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

[juspreet]

Hi,
I received a mail from ebay announcing implemention of new listing fees and change in existing fee.
My first reaction to this is that before implementing listing fee ebay should sort out the following problem.

Unpaid Items: Practically half of my time on ebay is spent on filing upi and closing existing disputes for reversal of fees. Once listing fee is introduced we sellers will loose money for items sold but remain unpaid.
Solution to this is: Paypal has a system of 'immediate payment option' for sellers where the buyer has to pay immediately for the purchase or the transaction does not get completed. This way we are saved from non paying buyers.

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi juspreet,

Thanks for your suggestion on immediate payment required feature. We have heard this in past, and the teams are already working on the same.

We are expecting the feature to roll out in second half of the year. We shall share more concrete timelines with our members once we are closer to the roll out date.

Warm Regards,
Sapana

[pc_gaming_store]

Hi Sapana,

Yes, I understand that the shop listing fee is Re. 1 for 30 days and that is 25 paise a week.

But you did not understand our point.

On eBay USA when you list a $24.99 item you are charged a $0.60 listing fee. But the same item when listed in Shop Inventory is charged $0.05 for 30 days.

So what we mean to say is the listing fee for an item is much much lower if he lists in shop inventory rather than normal listing.

So why then on eBay India are we having the same listig fee charge for both normal and shop inventory listings expecially when our business is much less compared to eBay USA?

[coindealer_in1]

Hi,
Finally ebay India has done it. Charging listing fee = Killing small and big sellers. I deal in coins , currency and stamps. This are not daily need item. For cloths , mobiles , watches it is ok, as each and every people wear cloths , wear watches and keeps mobiles. But mine it is Coins and collectibles which are lesuire items. People buy coins and stamps when they have excess funds or when they have some free time. Only those people buy coins and stamps who have interests in collecting them. The market for coins and currency is limited already. Already we were some how surviving and this decision will definetly close our gateway to ebay. we will have to sale all our present stock and say good bye to ebay. If there are 100,000 buyers on ebay then hardly we will find 20-30 coin buyers. I list 2000 items per week. So now it will incur me Rs.8000 minimum to just show the coins to the buyers, it is definetly not worth. I will be all in complete loss. I can just see a loss in this business after 1St April on ebay. So it will be better for me to close my business here sale all my stocks and buy one shop in my local and change my career completely.

Ebay has now decleared very clearly to the sellers that weather the sellers earn or not it does not matter but ebay should definetly earn more and more day by day. Weather the sellers business increases or not it does not matter but the ebay's revenue should increase in any case. This is nothing but simply blood bath for sellers who list in large quantity.

This decission will definetly end careers of thousands of sellers like me, but it will not affect ebay.
Ebay does what they like. This is the dominant nature of ebay.

Ebay tells that the business will increase after this move , they are absoloutly right , but of who's ? ebay or sellers , it is definetly ebay. If there is any loss it is of sellers but in any circumstances ebay will enjoy its profit.

Anyways it is with the sellers who have to decide to co-operate with ebay and be puppet in the hands of ebay and move as the ebay tells them. If ebay says stand then stand and if ebay tells sit then they must seat.

Thanks ebay for ending my career.

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi pc_gaming_store,

In your earlier post you mentioned the following as disadvantage of shop listing - no display in category pages and by the way they appear in search only if there are very few listings displayed when a person does a search

To clarify on the point, as you rightly said, on US site a shop listing gets limited exposure, and that too only when there are limited search results for the core site. In fact most most shop sellers in US themselves generate and drive traffic to their stores. However on India site, the exposure for a shop listing is greater compared to that of US site. On any search all listings on eBay India is displyed for the buyer - first core listings then followed by shop listings. Therefore, comparing US shop listings with India shop listings will not be fair.

Do let me know if you further point of view on the topic.

Regards,
Sapana

[juspreet]

Hi Sellers,
I have a point to make. eBay says that to increase the quality of buyer experience they are putting listing fee. As a seller if I keep on selling on eBay under new prices, I will definitely have to increase prices of my items to cover the listing fee. If I was selling an item for Rs. 100 before now I'll list it for Rs. 110 to cover listing fee charges. So a buyer who was earlier getting an item for Rs. 100 will have to shell out Rs. 110 now. How is this going to be a better buying experience for the buyer? Hard to understand.
This will surely wipe out a lot of new sellers also who are just trying to begin eBay career plus profits if any of old sellers will go to a different pocket now.

