Introducing Revised Fee Structure for Mobiles and Accessories category

[sapana@ebay.com]

Dear Members

To help improve the user experience of our buyers and sellers in Mobiles and Accessories Category, we are introducing a new pricing structure for this category.

Listings in Mobiles & Accessories Category will be subject to tiered Listing Fees and revised Final Value Fees. The changes are applicable starting 11:59 PM IST on the 3rd of December 2006. This revised pricing structure is only applicable to the Mobiles and Accessories Category and aims at improving the overall health of the category.

What is the New Fees Structure in the Mobiles and Accessories Category?

Click Here to see the New fee structure.

• All listings in the Mobiles & Accessories Category for all formats (i.e. BIN, SIF, Chinese & Dutch Auctions), live from 11:59 PM on 3rd December 2006, will be subject to the new pricing structure

• Listing Fees in the Mobiles and Accessories Category will be charged on the start price or BIN price of the listing. For example, an item listed in auction with a start price less than or equal to Rs.2,500 will be charged listing fees of Rs.3/- even if the final price of the product (auction ended price) is >Rs.2,500 (Please click here to see examples)

• Final Value Fees will be charged on the End Price and is applicable to all successfully sold “Mobiles and Accessories” items (Please click here to see example)

• The Listing fee will be credited if your item does not sell successfully (including Unpaid Item) for the first time, but is successfully sold in the 1st relist instance. (Please click here to see eligibility criteria for credit)

• No Gallery Fees will be charged for listings in the Mobiles and Accessories Category. Please note that sellers will need to select Gallery while creating the listing to avail the feature

• All other feature fees, such as home page featured, highlight, secondary category fees etc will remain unchanged

Which sellers will be impacted?

• All sellers listing in the Mobile and Accessories Category on eBay India

• Sellers who have listed more than 20 listings (>20 listings) in any eBay category, since their time of registration on eBay, will be charged Listing Fees on ALL future listings made by them in the Mobiles and Accessories Category (ONLY)

• Sellers who have listed 20 or fewer listings (<=20 listings) in any eBay category will not be charged the new Listing Fees in the Mobiles and Accessories category

• All sellers listing in the Mobile and Accessories Category are subject to the reduced Final Value Fees structure

How does it Impact a seller in Mobiles and Accessories category?

We understand that our sellers in the Mobiles and Accessories category will need to make changes to their current business plan to accommodate the above mentioned changes.
To understand the impact of the above changes on your business, we will encourage you to check the Managing Your eBay Business Strategy. It can help you arrive at important metrics that will help you determine your new listing strategy.

We also encourage you to use our Customer Support Resources to understand how this change will impact your business and discuss your options for adjusting your eBay selling strategy.

To learn more about these changes, read our FAQ section.
For sellers listing in all other categories, thecurrent pricing structure remains unchanged. All eBay policies like multiple listing, mis-categorisation etc remain unchanged.

Your suggestions & comments are valuable to us and we encourage you to share your feedback with us.

Best Regards

eBay International AG

[sreelakshmitraders]

I welcome this decision!

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi indconcepts,

On your question on why there is no listing fee for other category:

One of the most important factors that we considered before rolling out listing fee in Mobiles and Accessories category was, if the category is ready for a listing fee.
Mobile & Accessories Category has strong buyer and seller interest. We feel listing fee at this point of time will further help to boost category vibrancy, buyer find-ability and therefore improve overall seller business in this category.

On your question on the amount for listing fee - The revised eBay fee has been arrived at after studying the impact of any change on a variety of sellers and will benefit the sellers selling margin constrained product lines such as Mobile phones.

On your fear that the fee structure might become complicated for a new user, I appreciate your input. We will keep this in mind and will work on making our communication simpler.

Regards,
Sapana

[coolbrasco]

To fellow sellers who complain about listing fees under Mobile category, i would like to share my experience. When Gallery fees was introduced every one complined same and later we found it is good for geniune sellers for sure. In Lingarie category before one seller listed same Bra about 400 listings with gallery pictures and all 10 pages he was occupied, mine was like a small fish compare to him with proper listing, as others said he used multiple IDS to flood his listing and really annoying experience for buyers as well. He cannot do that anymore becuase of the fees, sellers like me getting more chance to sell now. The new listing fees will definitely help to identify the good sellers, good products, will be user friendly for buyers as well. Automatically the sales will increase for right person. Please wait and see.

