rising ebay fees

I was checking my-ebay this morning and had a message that irritated me a little bit. The ebay listing fees and final value fees increased. Not very much, but enough. between the listing fees final value fees and paypal fees profits are slowly getting chipped away. Most of the coins and other items I sell (or try to!) are fairly inexpensive, so this really does not help my cause.
I wondered what other peoples thoughts were.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Off goes more profits to Yahoo auctions.

 

Well I got the same message. Didn't they just raise the rates in the recent past?
I guess a seller would only hope that the price of old coins would rise to offset this.
Of course as a buyer, expect to have to absorb some of this increase.
Good old USA inflation strikes again. I both buy and sell. I tried that coinbay. biz but nobody bid on anything I put up for auction. The local coin show charges $70 for a dealer table so that's out.
It looks like we are forced to swallow yet another price hike at feebay.
Look for sellers to jack up shipping charges to pay the darn ebay fees.

 

For a coin that sells for $10 it went up 8 cents but only 3 cents if you start the listing at 99 cents. For a coin that sells for $1000 it went up $2.55 tops. Granted, its an increase but not too bad of an increase. I don't think it will stop me from using eBay considering the number of buyers my coins get exposed to. When compared to other auction options I think it's still a bargain.

 

Car:
Yes, a small increase, but they take more and more fun out of using Ebay!
Sure, they have to keep the shareholders happy, but you can increase income thru efficiency without screwing your customers.

 

I would expect Paypal to raise rates again as well... not long before the other shoe drops.

The rate of increase in eBay listings is dropping, so they have to increase that top line revenue somehow, and this "painless increase" is a way to keep that share price up!

The way I read it, they're only hitting the most popular starting price with an increased insertion fee, $1.00 to $9.99. Auctions that start at 99 cents are more likely to end in a sale IMHO, and Paypal gets a quarter plus 2.9% from you anyway-- that quarter being the operative term. Pretty good margin for a transaction that costs them millicents. I just say no to that Premium Account and I've given up selling on eBay.

No worries, we'll just see another increase in shipping and handling - by an even dollar or so, just to make the math easy. :hammer:

More power to the other sale forums. Maybe another look at Yahoo is in order...

 

painless

These painless increases may have me rethinking my buying and selling habits. Give an inch and they will take a mile.
As for as shipping goes, I have been trying to keep mine low, Usually $1.25 to $1.50, to attract buyers, but if I keep selling I may have to rethink that. Which brings up another point. I have noticed lately that a lot of people must not pay any attention to shipping cost. I have had a few Items lately with low or free shipping that did not sell, and completed results showed that people were paying $3 or $4 more after shipping for the exact same item. Go figure

 

What I never understood was why don't more people use the open forum on this site?
I have posted coins for sale and coins for trade. I have posted coins I wanted.
The response was dismal. Here we have a select group of serious collectors and the open forum is free.
Why isn't it being used?

 

Let's get real people. Just look at the S/H fees being charged on ebay. I think the sellers are more than making up for the ebay listing increases.

 

Ah, you see my point, Old Silver. EBay fees go up 25 cents and the S&H uplift is "rounded up" a bit... to a $1 increase, say?

Not everyone does this, but many do. Also, S&H amounts are exempted from Final Value fees, which leads (outside of coins) to the one cent item with $25 S&H. I was waiting to see whether eBay would close that "loophole" but not so far. ("In order to avoid confusion...")

I like Amazon.com's used book policy: they set the S&H and it's fixed per book. No baloney.

 

Someone who is beyond the computer literacy of me needs to do something like the following:

Create a program, site, or network that will consolidate the listings of yahoo, ebay, bidz and the like. One stop searching for all fo those sights. You go to this consolidated listing, bid and it transfers the bid information into the original listing forum. I guess it is somewhat like sniping you could say. This way you can list with the cheapest auction forum but have the exposure, plus some that you would routinely get with Ebay.

Was that coherent enough to inspire any of you? lol

 

I always offer both Priority Mail and First Class Mail with Delivery Confirmation and optional Insurance! Most Buyers like having a choice and eBay's Shipping Calculation Software which I believe is tied to the USPS, does a fairly good job of the correct shipping costs. Delivery Confirmation is required by PayPal whether Insurance is purchased or not.


The Other, Other Frank

 

The owners of Ebay are making a killing on fee's and are doing great---but when you get $$ you always want more it seems---and that is what I bet is happing with Ebay---it will run them into the ground if they don't watch.
I sell coins part time just to make alittle extra $$ and I hardly ever use Ebay---I use CoinTalk--WINS--Coin Dealer (who doesn't seem to buy much at the store--mostly from shows) and I've even set up at a coin shows---by far the only one that cost me to sell was the show---and that was $20 I think for a table---
I agree---if ya'll have something for sale post it in the OPEN forum here on CoinTalk---please remember the rules---one post per week (7 days), all others will be deleted.

Speedy

 

shipping

I offer both as well. I was surprised once the buyer actually paid more for priority! From my experience priority is no faster than first class.

 

Speedy, you have mentioned WINS before. Can you explain what that is and maybe provide a link.

As a side note, I listed some stuff on ebay today and then read this thread. So as an experiment, I then listed a dime for the selling price of 10 cents. I put the handling and shipping charge at $6.50

So we will see how that works out. What I am sick of is paying ebay listing fees for items that do not sell.
Then relisting them 2 or 3 more times and they still don't sell. Well now I've paid more in fees that the unsold item is worth!

 

http://www.winsociety.org/index.html

Its a Coin Club that is online---many of the people here are members---myself/Peter/Doug/Roy, just to name a few---
We have an email list for normal coin stuff---kindof like the CoinChat here at CoinTalk and we have a Trade list that is just for making trade and buy and sell offers...
There is an online auction every few weeks--members can list up to 10 items and there is no charge---I've never met a member that can't be trusted---
Alot of the guys are from the old CoinWorld forum also---

Speedy

 

Oh boy! I just tried to join but it rejected my e-mail. Something about an outgoing server address, well that's all gobbledegook baloney to me.

 

I got a blank e-mail on my Eudora when trying to send... probably an issue at my end since not many people use Eudora... (good for avoiding MS Outlook-borne viruses though). Speedy, I sent an e-mail with the info requested. Thanks for the idea!

 

Umtrr, I was under the impression that Eudora was owned by Penn State (they certainly acted that way), are you a penn state student, or is it publicly available?

 

Eudora

I used to have eudora mail also. It came on my old computer, and it was to me, the most discouraging progam I have ever seen. I even tried to delete it but the mail program had it's fingers in to many other programs.:computer: