mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@kathieskorner wrote:And with the financial reports even with that in consideration active Ebay buyers grew by 2% to 183 million.
That is a meningless number since an active buyer by eBay's standards is one purchase in the past 12 months. Besides it is the international marketplace that is still growing not the US. From the posts on this board - most of the long time sellers now struggling are here in the USA.
Yes, you can find fault in most anything if you look hard enough.
@bargainbigly wrote:
@mam98031 wrote:
@4everctr wrote:Ebay wants to increase their margin expansion or in other words raise fees on listings. Too bad for you, Ebay. I will not use promoted listings.
While the financial reports are not what any of us wants to see, I get that. It is disappointing at best, Ebay has not raised fees in a long time. So that just isn't an issue at this point.
IMHO I'm surprised the 4Q didn't look worse than it did. With the significant programming issues caused by Ebay updating Structured Data just as we entered the Holiday Season. It set of a firestorm of issues for many sellers and it took Ebay well over a month to work out of.
eBay did not raise direct fees. They raised fees indirectly however:
- Service metrics - indiscriminately applied to unlucky sellers who receive more return abuse than their peers. Penalty for being unlucky (or selling clothing or electronics) 55% increase in seller fees.
- Sponsored Listings - If you don't use them you will get absolutely zero traffic. Average trending rate we see around 7%. This obviously varies by category.
- Shipping price increases - Not eBay's fault, but it kinda is because they have a ridiculous contract and they don't pass on any savings to sellers. If you ship 50,000 priority packages in a year (contract) the discount is around 50%. We heard Amazon's UPS contract is 83% off retail. That gives you and idea of just how much eBay makes selling labels. 7% average across the board so far? How much discount is shared with sellers? Nothing.
- Damaged reputation - Make no mistake. Once a company gets a reputation as a "melting ice cube" there's no recovering. Ask Sears & Roebuck.
My understanding of the earnings call was this: We can't turn this thing around, so let's all just profit as much as we can while the ship sinks slowly over the next 5 - 10 years.
Time to move on, nothing to see here....
Then those posters that keep saying Ebay has raised fees need to stop saying that because it simply is NOT true.
Service Metrics affects a small percentage of sellers. I don't like the program at all and I've been very vocal about that. But penalty fee does not affect most sellers. And this is NOT a new policy. It is 2 years old.
Sponsored listings / Promoted listings is NOT a fee increase. It is something a seller can decide to do or not. It is OPTIONAL and the seller sets how much they are willing to pay for the use of this tool.
Because our vendor's raise pricing on us whether it is for shipping or the products we sell, we have to increase our pricing to cover the additional costs. Yes, our FVFs to Ebay do increase, but it is NOT because Ebay has increased a fee, it is because we have to cover our costs as sellers and increase our pricing. Now if this is something you don't like, it is completely your decision. You don't have to raise your pricing. You can leave it as it stands and take the additional costs from your profits currently set up in your pricing structure for the product. A decision for each seller to make.
@academy2 wrote:I think part of the reason sales are down is because buyers in most states had to pay sales tax on ebay starting last year. I've cut down my buying.
You are aware @academy2 that Ebay is NOT the only site that now has to charge sales tax, right? Going other like marketplaces will have the same issue for the buyer because of the laws THEIR STATE passed.