All of you have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year !!!.

Thanks and regards,
CoolBrasCo.

[hi_techpower]

😉 It is nice move by ebay to control the junk listing specially when a blue tooth dongle or a nokia charger or a data cable complatible for many models are listed with each model name 5 times. But the Rs 3 is on too higher side it should not be more than .50 as with Rs 3 fees geniun sellers will also avoid listing in this category.
?:|B-)

[juspreet]

I would say it is a very poor decision.
Before imposing any kind of fees ebay should work to reduce fake buyers. Every week at least half of the buyers don't pay.
Figure this: You list an item in this category. A fake buyer buys it and doesn't pay, you loose your Rs. 3 every time this happens. and I am sure all sellers in this category will end up paying Rs. 300- 500 extra to ebay for these unsold items. Ultimately sellers will increase the price to absorb such fees and in turn rather than increasing buyer satisfaction, it will become nightmare for them.

Fees charged on successful listings is ok but listing fees will definitely push sellers to find other avenues of selling online.

Overall not happy with this decision.

[assemblerz]

It is good move for genuine sellers.

I would also like to point out that these days there is a category which offers ebooks seems to be fishy. Items are bought at low cost with free shipping or low shipping with something called resale rights and using this feedback scores are accelarated. Here genuine sellers who sell item worth Rs. 10000 is given one point (that too after many reminders to buyers) and the seller who sells goods worth 4 Rupees gets instant 1 point as the buyer also is equally interested in feedback point rather than the product. Feedback team should take this seriously. I am not targeting any particular seller or buyer but if ebay wants to show the real genuine seller using feedback system they need to take this note a bit seriously.

[snrama]

Hi ,

I totally agree with hi_techpower.

Example:

I have an product "Sony Ericsson DCU-11 USB Data Cable". In this listing you can see that I have added the compatible phones like Sony Ericsson J300i, K500i, K700i, P910i.

I was getting good orders for this product for about 3-4 months. Suddenly the orders were reduced over 80%. My product pricing was reasonable. I checked the category and saw listings from other sellers with title as below:

Sony Ericsson DCU-11 Data Cable for J300i (5 Listings)
Sony Ericsson DCU-11 Data Cable for K500i (5 Listings)
Sony Ericsson DCU-11 Data Cable for K700i (5 Listings)
Sony Ericsson DCU-11 Data Cable for P910i (5 Listings)

So it became 20 listings from a seller and his product gets more visible than mine. There are more sellers (with multiple ids too) like this increase the listings and prompt sellers gets ignored from buyers.

So this new fee rule will make such listings down. Sellers will stop 20 listings as it becomes 20 (listings) * 3 (fee) * 4 (weeks) = Rs.240

If they create 5 listings, then it will be Rs.60/-.

eBay should atleast reduce the listing fee after few weeks once this kind of multiple listings comes down.

I am only sad that eBay is charging this new fee to store listings also. ---------------
With Regards,
Navaneeth (snrama) 😉

[sapana@ebay.com]

Hi snrama,

Thanks for understanding and supporting this decision!

To your point on shop listings, following is my take:

Few months ago, shop listings were closely interated with the main site.This helped the shops in getting increased exposure in the main site. If shop listings are not charged, the intention of creating a healthy category might get diluted.

However, I do agree with your point that some inventory is slow moving and seller can move the slow moving inventory to the shop. In a shop a seller pays the listing fee for 30 days unlike 7 7 days for a normal listing. This will ensure lower listing fee for a slow moving product.

Also, as mentioned earlier, shop listings have advantages like:
--getting indexed in Search Engines for natural search
--email marketing
--Opportunity to create one’s own branding

I hope this helps in giving a perspective on why store listings should be charged. If you have further clarifications, please feel free to post here.

Regards,
Sapana

[snrama]

Hi Sapana,

Yes, If you need some advantages, you need to sacrifice other. As I talked with you on phone a few days back, my opinion is this change will surely make success for genuine sellers.

I am even planning to add new products like dairies as new year is getting nearer. ---------------
With Regards,
Navaneeth (snrama) 😉