Autumn 2014 Seller Release

[pixie-six]

"Twice a year we bundle together a number of site, functionality and fee updates aimed at helping you deliver an enhanced shopping experience for your customers. The initiatives announced today encourage sellers to adopt the behaviours we know buyers increasingly prefer - boosting the chances of a successful sale or sustained business growth. Read more at Welcome to the Autumn 2014 Seller Release."

[gec2002]

Little to do with "helping you deliver an enhanced shopping experience" and everything to do with

MORE FEES FOR EBAY

[digital*ghost]

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@nprizeman wrote:

"Twice a year we bundle together a number of site, functionality and fee updates aimed at helping you deliver an enhanced expensive shopping experience for your customers"

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Fixed.

Luckily for me, my postage is generally quite low and the extra free listings will probably compensate well enough for the increase in FVF, at least while my listings are at the quantity they are now, but while I always felt that FVF on postage was inevitable here, there are many sellers this is going to hurt, and unfairly IMHO. Thanks to all the sellers who continually overcharged on P&H to avoid fees for making this change justifiable. 😞

[misterforgetfulsbooks]

it will mean everyone will have the same set up - free post eventually so it will be easy to tell whose item costs more quicker. Anything that makes it easier to shop online is good imo

[*mobile63*]

"Thanks to all the sellers who continually overcharged on P&H to avoid fees for making this change justifiable"

Lets not forget a special mention and  thanks to all the members who helped sellers avoid fees  by continually  advising other members, especially new members, that it's the 'total' price that counts stating ' it's only ebay who misses out on fees' !

Now everyone suffers!

[digital*ghost]

I'm not switching to free post, for many of my items that move woud just be plain ridiculous. If I have to charge a little bit more, ok, but by continuing to charge P&H separately I can at least continue to reduce overall costs for buyers with combined P&H. Many of my buyers purchase 5+ items at once, and they would pay $10 in P&H if it was included in my price, as opposed to $2 under my current postage rules. Few will find the postage-included prices attractive enough to buy one item, let alone several. 

[extra-keen]

Digital, I'm not switching to free post either. The vast majority of my listings have postage added, just a few that are not often purchased in multiples have postage included in the price.

I rarely sell just one item, I would have to say that 70% of purchases from my ebay store are for more than 1 item - why should I cruel my customers by including the cost of postage in the product (which for some unknown reason ebay thinks is "free post"), - I'm sure my customers don't want to pay the postage twice when it is only necessary to pay it once.

[go-tazz]

Looks like a plain fee grab and another way of getting rid of low priced items with high postage.

Sell an item for $10 with $10 postage and you profit is down another 9.9%

So to retain their profit margin the seller has to raise the price of the item,(so not good news for buyers).

Already more than 60% of the listings on eBay.com.au offer free shipping

Most of which would be items from China which probably accounts for 59% of items on here,

In the Aussie marketplace you can't afford to sell with free postage as it eats into profit margins so it's just

blatant money grabbing to keep the shareholders happy and so that the CEO can get his bonus for increasing

the profit margin,(it doesn't matter how many members this will hurt as long as long as he gets his pay/bonus

back up),

There is no way that I'll ever offer free post as it's not free.

Looks like bulk sales might be the go,(only one postage cost that way).

Better then twenty individual items with postage on each.

Postage is not part of the price for any item so should not be included in any cash grab.

[book-of-hezekiah]

Was FVF on postage mentioned and quashed during the "PayPal Only" debacle of '08? I can't find any info on it so I might be dreaming that one up, or it was on the old boards that no longer exist?

This new fee grab grates against my fair-go bone 😞 We are resigned to PayPal fees because of the nature of that business despite it being owned by eBay (since 2002! How time flies!). How can eBay justify taking a fee for something that is almost literally none of its business and then won't hold up its end by actually enforcing those policies related to postage or estimate properly? 

The other part that annoys me is that eBay isn't being transparent or honest.  It just needs to come out and clearly state "We are changing our business model to be effective for high volume sellers. We understand this will adversely effect low-volume and casual users and we invite these members to use our sister site Gumtree blah blah... etc."

I loved someone elses comment... umm... I can't find it at the moment that went something like this "why didn't we get an email? Why do we have to read about this in the newspaper?"

[everard6920]

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@extra-keen wrote:

Digital, I'm not switching to free post either. The vast majority of my listings have postage added, just a few that are not often purchased in multiples have postage included in the price.

I rarely sell just one item, I would have to say that 70% of purchases from my ebay store are for more than 1 item - why should I cruel my customers by including the cost of postage in the product (which for some unknown reason ebay thinks is "free post"), - I'm sure my customers don't want to pay the postage twice when it is only necessary to pay it once.

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This is exactly why it isn't a good idea.

Buyers: you get to pay postage not once, but multiple times! Yay!