eBay charges a "Reserve Fee"??

This is one of the most outrageous and stupid things eBay has done. I was thinking about listing a coin on eBay and wanted a reserve in case my minimum price was not reached. Come to find out, they will charge a "Reserve Fee" of 2% for any reserve set above $150.00!! That fee will be charged regardless if your reserve is met or not. I called eBay customer of service regarding this. The customer service agent tried to tell me that it is a new feature to allow a seller to decide if they will sell an item or not. I had to tell hime that he is absolutely dead wrong. Reserves have been around at eBay since it's inception. They used to never charge that fee. He then replied that they were "offering" the reserve fee to try and get more people to list as an auction style listing. What an idiot, it's doing the opposite. It will only get more people to list a fixed price listing.

I'd go to Great Collections if I could use my own photos and not have to use their awful bland lack of detail images. I really like their options. Seller's fees of only 5% for coins selling for under $1000.00 and 0% for coins over $1000.00.

Am I the only one who thinks eBay is dooming themselves?

 

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Ebay has been getting greedy and self destructing (making sellers mad).

 

I think I heard a voice from the past say it is too big to fail, no matter how it fleeces the sheep. (I owned Lehman Brothers in 2008!).

 

Tell me if this strategy would get around the 2% fee -- list your item fixed price at the amount where you would have set the reserve. Then select the additional (free) function of "or best offer". You can evaluate offers one by one. Find one you like, accept it. No 2% fee, as far as I can tell.

If there's something wrong with this idea, post your comment.

 

I wouldn't say eBay's in a death spiral. They just sold PayPal for much more than they anticipated, and now they've nearly reached agreement to sell "eBay Enterprise" for nearly a billion dollars (still a sizeable loss based on its acquisition price, but at least it's gone).

Their "short list" should include:
1. Get RID of Donahoe.
2. Decide what they want to be.
3. Eliminate all those useless worthless infuriating website crap-features that are strangling navigation, efficiency, and search. I could name two dozen.


====================from www.cnet.com

"...As eBay gets ready to split from PayPal, the company is shedding one last distraction from its core business.

(...) Please do not post the full text of the CNET article here (...)

He added that eBay's leadership will "make hard decisions along the way." John Donahoe, eBay's current CEO, will step down.

Hooray!!!

 

The thing with a reserve auction, is there is a potential to achieve higher than your reserve. With a "Buy It Now" fixed price auction with "Or Best Offer" your going to most likely go down in price. The coin I have that I am considering listing as an auction has never been auctioned before. At least in it's attributed form.

 

Yeah, I understand that, but you were looking for a way around the fee; for some coins, of a known and fixed value, my idea would work, I think.

 

Absolutely.. That's typically how I list all of my coins. This is just a unique situation. Thank's for the suggestion though.

 

As a buyer on eBay since well before their IPO stock and most of the current rules and fees, the change I'd like to see is anything that penalizes sellers who post coins at several times their market value in the hope of finding a fool or causing a serious buyer to contact the seller for a deal off-eBay circumventing the fees. We really do not need to wade through a thousand listings to find a few that really are there to sell a fairly priced coin rather than to fulfill a dream of get-rich-quick. Fees that have to be paid for lots not sold are one way to accomplish this. Best way? Maybe not but I do not have time to bid on reserved lots that are not really for sale but just seeking a free appraisal. There is an Ancients seller who regularly lists at 10x a normal price and has even sold some coins Buy-it-Now at 1/10. A fee structure that allows this to be practical needs addressing. How? I wish I knew.

Sellers seem to like to complain of the high fees but forget that this is what pays for a million eyes to see their wares. Certainly there are other venues that charge little or nothing to show lots to dozens of buyers. We all pay our money and pick our venue. If you feel eBay is making too much off of you, stop listing and buy their stock. If you are not selling lots, ask yourself if anyone with a clue would buy the things you are offering and adjust accordingly.

 

EBay thinks they are now too big to fail. A lot of my customers, both buyers and sellers, are complaining about EBay and their ever changing policies. Several of them no longer sell on their site.

