mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@sakic92710 wrote:There is no such thing as free shipping. Buyers are still paying for it. Don't want to pay more fees than others? Add a shipping cost instead of trying to hide it in the price. 🙂
OMG are you really suggesting that I don't know what the term Free shipping means or how it is applied?!?!?!
It is a Marketing program created many years ago, long before Ebay allowed it to be offered on this site, by the Marketing team of Target. Ebay didn't create this program nor did they define it. It is a marketing tool that many sites use, not just Ebay or sites like Ebay.
There have been much research on this subject over the years. For a time buyers preferred these free shipping listings. They liked that it was just one price that covered both the product and shipping. As time marches on, less and less buyers find it a must to have free shipping. This is true of so many things in life and in selling on the internet. As time moves on things Change to include what buyers like and dislike.
If you need further explanation of this marketing program, just ask. I'm happy to discuss it with you.
@ckimodog wrote:Because too many people were selling their items at .99 cents and charging $24.99 for shipping or what ever price. They were trying not just to avoid fees, but circumvent how eBay is actually supposed to work when there is a sale involved.
Happy Selling
I know that is an excuse Ebay used when they made the change and certainly that was part of it. There was a time when they actually had a department that would look at sellers doing this and sanction them. They absorbed that department into other departments and stop doing this many months before they started the FVF on shipping.
The main reason Ebay did it was two fold. One it was standard in the industry. And Two [a huge reason] sellers offering Free Shipping were paying more FVFs because they were rolling the price of shipping into their product price. Those sellers that had separately stated shipping were paying less in FVFs than those with Free shipping. Kind of hard for Ebay to continue to push Free Shipping unless they changed the fee structure.
@sakic92710 wrote:It's not the same thing. If buyers want something & willing to pay for it at the price that is offered to them, they act on their own free will to make the purchase. They pay for what they are getting. Sellers are having to give a portion of the shipping funds to eBay & not getting any service, etc. in return. People pay out for getting something in return. What do you get from eBay for giving them a % of the S/H funds? Name 1 other thing where you pay & get nothing in return.
I think you are twisting this up to meet your opinion of Free Shipping, not the actual way it works.
OH, I wasn't aware that Processing the payment was not a service they should be paid for. I guess only when PP was our money processor did PP deserve to be paid for that service. But now that Ebay does it they are not entitled to be paid for the service.
AS for the balance of the fees we pay Ebay on shipping, I've tried to explain this, but you don't consider what I've told you to have any value.
The ability to use this site to sell your stuff and the ability to be seen by so many is a Service. As are all the tools the site gives us to sell our stuff. I'm aware there are some that believe they are entitled to less fees because they don't see the value in the services or even know the services Ebay renders.
@doc-holmes wrote:If they stopped charging a fee on the total amount collected they would bring in less revenue. Their shareholders would be very upset and eBay would be forced to make up this difference elsewhere. Absolutely no for profit company, especially one that is publicly traded, will voluntarily make less money. That's just not how it works.
Can you name another Money Processor that doesn't apply their fees to the total amount received from the buyer?
@jice65 wrote:Ignoring the FVF charges, is eBay making money or losing money when they sell you shipping? I assume they must be making money on that (since it is the same price as stand alone shipping services such as Ship Station ... those companies must be turning a profit or why be in business?).
Some of the USPS pricing is the same for everyone that sells online shipping because USPS doesn't allow any negotiations on those rates. That is why you will see all internet sites that sell shipping to be the same for USPS GA and Media mail. Likely the two most used classes of mail.
It isn't some deep dark reason. USPS simply doesn't allow anyone to negotiate those rates. So all the sites have them at Comm Plus rates. Etsy, Amazon, stamps.com, Pirateship, etc.
And YES all these companies that sell USPS, UPS, Fedex, etc shipping labels make money on offering the service. And they should.