[cochinmall]

Hi Sapana.

Currently,the items advertised in the ebay platform consists of listings of the same items.That is, if suppose i search for a particular brand of item,there would be almost 50 listings for the same item!!! Now,that is going to be very difficult for a buyer to decide which item to buy and would obviuosly buy an item which is cheap.These cheap items could be duplicate items and the buyer would get to know about this only only after some time.

If there is a listing fee,these junk listings would go and the number of listings would reduce.But the price of the listing fee is not justified for sellers who sell so many items and in case, these items dont get sold,it is going to be a huge waste!!!

The increase in the listing fee is not going to reduce the no of upi's.How can u tell upi's are going to reduce when the buyers are newly registered buyers?? They are not exposed to the e-commerce world much and just bid on items to check out how the site works.They get unregistered and then register again to do the same thing again in another id!!!

I need a positive reply on how the upi's are going to reduce.There should be a reduction in the listing fee too.Like the promotion for mobile's,i list the memory cards for the phones for 1rs rather than 3 rs.

Regards
Rahul
cochinmall

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear coin_dealer,

The Coins & Stamps is a collectible oriented category and a unique advantage it has is that sellers have products which are hard to find. The collectors in this category are very passionate and for them the possession of a certain piece to complete their collection is paramount. Considering these factors, the category has a demand, where price is likely to be inelastic. This is a significant advantage which sellers might like to factor in their business plan.

The benefit of price inelasticity is also used by other hard to find products. One interesting example in this regards is Nokia N93i – one of the newest model in the Nokia stable currently. This model is not widely available. In short this is a hard to find model and for mobile enthusiasts, who would always want to own the latest mobile, this is a must have. The closest model to N93i is N90. In terms of feature, the key difference between these two models is the camera – N90 has a 2MP camera whereas N93i has a 3.15MP camera. However, currently N93i is listed at around $750 BIN in ebay.com whereas N90 is listed at $399 BIN. Sellers are using the hard to find nature of the Nokia N93i and pricing accordingly.

I hope this does give some directions. Please feel free to post your further concerns.

Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi jaspreet,

Taking the example you had quoted: for a product worth Rs 100, if you are increasing the cost by Rs 10, then it means that you are expecting to list a product 10 times before you sell the same. This basically means that it is a slow moving product and the buyer demand for the same is not high. If the buyer demand is not high, you may want to ask yourself if it is worth showing it to a buyer so many times. Rather, you may want to list it in your shop where listing it for 10 weeks will cost you around Rs 3.

The buying experience of the buyer should improve primarily for the following reasons:
Since listings will be fewer, it will be easier for buyer to find the best listings
For a serious seller, it will mean greater exposure of right products to the buyers and therefore either increased sale, or less effort.
For a casual seller who will be paying listing fee, will want his product to sell and will therefore offer the best rates and quality of listings. Since he will want to retain the customer to reduce the cost of acquiring new customers, he will service them better.

I hope the above gives greater clarity. Do feel free to post your further thoughts and comments.

Regards,
Sapana

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi cochinmall,

As you rightly said the listing fee will help in a better buyer experience because it will impact a variety of factors. However, to your question “will it also ensure that UPI rates are down?”

Honestly, I don’t have any direct data to prove that listing fee will help in reducing UPI. I believe UPI will be reduced because of various initiatives being taken by the team to improve the quality of buyers and sellers on the site. As I mentioned earlier, the Trust and Safety team is taking various measures to reduce UPI. We have already seen some decline in UPI, and hope to see improved results for the new initiatives.

However, a seller in Mobiles category told us two interesting reasons for reduced UPI after introduction of listing fee. First reason he told was, since he was paying for the listings, he was also calling up his buyers to ensure that they pay. Buyers, who would have otherwise not paid, clarify their doubts and complete the transaction. Secondly, before listing fee buyers were seeing too many products and used to bid on more than one product and finally buy the product that was available at the best price. However, after listing fee, since the quality of listings improved, it was easier for buyers to choose, decide and buy the product that they wanted thereby reducing UPI.

I think both the above thoughts hold merit and it might be worth the while for other sellers to emulate the same practice. The above factors coupled with the TnS initiatives to reduce UPI, we are hoping to see improved fulfilment rates for our sellers.

Regards,
Sapana