 

Oh, I'd love to see this as well, but I can't imagine that it will happen.

When I started selling on eBay (before the turn of the century), Final Value Fees were a tiny fraction of their current level, but listing fees were significant, and the listing fee was higher for items with a higher starting bid. It wasn't a straight percentage, as I recall, but some sort of level/threshold arrangement.

This led to some bad behaviors. First, reserve prices were a lot more common -- and buyers hated reserves (and still do). It was frustrating to put in a bid, see "reserve not met", and have no idea whether you were short by 5% or 500%.

Second, sellers would list items with 99-cent starting bids and no reserve, and if they were unhappy with the bidding, they'd either cancel the auction shortly before its end or find an excuse not to sell to the high bidder.

I think eBay decided that their current approach -- cheap or free listings, with higher FVFs -- would increase their total number of listings, and that was their goal. They want to be seen as the go-to online venue, with the biggest selection, and increasing their listing count is one part of that.

 

And that's why eBay's listing volume and sales are plummeting as people vote with their feet.

No, wait -- that's apparently the opposite of what's happening.

I think eBay is trying to cater to huge, high-volume sellers, and drive off the "pesky" small sellers -- or, at least, minimize the money spent supporting them. As a would-be small seller, this strikes me as a shame, but I'm not sure what to do about it.

 

I have taken my business elsewhere. Haven't bought or sold off of EBay for several years. I just check them from time to time for prices.

 

Ebay has also put themselves in the unfortunate position of being the "nanny" for taking care of lots of ignorant buyers, attempting to take the Caveat Emptor out of the process. This has become a big portion of what buyers are paying for. And in order to discourage dishonest sellers, they've made it so that you really have to hold your heart in your hand to sell. They paved the way for big secondary markets to sell off once-opened / returned merchandise. This is their bread and butter. Small sellers are just a legacy that allows them to remain a diverse marketplace and not just sell iphones and x-boxes.

As sellers (and costs passed on to buyers) there is a large premium for consumer protection.

I go way back as a consumer and seller (I go back far enough to have legally purchased a handgun on Ebay - used legal FFL for transfer, etc) and they have continually eroded the relationship with the people that built it - in order to facilitate large volume re-sealed box crap hawkers.

On the other hand, it is a big market - and with that comes a big audience. When something is hot - it's usually the best place to sell it. The premiums are higher, but the potential for a higher sale price is also much greater.

As we see more and more competition, we will also start to see erosion of Ebay's dominance, and possibly the "need" to compete.

With the PayPal split, other companies will be able to start realizing the benefits of the 3rd party payment processing - and that will put Ebay in a defensive position.

Keep supporting the up and coming competition and we will all be rewarded.

 

eBay certainly doesn't do everything perfectly, but in my opinion the Reserve Fee is a net positive. Coins with reserves do not sell, more often than not, as buyers are unwilling to bother bidding on them. By adding a reserve fee, eBay is helping disincent the seller behavior of setting reserves, which in turn will slightly reduce the number of auction listings that never sell and clutter up the search results.

eBay has to strike a balance - they want to encourage sellers to list items but at the same time they want to incent sellers to list their items in such a way that they will actually sell. As it stands now, I would guess that less than 5% of all new coin listings actually sell within their timeframe. Sifting through the search results to find true $0.99 auction listings and coins that are actually priced to sell is a laborious process. A more innovative eCom company would have tackled this problem head-on much earlier, but from what I have heard the company culture at eBay has been stifled and regressive for some years now.

To me, it seems a somewhat simple fix with two basic options. A) eBay can further disincent sellers from polluting the site with unsellable listings, by raising fees on BIN-only listings and auction listings with a starting price >$0.99. B) eBay can incent sellers to list more true auctions, by lowering the fees for auctions with a $0.99 start price.

 

I don't like to play guessing games myself, so I never bid on coins that have a reserve. Just my personal rule. I would much rather the seller post his offering at his lowest acceptable price for an opening bid and see where the auction goes from there.

 

Evolution is good..... I'm glad to see this thread with sellers looking for other selling platforms.

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I was under the impression that EBay always charged a fee for Reserve auctions?