posted on July 21, 2006 05:44:21 AM
I came home yesterday to a message on my machine from eBay. They said they just wanted to call and make sure I knew about the announcement of the new pricing structure, and that they were trying to contact all the sellers that would be significantly impacted. They left a number for me to call if they could be of any help.
Well... I called them all right!! I spent about 45 minutes on the phone venting to one of their CS reps. To give her credit, she was an excellent listener (she really was listening, and seemed concerned), but I'm sure my call did no good. There were two highlights to the conversation. The first was when she pulled up my account and said "oh... you really will see a significant increase" NO KIDDING!!! The second was when she said "well, you might want to think about just raising your s/h fees a dollar or two to cover the extra costs". That was when I went on about a 10 minute rant about how they've told us not to charge excessive s/h fees and haven't told us how they determine what is excessive! Anyhow... the entire conversation was depressing. She even outright told me to take my store items elsewhere..., of course, she suggested eBay's own ProStores where she said I could just like an eBay store for $6.95 a month. Yeah... well... that $6.95 covers just TEN items in your store... if you want to sell more, you need to bump up to $29.95 a month... AND it doesn't give you nearly as much as other sites give you for the same cost. NO THANKS!
My final business decision is this. I sell two product lines. One, I have been selling almost exlusively as fixed-price listings. Since nothing's really changed for them, I'll continue selling those items on eBay (for now). The second product line, I always listed new products as auctions, and then dumped the ones that didn't sell first time around into my eBay store. I will remove that product line completely from eBay (with possibily an occassional clearance lot). I will create my own website for this line, and will direct traffic there through communications with my eBay'ers from the first product line (there is some overlap), my About Me page, and through additional marketing provided by my website provider (things like Google ad words). My total costs should drop by at least 1/2, and yet I doubt my total profits will drop by even an 1/8.
I'll see how that works... and eBay has lost any loyalty that I might have felt toward them after 10 years. I will not recommend eBay to anyone looking to sell items, I will not buy as much, I will not sell as much, and I will always be on the lookout for someplace better that wants my business.
posted on July 21, 2006 06:04:37 AM
"I'll see how that works... and eBay has lost any loyalty that I might have felt toward them after 10 years. I will not recommend eBay to anyone looking to sell items, I will not buy as much, I will not sell as much, and I will always be on the lookout for someplace better that wants my business."
WELL PUT AND DITTO!!! Ebay has no loyalty to their "community" or real understanding of how all their screwing around affects all of us who DO live where the rubber meets the road. I suspect this may be the straw that breaks alot of Camels backs ... for "the community"
posted on July 21, 2006 06:41:12 AM
They called me at 8:30 this morning. I get calls routinely.
She did briefly mention the price increase. I have a store but sometimes do not have anything in it.
The subject matter for the contact was not on the "store".
The topic was focusing on the Las Vegas Resource Show- purchasing goods to resale.
I have no interest in it. I think I have more inventory than I need .
posted on July 21, 2006 08:19:49 AM
Anyone from ebay calling us is not going to be in any position to change policy. I understand ebay's logic in this, they want to go back to more auctions where they make more money. It costs 12-30 times less to have a store listing that lasts 4 times as long, and apparently takes 14 times as long to sell the item. Those are scary statistics from a company that makes a lot of their money from the number of items relisted.
That being said, I think it is a move that will hurt them in the long run. My business will be impacted a lot unless I change what I do. In the short term, I will reduce my inventory from about 5500 items to about 4000 items. In the long run, this will motivate me to finally move a larger chunk of my business off ebay. I've done a good job this past year, going from 95% to only 40% on ebay. I can't imagine not doing any business on ebay, but my ebay business in a year from now will exist ONLY to draw customers away from ebay. I think we'll see a lot of this. In the short term it might increase auction counts, but I think not only will a decent amount of sellers explore other viable options, they may take some of the buyers with them. I've been on ebay almost 10 years now, I've got a pretty good base of repeat customers, and I believe many of them will buy from me whether from ebay or my own brand name that I plan on developing further.
posted on July 21, 2006 10:22:37 AM
I was 2 hours into opening my Ebay store with 91 items listed when I recieved my email from Bill ,and I closed the store right away.
I will be very honest here,why am I opening an Ebay store?
To park my slow moving inventory !
posted on July 21, 2006 02:21:04 PM
I plan on still opening an Ebay store because i've got customers wanting to consign items with me and some of these items they have I know won't sell too quickly in a regular auction venue. One thing I sure am glad that I haven't done with them yet is to discuss the split. I had thought about doing a 70% 30% split but now with the increase in fees I think I should do a 60% 40% split.
Another thing that I have done is that I have increased my s/h fees across the board by about 75 cents to a dollar, depending on what it is and how much it is to pack and ship and I revised my TOS to say that I will combine shipping by charging full price s/h for the first item and half the s/h for succesive items, combined in the same package. Some items, I won't combine in shipping if they are really heavy or expensive.
As far as their new policy of cracking down on excessive s/h fees, I figure it this way. That what may happen is that I may get a warning at first about excessive s/h but I won't be thrown off or naru'd. So then i'll drop my s/h back a bit and see what happens. But all of that is if they even take notice of my s/h in the first place or if anyone turns me in, which I doubt anyone will but I could be wrong.
I say push the envelope with shipping and handling and see what happens.
posted on July 21, 2006 02:23:48 PM
Hi, You guys need to start your own web site like I did a year ago and put in your e bay all your contacts and your policy pay with credit only from your site track packages from the site and returns redirect all these questions to your web site and DISCOURAGE CUSTOMERS FROM BUYING ON E BAY LIKE WHAT I DO IS I CHARGE 15% RESTOCKING fee on e bay purchases and 0% restocking fee from my site I also offer free shipping on my web site and I charge shipping $5.95 shipping e bay items on e bay SO MY CUSTOMERS they get point that my site cost me shipper to sell on it and I pass on the savings to theme YOU NEED TO TELL YOUR CUSTOMERS THAT YOUR PRICES ARE LISTED AT HIGHER PRICE BECAUSE OF THE FEES ,I ALWAYS TELL THEME THAT.
After all e bay called me and asked me not to close my store since WATCHES is very big think on e bay and I have 2 huge accounts , for the past 2 months 80% of my business came from other sites NOT E BAY I DON'T CARE ABOUT E BAY ANYMORE.
