Pricing Changes on eBay India

[seemak@ebay.com]

Dear Community Members,

Together with you we have been pursuing the goal of growing the online shopping business in India. To do this we have been investing continuously, along with our seller-members, to achieve the common objective of buyer delight.

Changes in eBay Fees: Post discussions with our key sellers across categories and after understanding the commercial dynamics of the ‘supply-chain’ in various product categories, we have made changes to the eBay.in fee structure and these can be viewed on the announcement board.

We would be conducting an online workshop tomorrow from 4 to 5 PM on this thread & we encourage you attend this Workshop, or use our Customer Support Resources to help you understand the overall Fees changes.

Regards,
eBay Team

[seemak@ebay.com]

Dear Ez_shoppe,

We have thoroughly analysed the margin structures across categories and have increased FVF only in those categories where sellers would still be having sufficient margins after changes.

As eBay promises buyer traffic to the seller community, it is important that we stay invested to acquire and retain buyers.

We assure our seller community that the buyer traffic grows in line or above the market growth so that they get sufficient conversions and hence returns.
We would advise you to go through the transition phase and understand the benefits that will accrue to you.

Regards,
eBay Team

[seemak@ebay.com]

Dear Battleaxeworld,

The comment ‘sellers are left with sufficient margins’ is a typo error. What we mean to say is that we have analyzed we have thoroughly analyzed the margins before making the fee changes.

As far as leaving the option to the buyers to choose PaisaPay or not is concerned, PP has a value by buyers and sellers as it has certain value associated with it apart from just being a payment gateway and there are sufficient efforts are in place to educate buyers on a consistent basis. However, when it comes to making the payment, it is the buyer who chooses the final option.

Regards,
eBay team

[abs.rads]

Dear Ms. Seema,

Kindly do away with the canned responses as these are no good !! Repeating the same unwanted and unacceptable responses over and over can't justify this horrible step taken by eBay.

I would surely like to meet the so called "Key Sellers" who you have discussed this price hike with and who have agreed on this. Also, for the shipping price cap, I'd suggest you to come into real world and try using a courier service yourself (Try sending a regular envelope sized letter from one metro to another and Viola !! the courier charges anywhere from Rs. 25 to Rs. 45 as a bare minimum).. If eBay has discussed this cap with courier services, why can't eBay provide the sellers with certain seller codes which, when we approach the courier service with, would be treated as an eBay sale and hence the "Capped" prices would apply? I would be interested to know how many of the so called "Courier services" would agree to this and would come forward to offer these capped prices to the sellers...

[esnstore]

Hello,

We deal in Dietary Supplements, firstly there in NO category for us.

We have to forcefully list in Others in Health, Perfume, Personal Care category.

Please make a specific category for Dietary Supplements as listed in ebay.com

Also do note that in our field margins are very razor thin. You've seen 8 sellers already ran out of ebay by not paying ebay fees.

We're oldest member of dietary supplements over ebay.

Kindly look into it. Due to increased pricing over ebay and low pricing in market, people prefer local market now.

Regards,
ESNStore.

[accessorymart]

Seemaji,

Was just going through your responses and found that on every email, you have written "However, we suggest you plan your business on eBay accommodating the changes in fee." :^O

So, now it's only sellers responsibility to accommodate their business as per whatever you will change.

After this, if ebay increases the fees again in 6 months, again we have to plan our business according to ebay's changed policies??

Seems, we have become a puppet of ebay.. Here is the formula..

1) ebay changes policy (don't know who are the masterminds). Just for an example, I am a very small seller.. I have only approx 100 active items on ebay which don't get sold in 1st.. 2nd.. 3rd.. time. So, I need to relist them every time.

Now the issue is.. when I relist my items now, I get charged 100x1=100 Rs as insertion fee.. But from 16th June, I will be charged 100x2 = 200 Rs. each time. So, if the items don't get sold 3 times and I relist them 3 times, I will be charged 600 Rs. only for insertion fee for those items!! Do you understand what I mean, Seemaji??

This is in my case.. I know many sellers who relists 1000 and more Unsold items per week.. Think about it.

2) Some sellers like us who knows they will suffer because of this, come to this discussion board, write their needs heart out.

3) Someone from ebay replies with some Canned responses.

4) After some days, we forget all these and go as per what ebay wants us to do.

5) ebay is like this only.. They never thought about the sellers nor buyes.. Remember when they changed fees last time and when they changed policy about Seller can not leave negative and even neutral feedback?? We wrote in this discussion board for a month then for 7 days, ebay sellers went for strike.. The result?? Nothing changed... ebay stuck to their decision.

They only thinks about their profit... The reason is.. they knows it's a Monopoly and there is no other player in the market right now.

I just want to tell ebay that, time has been changed.. There are good online auctions are coming out in the market and if ebay going by this adamant nature in future, I can clearly see the drop in ebay business as well as sellers here. Just remember.. We are INDIAN, not American. Our mentality will never match to them (Good or bad).. So, do not try to put up their policies to us.

