Sorry to say that the folks blaming other sellers for this increase in fees (under the fake "We're reducing your final value fee" headline) don't understand corporate speak. Corporate speak with the art of saying something horrible in a way that makes it sound like it's wonderful..."We'll be reducing our dependence on funding our overhead by increasing your present ability to permanently defer your salary and benefits until such time as you are gainfully re-employed by other joyful employer"...which means you're fired!
Ebay's laughable corporate-speak message about increasing our fees by charging fees on shipping is classic; a real gem heading for the corporate-speak hall of fame. It will reside right next to their other classic "We're going to help the buyers by promoting free shipping", which was their first attempt to grab a percentage of the shipping costs.
This has nothing to do with "greedy sellers", that's just their cover for their own greed. Sounds like the old schoolyard trick of calling someone else a name that pertains to you, before anyone calls you that name. By blaming it on greedy sellers, they deflect attention from their own greed of charging us more for shipping, which will only increase the shipping costs they claim to be trying to keep down. This double-speak is the normal in corporate life, so for all you naive folks who don't get it, I'll explain it real simple:
Ebay is a public company. They must make more money this quarter than they made last quarter or they will die (meaning everyone will sell their stock. This isn't really true, but they believe it to be true, so that's all that counts). Their bonuses are based on it and, in fact, their job depends on it. So everytime they make an annoucement having anything to do with fees, you can bet the fees are going up for the sellers! They have to!!!! Ebay has already pissed off enough sellers and buyers that there really aren't any new people out there for ebay to trick into opening a store on ebay or buying something. Everyone already has tried it and most have already left ebay due to their constantly increasing greed (fees keep going up, so prices keep going up...there are almost no bargins left on ebay and the selection has incredibly deminished). So if you can't get new buyers and sellers, you have to charge the existing ones more in order to increase your revenues enough to make Wall St happy and to get their bonuses/stock options. It will never get better, it can only get worse. They will always have to charge more and more to sell something on ebay and they can raise the fees again anytime they want (and they certain take advantage of that fact). So if you thought you were going to make money on ebay, wake up. The only one making any real money is ebay, while we do all the work, take all the risk and make almost nothing.
I guess I'll just have to keep pulling my items from ebay and putting them on Craigslist. Of over 300 items I used to carry in my ebay store, I can only now sell about 10 items cause I'll lose money on all the rest due to their insane 700% increase in monthly fees for a stores that they implimented the last time they had a wonderful new announcement.
Ebay had a good thing going, but apparently nobody at ebay ever took an accounting class, cause if they had they would know that a retailer can't keep increasing their cost of selling products without increasing their prices. They would also know that retailers can't survive at the rent-to-sales ratio that ebay charges, unless they raise their prices or charge more for shipping.
So don't believe the corporate-speak coming from ebay, this isn't a good thing for anyone but ebay.
