"The trouble is, as said by *devils.advocate*, Sellers are either being greedy and thinking "More money for me" or aren't thinking at all."
Isn't that just what ebay are doing and expecting to get away with it because they are "A business" with "Expenses that have to covered" and also thinking they are entitled to a guaranteed profit on top. They are not entitled to a profit, they have to earn it by improving their offering to buyers, including private sellers if they want to keep them. Ebay should be looking at their costs and reducing them where possible, not just letting them escalate and using their near monopoly status to pass them on without any visible benefits to their customers.
I remember the (then) CEO telling the shareholders how many more $ billions Managed Payments would add to the revenue streams. That heavily subsidising Focus Categories and the Vertical Strategy would grow profitability by changing the nature of ebay's buyer base, it didn't but the subsidies continue..
At the time we were told that we had to accept MP because ebay had to adapt to stay in the race and private sellers would just have to accept that instant payment (under Paypal) was gone for good and we should put up with the lower standard of service. Last year (?) we had several more changes to how our payouts were made, all taking standards lower and further dis-advantaging private sellers.
The shareholders gratefully accepted the ever increasing dividends and share buy-backs (on falling buyer /seller numbers and falling GMV). How many board members and senior execs. took pay cuts to go with the falls? How many bonuses were reduced? My guess would be zero, the gravy train rolled on.
So we have a management that has implemented a costly strategy that's failed so far to grow ebay or its profits. The increased revenue from MP has disappeared and ebay, yet again, needs to raise revenue to keep the gravy train rolling.
Again, where are the economies falling on those that live very well off of ebay? Are there predictions of cuts to exec. pay, bonuses or dividends. Nope, the gravy train must be kept going whatever the cost.
So this time private sellers must put up with longer payment holds, sales falling (even further) because of ebay's stupidity in making what were invisible fees into what appears to be a price increase. It will still look like a price increase even if the seller reduces their price from 99p to 49p simply because it is shown to the buyer.
And ebay will try to squeeze another $billion or two out of reducing private sellers delivery options to a chaotic mess that will inevitably hit their sales even more.
For at least five years ebay has been reducing the quality and standards of the services offered to private sellers but increasing their cost, either directly or indirectly by making them much more inconvenient to use.
It's not really much of a surprise that there is so much distrust and disillusion about and a few business sellers telling them that it's all their own fault for being so greedy in wanting an extra 50p isn't going to make it go away. This fiasco has, I think, opened a lot of eyes to the fact that while a few at ebay are wallowing in gravy, for private sellers it's always "jam tomorrow" and most likely no bread today either.
