to avail the feature

• Listing Fees will be credited if your item does not sell successfully (including Unpaid Item) for the first time, but is successfully sold in the 1st re-list instance

• Fees associated with Services & Real Estate and Cars & Bikes categories remain unchanged

We understand that our sellers may need to make changes to their current business plan to accommodate these new fee changes. So, we encourage you to check the Managing your eBay Business Strategy, download the Fee Calculator, attend our Online Workshop on 23rd March, or use our Customer Support Resources to help you understand your overall listing strategy.

To learn more about these Fee changes, read our FAQ section. Your suggestions & comments are valuable to us and we encourage you to share your feedback with us on this thread.

We are aware that, as a seller, you have a choice of outlets through which to sell your products. We appreciate that you choose to do business with eBay. We will continue to work hard to ensure that our sellers and buyers continue to have great eBay user experiences.

Regards,

Sapana

[shreelaptop]

Dear Jaspreet,

I am fully agree with whatever you said. Now as u said the costing will increase hence the final price. Clearly If one wants to make profit, the fake item is the only solution for him. Since ebay does not have any practically successfull policy to avoid fraud sellers, the chances are that the buyers will get following things in reward :
1. Cheaper low quality items with false commitment for a warranty.
2. The sellers will not give warranty to buyers for the clear reasons.
3. Ebay washes its hands for all liability after 90 days. hence nobody to care for buyers. The buyer will not buy second time through ebay. At least high priced items will show less sale.
4. new sellers will come and disappear soon.
5 Genuine sellers will try different ways to increase their sale for a few months. Every trial will benefit ebay as for every listing, ebay will earn irrespective of any sale.
6. "Use and throw" low quality items may give margins.
8 The sellers should think about selling the item that can work good till at least 90 days. Forget about giving one year or more warranty. Just commit but don't give policy will work.
9 Reduced listing will give more exposer to the item, hence chances of sale are higher for running item.
10 Seller's overall profit will be reduced. Ebay's profit - the main objective of the listing fee, will increase drastically.

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear shreelaptop,

I will respectfully disagree with your hypothesis. If this were the scenario that had to happen after listing fee, then it should have happened in the Mobiles and Accessories category also. It is a tech category, and cheap fakes are easily available. Instead the category saw a marked improvement in buyer findability and sales. Instead of genuine sellers going away from the category, listing fee discouraged casual sellers. This helped business of serious sellers who have a good domain knowledge.

Again, to reiterate, eBay will make profit only if our sellers make it. We are committed to the growth of our genuine sellers and will make all possible efforts towards the same.

Regards,
Sapana

[creative_pursuits]

Well….None of the ebay answers are really convincing as of now!!!!Only God Knows what the plight of genuine ebay sellers is gonna be after this financial year ends.I am just waiting to see what Surprises April brings in after this listing fee introduction and maybe try May as well and if things don’t look positive…I will have to end my ebay career.

But I think the ebay team still has the time to consider a few points:

1)Impose listing fees but why not a uniform fee for all items???why the distinction between a high value item and low value item??After all it is a single listing in question!!!

2)Regarding the Unpaid items, with the imposition of ebay listing fees to enhance buyer experience,they cud also introduce credit of Listing and promotional fees for unpaid items to enhance seller experience!!!!


I am sure atleast ebay can do this for their sellers rightaway instead of saying steps to reduce UPI are being taken.In any case , its only going to reduce UPI’s not root out UPI’S completely so why not give credit of the listing and promotional fees as well???why shud only sellers suffer on that account too??? why cant ebay take steps to penalise the buyers and if that is impossible why cant ebay take the responsibility of fake buyers and refund the listing fees to the genuine seller???


Time and again I have heard that ebay TnS is taking the right initiatives etc etc but the situation is the same….there are so many fake buyers who bid for fun….and their target is normally high value items and many others who just buy things and don’t even care to reply or pay for the items…just yesterday I had to cancel 5 fake Bids and already there are 5 unpaid items pending FVF.In a month atleast there are 15 such unpaid instances.I am sure many other sellers face this…its so much of a waste of our valuable time and efforts.

Ebay please think about ur sellers…Buyers are important but sellers are equally important.we both are two sides of the same coin and by ignoring one side ebay is definitely only being partial and selfish.Sorry if I sound rude but it is painful to see this treatment to sellers who work so hard…..i don’t have anymore words to express….

Best wishes
Mala

[kritaant]

As u all r including listing fees from april ,it is all right .Seeing one way 1-5 rs is not much ,it will increase our sale etc etc but one thing i would like to say that you all are being so strict day by day for the sllers and you are doing nothing for the buyers. They just bid on the items but never pay for it . we have to waist say around 15-20 days after one item right from listing it till UPI is not filed.
So pls show your concern towards the seller buy improving the buyer network or do be strict with the buyers also.
Because ultimately everything depends on the buyer , once the buyer pays for the item and we complete the transaction smoothly why will we be not paying to ebay,rather we would be happy to pay.

Cheers!
Vandana (Kritant's Team)

[skygiftworldwide]

Hi Sapana,

I have a question regarding the new Listing Fee. If I list an item with quantity 10 for the price of Rs. 100 each then do I have to pay the Listing Fee of Re 1.00 or Rs. 10.00?

Regards.
Mohib-uz-Zaman

[entertainmentstore]

Hi Mohib,

For multiple quantity listing, the listing fees is based on price * quantity. In your specific example, since the total price will come to Rs. 1000/- (100 * 10) the listing fees charged to you will be Re. 1/-.

- Raheel

[homesaaz]

Dear Sapna,
There is one sugesstion, that shop listings must be free to some limit according to subscription level of Shop.
Regards
Amit

[juspreet]

taking forward to what i said before.
figure this: I list 100 items on ebay and my success rate is 10% which means i pay Rs. 100 as listing fee and sold ten items which means on an average i am spending rs. 10 per successful listing, so we have to increase the price of our goods to cover these costs.
Second thing: We sellers are already paying ebay a fee for a shop plus we will now be paying a listing fee also even if we list it as a shop inventory item. isn't it double fee we'll be paying plus your shop inventory items are not shown on ebay search results. only if we manage to bring a person to our shop will he be able to see shop inventory items.

[juspreet]

Buyers will loose variety.
Most of the sellers like me will be cutting their listings drastically. We'll try to list only fast moving items and hence the competition in these will increase. Plus we'll pull down the listings of products which are not fast selling. Buyers will loose a lot of variety due to this. Buyer will only get to see and buy items which are fast selling. They may not be able to buy those things on ebay which are really good, rare but slow selling.
Is this buyer's gain or loss

[pc_gaming_store]

Announcement by eBay India:

"26 March, 2007 | 05:01 PM IST


After taking feedback from the community, we are increasing the number of allowed duplicate listings from 5 to 10, this increase flexibility for a seller to showcase the width of inventory.

eBay will enforce this policy from April 1st, 2007."

LOL!!! Feedback from what community? The whole community has been asking for reduction in duplicate listing that is why it came down from 10 to 5 earlier.

Another contrast...how can an increase in duplicate listing (which means the same item) increase flexibility of a seller to showcase width of inventory!!!

Another one...earlier in one of the justifications posted by eBay, eBay stated that listinf fee is being introduced to reduce the number of identical items. Man eBay can be such hypocrites!!!

Basically what this now means that big sellers with money power have been given more leverage to flood the site with duplicate listings which is going to crush the small sellers who can't afford to put too many duplicate listings.

Is it Service to sellers??? HAH!

Is it a better buying experience??? HAH!

Does it mean more money for eBay? Obviously YES!!!