@amricons wrote:
Sorry, our apologies, the package used as an example was 29 pounds 10 ozs and measured 18X 16 X 12. Vendor paid $19.90 for 2 -day Priority registered mail zone 8. The point being made was any break in shipping, which can be obtained by eBay and passed to sellers will ultimately help sales efforts in a very competitive market. The marketplace is headed towards 1 or 2 day shipping if not free shipping with 1 to 2 day shipping. In our market there ius even a delivery by noon if ordered by a hourly deadline. Just seems one benefit of community is to obtain advantages which can be used by community members due to membership. There are many examples, like credit unions, HMO's etc . Free shipping and quicker shipping does help in getting sales. To make a start to get sales going again , this is a good step. This and many other steps which eBay needs to look at as it is one of the few sites that is showing a minus grow rate in sales.
For those that are happy with their present situation great. If you can lessen your shipping costs then by all means pass the saving to your buyers. Our comments are for the market in general as it's realities have caused a perfect storm and dropped sales for almost all sellers. Competition has backed smaller eBay sellers into a no win situation on shipping. Costs will continue to rise for supplies, actual costs and labor. Many sellers do not even get paid for the task and forced to continue finding short cuts. Looking for solutions is not a crime as eBay has had declining metrics for awhile. The key failing metric is GMV which has been in decline for a time. The key priority for eBay is to grow GMV.
They are not doing anything about that metric. Two key eBay steps would help, stop paying dividends and stop company stock buyback. Both are reflections of corp failure in policy. The promotions program has run afoul of search engines but that is a topic for another time (search) . We all have a big challenge in this marketplace and while we cannot fix most we can begin to look at making steps towards getting out of the ditch we are in and get back to better times. We need to get eBay to see the benefit to supporting and helping sellers as that may stem the tide of falling fortunes.
@amricons
I like you observations and opinions on this subject so I'll chime in with a few comments.
I asked this in the weekly chat today:
What is eBay doing to help smaller sellers that do no qualify for shipping discounts with FedEx or UPS? Is see your competition is building its own fleet for delivery and often thus able to do 1 or 2 day delivery. How can eBay remain viable in the long run with ever increasing shipping costs for sellers as the small guys get priced out of the market?
And THIS is the response I got!
we work to negotiate discounted rates for our sellers and pass these discounts on to any seller who prints labels on eBay. We will continue to strive towards supporting our sellers and giving them an opportunity to compete on an equal playing field, and also work towards improving the shipping options and tools available to our Community to remain competitive in an ever changing market.
As far as what eBay IS doing to increase sales is creating a program called Managed Delivery - which increases Drop Shipping! So like eBay helped Chinese sellers set up warehouses in the USA, looks like eBay is working hard to support drop shippers!
As far as the dividend goes, that came about when Elliott Management took over eBay earlier this year. Their 1%-2% position in the company was enough to get seats on the BOD and drive the agenda of the company. First order of business was dumping Wenig. Elliott is working hard to sell off the Classifieds business and StubHub,leaving just the Market Place.
Also, eBay looks at Promoted Listings (PL) as low hanging fruit. Get sellers to pay additional advertising fees above and beyond the 'advertising fees' (listing fees) sellers already face. Projections are for $1 Billion in revenues from PL, so as GMV declines, it can be made up with PL income.
Also, the reason for a HUGE push into Managed Payments is that eBay sees the potential for $1 Billion of revenues from that program. Why do the hard changes when you can skim pennies off or every transaction just like CC payment processor do!?
The days of small sellers is likely numbered here. I suspect 80% of the CS complaints and actions relate to 20% of the sellers, those small sellers that do not "get" returns and fight them. So if attrition of policies can eliminate these, then lower costs for CS issues going forward!
