Free Listings

[jjinst]

I wrote to ebay a few years back, I said why don't u let people list for free and increase the Final  Value fee to compansate for the listing fee?

Well they must have been half listening because they increased the Final Value Fee but only offered 40 free listings per month!!

Of course the have the occassional promotion to list 1000 items ( like that would not take a month ) but are missiing the point!!

The more stuff forsale / Listings = Final Value Fees!! People do not wish to open Ebay Stores to get Psuedo free listings for a monthly payment to ebay. The same way people don't shop at costco because of the $60 a year fee!!

Mum & Dad type ebays just want unlimited free listings at your current Final Value Fee percentage which means win for them & win for ebay.

I spent 1hr on the phone to a consultant who was reading a script to me and could not assist in anyway, eventually she admitted that she was not empowered to assist the members, I asked her to pass my concerns to upper marketing management and said I would be advising the same in the survey they usaully send out after contact. Guess what ..... No survey sent!!

Ebay need to realise the small sellers are the foundation that supports this industry and the original reason ebay was created.

Its simple remove listing fees and everyone hopefully makes money!! The infrastructure is inplace and it is not costing anyone anything, more listings = more advertising revenue etc etc .

How Hard can it be??????????????

Would love to hear back from someone at ebay who can actually understand supply & demand economics.

                                                 LETS MAKE E-BAY GREAT AGAIN!!

[kopenhagen5]

Admire your postive attitude but there is more to it than economics.

Unlimited free listings means sellers will begin to flood with same or similar listings. Especially Chinese sellers.

There are usually reasons for limits just like the reason we have money otherwise some will take more than they need.

When it costs a seller, quality remains a little higher.

[ozstamp]

Case in point; Gumtree.

Free unlimited listings.

Filled with that much carp and unrealistic prices you can barely find anything worth buying.

In my collectables hobby, there's another site (won't mention the name lest I break a rule), which decided to differenciate itself by having unlimited listings.

It wasn't long and the ocean of identical 5c and 20c items made it impossible to find anything.

So now, they charge a final value fee plus a flagfall price on every item, in an effort to drain the swamp, as per popular modern parlance.

[chameleon54]

Unlimited free listings would destroy ebay. The place would be full of rubbish that no-one wants going round and round for years on end. Buyers would not be able to find things amongst the junk and sellers of quality items would see their listings lost in a see of valueless carp. 

When sellers have to pay for listings or only get limited free listings they make sure the items they list have some value and some chance of being sold.

It also costs money to service all of the listings both from a technological and human resources point of view. Who pays to keep all of those valueless listings running round and round ? The sellers of quality items that are worth something and actually sell of course.

[miomoda]

Well you will just love this!! Received an email from eBay this morning re new pricing/fee structure (all with added benifits for the seller) so tell me if I am dumb and can't find the "benefits"

1/ increase in monthly fee to have an ebay store

2/ increase in final value fees

3/ the real winner!! increasing listing fee at auction from $1.50 to $3.00 YUP 100%

Yet collectables pay absolutely no listing/insertion fee - are we now paying double to cover that shortfall??? why don't collectables pay a fee and reduce other categories (clothing / shoes / makeup....etc!!!)

[davewil1964]

4. 200% increase in included listings, which more than offsets the additional store costs.

5. Why have a store if you are going to run auctions? It seems somewhat self-defeating.

Collectables haven't had an insertion fee within a store for a very long time, so this is not a new initiative. They are obviously trying to discourage stores from running auctions, unless it is for collectables. One of the few categories where an auction is reasonable. Most items are easy to find a value for, so why not BIN them. Unless they are OOAK, in which case they are probably collectable.