Regards,

A very frustrated ebay member
You may call Ex-ebay member in some days because I have got another good online auction site already whose policies, fees and support are far far far better than yours.. Thanks for your understanding and AWESOME support. ]:)

Lastly, I just want to say that, I have no personal grudges against anyone here from ebay . I know you guys are just employees here and can not do ANYTHING about it because you also know that ebay is NOT DOING GOOD WHATEVER THEY ARE DOING but you guys are also helpless because you are just following what your AKA is ordering you guys to do..

I am sure, you guys also talk about this in your office and you are also fade up seeing and writing the same thing again and again.

[seemak@ebay.com]

Dear accessorymart,

Every seller and buyer is a part of the market place of eBay and therefore any changes that happen to the overall market place will definitely have some implication for its individual members.

eBay has always striven to get increased business for its sellers through consistent efforts in buyer marketing in both online and offline campaigns, improved buyer experience through initiatives such as Best Match, Product Based Search Experience, and improved buyer confidence through measures such as eBay Guarantee*. Our sellers have widely benefited from these through increased traffic and increased sales.

Your association with eBay is definitely valuable to us. Yes, you will need to change your business strategy to accommodate these new changes and your account manager will soon get in touch with you to guide you through that.

Regards,
eBay Team

[linusstudios]

This may be a little out of the context but I have a doubt.

Can sellers provide a Breakup of the pricing on a product listing? For example-

Product T-shirt
Buy it Now price: Rs 200
Shipping Charges: Rs 50
eBay FVF Fees: Rs 14
eBay Listing Fees: Rs 2
eBay Paisapay Charges: Rs 10
Fixed eBay Featured and shop charges: Rs 4 per item.
Seller's Actual selling price: Rs 120

With this at least our buyers will at least expect quality accordingly. As above item illustrates, there is a considerate amount of difference between a 200 Rs T shirt and 120 Rs T-shirt.

As it is now obvious with increase in fees that sellers cant cushion the hike with their margins so buyers should also know how much they are actually paying for the product.

.

[abs.rads]

Product: 16 GB Pen Drive

Cost Price from National Distributor : Rs. 870 + 4.5% VAT i.e. 909.15 /-
BIN Price: Rs. 1065/- (Including Shipping - Price constraint due to razor sharp competition, so can't post item for more price)
Old Listing Fee: Rs. 1 + 10.3% = 1.103
Old FVF: Rs. 10.65 + 10.3% = 11.75
Old PPF: Rs. 42.6 + 10.3% = 46.99
Shipping Charges incurred: Rs. 75 /- (Average shipping cost Depending upon location.. varies between 45-90/- with insurance included)
Packaging & handling - Rs. 10/- (Bare minimum)
Total Expenses incurred: Rs. 909.15 + 1.103 + 11.75 + 46.99 + 75 + 10 = 1053.99 = 1054/-
BIN Price = 1065/-
Earning - Rs. 11/- (After taking huge headache of listing on eBay, handling courier people, following up with customer, waiting for upto 21 days for customer to confirm item receipt, tracking and dealing with transit losses, paying eBay invoices, paying higher VAT on sales as per the BIN price but actually getting much lower returns... Sounds Reasonable? Hehehehe... This must be a joke... Isn't it?

Even after procuring the item for almost Rs. 200/- less than the BIN price, the only margin saved is Rs. 11/- and rest Rs. 189 on eBay Fee and Taxes... ??? (Of course, not to mention the Listing fee paid for unsold items and also for items on auction which mostly go unpaid as buyers simply go scot free since they know that nothing can be ne against them except for a silly unpaid item strike whereas the sellers still end up paying at least the listing fee for such unpaid items after the hassles of filing an unpaid item dispute and hoping to win it after a lot of time lag.... )

This is the old picture... Now i'm sure you can very well think of the picture with the revised fee structure...

You need me to provide that calculation too?? I hope not !!!

Should I be smiling ??? ?:|X-(

Give me one good reason except for that stupid canned response !!!

[seemak@ebay.com]

Dear abs.rads,

There has been no increase in the Final Value Fees in the Memory category. The additional cost for PaisaPay fees that you will incur in the above mentioned item is Rs.6.

You may choose to add this cost to the item price (which will happen across the category, and therefore might not make the listing uncompetitive) or absorb it.

Regards,
eBay Team

[abs.rads]

Wow !!!

How quickly that computation was made...

Ms. Seema, while you mentioned FVF in your response, you probably didn't notice that I mentioned a razor thin margin of Rs. 11/-. Adding the "Rs. 6" additional PPF to the BIN cost would not make much of an impact on the margins. There is no point listing items and selling them for charity.

While sellers were already reeling with the high eBay & PP fee, this hike would lead them nowhere.. There may be bigger players who may still be able to play on this playground, but for small sellers, this is like a damp playground with the batting pitch completely taken out of sorts... NO PLAY POSSIBLE !!! MATCH ABANDONED !!